A strategic plan for operating in a commercialised environment.

Thesis (MBA)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.This report evaluates the business plan at Eskom's Matla power station by comparing it to grounded theory to establish whether the strategies selected prepare the station to be competitive in a commercialised environment. It is assumed that the key success factors in a commercialised environment would be low cost operation and service delivery to meet customer demands. It is shown that the business plan is deficient in many regards, but the strategies selected are adequate in preparing the station for operation in a commercial environment. A questionnaire is used to determine management buy-in to the strategies selected to gauge support for the strategies. Reasons for strategies not meeting all objectives are also looked at and recommendations are made to improve· the business plan and the implementation of the strategies selected. The question of whether the strategies support corporate strategy is answered by comparing the vision, mission and strategies selected by the station to the vision and mission of Eskom Holdings and Eskom Generation. The findings here were that, although long and awkward, the mission statement supports corporate mission, while the vision contradicts corporate vision. Matla's vision supports growth through diversification while Eskom Holdings and Eskom Generation focus on core business

Towards a dynamic social judgement theory – an experiment using fake news

Fake news creates a distorted perception of reality, with surreptitious influence on beliefs, attitudes and decision making. It can lead to suboptimal decisions for individuals and society in general, and more perversely can lead people to stop believing in facts altogether. Countering fake news remains a challenge to both academics and practitioners alike, and this study contributes towards closing this practice-knowledge gap through the lens of social judgement theory. While social judgement theory is important and useful for understanding anchor shifts from the fake news phenomenon, it is in itself incomplete as an account of persuasion and overlooks the impact of time on anchors. The contribution of this study comes from introducing a dynamic element to social judgement theory, while adding to the body of knowledge in persuasion theory to counter the scourge of fake news. The research design was a full experimental research that utilised two pilot studies and a main study comprising 190 participants. The results of the experiment led to new findings that time is an important factor in shifting people’s anchors, despite no presence of a persuasive message as required by social judgement theory. The importance and benefits of longitudinal studies in persuasion is demonstrated as the conclusions drawn from this study could have been significantly different had it been a cross-sectional study, which typifies most studies in persuasion. Importantly, a comparison in a single study of the effects of messages questioning the source’s bias against social consensus in the form of user comments at the end of a blog-post, has received remarkably little attention in the field of persuasion. This study compares these two important and critical aspects of persuasion in a single experimental research over a three month period, and finds that both discounting cues on source bias and social consensus had the same effect on participant’s anchors over time, implying they could be used to equal effect to counter fake news. Although the study setting is fake news around climate change, it offers immense value in guiding resources towards countering fake news in other spheres of persuasion like politics and the tobacco industry.Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2022.Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS)PhDUnrestricte