research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment,
University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree:
Master of Science in Engineering.
03 November 2015South African technology businesses are seeing an increasing number of young
professionals from diverse backgrounds joining their ranks. Managing diversity in the
workplace is perceived to be poorly handled in the South African business arena and may
be responsible for the large turnover of employed professionals observed. There is a high
rate at which young professionals are changing jobs, leaving the country and/ or
becoming unproductive or complacent within relatively short periods of time. This situation
is of serious concern due to the severe shortage of skills in the country, especially in the
technology sector. On the one hand it creates a major upset or disruption for companies
that invest significant resources in the training and development of these individuals. On
the other hand, it leads to a vast knowledge gap within the industry since the time horizon
of incumbents in specific positions or in companies is seldom long enough to fully develop
specialist knowledge within the various technical niches.
Chaos and complexity theories are applied in the study to understand this problem better
in the context of interactions between constituent parts of a dynamic system within itself
and with the environment, and, specifically, to determine the degree to which the problem
is influenced by leadership interactions. In the process a framework for designing
leadership architecture was developed with the aim of helping business leaders better
manage the problem.
A mixed method approach was used to conduct the research, in which a survey with over
ninety respondents and focus group of selected individuals were used to obtain
quantitative and qualitative data respectively. The data were then analysed to provide
useful insight. The results showed that leadership, particularly the relationship between
professionals and their direct managers, has a significant influence on the decision to stay
or leave a company and/ or to change professions
