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Doctoral Degrees (Graduate School of Business and Leadership)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10413/7377

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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Graduate School of Business and Leadership) by Author "Bodhanya, Shamim Ahmed."

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    A system dynamics perspective of the non-profit organisation's quest for sustainability: a case study.
    (2015) Singh, Nikita.; Bodhanya, Shamim Ahmed.
    The process of investigating this organisation’s quest for sustainability began by recognition of the struggle to remain sustainable as a common one among NPOs the world over. The sustainability of non-profit organizations is of vital importance as the non-profit sector contributes large amounts of time, energy and resources to the upliftment of society, while faced with constant financial, environmental and organizational uncertainty and ambiguities. It was recognised that the sustainability of NPOs is a complex issue requiring a methodology that could capture such complexity adequately. A Qualitative System Dynamics methodology was chosen based on its merits in enhancing understanding regarding complex problem issues. In addition, the study was guided by a case study approach with the empirical work been conducted on the Oxfam Great Britain (GB) affiliate operating in SA. Empirical investigations, together with careful scrutiny of organisational documentation formed the basis of the findings that emerged which pointed to seven themes as integral to the sustainability of Oxfam affiliates, namely: (1) Human Resource capacity (2) Credibility of the organisation (3) Partnerships (4) Competition in the non-profit sector (5) Co-financing and funding arrangements (6) Navigating the North-South Dilemma and (7) the dynamics involved in attempts to remain apolitical. Sustainability was recognised as being emergent from the feedbacks within and between such themes. Furthermore, it was recognised that due to the constantly changing nature of such feedbacks and of the environment in which the organisation is embedded, non-profits tend to traverse a sustainability landscape in terms of being more sustainable at certain times and less sustainable at other times, depending on how they respond to such change. A number of external influences emanating outside of the organisation were also identified as impacting the NPOs sustainability, including the influence of the political and economic systems in which the organisation was embedded, the impact of donors’ perceptions of South Africa as a middle-income or prosperous nation, the external pressures encouraging the establishment of a South African Oxfam affiliate in SA, and the impact of the global economic recession on international aid and development efforts. Overall implications for the NPO sector were also identified including the effect of continuous giving to well-known or “successful” NPOs such as Oxfam, as well as the consequences of an ever-growing NPO sectors’ reliance on ever-shrinking funding pools.
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    Systemic approaches to improvement in sugarcane production and supply : Umfolozi and Felixton Mill areas.
    (2013) Hildbrand, Sandra.; Bodhanya, Shamim Ahmed.; Bezuidenhout, Carel Nicolaas.
    Within the South African sugar industry, several possibilities for performance improvement exist. Present inefficiencies arise largely from the complexity of integrated sugarcane production and supply systems. Research has mainly concentrated on technical, hard aspects, such as mill and transport efficiency and sugarcane quality in an attempt to optimise these systems by optimising their parts. Soft issues, like communication, trust, and values have been neglected. This study considers sugarcane production and supply systems more holistically and places a particular focus on soft and leadership issues. Two systems methodologies, Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) and the Viable System Model (VSM) were applied to investigate the complexity of two large sugarcane production and supply systems in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa in the Felixton and Umfolozi milling areas. These methodologies were combined with a qualitative approach which facilitated a thorough exploration of crucial soft and leadership issues. The outcome of the empirical work showed that a core issue challenging both milling areas and the entire sugar industry is the presence of fragmentation. Factors that contribute to fragmentation and suggestions for its handling are presented. SSM and VSM fostered an in-depth understanding of the studied system, yet their ability to suggest improvements was not confirmed. Since it is argued that this was largely impeded by the conditions of the study, the thesis overall supports the suitability of both methodologies in the sugar industry context and encourages their further use. The thesis emphasises the necessity to adopt a holistic approach and pay attention to soft issues when dealing with sugarcane production and supply systems. By implication, systemic approaches in general seem significant in this context. Neither SSM nor VSM were previously utilised to investigate a sugarcane production and supply system, hence this thesis makes a meaningful contribution to the existing body of SSM and VSM knowledge. It highlights the strengths and shortfalls of these systems methodologies in the applied context and presents derived methodological lessons. These lessons broaden the knowledge of employing SSM and VSM and support their application in practice.