Browsing by Subject "Business Science"

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    An Investigation into the suitability of using GARCH process for pricing options on the SAFEX all share index futures contracts
    (1999) Miller, Saul; Dorrington, Robert; MacDonald, lain
    This thesis primarily sets out to investigate the possibility of incorporating autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) assumptions in an option-valuation model for All Share Index option contracts, as an alternative to the constant variance assumption required by the Black-Scholes option-pricing model. This involves an assessment of whether the log-returns of the ALSI futures (the instruments underling the ALSl option) follow an ARCH process. A secondary objective is to assess the potential for using an ARCH process to model the ALST spot log returns. This could have the following uses: • Pricing over-the-counter ALSI spot options. • Using the forecast spot return ARCH volatility as a proxy for the forecast ALSI future log return volatility if they have similarly. This is desirable for pricing options on new futures contracts when there is insufficient historical futures data available to fit an ARCH model. Evidence of ARCH presence is determined by examining autocorrelation in the square error terms of the log returns. Although some statistically significant autocorrelations were found, the lags which exhibited these significant autocorrelations showed no pattern. Furthermore, lags which exhibited these significant autocorrelations changed over time.
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    Open Access
    B2B brand engagement in social media: The employee's perspective
    (2017) Pitt, Christine; Botha, Elsamari
    Brand engagement, or the process of how customers and other stakeholders form emotional or rational attachments to brands has garnered considerable attention in the marketing literature in recent years. Brand engagement is important because it is a construct strongly related to brand equity, or in simple terms the "value of the brand". Recently, the nature of brand engagement has also changed significantly because of the advent of social media. Not only do users of these social media share personal information with each other, they also comment on, contribute to, and share opinions on the brands that engage them. While the literature is extensive on brand engagement and social media, most of the emphasis is on customers, rather than other stakeholders such as employees, suppliers, and investors. Moreover, the research focuses almost entirely on consumers, the customers of business-to-consumer firms, rather than on the industrial and organizational customers of business-to-business (B2B) firms or their stakeholders. Only very recently have scholars begun to explore both customer and employee engagement and their effects on firm performance in both the business-to-consumer and business-to-business arenas. The research presented in this dissertation attempts to grow the literature in two ways. First, it focuses on brand engagement in business-to-business firms rather than business-to-consumer; second, it does this by studying a stakeholder group other than customers, namely, employees. Moreover, it does this through the employee lens, rather than the lens of the firm; in other words it explores how employees engage with firms rather than how firms engage with their employees. The study utilizes an exploratory research design focusing on qualitative data. The data consist of job reviews posted by employees of B2B firms on the social medium Glassdoor.com. Glassdoor.com collects company reviews and real salaries from employees of a range of organizations and displays them anonymously, and users are also able to rate their employees on a five-star scale. The firms chosen were based on a ranking study by the research firm Brandwatch, and were split into two groups, namely the 30 top ranked firms, and the 30 bottom ranked firms. These reviews were then analyzed, using Hart's theory of word choice and verbal tone, in DICTION, the content analysis software. The results indicate that there are significant differences between top ranked and bottom ranked firms, and also between top rated and bottom rated firms. Employees of top ranked firms are significantly more optimistic in their reviews, while employees of bottom ranked firms express significantly more certainty, activity and realism. There are no significant differences with regard to commonality. With regard to firm ratings, the employees of highly rated firms are significantly more optimistic, while employees of low rated firms score significantly more on all the other dimensions of word choice and verbal tone. The employees of top ranked firms are significantly less insistent in their reviews but display significantly more embellishment, variety and complexity. Similarly, in the case of firm ratings, highly rated reviews are significantly less insistent, but exhibit significantly more embellishment, variety and complexity. The thesis contributes to academic knowledge in four ways. First, it is the first study to consider brand engagement in the business-to-business environment from an employee perspective. Second, the study contributes by providing a perspective on brand engagement from two sides, namely highly ranked B2B companies and low ranked B2B companies, as well as highly rated B2B companies and low rated B2B companies. It highlights the differences between these two groups with regard to brand engagement. Furthermore, it permits a focus on the differences between employees who rate an employer brand high versus those that rate it low, regardless of how the brand is ranked independently. Stated differently, in a brand engagement context, the study identifies specific dimensions or calculated variables that distinguish high and low rankings and ratings. Third, this is the first study that examines employee brand engagement using Hart's theory of word choice and verbal tone. This means that it employs a robust means of comparing pieces of text, or in this particular case, the text resulting from an employee's review and rating of an employer, as a proxy for employee brand engagement. Fourth, this study is the first to use the DICTION content analysis software to examine employee brand engagement in a business-to-business context. It demonstrates DICTION's ability to operationalize Hart's five dimensions of text, and the calculated variables, as well as confirming DICTION's capacity to handle very large text files. The study also has implications for marketing managers, and for brand executives in the business-to-business arena specifically. First, it enables managers to identify the most important dimensions of brand engagement according to Hart's theory, when employee reviews are posted on social media. When managers are able to discern which dimensions figure prominently in the most highly regarded brands according to employees, they can begin to formulate strategies that might enable them to develop these dimensions in their own environment. Likewise, when they are able to distinguish the dimensions that mark the least highly regarded brands, or the dimensions that occasion negative reviews, they will be able to develop strategies that enable their firms to overcome these effects. Second, the use of data such as that available on Glassdoor will allows managers to compare the nature of their brand engagement to others, such as competitors or firms they wish to benchmark against, and to develop strategies that will enable them to shift their level of brand engagement over time. Third, the results of the study reinforce the notion that brands and human capital are more important and interlinked than most managers acknowledge. The management of these two assets therefore requires more than occasional attention; rather, they should become part of regular organizational brand strategy.
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    Collaborative new product development : a study of governance and outcomes
    (2003) Parker, Hamieda; Faull, Norman; Marks, Amy
    This study contributes to the understanding of the role of relational governance and formal contractual governance within short-term new product development focused alliances and proposes relevant managerial implications.
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    Corporate social responsibility with special reference to a life assurance society
    (1984) Goldblatt, Raymond Brian; Kabat, M; Leatt, J V
    This thesis deals with the topic of corporate social responsibility and represents an effort to treat it as a management issue in the context of a large insurance society. Today we live in a world of increasing complexity, growth and change. Attempts to gain a greater understanding and insight into the functioning of our world have led to the development of an analytical method called the 'systems approach', whereby instead of explaining the whole in terms of its parts, the parts are explained in terms of the whole. The systems approach is a holistic method of analysing systems. The outputs of one system form the inputs to another. The analysis of any system must deal with the twin phenomena of complexity and interrelatedness. Each system is in itself quite complex but nevertheless has many interrelated elements organised to achieve the set objectives of the system. The systems approach is potentially useful when considering the complexities of a modern business organisation. Indeed, the conscious recognition of the business organisation as a dynamic whole brings with it the awareness of the difficulty of the managerial process. Systems thinking compels management to realise that their organisation is only a subsystem of a larger system - the society whose mandate legitimises their organisation's purpose and existence. The organisation's outputs are its inputs to the society, and vice versa. This interrelationship imposes certain obligations and restrictions on the manner in which the organisation conducts its business to ensure the increased well- being of the society as a whole.
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    The effect of South African dividend and capital gains taxes on cost of capital, firm value and capital structure
    (2010) Marcus, Matthew; Toerien, Francois
    I examine the effect of South African taxes, specifically the secondary tax on companies (STC) and capital gains tax (CGT) on investor measures of expected return and firm value, firm cost of capital and optimal capital structure. The discussion, findings and models presented in this study are entirely original in the field of South African corporate finance research. I model the relationship between STC, CGT and expected return and use this relationship to formulate an hypothesis of the expected behaviour of ex ante measures of implied cost of capital for a sample of listed South African companies.
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    Estimates of the level and shape of mortality rates in South Africa around 1985 and 1990 derived by applying indirect demographic techniques to reported deaths
    (1998) Dorrington, Rob; Bradshaw, Debbie; Wegner, Trevor
    This research attempts firstly to estimate both the level and shape of the mortality curve of the Black South African population group circa 1985 by the application of indirect demographic techniques to the reported deaths for Blacks for the period 1984- 86 and an estimate of the Black population in mid-1985. The life tables thus produced are then combined with the official South African Life Tables for Whites, Coloureds and Asians to produce a weighted average national life tables circa 1985. These national life tables are then compared with those produced by applying the Bennett and Horiuchi method to national data for the 1984-86 period in order to decide on suitable adjustments to make when applying the Bennett and Horiuchi method to national data for the period 1989-91 and beyond.
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    Monthly expenditure category fluctuations and trade-off in South Africa bottom of the pyramid households
    (2017) Lappeman, James; Chigada, Joel; Pillay, Pragasen
    This exploratory study investigated changes in the allocation of household expenditure between various product or service categories in a sample of South African low-income or 'bottom of the pyramid' (BoP) households. First, the mixed methods research quantified the monthly income and expenditure fluctuations in the sample of households over a period of four months. In addition, study identified and quantified expenditure category trade-offs in the target households. Finally, a qualitative inquiry explained the reasons for the fluctuations and the trade-offs identified in the first two components. The study was based on the existing BoP proposition and specifically focused on BoP consumer decision-making theory. Methodologically, the study was a monthly longitudinal panel over four months. The quantitative component employed a once-off baseline questionnaire to gather household data. The participating households then completed monthly self-complete financial diary questionnaires that recorded both income and expenditure. The qualitative component involved interviews with representatives from the participating households and provided details to explain the underlying causes for changes in monthly expenditure patterns. The study was conducted in four provinces with eighty BoP households participating in the research. The study found significant variation in both household income and expenditure between months. The variation and consequent trade-offs between expenditure categories was caused by calendar-related phenomena (such as the festive season), income shocks, unforeseen expenses and spreading the household budget over multiple months. In addition, large fluctuations in income resulted in a constantly shifting allocation of expenditure to categories that required the most attention at a particular point in time. Informal savings (stokvels) and micro-enterprise expenses also contributed to fluctuations in income and expenditure. This study provides unique insights that fill a vacuum in the current body of academic and industry knowledge for this segment of close to forty million BoP South Africans. No study of this nature has been published in either South African or international journals.
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    News media, asset prices and capital flows: evidence from a small open economy
    (2017) Sher, Galen; Strugnell, Dave
    Objectives: This work investigates the role for the content of print news media in determining asset prices and capital flows in a small open economy (South Africa). Specifically, it examines how much of the daily variation in stock prices, bond prices, trading volume and capital flows can be explained by phrases in the print news media. Furthermore, this work links such evidence to the existing theoretical and empirical literature. Methods: This work employs natural language processing techniques for counting words and phrases within articles published in national newspapers. Variance decompositions of the resulting word and phrase counts summarise the information extracted from national newspapers in this way. Following previous studies of the United States, least squares regression relates stock returns to single positive or negative 'sentiment' factors. New in this study, support vector regression relates South African stock returns, bond returns and capital flows to the high-dimensional word and phrase counts from national newspapers. Results: I find that domestic asset prices and capital flows between residents and non-residents reflect the content of domestic print news media. In particular, I find that the contents of national newspapers can predict 9 percent of the variation in daily stock returns one day ahead and 7 percent of the variation in the daily excess return of long-term bonds over short-term bonds three days ahead. This predictability in stocks and bonds coincides with predictability of the content of domestic print news media for net equity and debt portfolio capital inflows, suggesting that the domestic print news media affects foreign residents' demand for domestic assets. Moreover, predictability of domestic print news media for near future stock returns is driven by emotive language, suggesting a role for 'sentiment', while such predictability for stock returns further ahead and the premium on long-term bonds is driven by non-emotive language, suggesting a role for other media factors in determining asset prices. These results do not seem to reflect a purely historical phenomenon, finite-sample biases, reverse causality, serial correlation, volatility or day-of-the-week effects. The results support models where foreign agents' short-run beliefs or preferences respond to the content of domestic print news media heterogeneously from those of domestic agents, while becoming more homogeneous in the medium term.
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    The relationship between central life interests and work-family conflict amongst single working mothers
    (2000) Andrews, Taryn; Price, Linda
    This research explored the experiences of work-family conflict amongst a group of twenty single working mothers with pre-school age children. Dubin's (1992) theory of Central Life Interests was utilised to fully understand how the differential importance of the roles played by the women informed the level and nature of the conflict experienced. A two-phase research design was employed, in which questionnaire responses from the first phase formed the basis for the second phase of in-depth qualitative interviews. Results indicated that participants viewed motherhood as their Central Life Interest and that this priority could lead them to experience greater conflict between work and family demands. Although work was rated second in importance when compared to family, it was still seen as being of great significance, not only for instrumental reasons but also for the intellectual stimulation provided and opportunities for participants to exercise independence and resposibility.
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    A resource-based view of the firm : integrating the role of IT as a strategic resource - an empirical study of South African personal financial services (Assurance) firms, 1999-2003
    (2004) April, Kurt; Feeny, David; Simpson, John; Licker, Paul
    This research explores an "inside the black box" view on how IT enables sustainable competitive advantage. Most researchers have investigated IT competitive competencies that make up a firm's strategic framework to understand competitive advantage. However, Resource-Based Theory (RBT) probes into the inner workings of a firm, suggesting that a firm's IT assets and resources are the basis of a firm's "rare" core competencies to compete successfully. Using RBT and research in the economics, strategy, and IT literatures, an initial "Framework of Sustainability" was created, against which the case studies were conducted. This framework was used as foundation to develop semi-structured questionnaires in which 45, 90 minute (on average) interviews were conducted with managers in the four firms. Both internal and external documents about the firms and the industry were used as sources of corroborating evidence. In addition, a "bottoms up" view was obtained with evidence gathered from a short questionnaire and focus groups discussions held with 178 staff employees in the four firms.
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    A strategic focus on the structuring of business combinations
    (2004) Snyman, Anton M; Pitt, Doug
    The purpose of the research is to develop a strategic planning approach apropos the structuring of business combinations on the basis of empirical research as well as relevant strategy approaches and concepts. Business combination with other firms through mergers and acquisitions (M&A), joint ventures and strategic alliances represents the major external versus internal organic growth route and provides the firm intent on external growth with a considerable range of combination vehicles, through which it can implement specific combination strategies to achieve its defined corporate vision and objectives.
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    The structuration of industrial relations in the South African garment manufacturing industry : 1968-1986
    (1991) Birt, Martin Kenneth
    Industrial Relations theory presents a dualism of approaches to explanation, that is of Subjective and Objective paradigms of explanation. Utilising Giddensian Structuration theory, a Structuration theory of industrial relations is developed and utilised to bridge the epistemological divide. Structuration theory is then utilised to establish the ontological character of collective bargaining for three regions of the South African Garment Manufacturing Industry. This 'character' is shown to be encapsulated in the notion of maintaining a high level of managerial prerogative. The managerial prerogative has been maintained and perpetuated by the lack of militancy on the part of the Unions, and an explanation of the observed lack of militancy is provided by the examination of action around the bargaining in the respective industrial councils.
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    A study into the rationale, design and evaluation of a specific decision support system in compensation planning
    (1987) Wegner, Trevor; Money, Arthur; Tromp, David
    The application of newly developed information technology to managerial decision making has given rise to a new discipline known as Decision Support Systems (DSS). While considerable development of DSS has taken place since the mid-seventies, in such areas as applications, conceptual clarification of goals and characteristics, and developmental methodology, there are still certain areas which remain relatively unexplored.
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    Tencent Holdings Limited : an IPO case study
    (2015) De Wet, Dario; Toerien, Francois; Kruger, Ryan
    The purpose of this case study is to empirically investigate the phenomenon of initial public offerings (IPOs) by applying it to Tencent Holdings Limited (Tencent). Tencent is a Chinese internet and telecommunications value-added service provider that launched its IPO on 16 June 2004. Tencent is China’s largest internet firm and Asia’s most valuable brand, boasting a current market capitalization of HK$1.224 trillion (US$157.9 billion). The origins of Tencent’s success story trace back to its IPO decision, an important topic in the field of finance. The aim of this study is to investigate the structure of Tencent’s IPO, its listing decision and determining an intrinsic value of its IPO shares on its listing date. It was found that Tencent’s IPO extensively relates to academic literature surrounding IPO under-pricing and valuing unlisted companies. The results reveal that Tencent left money on the table by underpricing its offer shares and exercised its over-allotment option as a form of price stabilization. It was further found that Tencent’s underpricing was not influenced by competitor IPOs but rather by stringent IPO allotment policies and other signals of firm quality. It was also discovered that there might have been bias in the allocation of Tencent’s shares. An investigation into Tencent’s listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx) revealed that while its competitors listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market, there was a clear correlation between Tencent’s operations and corporate structure to the HKEx listing and regulatory requirements. The decisive factors included domiciling in the British Virgin Island and Cayman Islands, the cost of listing on the HKEx Main Board versus the NASDAQ National Market as well as the effects of US GAAP and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The study was concluded with the application of a relative valuation and discounted cash flow (DCF) valuation. The relative valuation estimated a price range of HK$14.40-HK$18.72 for Tencent’s IPO shares, while the DCF estimated the intrinsic value of the shares to be HK$18.68. The analysis was comprehensive and in-depth and suggests that Tencent’s IPO shares were five times undervalued and were offered to shareholders at a deep discount.
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    The relationship between job characteristics and work family enrichment
    (2009) Le Shauls, Bridgette; Jaga, Ameeta
    This study examined job characteristics as antecedents of work-family enrichment amongst full time employees in an investment company in South Africa (N = 129). Contrary to expectations of work family enrichment having three underlying dimensions, an exploratory factor analysis revealed a unidimensional construct. Multiple regression analysis evidenced that a higher level of work-family enrichment was reported by respondents in jobs where feedback and friendship were experienced. There was no support for the hypotheses that employees in jobs with more autonomy, task identity and/or dealing with others, would experience greater work-family enrichment. Management implications of these results and future directions for research are discussed.
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    The relationship between job characteristics and work family enrichment
    (2009) Le Shauls, Bridgette; Jaga, Ameeta
    This study examined job characteristics as antecedents of work-family enrichment amongst full time employees in an investment company in South Africa (N = 129). Contrary to expectations of work family enrichment having three underlying dimensions, an exploratory factor analysis revealed a unidimensional construct. Multiple regression analysis evidenced that a higher level of work-family enrichment was reported by respondents in jobs where feedback and friendship were experienced. There was no support for the hypotheses that employees in jobs with more autonomy, task identity and/or dealing with others, would experience greater work-family enrichment. Management implications of these results and future directions for research are discussed.
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    The treatment of uncertainty in multicriteria decision making
    (2003) Durbach, Ian N; Stewart, Theodor J
    The nature of human decision making dictates that a decision must often be considered under conditions of uncertainty. Decisions may be influenced by uncertain future events, doubts regarding the precision of inputs, doubts as to what the decision maker considers important, and many other forms of uncertainty. The multicriteria decision models that are designed to facilitate and aid decision making must therefore consider these uncertainties if they are to be effective. In this thesis, we consider the treatment of uncertainty in multicriteria decision making (MCDM), with a specific view to investigating the types of uncertainty that are most relevant to MCDM, [and] how the uncertainties identified as relevant may be treated by various different MCDM methodologies.
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    The weekend effect on the Johannesburg stock exchange
    (1994) Nash, Peter; Hobson, Jane
    The study of intraweek share return patterns has received considerable attention in the field of international research. This research has shown that share returns tend to be higher than average on the last trading day of the week and lower than average on the first. This anomaly has come to be known as the Weekend Effect. Explanations proffered for this phenomenon have failed adequately to justify the pattern of returns across the weekdays. These explanations include settlement period delays, dividend effects, measurement error in share prices, institutional features and the tendency for firms to release unfavourable information over the weekend. This study investigates day of the week effects on returns of the All Share Index, Industrial Index and Gold Index on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.