Browsing by Subject "materiality"

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    An inductive analysis of ESG practices and assumptions of materiality amongst South African asset managers
    (2020) Worthington-Smith, Matthew; Giamporcaro, Stephanie
    South Africa is a country burdened by the overhang of apartheid and recent state capture, and desperately trying to balance economic growth with well-being of all stakeholders. This has opened the door for ESG practices to provide holistic solutions for both society and business. This is made particularly relevant by applying business resources to the most relevant ESG issues facing companies, the focus of this study. To achieve the objective of promoting positive societal outcomes through better corporate engagement with ESG, the study analysed 22 asset managers, 25 companies and 25 earnings call transcripts for the opinions of asset managers, companies and analysts on which issues were material to them across five industries. Alongside this analysis, asset managers were interviewed for their opinion of ESG as it is currently practiced in the South African market, where they saw barriers to its practice and where potential improvements could be made. The study found alignment between asset managers and companies on the majority of material issues, but little alignment with analysts, suggesting a break-down in conversation between investors and companies. In particular, the issue of governance was stressed as the most important issue category by asset managers across all industries, but was given little air-time by both companies and analysts. These findings were consistent with the literature on investor perspectives of ESG, company ESG disclosure and materiality. The author suggests a model for materiality be developed to gauge company response to material ESG issues more consistently and aide engagement. Key words: ESG, sustainability, materiality, decoupling, disclosure
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    Assembling Fragments of Home: Finding a Sense of Belonging in Other People's Domestic Objects and Family Photographs
    (2026) Stodel, Sitaara; Huigen-Conradie, Stephane; Alexander, Jane
    My project, an exhibition of assemblage artworks and explicatory document, explores aspects of displacement, belonging, and notions of home with reference to personal, familial, and ancestral experience in the context of South Africa and its history of racial discrimination. I investigate how found materials, specifically photographic fragments and household objects, can be reassembled into affective and meaningful artworks through their alteration, combination, and physical and conceptual layering to construct new narratives that engage memory, loss, and identity. Using found material with mixed media that include printing, sewing, stuffing, and embedding elements, I allude to details of domestic space that relate to personal experience. In my explication, I consider various theoretical frameworks to examine the ideal and transient home, material culture, liminality, domestic photography, and memory, and discuss how particular features of South African history have shaped both my research and the conceptual and material choices I have made in my exhibition, with particular reference to photographs. I refer to the writings of Sara Ahmed, Arup Ratan Chakraborty, Siona O'Connell, and Rebecca Bryant, as well as to selected artworks by Lebohang Kganye, Penny Siopis, Lungiswa Gqunta, Do Ho Suh, and Massa Lemu, to analyse and position this body of work. Through this project, drawing on my personal experience, I aim to evoke and construct new narratives in search of a sense of belonging and to contribute to a more complex and layered understanding of the varied transgenerational impact of displacement on individual lives.