Research Articles (Business Management)

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    Antecedents of psychological well-being among workers within small and medium enterprises
    (AOSIS, 2019) Maziriri, Eugine T.; Chuchu, Tinashe; Madinga, Nkosivile W.
    Orientation: In the contemporary business environment, employee mental health is neglected, especially in mental health research and practice in African Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). This occurs even though this sector is the largest contributor to developed economies. This study highlights the importance of psychological well-being in SME performance and the individual employee. Research purpose: To investigate the influence of perceived organisational support, career goal development and empowering leadership on the psychological well-being of SME employees in Gauteng province, South Africa. Motivation for the study: Despite increasing research on SMEs, few studies have investigated the impact of perceived organisational support, career goal development, and empowering leadership on psychological well-being in a Southern African context. Research approach/design and method: This study followed a quantitative approach, using the survey methodology where a structured questionnaire was administered to 250 SME employees. To evaluate the psychometric properties of measurement scales, a confirmatory factor analysis was performed. Structural equation modelling was used to test the hypotheses. Main findings: Perceived organisational support, career goal development and empowering leadership have a positive and significant impact on the psychological well-being of SME workers. A robust, positive and significant relationship exists between empowering leadership and psychological well-being. Practical/managerial implications: The results indicate that SME managers in South Africa should pay more attention to, or place greater emphasis on, supporting employees in their organisations, recognising and assisting them in achieving their goals, and empowering them to be happy at work. If the psychological well-being of employees is prioritised, SME business performance will ultimately improve. Contribution/value-add: This study contributes to the current body of Africa’s industrial psychology and mental health literature – a field that has received little research attention in developing countries like South Africa.
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    Does occupational noise matter amongst manufacturing (small and medium enterprises) workers? Empirical evidence from Magaba, Mbare, Zimbabwe
    (AOSIS, 2020) Mapuranga, Miston; Maziriri, Eugine T.; Letshaba, Ralebitso K.; Chitamba, Anos
    Background: The significance of how occupational noise can influence attitudes towards occupational noise exposure, susceptibility to hearing loss and job performance has generally been neglected in the past studies. Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the impact of occupational noise on attitudes towards occupational noise exposure, susceptibility to hearing loss and job performance of manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) workers in Zimbabwe. Method: A survey was conducted involving 250 respondents, including manufacturing SME workers, and the hypotheses were analysed by applying structural equation modelling. Results: Occupational noise had a positive and significant effect on attitudes towards occupational noise exposure and perceived susceptibility to hearing loss amongst manufacturing SME workers. In addition, attitudes towards exposure to occupational noise and the perceived susceptibility of hearing loss have had a positive and significant impact on manufacturing SME workers’ job performance. Conclusion: The novelty of the research is its analysis of occupational noise as an indicator of attitudes towards occupational noise exposure and susceptibility to hearing loss as well as job performance. This study provides practitioners with beneficial implications. Collective knowledge on occupational noise could help manufacturing SME managers in recognising the perceptions of employees on occupational noise and how it ultimately affects job performance. Moreover, this study is intended to add new knowledge to the current body of African occupational noise literature – a context that has not received much research attention in developing countries.
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    Factors influencing food consumption satisfaction and purchase decisions of restaurant consumers
    (Taylor & Francis, 2021) Maziriri, Eugine Tafadzwa; Rukuni, Tarisai Fritz; Chuchu, Tinashe
    This research examined how multi-sensory dimensions like sight, sound, and smell would influence customer attitudes toward quick-service restaurants, restaurant patronage intentions, food purchasing decisions, food consumption satisfaction, restaurant attachment, repurchase intention, and positive word of mouth in South African quick-service restaurants. The research embraced a quantitative approach. An online questionnaire was used to collect data from restaurant customers in the Bloemfontein metropolitan. The hypotheses were analysed by applying structural equation modelling. The results uncovered that the study variables were significantly associated and surprisingly, restaurant attachment had a negative and insignificant effect on positive word of mouth. This research adds new fresh knowledge to the established body of knowledge in the context of restaurant food consumption behaviour. This area has little research attention in developing African countries like South Africa.
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    Role salience and the growth intention of women entrepreneurs: does work-life balance make a difference?
    (Cambridge University Press, 2021) Neneh, Brownhilder Ngek
    Work and family are two of the most competing and salient roles in the life of every individual. As such, individuals often make behavioral decisions based on the relative salience (work or family) they attach to these life roles. Given that growth intention is a vital behavioral choice in the life of an entrepreneur, this study examined how role salience influences the growth intentions of women entrepreneurs. Moreover, for most women entrepreneurs, their family domain is highly entwined with the business domain, and as such, having an adequate work-life balance is often a vital personal goal. Thus, this study also examined the influence of work-life balance on the growth intentions of the women entrepreneurs as well as its moderating effect of on the relationship between role salience and growth intentions. Based on self-reported data from women entrepreneurs (N = 300), the findings of this study using logistic regression analysis revealed that both work role salience (b = .88, p < .001) and work-life balance (b = .73, p < .001) have a positive effect on the growth intentions of women entrepreneurs. Additionally, work-life balance also moderated the relationship between work role salience and growth intention such that the positive association is strengthened at high levels of work-life balance (b = .90, p < .001). The study culminates with a discussion of the implications and suggestions for future research.
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    Migrants, migration and migrancy: Migrant experiences of South Africa in contemporary African literature
    (University of the Free State, 2022) Motahane, Nonki; Nyambi, O.; Makombe, R.
    Recent years have seen a steady increase in mass migration of Africans within and outside the continent. In the African continent, South Africa is among the top immigrant receiving countries. The post-1994 political dispensation’s notion of the of the “rainbow nation” created an impression of diversity that attracted inward mobilities. However, in recent years, as the South African economy stuttered and anti-immigrant rhetoric by the media and senior politicians increased, the reception and assimilation of immigrants in South Africa has been less than enthusiastic. In the discourse on migration in South Africa, xenophobic violence has become the single most important manifestation of the relationship between the locals and migrants. It is important, therefore, to explore the literary interventions in the urgent process of re-establishing new knowledges about South Africa’s so-called “migrant crisis”. This study enters the conversation on migrant experiences of South Africa, by exploring literary representations of the country as a diasporic space. The primary concern of this thesis is to use a literary critical approach to examine the potential contribution of migrant narratives of South Africa in re-discoursing epistemological methods of knowing, seeing, telling, and reading migrants, migration and migrancy in contemporary South Africa. My analysis invokes a triangulation of migration, space, gender, border and identity theories to explore various ways through which such narratives respond, re-imagine and re-constitute the realities of the current social, political, and economic precarity in the country. I demonstrate how literature is a new site of encountering this precarity, which may help us to understand it in new ways. The study uses a variety of literary genres; novels, short stories, poetry, and auto/biographies to offer different representations of the state of social cohesion and the discourse of African (dis)unity in the context of the recent return of radical nationalism and the discourse of borders. I focus on the narrative strategies, form, motifs, and other forms inherent to literature to analyse themes of belonging, (un)home, abjection, precarity, settlement, gender, Othering, and human rights. A key finding of this study is that through modes of representations, most of the texts deconstruct and radically transform some of the subject matters in the (re)construction of South Africa as a trans-African host space.