The influence of legislation and regulations on strategy in public entities
- Authors: Govender, Kasavan
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Government business enterprises -- Law and legislation -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Government corporations -- Law and legislation -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape Industrial development projects -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , DPhil
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/22178 , vital:29866
- Description: While citizens require products and services to meet their needs, government goes about designing systems and processes to meet that need through the setting of goals and objectives. Many methods are adopted for that to happen. However, one of the ways that this occurs is through legislation and regulations and the formation of public entities. On the other hand, strategy is needed to devise techniques and plans to meet needs, goals and aspirations of government in the most efficient manner. At face value it would seem that the enactment of certain legislation and regulations seems to make the need for strategy obsolete especially since there is proliferation of national, provincial and local strategies that only need implementation. The purpose of this research is to determine the influence of legislation and regulations on strategy in public entities focusing on the Eastern Cape Province and using the Eastern Cape Development Corporation as a case study. The study focused on the assessment of the relationship between the public entities and the shareholder through the use of legislation and regulations. The context for the research is prefixed on creating an understanding of the public administrative system and especially the components of the New Public Management approach that deal with the principal-agent and public choice theory. The study assessed the public administrative system and its relationships in order to locate the use of legislation and regulations and public entities to deliver products and services to citizens. Likewise the concept of strategy was examined from three perspectives namely that strategy is about goal consciousness, strategy involves leadership and strategy is multifaceted in its nature. In order to undertake the study a document review was conducted on the legislation and regulations, semi-structured interviews were held with the principal or shareholder and a questionnaire was administered to executives and senior managers in public entities in the Eastern Cape Province. The findings revealed that there is a relationship between legislation and regulations and strategy on the one hand and on the other strategy appears to be ineffective due to a lack of planning, key role players’ involvement in the process, leadership, inflexible compliance and restrictive conditions. The research further found that strategy involves implementation of legislation and regulations which support the rise of the regulatory state. The study proposes a normative model that is built around defining the nature of strategy and predetermining the definition of roles in the system.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
- Authors: Govender, Kasavan
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Government business enterprises -- Law and legislation -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Government corporations -- Law and legislation -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape Industrial development projects -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , DPhil
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/22178 , vital:29866
- Description: While citizens require products and services to meet their needs, government goes about designing systems and processes to meet that need through the setting of goals and objectives. Many methods are adopted for that to happen. However, one of the ways that this occurs is through legislation and regulations and the formation of public entities. On the other hand, strategy is needed to devise techniques and plans to meet needs, goals and aspirations of government in the most efficient manner. At face value it would seem that the enactment of certain legislation and regulations seems to make the need for strategy obsolete especially since there is proliferation of national, provincial and local strategies that only need implementation. The purpose of this research is to determine the influence of legislation and regulations on strategy in public entities focusing on the Eastern Cape Province and using the Eastern Cape Development Corporation as a case study. The study focused on the assessment of the relationship between the public entities and the shareholder through the use of legislation and regulations. The context for the research is prefixed on creating an understanding of the public administrative system and especially the components of the New Public Management approach that deal with the principal-agent and public choice theory. The study assessed the public administrative system and its relationships in order to locate the use of legislation and regulations and public entities to deliver products and services to citizens. Likewise the concept of strategy was examined from three perspectives namely that strategy is about goal consciousness, strategy involves leadership and strategy is multifaceted in its nature. In order to undertake the study a document review was conducted on the legislation and regulations, semi-structured interviews were held with the principal or shareholder and a questionnaire was administered to executives and senior managers in public entities in the Eastern Cape Province. The findings revealed that there is a relationship between legislation and regulations and strategy on the one hand and on the other strategy appears to be ineffective due to a lack of planning, key role players’ involvement in the process, leadership, inflexible compliance and restrictive conditions. The research further found that strategy involves implementation of legislation and regulations which support the rise of the regulatory state. The study proposes a normative model that is built around defining the nature of strategy and predetermining the definition of roles in the system.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
Chinese tourists' intentions to visit South Africa: an extended model of the theory of planned behaviour
- Authors: Han, Xiliang
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Market segmentation , Tourists -- Attitudes , Sustainable tourism -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , DPhil
- Identifier: vital:9325 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/d1020945
- Description: The South African National Department of Tourism has recently initiated the National Tourism Sector Strategy aimed at developing a sustainable tourism economy, and making the country a Top 20 global tourism destination by 2020.China is one of South Africa’s major non-African sources of tourist arrivals. To ensure a growing share of this booming market, South African tourism scholars and practitioners have to pay close attention to the behaviour of Chinese outbound tourists, particularly their destination choice behaviour. The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)– an extension of the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA)– can serve as a basis for researching destination choice. According to the TPB literature, intention is the most immediate and important determinant of behaviour. Three direct predictors of intention, namely, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived control, are functions of latent behavioural, normative, and control beliefs, respectively. The TPB is parsimonious but open to the inclusion of additional predictors if there is evidence that these predictors may explain a significant proportion of the variance in intention and behaviour after the basic predictors (attitude, subjective norms, and perceived control) have been accounted for. The current research successfully extended the TPB model for predicting potential Chinese tourists’ intentions to visit South Africa by adding two additional variables: travel motivation and travel constraints. The push-pull motivation framework discussed in the study postulates that people travel because they are pushed by internal forces (inner needs) and pulled by external forces (destination attributes). Typical barriers to travel include intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural constraints. The new model makes an important contribution to the literature on destination choice, and provides South Africa’s destination marketers with suggestions for attracting and serving Chinese tourists. In addition, the research shows that both travel motivation and travel constraints can be used as bases for segmenting the outbound Chinese tourist market interested in visiting South Africa. A survey approach and a structured questionnaire distributed electronically to the online panel members of a Chinese market research company were instrumental in collecting the empirical data for the study. The questionnaire was originally written in English and translated into Chinese (Mandarin) via a blind translation-back-translation method. Attitude, subjective norms, perceived control, and visit intention were all operationalised as unidimensional and used scales adapted from previous studies. New scales were developed for travel motivation and travel constraints– both operationalised as multidimensional. Quota sampling, used to identify respondents aged 18 or older and living in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, resulted in 630 usable questionnaires obtained from 1,510 sent invitation e-mails, yielding a response rate of 41.7%. The raw data collected were prepared through the sequential steps of editing, coding, and filing, and then analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive analysis suggested that broadening personal horizons, viewing the natural scenery, and seeing something different were the top motives for visiting South Africa, while language, fear of crime, and lack of travel companions were the top barriers to visiting South Africa. According to the factor analysis, travel motivation had three underlying dimensions – learning, escape, and aesthetics and appreciation, while operational, risk and fear, and social barriers were three underlying dimensions of travel constraints. Regression analysis showed that the proposed extended TPB model had higher predictive power for visit intention than both TRA and TPB models; the basic predictors – attitude, subjective norms, and perceived control – all had a significant impact on visit intention; and in terms of the additional predictors, learning, operational constraints, and social constraints had a significant impact on visit intention. The analysis of variance indicated that travel frequency and age were the most profound background factors with an influence on the extended TPB model. Finally, cluster analysis resulted in two market segments with distinct profiles, that is, High-Motivation/ Low-Constraint (HMLC) tourists and Low-Motivation/High-Constraint (LMHC) tourists. Based on the theoretical and empirical findings of the current research, it is recommended that destination marketers in South Africa: advertise specific benefits of touring South Africa, namely, increasing knowledge, relieving stress, and enjoying high environmental quality, to advance Chinese residents’ perceptions of the country; develop tourism experiences that can be taken in a week or shorter to cater for the unique annual leave and public holiday policy in China; launch a media relations campaign in China to ensure that the facts about South Africa are communicated without distortion; collaborate with other destination stakeholders such as government and businesses, to actively attract and retain Chinese tourists for example by educating the public about Chinese culture and training employees to improve the quality of service; target the HMLC tourists via the Internet (particularly the social media) and by developing holiday packages that include activities related to cultural tourism, rest and relaxation, and nature-based tourism; and target the LMHC tourists by cooperating with local travel agencies and by developing holiday packages that highlight the diversity of tourism activities and offer value-added products/services.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: Han, Xiliang
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Market segmentation , Tourists -- Attitudes , Sustainable tourism -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , DPhil
- Identifier: vital:9325 , http://hdl.handle.net/10948/d1020945
- Description: The South African National Department of Tourism has recently initiated the National Tourism Sector Strategy aimed at developing a sustainable tourism economy, and making the country a Top 20 global tourism destination by 2020.China is one of South Africa’s major non-African sources of tourist arrivals. To ensure a growing share of this booming market, South African tourism scholars and practitioners have to pay close attention to the behaviour of Chinese outbound tourists, particularly their destination choice behaviour. The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)– an extension of the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA)– can serve as a basis for researching destination choice. According to the TPB literature, intention is the most immediate and important determinant of behaviour. Three direct predictors of intention, namely, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived control, are functions of latent behavioural, normative, and control beliefs, respectively. The TPB is parsimonious but open to the inclusion of additional predictors if there is evidence that these predictors may explain a significant proportion of the variance in intention and behaviour after the basic predictors (attitude, subjective norms, and perceived control) have been accounted for. The current research successfully extended the TPB model for predicting potential Chinese tourists’ intentions to visit South Africa by adding two additional variables: travel motivation and travel constraints. The push-pull motivation framework discussed in the study postulates that people travel because they are pushed by internal forces (inner needs) and pulled by external forces (destination attributes). Typical barriers to travel include intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural constraints. The new model makes an important contribution to the literature on destination choice, and provides South Africa’s destination marketers with suggestions for attracting and serving Chinese tourists. In addition, the research shows that both travel motivation and travel constraints can be used as bases for segmenting the outbound Chinese tourist market interested in visiting South Africa. A survey approach and a structured questionnaire distributed electronically to the online panel members of a Chinese market research company were instrumental in collecting the empirical data for the study. The questionnaire was originally written in English and translated into Chinese (Mandarin) via a blind translation-back-translation method. Attitude, subjective norms, perceived control, and visit intention were all operationalised as unidimensional and used scales adapted from previous studies. New scales were developed for travel motivation and travel constraints– both operationalised as multidimensional. Quota sampling, used to identify respondents aged 18 or older and living in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, resulted in 630 usable questionnaires obtained from 1,510 sent invitation e-mails, yielding a response rate of 41.7%. The raw data collected were prepared through the sequential steps of editing, coding, and filing, and then analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive analysis suggested that broadening personal horizons, viewing the natural scenery, and seeing something different were the top motives for visiting South Africa, while language, fear of crime, and lack of travel companions were the top barriers to visiting South Africa. According to the factor analysis, travel motivation had three underlying dimensions – learning, escape, and aesthetics and appreciation, while operational, risk and fear, and social barriers were three underlying dimensions of travel constraints. Regression analysis showed that the proposed extended TPB model had higher predictive power for visit intention than both TRA and TPB models; the basic predictors – attitude, subjective norms, and perceived control – all had a significant impact on visit intention; and in terms of the additional predictors, learning, operational constraints, and social constraints had a significant impact on visit intention. The analysis of variance indicated that travel frequency and age were the most profound background factors with an influence on the extended TPB model. Finally, cluster analysis resulted in two market segments with distinct profiles, that is, High-Motivation/ Low-Constraint (HMLC) tourists and Low-Motivation/High-Constraint (LMHC) tourists. Based on the theoretical and empirical findings of the current research, it is recommended that destination marketers in South Africa: advertise specific benefits of touring South Africa, namely, increasing knowledge, relieving stress, and enjoying high environmental quality, to advance Chinese residents’ perceptions of the country; develop tourism experiences that can be taken in a week or shorter to cater for the unique annual leave and public holiday policy in China; launch a media relations campaign in China to ensure that the facts about South Africa are communicated without distortion; collaborate with other destination stakeholders such as government and businesses, to actively attract and retain Chinese tourists for example by educating the public about Chinese culture and training employees to improve the quality of service; target the HMLC tourists via the Internet (particularly the social media) and by developing holiday packages that include activities related to cultural tourism, rest and relaxation, and nature-based tourism; and target the LMHC tourists by cooperating with local travel agencies and by developing holiday packages that highlight the diversity of tourism activities and offer value-added products/services.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
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