No abstract

Abstract

Family responsibility has been identified as a potential unique female entrepreneur challenge. Although some females may willingly enter into entrepreneurial activity when having children as it may provide more work life flexibility, some may be challenged by time restrictions especially when children are still young. However, empirical data show that females who decide to become self-employed may in many cases do so to enjoy higher flexibility but may be restricted regarding growth and other factors such as finances, motivation and support. In light of this, the purpose of this study is to identify differences between two groups of South African female entrepreneurs: those with and those without children. Differences were compared between groups considering several factors such as, motivation, financial constraints, intention to grow the business and socio-cultural barriers to name a few. The study followed a descriptive research design using self-administered questionnaires. The questionnaires were distributed to a purposive and convenience sample of female entrepreneurs from all nine South African provinces resulting in a final sample of 510. Data were analysed using reliability and validity analysis and Multiple Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and Analysis of Variances (ANOVA). Results indicated that the only entrepreneurial variable or factors that were influenced by having children or not were financial constraints, government support and socio-cultural barriers. Factors such as intention to remain in business, intention to grow the business and motivation returned non-statistically significant results for the said groups. The results from this study link to previous findings indicating that differences were observed between female entrepreneurs with children and those without. Further

Human resources remain the most important and valuable assets of every organisation. In effect, the strategic monitoring and management of related environmental factors and employees’ affective well-being for continued presence at work are becoming increasingly fundamental. The mining industry is characterised with different environmental factors and affective well-being puzzle that may likely affect employees’ turnaround time at work. While available studies have largely investigated how environmental factors predict employee’s well-being, what is unclear is how environmental factors and affective well-being determines employee’s absenteeism from work. Using a quantitative study, this study examines how environmental factors and affective well-being influence workers absenteeism in South African mine industry. A total of 280 mineworkers were randomly selected using a descriptive survey of the probability sampling technique. The retrieved data were analysed using both the simple and multivariate regression analysis. The findings revealed that both environmental factors and affective well-being do not predict mine workers absenteeism, although environmental factors show more variation in employee’s absenteeism than affective well-being. Similarly, the different environmental factors including exposure to noise, dust, vibration, temperature and heavy lifting do not show any evidence to have predicted mine workers turnaround time at work, except hazardous materials. The study concludes that mitigating the consequence provoked by hazardous materials on mine workers will significantly increase employees’ presence at work. Thus, the study makes a case for the revitalisation of the South African mining industry, especially in the area of setting out modalities for the control of strenuous environmental factors, particularly hazardous materials in the workplace.

Local government is one of the main role players in local economic development (LED) and need to assist in the creation of an enabling developmental environment for local businesses to prosper. Partnerships are required between local government, businesses and communities for regions to develop, yet in many cases government at this level fails to create this developmental enabling environment. This research has as its focus on the formulation and validation of an Enabling Developmental Environment Scale (EDES). This scale will allow local government to be evaluated, assessed and compared regarding the creation of such a developmental environment. The pilot study involved152 participants from the Vaal Triangle region, South Africa. Reliability and construct validity of the instrument weretested by using the Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient and Varimax Factor Analysis. It is evident from the results that thescale is a valid and reliable tool for researchers to evaluate and assess the level of an enabling environment as created by local government in a specific region.