1,720,961 research outputs found
Marketing and management framework to create sustainable healthcare sector non-profit organisations in South Africa
Get PDFThesis (DCom (Marketing))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2019Poverty gaps and poor living conditions in developing countries have led to an increasing need for social support. Owing to this, there is a growing number of new players in the non-profit organisation (NPO) sector, which has given rise to intense competition for donor funding. More so, the global economic crisis of 2008 resulted in reduction and uncertainty in funding and philanthropic income. The environment in which NPOs operate is no longer favourable especially considering the intense competition for donations. Thus, sustainability has emerged to be a critical issue for these organisations, as they have to sustain a long-term, perpetual need with limited funding. In response to this, many scholars have concluded that adopting marketing strategies, and business-oriented methods and practices, can contribute and enable these organisations to achieve sustainability.
Even though some NPOs have moved towards adopting these strategies, sustainability remains a challenge for them. The reason for this could be that NPOs are not utilising marketing and management strategies as widely as they should be. This prompted the following research question: To what extent do healthcare sector NPOs employ marketing and management strategies in their operations? In order to address this question, a combination of techniques was adopted which included literature review, in-depth interviews, focus groups discussion, and thematic and content analysis.
Some say that the lack of adoption of marketing strategies and business-oriented methods is mainly due to a lack of understanding of the benefits of marketing and the perception that marketing is only for the for-profit sector. This incited the question of what should be the impact of including marketing strategies on growth and sustainability of healthcare sector NPOs in South Africa?
In the literature review, evidence was presented that NPOs are of significant value to any economy they serve, they aid in addressing inequality gaps, and they provide services that cannot be provided by the state to disadvantaged communities and individuals. In light of the value-add NPOs bring, it is imperative for these organisations to operate for the long-term. This could be achieved through the adoption of marketing and business-like approaches as noted in previous studies, however, this is not the case as these organisations are faced with funding challenges and intense competition. This elevated the question: How should the challenges to the current NPOs marketing efforts be addressed?
This study utilised the qualitative method. Qualitative methods were considered the most applicable for this study because they help the researcher to gain deeper insights into the research problem through interactions with the study participants. The study finds that the inability to adopt business-oriented methods in NPOs is owing to a lack of skills and expertise, lack of knowledge of how to approach marketing and the high dependence on donor funding. The respondents concur that the high dependence on donor funding has resulted in a lack of independence on how to utilise the funds. According to the literature, due to a high dependence on donor funding, the design of NPOs’ projects is usually framed to suit donor requirements and within the budget line items that are acceptable to the donor; essentially donors require their funds to be used only for charitable activities they are interested in. This raised a question: What should be the main funding streams for NPOs in the healthcare sector in South Africa?
In response to the literature, research questions and the study findings, a framework was developed which could provide NPOs with the basic understanding of how to adapt marketing and management strategies for sustainability; where the process should start, what it should involve, what are the outcomes thereof and the benefits to NPOs. This then overall answers the question of how marketing and management strategies should be effectively deployed to achieve NPO sustainability
The impact of business incubators on survivalist entrepreneurs in the Cape Metropolitan area
No full textThesis (MTech (Business Administration (Entrepreneurship)))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2015.The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of business incubators on survivalist entrepreneurs in the Cape Metropolitan Area. The question that guides this research is: What is the impact of business incubators on survivalist entrepreneurs in the Cape Town Metropolitan Area? This study was conducted in the context of economic growth and development, considering addressing the following problems: small business failure and the unemployment rate in South Africa.
Although entrepreneurship is of greater importance to the growth and development of an economy, not all entrepreneurs are presented with the same opportunities and resources as others. As opposed to formal businesses, informal small businesses are normally discriminated against in terms of support, which is offered to them to necessitate their growth. The contribution that they make towards economic growth and development is often seen as insignificant. They lack opportunities that are enjoyed by large businesses and they suffer from discriminating policies, which has resulted in suppressed growth of these business ventures
The relevance and challenges of business incubators that support survivalist entrepreneurs
Get PDFNoting that business incubation (BI) receives substantial attention in the entrepreneurship literature as programs that help entrepreneurs overcome business start-up and growth challenges, this paper investigates the relevance and challenges confronting the BIs in the context of South Africa. Mixed methods were utilized in this study; essentially interviews and questionnaires were used to collect data. Using the graduation rates and satisfaction (benefit) of the incubatees as a proxy for the relevance of BIs, the results indicated that, 55.1% of those survivalist entrepreneurs who enrolled in incubation programs benefited from attending the incubation program, whilst 44.9% indicated that they did not benefit from attending the program. Furthermore, lack of funding was found to be the major challenge confronting BIs. Other less significant challenges include lack of support from stakeholders, and uncommitted clients. The implication of these results are that just like their clients, BIs face a number of challenges that threaten their long-term survival, the quality and quantity of service that they render
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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