1,720,954 research outputs found
Skills development plan as a tool for enhancing performance in local government, with specific reference to Greater Letaba Local Municipality
Full text linkMAdminDepartment of Public and Development AdministrationThis study focuses on Skills Development Plan as a tool for enhancing performance in local government. The focus area is the Greater-Letaba Local Municipality. Lack of skills is one of the factors identified as being responsible for poor performance in many municipalities in South
Africa in the Auditor-General of South Africa’s report of 2019. According to this report, evidence of poor performance of most municipalities is largely due to poor service delivery and infrastructure backlogs. The Skills Development Plan is a tool which was developed to enhance performance in service delivery and infrastructure development. Effective service delivery and infrastructure development will improve the quality of life of all South Africans, especially the poor.
This study followed the mixed methods, in which both quantitative and qualitative research approaches were used. The mixed method was used to investigate the Skills Development Plan as a tool for enhancing performance in local government, with specific reference to the Greater-Letaba Local Municipality. Quantitative research methodology was used in this study because it enabled the researcher to quantify the problem by way of generating numerical data to be transformed into usable statistics. Qualitative research methodology was used because it covered issues in great depth and detail, and it allowed the researcher to interact with the research subjects. The researcher used the contextual and descriptive design for the study, while the sampling of respondents was done through non-probability sampling, under which the sub-type, purposive or judgmental sampling was used to collect the data. Purposive sampling was chosen because the researcher wanted to use her judgement to select a sample that is most useful to the purposes of the research. Two instruments; namely, questionnaires and interviews were used to collect the data. The reason for selecting structured questionnaires and open-ended interview schedule is that the researcher wanted to collect the primary data to obtain relevant information about the study. The researcher used descriptive statistics and thematic analysis for data analysis. Finally, the researcher adhered to the research ethics.
The Major findings of the research study are:
The study findings discovered that majority of the respondents at ninety (90) constituting 90% responded that skills development plan leads to an improvement in employee performance, which in turn improves services offered to municipal residents. The findings revealed that the majority of the respondents, 88 who constitute 88% indicated that skills development programmes are properly coordinated. It was found that the majority of respondents, 80 who constitute 80% affirm that municipal officials are encouraged to attend skills development programmes. The findings attest that the skills development plan play a role in filling the skills gap, training and developing the municipal officials’ scarce skills according to the plan and also in terms of career development for the municipal officials to perform work better. The study
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found that budget constraints, time and poor skills audit are the challenges of implementing the skills development plan at the Greater-Letaba Local Municipality.
The recommendations of the research study are as follows:
The researcher recommends that the municipality should identify municipal officials who at all categories are struggling to operate and maintain their services standard and infrastructure in a cost-effective and sustainable manner and train them. The researcher recommends that the skills development programmes will be properly coordinated when municipal actors collaborate to achieve skills development goals and consequently ensure that the skills development programmes are linked to the organisational objectives. The researcher recommends that there is a need for mentorship in the municipality as a means of encouraging municipal officials to attend skills development programmes with the intention of supports in improving the welfare of communities. The researcher recommends that training of administrative and political component, technical staff and managers in both “hard” technical skills, as well as “soft” skills development including supervision, leadership, organising, coordination, monitoring and control are further required. The researcher recommends that the municipality should overcome the capacity challenges and manage unsatisfactory performance in several ways such as achieving targets on a regular basis with limited time, money and human resources who are not allowed to work every day to comply with the COVID-19 regulations.NR
EXAMINING BEST PRACTICES FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORM IN THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Full text linkThe Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is characterised by disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and blockchain, which present significant opportunities to transform governance, enhance service delivery, and foster community development.
This article explores best practices for local government reform, with the focus on integrating 4IR technologies to advance governance and sustainable development.
The research is situated within the context of South Africa’s local government framework and juxtaposed with international benchmarks to provide actionable insights.
The study utilised a qualitative research approach in the form of secondary data analysis, whereby academic literature, policy documents, case studies, and reports were reviewed. This methodology enabled a comprehensive examination of international best practices and their applicability in the South African context. The analysis was guided by theoretical frameworks, including the diffusion of innovation and stewardship theories, to provide insight into the adoption and implementation processes of 4IR technologies in governance.
The findings reveal that the adoption of 4IR technologies in local government necessitates inclusive governance, robust policy frameworks, and substantial investment in digital infrastructure to bridge the digital divide.
Integrating 4IR technologies into local government operations can significantly enhance service delivery and governance; however, achieving this requires addressing systemic challenges such as policy gaps, infrastructure deficiencies, and inequities in access.
This article contributes to the discourse on governance innovation by offering a comparative analysis of best practices and strategic recommendations tailored to the South African context
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Full text link“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
Full text linkWe 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
Full text linkWe 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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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