David Coldwell

University of the Witwatersrand | wits · School of Economic and Business Sciences

Although employment testing is routine today in South Africa, this was not always the case. Breaking from its history of racial segregation, modern-day South Africa has developed a rich and mature legal framework to promote fairness and prevent bias in employment testing. Although testing is also widespread in the educational context, we focus in t...

Economic growth is a priority in many developing countries in the drive to eradicate inequality and poverty, but elevated levels of economic growth are regarded as inimical to climate preservation and sustainability. The continuing depletion of natural resources and industrial pollution has led to increasing global pressure and government policies...

The increasing prevalence of toxic leadership in business organizations can be at least partly attributed to increasing pressures emanating from the 4th industrial revolution. Pressures on business leaders from increased competition, environmental awareness, commitment to social purpose, and speed and spread of data communications have been made po...

The increasing reported incidents of knife crime in cities and the release on parole of “rehabilitated” violent criminals are creating an unsafe urban environment. Such occurrences suggest that measures taken to address psychopathic-oriented behaviour may have been ineffective because the individual’s degree of “moral deficit” is not fully accounte...

Purpose While the problem of unethical leadership is undoubtedly a global one, the urgency of generating ethical leadership to advance the development of Africa has never been more evident than it is today. The challenge for higher education in developing ethical leaders is of core importance, as it is responsible for providing the main recruiting...

The 4th industrial revolution, referred to as a ‘second coming’ of the ‘digital era,’ has introduced both positive and negative effects on the workplace. While digitalization and automation have taken the drudgery out of work for some and released them to enjoy qualitative improvements at work and higher salaries, others have been thrust into low-p...

Background: Corporate social performance (CSP) has been widely researched in the past. However, few empirical studies, especially in the African context, have been conducted. In particular, a highly under-researched topic is the role that corporate social responsibility (CSR) plays in an individual’s actual purchasing behaviour. Objectives: This a...

As trade barriers fell, South African enterprises faced new competition in their previously protected home market. With established markets becoming saturated, multinational enterprises (MNEs) steered towards emerging markets abroad. Geographically, South Africa is an intrinsic part of Africa, and psychic distance, defined as consisting of, inter a...

Purpose A significant and increasing number of graduate recruits take up employment for specific companies by virtue of their ethical reputation and profiles. As such, ethical fit has become an important dimension of the attraction and retention of graduates. However, preconceived notions of a company’s ethical orientation obtained through the med...

The fact that individuals are spatially close to each other in the urban environment increases the potential number of encounters between them. Thus, theoretically speaking, the probability of interaction and social intercourse among people increases as they get closer to each other spatially. This reduction in spatial distance and propensity for l...

Purpose The mechanisms through which leaders influence innovative work behaviours (IWB) are important in innovation management. The purpose of this paper is to explain how leadership and justice relate to IWB through the successive mediating roles of affective commitment and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB). Design/methodology/approach...

Even though the effects of leadership and affective commitment on innovative work behaviours (IWBs) have been thoroughly researched, little is known about the interactive effects of these factors on IWBs. Based on data collected from 263 respondents from public and private organisations in Lesotho, the present study examines if affective commitment...

Psychic distance is derived from the Greek word psychikos which refers to an individual's mind and distance refers to degree of psychological gap when specific individuals consider subjective and objective phenomena. It is regarded as an individual's subjective perception of phenomena and their unique subjective distance of these phenomena from the...

The recent crisis in a prominent German car manufacturer generated by unethical leadership practices has brought into sharp focus, once again, the need for radical and fundamental ethical transformation among members of capitalism’s leadership elite. The divide between ethics and business needs to be closed and to do this effectively in a globalize...

Ethical leadership is a necessary ingredient for successful crisis management. The study outlines generalizable prescriptive remedial steps that can be taken by business leaders faced by crises. But these remedial steps are simply the “bricks and mortar” of effective crisis management. The “pulsating soul” of ethical leadership is required to give...

8An increasing number of studies suggest that organisational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) may produce both positive and negative results for organisations and individuals. Few empirical studies, however, evaluate when OCBs are likely to be most or least effective. Based on a sample of 210 participants, and drawing on the entropic citizenship behav...

Entropy is a concept derived from Physics that has been used to describe natural and social systems' structure and behavior. Applications of the concept in the social sciences so far have been largely limited to the disciplines of economics and sociology. In the current paper, the concept of entropy is applied to organizational citizenship behavior...

Entropy is a concept derived from Physics that has been used to describe natural and social systems’ structure and behaviour. Applications of the concept in the social sciences so far have been largely limited to the disciplines of economics and sociology. In the current paper the concept of entropy is applied to organizational citizenship behaviou...

In the present resource-constrained environment, supervisors need to motivate subordinates to engage in extra-role behaviours that are not directly rewarded in organisations. Even though research on affiliative extra-role behaviours in schools has made a considerable progress, little is known about change-oriented extra-role behaviours in schools....

Academic citizenship is, conceptually speaking, closely related to organisational citizenship behaviour, as both concepts can be regarded as consisting essentially of personal co-worker and organisational support behaviours. Academics across the world operate in widely divergent settings in different socioeconomic and political situations and highe...

Purpose – Strategies and policies aimed at alleviating poverty in Sub-Saharan African countries usually depend on capitalistically driven economic growth. However, the view that capitalism needs to reinvent itself to survive the crisis of confidence brought about by the recent global financial collapse depends on the extent to which such a shared...

We compare and contrast different theoretical explanations to the history of corporate structure in South Africa using a case study. Changes in South Africa following 20 years of democratization provide a useful setting to examine how environmental change impacts corporate structure. The results support a relationship between changes in corporate s...

The history of South Africa serves as a natural experiment in how a changing institutional environment impacts corporate structure. Based on institutional theory, we anticipate higher performance through emulating successful strategies or through restructuring consistent with mimetic isomorphism. Conversely, coercive isomorphism results from restru...

The paper describes a multidisciplinary international collaborative academic research group. The study contributes to the literature by describing and analyzing reflexive processes’ costs and benefits in international collaborative research in generating and disseminating knowledge against a background of increasing globalization. The study suggest...

Regulatory developments are often presented as being in the public interest but recent studies on corporate governance have suggested otherwise. In some cases, regulatory change is driven more by the self-interest of the political elite than by the need for substantive reform. This paper adds to this debate by considering whether capital gains tax...

PurposeTo examine the business case for corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the South African context. MethodologyA cross-sectional correlation research design involving quantitative and qualitative data. FindingsThe findings lend general support for the utility of business case oriented CSR strategic applications in the South African business...

The paper describes a multidisciplinary international collaborative academic research group. The study is cross sectional and adopts a mixed methods approach. It contributes to the literature by describing and analyzing reflexive processes’ costs and benefits in international collaborative research in generating and disseminating knowledge against...

In this study, an exploratory quantitative cross-sectional research design is applied in a study of a large South African university to test theory that relates research productivity to different dimensions of satisfaction, or dissatisfaction. Findings suggest that individuals who derive their primary job satisfaction from teaching are less researc...

This paper uses South Africa as an example to explore how crises of trust – stemming from the legacy of Apartheid, local and international corporate failures and the changing regulatory framework in the United States – have contributed to shaping aspects of South African corporate governance. Using Giddens' theory of modernity, the research conside...

In order to meet social needs, and address societal challenges, the University is dependent upon the research productivity of its staff. Satisfaction contributes to the retention of, as well as the job performance of, academic staff. However, knowledge of the relationships between job satisfaction and research productivity is absent from the litera...

Discussions around career pathways have gained momentum in the field of career development to assist young people in mapping out their career choices in order to achieve meaningful and productive futures. The purpose of the study was to empirically investigate third-year accounting students’ perceptions of the comparative worth and the utility of a...

Organizational citizenship behaviour has generally been associated with organizational effectiveness. However, recent research has shown that this may not always be the case and that certain types of organizational citizenship behaviour such as compulsory citizenship behaviour, may be inimical to the fulfillment of formal goals and organizational e...

Axelrod’s seminal work describes circumstances in which the goals of the formal organization’s military network become derailed by powerful informal networks built up amongst soldiers during the First World War. This paper considers payoffs of both informal soldiers’ network and that of the formal military bureaucracy. The paper aims to analyze spe...

This research examines the effect of the announcement of corporate unbundling by South African corporations listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange. This research was carried out to update the literature and to analyze whether results confirm previous research done by Blount and Davidson (1996) or coincide with international trends, which di...

The aim of the study is to investigate undergraduates' perceptions of the comparative worth/utility of studying Business Science disciplines at a prominent South African University in terms of: (i) internal factors comprising aptitudes, values and interests; and (ii) external factors comprising job attractiveness (job prospects, earning potential,...

The aim of the study is to investigate undergraduates' perceptions of the comparative worth/utility of studying Business Science disciplines at a prominent South African University in terms of: (i) internal factors comprising aptitudes, values and interests; and (ii) external factors comprising job attractiveness (job prospects, earning potential,...

‘The loss of a stable state’ (Schon 1973) in organizational transformation can both be regarded as lamentable and inevitable. Transformation causes disruption and invasions of comfort zones to those affected by it, but it is nevertheless inevitable. The article maintains that while the loss of a stable state is inevitable in the stream of change co...

The learning organization has been put forward as an effective way of conflict management through the adoption of the disciplines of personal mastery, mental models, team learning, systems thinking and shared vision (O’Keefe and Stewart, 2004; Fisher-Yoshida, 2005), but this depends to a large extent on the transferability of the concept cross-cult...

The paper proposes a structured, s t e p w i s e approach to the management of reputational risks in order to assist in defining strategies for crisis management. A series of case studies of selected South African firms’ responses to specific crises in comparison to an ideal type stepwise model were analyzed and the effects on specific share price...

Best Paper Award

span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> The paper delineates a heuristic device comprising relationships between levels of instrumentality towards Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) implicit in differential theoretical organizational approaches, associated managerial freedom in ethical decision m...

An exploratory model is presented as a heuristic to indicate how individual perceptions of corporate reputation (before joining) and corporate ethical values (after joining) generate specific individual organizational senses of fit. The paper suggests that an ethical dimension of person-organization fit may go some way in explaining superior acquis...

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in both statistical methods aimed at generating causally adequate explanations in business research and criticisms of these. Running parallel with this discussion has been critical discussion on the adequacy of such explanations at the level of meaning and specific attempts to address this issue with t...

This paper focuses on the issue of differences in individual perceptions and expectations of corporate social performance (CSP). Business research has indicated, somewhat equivocally, that there is evidence to support possible causal relationships between CSP, corporate reputation (CR) and financial performance (CFP). The paper analyses these relat...

This paper analyses the effects of gender and ethnic group in the perceptions and expectations of corporate social performance (CSP) in a sample of students controlled for age, education and academic discipline. Instruments to measure perceptions and expectations of CSP are devised using Likert-type scales. The reliability and construct validity of...

Children use drawing as a primary means of communicating. Not all children have this ability and, therefore, do not benefit from the drawing and use of symbols. This seems to be a major deterrent to their communicating with other people. However, autistic children and, perhaps, other intellectually handicapped children sometimes have seemingly inhe...

Recently, Erwee (1988) discussed the issue of black advancement in South Africa. This paper extends and clarifies her views. Three reasons for lack of progress are proposed. The first two, namely prejudice and lock of ability are rejected in favour of a mismatch argument, which argues that management is ethnocentric, seeking out and rewarding behav...

A dialectical approach incorporating both nomothetic and idiographic perspectives is proposed as a possible solution to the problem of concept validation encountered in industrial psychological and industrial sociological investigations by providing them with a more complete criterion of validity. The use of the proposed method is illustrated in an...

In a previous article (Coldwell and Moerdyk, 1981) it was argued that many blacks in South Africa are at a disadvantage in the 'White man's world' of business and industry as a result of a number of cultural factors, some of which were described. In this paper, the suggestion is made that it is probably easier and more cost-effective to find ways i...

Just as, in the West, Calvinism generated a philosophy and value system which is still evident today in the industrialized world - even if its precise connection with Calvinistic doctrine is forgotten - so Africa has evolved its own philosophy and corresponding world view. In this paper it is argued that this African philosophy, however amorphous a...

Adams' Equity theory (Adams, 1965) suggests that employees' perceptions of equity or inequity stem from individual comparisons with salient referents of individual personal-referent perceptions of work inputs to outcomes ratios. Although the theory has proven to be generally correct in showing that employee motivation is affected by the perceived r...

Entrepreneurial networking has been a relatively under-researched area in the field of entrepreneurship. The apparent avoidance of this topic by researchers could be attributed to a multitude of speculative reasons, such as the multi-disciplinary nature of the topic; uncertainty with regard to the nature and operation of entrepreneurial networking;...

Thesis (D. Litt.)--University of South Africa, 1979.

This paper explores the comparative importance of learning organisation disciplines in generating effective work outcomes in HR employees in two different national cultural contexts. It is suggested that the importance of the learning disciplines in different countries may be influenced by prevailing cultural differences and prevailing organisation...