Marius Pretorius

University of Pretoria | UP · Department of Business Management

The business rescue proceedings of Rebosis Property Fund Limited, a registered and publicly listed Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), represent a significant case study in the South African real estate sector and business rescue regime. In response to ongoing liquidity challenges, high debt levels, and a dwindling share price, several management-...

The business rescue proceedings of Rebosis Property Fund Limited, a registered and publicly listed Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), represent a significant case study in the South African real estate sector and business rescue regime. In response to ongoing liquidity challenges, high debt levels, and a dwindling share price, several management-...

Orientation: Once appointed, business rescue practitioners and turnaround professionals are faced with critical decision making of whether a distressed venture contains an opportunity as judged by reasonable prospect.Research purpose: This study investigated and explored the application of ‘effectuation theory’ principles and/or causation elements...

Purpose Business rescue, as a mechanism to aid financially distressed companies in South Africa, has received considerable academic and practical recognition. However, the business rescue plan is an overlooked and, perhaps, underdeveloped aspect of the regime. For stakeholders, this is the ultimate decision-making document. Creditors are the most i...

Background: Practice has shown that decision-makers experience various tensions during a business rescue event, which adds to the complexity of their decision-making. Even though business rescue has been operational for more than a decade, decision-makers require training and development beyond the scope of the legal and finance realms to cope with...

Orientation: From a critical entrepreneurship perspective, this article examines the potential hegemonic nature of the mainstream entrepreneurship discourse. Research objectives: (1) To determine what mainstream entrepreneurship assumptions and resulting discourses are being reproduced in the South African media discourse. (2) To determine if and...

Background: In search of more entrepreneurs for economic development, academics and policy makers are continuously seeking ways in which the participation of potential entrepreneurs in the economy can be enhanced. Purpose: This study investigates whether entrepreneurial prototype factors could be identified to inform how entrepreneurs evaluate oppo...

South Africa’s economic turmoil has resulted in a number of companies opting for business rescue, which is considered a better alternative than liquidation. Business rescue aims to resuscitate ailing companies and save them from liquidation. However, as companies enter into business rescue, little is known about what happens to the employees of the...

Background: Determining the turnaround potential of a firm has plagued academia and practice. Existing failure prediction tools yield limited insight into turnaround potential and are heavily dependent on financial metrics. This framework made a valuable contribution to research in this field as it added a new perspective for decision-making purpos...

Orientation: To resuscitate financially distressed companies in South Africa, business rescue as introduced through the enactment of Chapter 6 of the Companies Act 71 of 2008 requires the business rescue practitioners (BRPs) to take management and financial control as part of their specific powers and duties. Research purpose: This study investiga...

Purpose and context: The purpose of the study was to explore the construction of professionalism in a multiple professional bodies (MPB) landscape in South Africa (SA) and demonstrate how this construction can be used to enhance a professional accreditation regime. Professional accreditation has become a pre-requisite for business rescue practition...

This study provides methodological considerations for research on turnaround management (business rescue) practitioner (BRP) accreditation. The article responds to recent BRP licensing debates and the need to enhance BRP capabilities through continuing professional development (CPD). We assess existing data collection procedures using the practice...

Business rescue practitioners (BRPs) are subject to many allegations of abuse and, therefore, professional accreditation has become a pre-requisite. The Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) licensing is linked to multiple professional bodies’ knowledge and practices but is not generic. This study was guided by one key question: Wha...

Purpose of the research: To identify and explore the construction of professionalism in a multiple professional bodies (MPB) landscape in South Africa (SA) and demonstrate how such construction can be used to enhance the professional accreditation regime. Design of research and methodology: The study used a qualitative research design. This require...

The current theoretical framing of entrepreneurship includes several diverse phenomena under the same conceptual umbrella, yet the terms are often conflated and used interchangeably. Based on the assumption that anything included under this conceptual umbrella contributes to economic development and job creation, entrepreneurship has become appropr...

It may be argued that the indirect costs of financial distress are substantially higher than the direct costs. Consequently, indirect costs of participating in a formal turnaround may hinder the success of a reorganisation attempt. This study set out to explore the indirect costs financially distressed firms face as a consequence of participating i...

Purpose This paper aims to explore the nexus between integrated reporting and sustainability embeddedness. It seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the nexus by obtaining in-depth insight from the sensemaking of those in practice. Design/methodology/approach A single exploratory case study design strategy was applied to a leading stock...

Background: Delay in cognition by management is likely to see a firm’s distress worsening and the turnaround potential of a firm eroded. This inertia and resistance to change are further likely to result in antecedents absent in the required cognition of distress to trigger turnaround actions. Aim: To explore firstly the Zone of Insolvency (ZOI),...

Background: Entrepreneurs often face distress in their businesses; as one way to address it, they can file for business rescue. The Companies Act 71 of 2008 requires the appointed business rescue practitioner (BRP) to place before the court facts proving ‘reasonable prospect’. This often seems determined mainly by the subjective opinion of practiti...

Purpose The plight of dissatisfied employees has become a recurring theme. A question often asked by management trainees is “How do I handle my difficult boss?” Hence, this paper aims to address the difficult boss problem successfully from the perspective of the subordinate. Design/methodology/approach The conceptualized legacy framework had been...

Background: Sensemaking of the extreme vagaries and external considerations that influence decision-making and judgement during business rescue events (BREs) are currently sparse but details about evaluation criteria are desperately needed. Aim: Learning from and applying post-mortem analysis (PMA) is investigated to propose an evaluation framewor...

While reorganisation procedures aim to salvage financially distressed firms, they are often abused, as uneconomic, failing firms commence with proceedings that erode value rather than preserve it. The commencement standard for business rescue is aimed at preventing such abuse, though it is often hampered by vagueness and limited practical applicati...

Turnaround practitioners (TPs) and business rescue practitioners (BRPs) are tasked with making the critical decision of whether a distressed business has reasonable prospect (RP) for reorganisation. Creditors often require the same determination because only businesses assessed to have a reasonable prospect can enter the rescue or reorganisation pr...

Stakeholder salience, conflict and prioritisation are important for directing decision-making. Entering a turnaround situation or business rescue (following distress) affects who and what may be important to decision-makers. During such distress, the stakeholders' composition changes which may alter power, legitimacy and urgency relations for other...

Orientation: Currently, little is known about entrepreneurial learning under turnaround and rescue conditions. A better understanding of the content dimensions as well as the factors that drive or restrain entrepreneurial learning during business rescue (BR) is relevant for theory and industry development. Research purpose: BR is a fairly new regi...

Tension often arises when Chapter 6 business rescue practitioners (BRPs) are appointed by directors to rescue their distressed businesses. Regulating by means of standard agency contracting becomes irrelevant in the resulting multiple relationships. Looking through the agency lens, using analytic autoethnography and compiling narratives, this paper...

Purpose Today, more than ever, businesses need to improve strategy implementation. Part of achieving implementation requires strategies to be embedded in the daily activities of executors (practitioners) – thus to embed strategy in implementation. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a “lesser acknowledged” strategy type that is ill-considere...

With increased pressure to publish, academics are pursuing creative ways to achieve enhanced research outputs. One such process is the publication-based thesis (PBT) for both masters and PhD candidates, rather than monographs. While this process is not novel in the sciences, it has not been widely applied by economic and management schools, particu...

Sustainability is an essential theme for business. In order to compete, strategies need to be improvised and efficient and effective decisions need to be made for improved sustainability performance. Despite management's apparent knowledge of this, it appears that challenges persist with sustainability's embeddedness in decision-making and its impl...

There can be little doubt that sustainability has become one of the most important issues in business in recent years. In spite of sustainability's importance, there is agreement amongst leaders and practitioners that sustainability is not as embedded as desired. This study reports a framework on inhibitors that limit sustainability embeddedness in...

Orientation: In 2009, Strategy-as-Practice (S-as-P) research, as a subfield of strategy research, was grouped into nine different domains, and researchers were advised to frame their research within these domains. The papers or works (herein used interchangeably) published with S-as-P as subject, were counted, categorised, and a typology matrix was...

Tension often arises when Chapter 6 business rescue practitioners (BRPs) are appointed by directors to rescue their distressed businesses. Regulating by means of standard agency contracting becomes irrelevant in the resulting multiple relationships. Looking through the agency lens, using analytic autoethnography and compiling narratives, this paper...

p> Background: A business rescue plan has to comply with a new and vague set of obligations regulated by South African legislation. Expectations of the plan are largely unknown, yet crucial in determining compliance. Establishing an effective benchmark for the plan is essential for the growth and success of the industry. Purpose: The study set out...

Purpose: The ubiquitous pace of innovation is spawning a multitude of information and communications technology (ICT) products that are both redefining the manner in which organisations operate and have the potential to engender organisations with strategic advantage through the adoption of these products. However, the challenges that this presents...

The literature suggests that the solution to business and IT alignment may lie in the antecedents of alignment. This study attempts to establish the role, mode of operation and sourcing option of the IT department as antecedents to alignment and show how they are related to one another. A survey was deployed within a case organization to demonstrat...

Preliminary analysis of business rescue plans suggested that a signifi cant contrast exists between international reorganisational plans and those being published under the newly formed business rescue regime in South Africa. Since the South African regime has emerged from an international insolvency framework, an international benchmark was used t...

ABSTRACT Orientation: Within the principal-agent dilemma there exists conflict between business rescue practitioners (BRPs) and banks (often the determinant creditor) about process, outcomes and remuneration. Details about the issues, liabilities and solutions to overcome the relationship liabilities during a rescue can guide the development of a c...

Orientation: Business Rescue Practitioner (BRP) tasks are complex and involve a wide range of knowledge, tacit skills and experience not accessible to novices. Research purpose: Competencies required by business rescue practitioners (BRPs) to navigate a distressed venture were investigated. What BRPs actually ‘do’ during a rescue guided the develop...

Purpose: Sustainability appears to be an often misunderstood and complex phenomenon. The concept of sustainability embeddedness in decision making has become a " front of mind " concept and it is, in our opinion, critical to develop a clear understanding of sustainability in order to achieve improved strategising. Problem investigated: There is a n...

In 2009, the management consulting industry reported a 9% decline in their financial performance. The applied empirical research, which informed this article, was undertaken in an effort to provide an alternative explanation (over and above the 2.2% decline in the global market economy reported for 2009 by the World Bank) for the observed slump in...

p>Since its introduction, business rescue has become a critical consideration in business strategy decision making. One of the critical components of business rescue, which appears largely unsuccessful to date, involves securing post-commencement finance (PCF) to restore the company’s financial health. Despite extensive theory in the literature on...

A business rescue practitioner’s (BRP) tasks are complex, vaguely stated and involve a wide range of competencies not accessible to the average business person. Details about what exactly BRPs do during a rescue need to be determined in order to guide licensing and build a qualifi cations framework for the education of BRPs. Through an adapted ‘int...

Management consultants experience numerous roadblocks to the successful completion of strategy projects. These typical obstacles create inability to strategise and are the result of inability preconditions. Inability preconditions accumulate into liabilities that not only limit the management consultant’s ability to earn economic rents, but also th...

Orientation: Business rescue has become a critical part of business strategy decision making, especially during economic downturns and recessions. Past legislation has generally supported creditor-friendly regimes, and its mind-set still applies which increases the difficulty of such turnarounds. There are many questions and critical issues faced b...

Purpose: To determine the level of sustainability embeddedness in strategising by investigating the public and external communication of companies. Problem investigated: The extent to which sustainability is embedded in the elements of strategy formulation and implementation (and not merely surface-level statements and claims) Design: The researche...

Purpose – The paper endeavors to determine the reasons why key managers fail to win the respect of their direct reports. Design/methodology/approach – Junior and middle managers were asked to judge why managers generally fail as leaders and what they think the consequences are when there is leadership failure. They were prompted to consider their o...

This article explores strategy-making modes within organisations. The implications of certain strategy-making modes for the responsible leader as an architect or change agent are highlighted. The study on which this article is based, showed that the use of emergent strategy-making is as prevalent as the use of deliberate strategy-making. This artic...

Purpose More than ever, businesses need to get their strategy right. Part of achieving this is the approach to strategy making that is chosen. The purpose of this paper is to describe how strategy making happens on the continuum of deliberate versus emerging strategy. Design/methodology/approach Through in‐depth interviews with “strategy informant...

Orientation: Current theories of repeat entrepreneurship provide little explanation for the effect of failure as a ‘trigger’ for creating successive ventures or learning from repeated failures. Research purpose: This study attempts to establish the role of previous failures on the ventures that follow them and to determine the process of learning...

The importance of major dealers' expertise in distribution channels and effects on exchange relations is widely acknowledged by many SMEs in Africa and yet there seem to be a paucity of research on this matter. To address this dearth, the current study attempts to examine the relationship between major dealers' expert power and SME manufacturers' c...

The importance of major dealers’ expertise in distribution channels and effects on exchange relations is widely acknowledged by many SMEs in Africa and yet there seem to be a paucity of research on this matter. To address this dearth, the current study attempts to examine the relationship between major dealers’ expert power and manufacturers’ chann...

Purpose: Reports of business failure elicit various reactions, while research in this domain often appears to be limited by a lack of access to information about failure and by the negativity that surrounds it. Those who have experienced failure do not readily talk about it, or they disappear from the radar screen of researchers. Yet failure is pre...

p>In the past, researchers have often defined failure to suit their data. This has led to a lack of comparability in research outputs. The overriding objective of this paper is to propose a universal definition for the failure phenomenon. Clear definitions are a prerequisite for exploring major constructs, their relationship to failure and the cont...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose an instrument, the Small Enterprise Social Responsibility Inventory (SESRI) for measuring business social responsibility (BSR) in the African venture setting. Design/methodology/approach – The approach was to use the components of Dzansi's framework to create an instrument for measuring BSR activiti...

Purpose There are seven categories of liabilities all new managerial appointees must overcome, regardless of whether they are a new CEO or a new department manager. This paper aims to identify them and offer an action plan for rapidly overcoming them. Design/methodology/approach These liabilities are the preconditions that act as obstacles to effe...

Purpose The aim of this paper is to provide a systematic and sound framework for addressing and measuring business social responsibility (BSR) in small and micro enterprises with specific focus on the African context. Design/methodology/approach The paper is theoretical but has practical applications. The approach was to use principles of BSR from...

The predictability of Type A behaviour was measured in a sample of 375 professionals with a shortened version of the Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS). Two structural equation models were constructed with the Type A behaviour achievement sub-scale and global (total) Type A as the predictor variables. The indices showed a reasonable-to-promising fit wit...

This paper reports on decision-making cognitions just before and during the start-up decision within the entrepreneurial process. It uses empirical results based on responses collected through questionnaires from entrepreneurs, managers, employees and students as respon- dents. The importance of entrepreneurial cognitions is reported, and the possi...

At best, many venture start-ups contain accidental actions while theory suggests they are methodically scouted, planned and pursued. Baron & Henry at this conference in 2006, proposed deliberate practice research as an avenue to identify effortful, directed actions of relevance, associated with expert performance of entrepreneurs, similar to those...

p align="LEFT">Many institutions embark on entrepreneurship education, as ultimately start-ups benefit economic growth; but institutions unfortunately lack tools and benchmarks for assessing the quality of their programmes. The uniqueness of different programmes, however, does not allow meaningful comparative assessment between them, so this study...

Failure is a phenomenon that ventures face during all stages of the life cycle and requires insight into its causes before it can be reversed. The scientific literature on failure is, however, spread over multiple disciplines. This study's line of enquiry firstly reviews the documented research (both theoretical and empirical) encompassing the phen...

Purpose – Porter's generic strategy matrix often proves inadequate for use by distressed firms, because it assumes that ventures operate “normally” in competitive environments. Leaders of troubled ventures facing turnaround situations need to interpret the complex factors involved, as generic strategies alone prove insufficient. Researchers have no...

div>This paper joins the debate about how best to assess entrepreneurial training interventions, using a case-study. Contextual secondary literature about the structure and content of such interventions is briefly reviewed. Based on this review, a framework is developed and applied to the Provincial Skills Development Pilot Project’s current New Ve...

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to develop an entrepreneurial education model for implementation in the Namibian Higher Education system. Namibia, just like South Africa, has an objective to develop small, medium and micro enterprises to enhance economic growth and reduce unemployment. Development of such a model is supported by the government of...

Current theories of repeat entrepreneurship provide little explanation for the effect of failure as a “trigger event” in creation of successive ventures. Multiple failures offer potentially valuable insights to explore this relationship. New venture creation could potentially be the consequence or cause of failure. The relation also depends on whet...

SMME (small, medium and micro-enterprise) development has been identified by the South African government as a priority in creating jobs. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor reports low entrepreneurial activity and suggests entrepreneurial education as paramount for improvement. Entrepreneurial skills depend on creativity and innovation as it disti...

Purpose This paper focuses on the comparison of two models for entrepreneurial education with the aim of potential integration. At this juncture when entrepreneurial development is seen as the core contributor to enhance start‐ups of new ventures and hence facilitate economic growth and development, the best possible education model is required. Th...

div>This article focuses on the position that South African commercial banks adopt when evaluating an application for finance of new business ventures. The role and importance of the business plan in the decision-making process is highlighted and investigated. This article begins to qualitatively describe the decision-making processes, criteria and...

This paper discussed the role of an entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and start-up culture to enhance economic development. It investigates the proposition that the South African culture is conducive to EO. Secondly, this paper investigates the available programs from an entrepreneurial culture perspective. Programs are categorised to delineate thei...

Potential failure is a threat that businesses face during any stage of their life cycle, while turnaround from decline is essential to protect them from failure. The scientific literature on turnaround focuses on both strategy and process. This study's line of enquiry firstly reviews the documented research (both theoretical and empirical) encompas...

Reports of business failure are met by various reactions while research in this domain often appears to be limited by access to failure information and the negativity surrounding failure. Those who experienced failure do not readily talk about it or they disappear from the radar screen of researchers.

This study reports on the use of simulation as approach to management edu-cation. After reporting the literature, the change in skills levels of participants in an entrepreneurship and business management simulation is empirically reported. Data from respondents were studied to compare if strategic, fi nan-cial, operational, marketing and sales, hu...