Sara Grobbelaar

Stellenbosch University | SUN · Department of Industrial Engineering

In the resource-constrained education sector in South Africa, infrastructure deemed temporary or backup elsewhere is used as permanent classrooms, mainly in areas of low income. Temperature and CO 2 levels, substantial determinants of air quality, have not been studied across different classroom types, despite their direct impact on children's cogn...

This dataset comprises survey data from South African additive manufacturing (AM) enterprises, representing approximately 80% of the industry. The survey was designed using innovation indicators from the technology innovation system (TIS) framework to explore the dynamics within South African AM enterprises. Six TIS experts and 2AM industry special...

This article applies a network lens to transactional data in order to improve a food banking network's supply chain design and planning. This study draws on data from FoodForward South Africa. This food bank has compiled a rich dataset of connections between supply chain partners (e.g., donors), the flow of stock (volume of food), and their benefic...

Value conceptualisation has shifted from a firm’s standpoint to the ecosystem perspective involving multiple actors who integrate resources for value co-creation. This paper presents a structured review of the current state of knowledge, identifying and synthesising a conceptual framework of core elements for SMEs and orchestrators in developing pl...

In the resource-constrained South African education sector, infrastructure considered temporary or a backup in other countries is used as permanent classrooms, primarily but not exclusively in lower-income areas. Children's cognitive performance and comfort are directly impacted by indoor air quality. Temperature, relative humidity, particulate mat...

In recent studies, platform ecosystems, an extension of business ecosystems, have emerged as highly disruptive mechanisms for generating value within various industries. The transformative influence of digital technologies on conventional business landscapes is increasingly evident, facilitating inclusive and sustainable development. Nevertheless,...

As additive manufacturing technology is growing globally, a need exists to better understand the landscape of needs, challenges, and opportunities that enterprises experience to assist policymakers in developing practical and sufficient support policies. This paper draws from the literature on the technology innovation system's innovation indicator...

In order to enhance their impact on traditional healthcare systems and improve health outcomes, digital health interventions must undergo widespread adoption, scaling, and consistent use. However, achieving adoption and scaling of digital tools in healthcare remains a challenging goal globally. This challenge is compounded by an inconsistent and fr...

While the medical device value chain has been extensively studied, this article enhances understanding by offering a refined approach to analyze and explore its bottlenecks. Leveraging a design science research methodology, our article introduces a medical device value chain framework that advances beyond traditional mappings. Initially, two system...

Time-limited access (unitl 18 Jan 2024) to the full text article available here: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1iAPA5Ce0rnp98 Background: One Health is built on the concept that "human health and animal health are interdependent and bound to the health of the ecosystems in which they exist" (OIE, 2021). The zoonotic origins of the COVID-19 pandem...

Purpose: Several studies have shown that community management and platform engagements promote value co-creation in the automobile, housing, e-commerce, education and IT industries. The potential of digital technologies to support more inclusive and sustainable growth is transforming traditional business ecosystems. However, this value co-creation...

Purpose This paper aims to explore the growth of the South African additive manufacturing (AM) industry over the past 31 years through the lens of the innovation system (IS) perspective, examining the actor dynamics and mechanisms that facilitated or hindered the industry’s development. Design/methodology/approach The study used a case study resea...

African logistics and supply chain management capabilities are essential to the performance of the continent's commercial and humanitarian supply chains. This study reviewed the challenges for researchers and practitioners in advancing logistics and supply chain performance through developing appropriate capabilities. A literature review and landsc...

Objective: To enhance the predictive power of the Fit between Individuals, Task and Technology (FITT) framework in mobile, individual consumer settings by restructuring the individual-task fit to prominently emphasise the task-skills fit. Design: A mixed study involving a quantitative survey of 679 potential patients (adopters) and a qualitative...

Background: While the One Health perspective provides a useful approach by which to influence the complex interactions that pose a risk to the individual and collective health of humans, animals, and the environment, approaches to its operationalization can be enhanced. Aim: This study examines models as contributors toward operationalization of O...

There exists concern that traditional innovation approaches (although not the sole driver) can contribute to the vicious cycle of inequality and exclusion. The past decades have witnessed responses to develop more equitable outcomes through innovation. Innovation for Inclusive Development (I4ID) has been hailed as a promising approach where one may...

Crime statistics indicate that the total number of annually reported crimes decreased steadily between 2008 and 2019 in South Africa. However, annually reported robberies have been steadily increasing over the same period. Additionally, South Africa remains plagued by high income inequality. This paper presents a system dynamics simulation model de...

Although a large body of literature exists to support the execution of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) initiatives, many such initiatives fail to deliver the intended results. By following a Design Science Research (DSR) methodology, this article presents an artifact (a framework) whose purpose is to integrate act...

Accelerating the dynamics of technological change presents business leaders with complex innovation risks, be they manifested as opportunities or threats, and challenges to bridge the widening strategy-technology chasm. We propose a decision-support tool in the form of a new strategic lens to make sense of evolving technologies within the context o...

Background Despite all the excitement and hype generated regarding the expected transformative impact of digital technology on the healthcare industry, traditional healthcare systems around the world have largely remained unchanged and resultant improvements in developed countries are slower than anticipated. One area which was expected to signific...

Purpose In this article we aim to understand how the network formed by fitness tracking devices and associated apps as a subset of the broader health-related Internet of things is capable of spreading information. Design/methodology/approach The authors used a combination of a content analysis, network analysis, community detection and simulation....

Digital health technologies have for number years now been expected to reduce the skyrocketing health related costs as well as the care burden on traditional healthcare systems. However, their adoption and scaling have consistently been unsatisfactory and sometimes, outright disappointing. Scholars have offered several valuable, insightful, and per...

Background: Globally, community health workers (CHW) are increasingly viewed as an integral part of the health system as opposed to simply being an extension of it. Given this view, most low- or middle-income countries (LMICs) have refocused their efforts on reorganising CHW initiatives to maximise their impact. The ongoing endeavours to augment th...

Social enterprises are critical players in economic growth and service delivery. This article presents a tool that helps to identify the aspects that affect the sustainability of social enterprises. The tool is based on a framework that identifies high-growth factors and that uses the CRISP-DM (Cross-industry standard process for data mining) metho...

Performance improvement in any field depends on establishing goals that align the interests of relevant stakeholders, which may be defined as creating value for stakeholders. In the healthcare context, the concept of value creation and its analysis from an ecosystem perspective has been neglected and is hard to achieve in practice. This research ad...

Social enterprises (SEs) have a high degree of complexity, as they are hybrid organisations that serve two missions: a social mission and a commercial mission. These missions are not always aligned, and tension can form between them as the commercial and social value creating activities compete for the limited resources available in the organisatio...

Understanding how innovation ecosystems emerge and can be sustained is an important issue. However, the lack of sound relational analysis methods to explain such dynamics could constrain a deeper understanding of the emergence and evolution of ecosystems. This article aligns with the call for innovation ecosystems to utilize developed theoretical f...

This paper examines the process of research uptake institutionalization tak- ing place at universities in the African context. It explores the importance of the emerging concept of Research Uptake Management (RUM) and provides a rationale for why it is becoming increasingly relevant within the higher education sector, both inside and outside of Afr...

Technology platforms have proven to give companies an edge over their competitors and the agility required to mitigate market disruption. Technology platforms require unique management strategies and considerations that many prospective platform owners do not adequately address. The technology management capabilities perspective has become a common...

There is a growing trend in the potential benefits and application of log data to evaluate mHealth Apps. However, the process by which log data is used to derive insights remains unstructured, resulting in the underutilization of mHealth data. We aimed to explore extant literature and guidance through a scoping review on how log data analysis can b...

The healthcare supply chain is a complex adaptive ecosystem that facilitates the delivery of health products to the end patient in a cost-effective way. However, low forecast accuracy and high demand volatility in healthcare supply chains have resulted in an increase in stockouts, operational inefficiencies, poor health outcomes, and a significant...

The research presented within this article sets out to evaluate a conceptual framework, consisting of five phases, aimed at facilitating health-related technology transfer to and within sub-Saharan African countries. The framework is constructed using a grounded theory process and is subsequently quantitively evaluated via a questionnaire survey in...

Running-related injuries, specifically overuse injuries, are complex and multifaceted. A different way of thinking is required to fully comprehend why, and how, these injuries occur. The systems thinking perspective offers tools and techniques to capture system-wide interactions in causal, closed-loop structures which may be studied and quantified...

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on global operations and economies. Inadvertently, lock-downs and working from home have reduced the daily carbon footprints of transport and office buildings. A beneficial consequence of these reductions is the ability to measure the differential demand of occupants, to benchmark the base load of thes...

South Africa’s interventions to address complex social challenges rely on coordination across several sectors and between different levels of government and society. Improved alignment, planning and coordination are needed when addressing the causal factors of these social challenges. These causal factors include the environments in which people li...

Background: Shared value creation in base of the pyramid (BoP) communities is a crucial process towards building sustainable societies. BoP communities in developing countries represent more than 4 billion people who live on low incomes with limited access to basic products and services. Current or emerging technologies offer promising solutions fo...

Globally, the agriculture sector is faced with multiple challenges especially in developing countries where smallholder farmers face barriers such as lack of access to financial services, information, formal and/or economic identity. The utilization of digital platforms in agriculture can offer solutions such as information services, financial incl...

Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) projects aim to improve the living conditions of marginalized communities. However, ICT4D interventions have high failure rates. We draw on the Technological Innovation for Inclusive Development Systems (TI4IDS) framework, which argues that ICT4D projects are embedded in a system af...

Background: Shared value creation in Base of the Pyramid (BoP) communities is a crucial process towards building sustainable societies. BoP communities in developing countries represent more than four billion people who live on low incomes with limited access to basic products and services. Current or emerging technologies offer promising solutions...

Background: South Africa’s public healthcare sector is overburdened, especially its under-resourced primary healthcare delivery system. This burden could be relieved by alleviating the population’s ill-health, focusing on the social determinants of health. These include living conditions and levels of social cohesion. In an attempt to address the a...

BACKGROUND There is a growing trend in the potential benefits and application of log data for the evaluation of mHealth Apps. However, the process by which insights may be derived from log data remains unstructured, resulting in underutilisation of mHealth data. OBJECTIVE We aimed to acquire an understanding of how log data analysis can be used to...

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on global operations and economies. Inadvertently, lock-downs and working from home have reduced the daily carbon footprints of transport and office buildings. A beneficial consequence of these reductions is the ability to measure the differential demand of occupants, to benchmark the base load of thes...

Although significant resources are invested in research through the delivery of management studies graduates in Nigeria, uncertainty exists as to whether, how, and how effectively Nigerian universities engage with the Nigerian banking sector regarding research. This article adopts the interpretivist/constructivist research philosophical paradigm to...

Background Predicting and monitoring recruitment in large, complex trials is essential to ensure appropriate resource management and budgeting. In a novel partnership between clinical trial investigators of the South African Medical Research Council and industrial engineers from the Stellenbosch University Health Systems Engineering and Innovation...

Background: Despite all the excitement and hype generated regarding the expected transformative impact of digital technology on the healthcare industry, traditional healthcare systems around world have largely remained unchanged and resultant improvements in developed countries are slower than anticipated. One area which was expected to significant...

South Africa's private sector-under significant pressure to become energy efficient and employ sustainability principles-has long been implementing energy-saving mechanisms. Unfortunately, there seems to exist many misplaced incentives in South Africa's public sector that prevent it from embracing energy-efficient technology. With the falling cost...

Rising patient demands, a growing population, and resource limitations constrain the South African healthcare system. The integration of disparate interventions that are developed and implemented across various actors in healthcare value chains (VCs) remains a significant challenge. This calls for a multidisciplinary approach to integrate the knowl...

South Africa’s source of energy in buildings is electricity from a struggling state utility running mainly on coal. But despite the constraints and the high cost, energy usage remains mostly unchecked and poorly managed in schools, whose attention is focused on reducing inequality in educational outcomes. School energy usages have been well studied...

Enterprises operating at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) find it difficult to simultaneously achieve economic (profitable growth) and social (poverty alleviation) outcomes. This study builds on a previously published systematic literature review that identified the key growth-promoting factors of the Small, Medium, and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) opera...

Additive manufacturing has been described as a novel, disruptive technology that will revolutionise the way almost all products will be manufactured and produced. Policies are therefore required to facilitate and guide the maturing of this technology to ensure that it is beneficial to everyone and that the misuse of this technology is mitigated. Th...

South Africa’s private sector - under significant pressure to become energy efficient and employ sustainability principles - has long been implementing energy saving mechanisms. Unfortunately, there seems to exist many misplaced incentives in South Africa's public sector that prevent it from embracing energy-efficient technology. With the falling c...

Healthcare supply chains ensure that there is a cost-effective availability of medicines at healthcare facilities. However, it appears that public healthcare supply chains in South Africa are experiencing significant challenges in the management and distribution of the right medicines, at the right time, and at the right cost. This has resulted in...

To date, applications of Systems Thinking (ST) in sport sciences are lacking with little existing practical work that adopted the approach. The aim of the article is to present an instantiation of ST in running towards demonstrating its utility. Two qualitative, principle tools in ST is demonstrated for a systemic problem in sport, namely recurring...

Uncertainty exists regarding the possible return on investment through health information systems projects. Here, the impact of value co-creation in the success of health information systems plays an important role. To this end, exploring value co-creation through stakeholder engagement on a micro-level is essential for the improvement of healthcar...