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Masters Theses
Service quality, empowerment and ethics in the South African hospitality and tourism industry and the road ahead using ISO9000/1
Author(s): Nicolaides, Angelo
Advisor: Prof Moodley, S.
Attachments [1]
Issue Date: 2008
Language: en
More Detail
Abstract: The study investigates the concept of quality service in the Hospitality and Tourism Industry. What quality service means to different customers may vary considerably from individual to individual and from country to country. It is nevertheless an indispensable aspect of business which has far more points of congruence than diversity. Customers are the very lifeblood of a service industry business and indeed all businesses. It is therefore vital that management permanently remove any and all of the obstacles which appear in quality service provision. What is the remedy to poor service and how can management be proactive in the pursuit of excellence in quality service provision? This research strives to analyze various opinions and theories on what it is precisely that quality service means and how hospitality and tourism managers can benefit their operations by ongoing commitment to quality service provision and by genuinely empowering and motivating their employees. South Africa as a growing international tourist destination needs to improve its service provision to meet global standards-ISO9000/1 is the ideal tool. To an extent, using the WEB and Internet can also greatly improve the Tourism and Hospitality industry quality service provision in South Africa and give the country a strategic competitive advantage in the international marketplace. Ethical behaviour in the hotel industry is also non-negotiable. Ethics is good economics. Suggestions are made as to how an ethics policy including a formal code of conduct can be developed which defines the standards of personnel behaviour in hotels. All employees can and should be motivated to provide excellence in service quality and positively influence the behaviour of employees under their charge. An appropriate and conducive to business approach is not only desirable but non-negotiable. ISO9000/1 certification implementation in the hotel industry has many benefits for companies which hold it and addresses most of the issues stated above.
Description: Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Administration and Law to fulfil the requirements for the Master of Commerce in Business Management at the University of Zululand, South Africa.
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- South African government has been utilizing expansionary expenditure for the past two decades to tackle the declining growth and the prevailing socioeconomic challenges. This policy stance is heavily grounded in the Keynesian theory which proposes that government spending stimulates economic growth. Several empirical studies testing the Keynesian proposition are generally affirmative but these studies do not tell us how disaggregated and particular components of government spending affect economic growth. Against this background, this study contributes to existing knowledge by using a disaggregate measure of government spending to establish the association between government social spending and economic wellbeing, which is measured by economic growth, income distribution inequality and household consumption expenditure. The autoregressive distributed Lag (ARDL) econometric modelling approach is employed to estimate the impact of disaggregated government social spending on economic growth (growth model), income inequality (Gini model) and household consumption expenditure (consumption model). Therefore, the three models utilise time series data spanning from 1983 to 2016. The results showed that education spending improves economic growth during the short run, but has an insignificant impact on economic growth in the long run. Health spending has a negative impact on economic growth during the short run, however, stimulates growth in the long run. Social protection spending boosts economic growth during both in the short run and the long run. On the other hand, social spending on education and health have an equalizing impact on income distribution during the long run, except for social protection spending. While during the short run only health and social protection spending reduce income inequality. The long-run results for consumption model indicate that education spending has an insignificant effect on household consumption and public spending on health has a negative impact on household consumption respectively. While social protection spending promoted household consumption. Notably, all government social spending variables are unsuccessful in promoting household consumption expenditure during the short run as the impact is statistically insignificant. Therefore, the overall results revealed that government social spending variables have a significant impact on economic wellbeing, especial during the long-run. However, the impact caused by disaggregated social spending is small. Even though the social spending components are inelastic, most have a significant impact, which makes social spending has an important role in the variation of economic growth, income distribution and household consumption spending. Another important finding is that government cannot overall rely on government social spending to boost its economic perspective therefore, may need to focus on other economic fundamentals to raise economic wellbeing
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- The increasing number of trade unions with strong/collective bargaining power in recent times have put pressure on wage rate, resulting in rate rise in South Africa, thereby causing rate rise in inflation from both the supply and demand sides with its attendant output/productivity deterioration. Consequently, this study complements existing literature by investigating the long and short-run linear and nonlinear relationships between wage rate and inflation rate before and after inflation targeting periods in South Africa. in a sample of 170 observations spanning from 1980Q1 to 2022Q1. The study quantitative, anchored on archival design, with the data sourced from the World Development Indicators (WDI) and the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) It employed the linear and the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (LARDL & NARDL) estimation techniques in the analysis to test these objectives. The findings made in this study have both short-run and long-run implications. This study found a positive linear and nonlinear relationship between inflation and wage rate in South Africa for the period under investigation. This implied that although both indicators significantly raise each other during the short-run and long run, the magnitude of the impact of inflation on wage rate was higher than that of wage rise on inflation. Therefore, higher rates of inflation caused workers/trade unions to demand for higher wages and not vice versa. Hence, the high inflation rate is more of demand-pull rather than supply/cost-push. This study also found a non-persistent inflation rate in the long-run. This implied that adaptive expectation, rather than rational expectation, is the main driver of economic agents’ price setting behaviour. This assertion was further strengthened by significant positive impact of the log of bank rate on inflation in the short-run and long-run. Moreover, high productivity was found as a strong panacea for rising wage rate and inflation rate, whereas the adoption of inflation targeting from the first quarter of the year 2000 in South Africa emitted no significant impact on the wage-inflation nexus. This was attributed to a credit crunch following the 2007/08 global financial crisis that led to policy failures and, hence, the inability of the monetary policy rate to control wage rate. The negative impact of the cumulative negative changes in wage rate on inflation implies that, over the long-run, negative changes in unit labour costs had a marginally stronger dampening effect on inflation relative to a positive change, which in relative terms has a marginally smaller positive effect. Hence, there was weak evidence of an asymmetric/nonlinear impact of wage rate on inflation rate, and vice versa, in the long-run with no short-run nexus. This implied that positive and negative changes in the two indicators are more likely to have a trade-off with each other in the long-run than during the short-run. Finally, the findings from the last objective of this study relating to the nature of the relationship between inflation, wage growth and productivity before and after the inflation targeting eras in South Africa revealed that the downward nexus among inflation, wage rate and bank rate during the early 1980s could be attributed to structural transition to quantitative approach to monetary policy in 1985. Moreover, high volatility recorded among productivity, inflation rate and wage rate in 2020 could be attributed to the structural shock of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on these findings, the study recommended that government should reduce the cost of governance to keep inflation low, improve productivity through market liberalisation and tax holidays, and incentives to firms in order to keep wage rate and inflation rate low. It is also recommended that capital and money markets reform be done in order to make inflation more responsive to monetary aggregates, and financial system be liberated to cushion the effect of credit crunch that might arise from financial crisis. The findings that emerged in this study have both short-run and long-run implications. The short-run implications included rising inflation, high wage differentials among workers and job loses especially among private establishment. the long run implications included policy conflicts structural collapse, institutional failures and high tax liability in the future as a contractionary fiscal policy mechanism to cushion demand pull-inflation
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- Since the mid-90s female work compel investment has seen a stark increment (by 38%) boosting the general business levels. However, by global norms female labour force participation stays low and it is lower than for men averaging to a gap. Women’s work remains characterised by domestic and cultural divisions. This study establishes the long-run relationship between female labour force participation and economic growth and unemployment in South Africa by using time-series data collected from various data source for the period of 1980 to 2015 (yearly) and 2008 to 2016 (quarterly). Empirical studies form both developed and developing countries indicate different results and also indicating a U-shape relationship between female labour force participation and economic growth. This study adopted the Cointegration Vector Autoregressive and Vector Error Correction Model (multivariate equations) together with cointegration equations (FM-Ordinary Least Squares, Canonical Cointegrating Regression and Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares) to establish the long-run and short-run relationships and the effect of economic growth and unemployment on the participation of women in the labour force. The estimate of yearly data shows that unemployment is positive and significantly influences the participation of women in the labour force in the long run. Economic growth exhibits the n-shape relationship with female labour force participation in the long run, hence, it indicates the opposite of what other researchers have found. The Vector Error Correction Model indicate insignificant effect of economic growth and unemployment on FLFP.
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- The estimation of money demand function and determination of its stability is common practice in macroeconomic research due to its significance in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy. This study investigates stability of the long-run money demand for both narrow and broad money in South Africa over the period 1980 to 2011, using expenditure components of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as scale variables, the real effective exchange rate, inflation and a representative short-term interest rate as opportunity cost variables. The bounds testing procedure, a single equation cointegration technique, is applied to test for cointegration between the endogenous and exogenous variables. To achieve this objective, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach (Pesaran et al., 2001) is employed to estimate the long-run equilibrium relationships between real money balances and disaggregated expenditure components of Gross Domestic Product in addition to the interest rate and inflation as variables reflecting the opportunity cost of holding money. Both short-run and long-run relationships are explored to understand the dynamic adjustments through the error correction mechanisms of the model. The CUSUM and CUSUMQ tests (Brown et al., 1975) are applied to examine the possibility of structural breaks in money demand functions, as well as parameter stability. Results indicate that M2 and M3 money aggregates are cointegrated and are maintaining a stable long-run relationship with their determinants. However, M0 and M1 monetary aggregates are found not cointegrated with their determinants. Different expenditure components have different influence on the demand for broad money. This research also gives evidence that demand for broad money has remained stable despite the external shocks experienced in the previous years due to the global economic meltdown
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- This study investigates the economic impacts of HIV/AIDS on the rural households in KwaDlangezwa. The study also investigates the hypothesis that Aids has massive economic impact on families infected and affected by HIV/AIDS. At the level of the household, AIDS results in the loss of income, assets, savings and an increase in spending on health care by the households. HIV/AIDS epidemic slows down the pace of economic growth. UNAIDS (2009) estimated that the number of people living with HIV worldwide continued to grow in 2008, reaching an estimated 33.4 million (31.1 million–35.8 million). The total number of people living with the virus in 2008 was more than 20% higher than the number in 2000, and the prevalence was roughly threefold higher than in 1990. South Africa is one of the countries most severely affected by the AIDS epidemic, with the largest number of HIV infections in the world. UNAIDS estimated that in 2009, the total number of persons living with HIV in South Africa was 5.7 million. South Africa’s generalised HIV epidemic is defined as being hyper-endemic due to the high rate of HIV prevalence and the modes and drivers of HIV transmission. Heterosexual sex is recognized as the predominant mode of HIV transmission in the country followed by mother-to-child transmission, and drivers of the epidemic include migration, low perceptions of risk, and multiple concurrent sexual partnership (UNAIDS, 2010). The HIV/AIDS epidemic is a global concern of every country in the world particularly, in most African countries where the spread of the virus is increasing at an alarming rate. Coupled with other socio economic and political problems such as poverty, high fertility, low literacy and, the incidence of HIV/AIDS in most African countries like South Africa is becoming a serious challenge. The rural households are the most affected because of the lack of service delivery. Data is collected using quantitative and qualitative method. Quantitative results are in consensus with qualitative results. Results reveal that seventy one percent (71%) of the respondents believe that AIDS has a negative impact on the level of income, and fifty seven percent (57%) of the respondents believe that AIDS has negative impact on assets and household members who are infected with HIV/AIDS do not get any assistance. The overall results reveal that HIV/AIDS has negative economic impact on the rural household in KwaDlangezwa.
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- The Eastern Cape is the second largest province in the country, with high levels of poverty, and hence its rural areas, in particular, are considered to be highly food insecure. There is little known about the factors which determine the households' food security status in small rural towns such as Mbizana, a local Eastern Cape municipality mainly comprising of indigent households, for no such studies have been conducted in this area. The main objective of the study was to identify the relevant factors that affect the food security status of the households in the Isikelo community of the Mbizana Local Municipality. The study employed a systematic random method to select 330 participants to participate in a survey. The data collection occurred over the period of December 2016 to February 2017. The study used two binary logit models, where the first one estimated the determinants of household food security status using the dietary diversity scores, while the second model used the household food insecurity access scale (HFIAS) developed by USAID in 2007. In the first logit model, five variables were found significant and these variables included household social grants, gender, total monthly income, remittances, and membership in maize cooperative. In the second logit model, the results indicated that 10 of the 15 commonly used predictors that were included in the model, were found to be statistically significant. These variables included household size, government social grants, gender, marital status, total household monthly income, farm income, remittances, improved seed, and subsistence farming (own food production). Moreover, 62.0% of the sampled households were food insecure, whereas 38.0% of them were found to be food secure. In comparison, the dietary diversity scores showed that 52% of the households were food insecure, whereas 48 were found to be food secure. There is a significant discrepancy in these two measures of food security. However, the study prefers the household food insecurity access scale because it uses a norm of 30 days, unlike the dietary diversity scale, which uses the data of 24 hour recall. Based on the findings of the study, it is recommended that the government should introduce programmes that promote farm cooperatives, as well as subsistence farming. It is also recommended that government should finance small farmers in order to produce diverse agricultural products in rural areas, which will upgrade the income, as well as food security status, of the households in the relevant municipality
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