Business School Academic Graduates Five Master’s Students

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The 2018 academic year was a productive one for Graduate School of Business and Leadership academic and Human Capital specialist, Dr Vuyokazi Mtembu-Hlophe, who supervised five master’s students who graduated this year.

The Impact of Performance Management Appraisal on the Employee’s Morale and Job Satisfaction in the City of uMhlathuze, was the title of the MBA dissertation by Mr Sipho Khuzwayo, an Engineer and manager responsible for Urban Roads and Rail Sidings in the city of uMhlathuze in northern KwaZulu-Natal.

Mr Vishal Poona, a Water Loss Control Engineer and Director at Joat Group - a South African water management company - completed his MBA with a dissertation titled: Non-Revenue Water Reduction Programmes Funded by the Private Sector to Solve Under Staffing at KwaZulu-Natal’s Municipalities.

Training and Development manager at Hollywoodbets, Mr Gregory Glossop, did an MBA research project which investigated: The Relationship between Job Satisfaction and Absenteeism: A Case Study on Hollywoodbets.

UKZN researcher, Mr Caiphas Muyambo’s MBA dissertation examined: The Impact of Corporate Entrepreneurial Culture on the Quality of Intervention on Market Systems Development.

Exploring Quality Management as a Tool for Organisational Performance: A Case Study for eThekwini Municipality, was the title of Ms Lungile Mnyandu’s study which earned her a Master of Commerce in Leadership Studies. Mnyandu is a manager at the South African Revenue Service.

Mtembu-Hlophe said: ‘I am super excited to be graduating five students at the same time. It gives me a sense of fulfilment to know that my hard work was not in vain. I am inspired to work harder with the current cohort of students I am supervising.’

she says it was challenging to keep the students motivated to submit chapters on time as they all had demanding jobs. ‘I sent email reminders to my students. I also used a positive feedback method which motivated students to work even harder to finish the next chapter and submit quality work.’

It is important for the academic research work to be published so that it can be used to help solve complex business challenges so Mtembu-Hlophe has started working on journal articles with some of her students.

‘It is exciting and we look forward to having those papers published,’ she said. ‘We also look forward to ideas and recommendations made in them being implemented.’

Words: Hazel Langa 

Photograph: Rogan Ward