UKZN Webinar Spotlight on Management and Entrepreneurship

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The School of Management, IT and Governance (SMIG) hosted a webinar to discuss topical issues around management and entrepreneurship.

Participants comprised about 400 academics, University professional services staff, undergraduate and postgraduate students, business professionals, entrepreneurs, and representatives from a variety of local government sectors and large international corporations.

The programme was hosted by Academic Leader Dr Thea van der Westhuizen, who in her welcome address said management and entrepreneurship were among the most important issues currently faced by society. Contemporary research, learning and teaching, and management and entrepreneurship combined to promise exciting times ahead in the education of the next generation of managers and entrepreneurs.

The discussion panel included SMIG’s Professor Dan Remenyi, who was the keynote panellist; honorary research fellows Dr David Sarpong and Professor Rosemond Boohene; and Professor Vannie Naidoo, an associate professor and researcher at the School.

Remenyi said management was a relatively new field of study. With its modern manifestation developing from around 1900, it had only become part of the consciousness of business in the 1950s thanks to the work of Peter Drucker. A lot of work had been done since then in understanding and improving the functioning and organisation of society but there was still a lot to do, especially in clarifying the reach and scope of management processes and how they affected people.

Remenyi said entrepreneurship - an evolving concept which had caught the imagination of many - had the potential to deliver extraordinary benefits. It was, however, a very challenging task to succeed as an entrepreneur and care needed to be taken in explaining and demonstrating what was really involved in building new successful businesses.

Sarpong’s subject for debate was: How do we bring together theory and practise?, while Boohene examined concepts of management and entrepreneurship saying ‘we live in an uncertain and turbulent environment where the traditional ways of doing things have been questioned as most of them do not work or need to be modified in our present dispensation.

‘Currently with the pandemic, people have been asked to work from home - we need to think about how we manage that situation and whether it is in fact possible to manage people who work remotely?’ said Sarpong.

Naidoo discussed insights around the 4th Industrial Revolution and COVID-19; research studies on transcendental consciousness and how it impacts on the manager and entrepreneur, and the ever-changing management and entrepreneurial education.

‘The dynamic nature of management is being studied and dissected by theorists all over the world,’ she said. ‘As a science, management has transformed the way we live, work and every facet of human life as we know it. Management has continually evolved over time - this we can see in every century as management thought continues to evolve in the 4IR and now the COVID-19 pandemic,’ she said.

The session ended with an interactive panel discussion and Q&A session involving all participants.

Words: Lungile Ngubelanga

Photograph: Supplied