Management Studies in South Africa

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN AFRICAN LEADERSHIP Series Editors: Faith Ngunjiri and Nceku Nyathi

MANAGEMENT STUDIES IN SOUTH AFRICA Exploring the Trajectory in the Apartheid Era and Beyond

Shaun Ruggunan and R. Sooryamoorthy

Palgrave Studies in African Leadership Series Editors Faith Ngunjiri Moorhead, MN, USA Nceku Nyathi De Montfort University Leicester, UK

Almost every continent has solid representation in the field of leadership studies except for Africa, despite its rapid growth. A groundbreaking series, Palgrave Studies in African Leadership fills a gap in the production of knowledge and scholarly publishing on Africa and provides a much needed outlet for the works of scholars interested in African leadership studies around the world. Where many studies of leadership in Africa focus solely on one country or region, this series looks to address leadership in each of the different regions and countries of the continent. This comes at a time when business and academic discourse have begun to focus on the emerging markets across Africa. The wide-ranging scholarly perspectives offered in this series allow for greater understanding of the foundation of African leadership and its implications for the future. Topics and contributors will come from various backgrounds to fully explore African leadership and the implications for business, including scholars from business and management, history, political science, gender studies, sociology, religious studies, and African studies. The series will analyze a variety of topics including African political leadership, women’s leadership, religious leadership, servant leadership, specific regions, specific countries, specific gender categories, specific business entities in Africa, and more. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14652

Shaun Ruggunan • R. Sooryamoorthy

Management Studies in South Africa Exploring the Trajectory in the Apartheid Era and Beyond

Shaun Ruggunan University of KwaZulu-Natal Durban, South Africa

R. Sooryamoorthy University of KwaZulu-Natal Durban, South Africa

Palgrave Studies in African Leadership ISBN 978-3-319-99656-1    ISBN 978-3-319-99657-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99657-8 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018954944 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

This book is about the development of management studies as a scholarly discipline in South Africa. It focuses also on the ways in which the management studies academy has or has not transformed in post-apartheid South Africa. The book is also a tribute to the power of collaboration across academic disciplines. As academics from management studies and sociology, separated not only by disciplinary and methodological identities, we recognize the importance of collaboration. Both the National Research Foundation of South Africa and the University of KwaZulu-Natal have been supportive through the provision of the funding and infrastructure needed to produce this work. We are grateful to Renjini Devaki for the expert handling of the vast number of bibliographic records. Claudette Kercival was especially adept at helping to source archival material for us. Geoff Waters provided editorial assistance and a critical reading of the draft manuscript. Stella Nkomo and Dorothy Spiller were generous in serving as “sounding boards”. Thank you to Liz Barlow and her team at Palgrave Macmillan for handling this project with such care and professionalism. Finally, thank you to our families for their unwavering support and encouragement. Durban, South Africa 

Shaun Ruggunan R. Sooryamoorthy

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Contents

1 Management Studies in South Africa: From Practice to a  Scholarly Discipline   1 2 Management Studies: From Apartheid to Post-apartheid  23 3 Research in Management: Analysis of Publications  51 4 Publications in a South African Journal  93 5 Features, Trends and the Future 113 Index 135

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Abbreviations

AFAM ANC AOM BRICS CHE HBU HRD HRM HSRC HWU ILR IPM IR LEAP MBA NIPR NQF RU SABSA SAJHRM SAJLR SU UCT UDW UFH UN UNISA

African Academy of Management African National Congress Academy of Management Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa Council on Higher Education Historically Black University Human Resources Development Human Resources Management Human Sciences Research Council Historically White University Institute of Labour Relations Institute of People Management Industrial Relations Leadership Equity Accelerated Programme Master of Business Administration National Institute of Personnel Research National Qualifications Framework Rhodes University South African Business Schools Association South African Journal of Human Resource Management The South African Journal of Labour Relations Stellenbosch University University of Cape Town University of Durban-Westville University of Fort Hare University of Natal University of South Africa ix

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ABBREVIATIONS

UOFS UP UPE Wits

University of Orange Free State University of Pretoria University of Port Elizabeth University of Witwatersrand

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2

Features of publications in management studies in South Africa, 1966–201567 Count of authors by race, 1966–2015 67 Features of publications in SAJHRM, 2005–2015 97 SAJHRM authors by race, 2005–2015 98

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List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 3.4 Table 3.5 Table 3.6 Table 3.7 Table 3.8 Table 3.9 Table 3.10 Table 3.11 Table 3.12 Table 3.13 Table 3.14 Table 3.15

Accredited business schools in South Africa 29 South African publications in management, 1966–2015 55 Publications according to race, 1966–2015 60 South African publications in management in three time periods, 1966–2015 64 Institutional categories of South African authors, 1966–2015 68 Institutional categories and publications in three time periods, 1966–2015 69 Correlation between institutional type and race of authors, 1966–201571 Correlation between institutional type and race of authors, 1994–201571 Departmental affiliation of authors in three time periods (South African authors only), 1966–2015 73 Correlation between departments and race (South African authors only), 1966–2015 75 Correlation between departments and race (South African authors), 1994–2015 75 Coauthorship patterns across years, 1966–2015 78 Correlation among types of coauthorships, institutional types and race, 1966–2015 79 Correlation among types of coauthorships, institutional types and race, during 2005–2015 81 Correlation among types of coauthorships, departments and race, 1966–2015 82 Correlation between coauthored publications and type of institutions, race and gender, 2005–2015 83 xiii

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List of Tables

Table 3.16 Table 3.17 Table 3.18 Table 3.19 Table 3.20 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4 Table 4.5 Table 4.6 Table 4.7 Table 4.8 Table 4.9 Table 4.10 Table 4.11 Table 4.12 Table 4.13 Table 4.14

Correlation among the types of coauthorships, departments and race, during 2005–2015 85 Correlation among the regions of international partners, and institutional types of authors, 1966–2015 85 Correlation between the top ten international partners and institutional types of authors, 1966–2015 86 Correlation between the regions of international partners, race and gender of authors, 1966–2015 87 Top ten international partners, race and gender of authors, 1966–201588 Publications in SAJHRM, 2005–2015 95 Publications in SAJHRM by the count of author’s race, 2005–2015100 Institutional categories of South African authors in SAJHRM102 Publications in SAJHRM according to institutional categories of authors, 2005–2015 102 Correlation between institutional type and race of authors in SAJHRM publications, 2005–2015 103 Correlation between institutional type and race by two time periods in SAJHRM publications, 2005–2015 104 Departmental affiliations of South African authors in SAJHRM publications, 2005–2015 104 Correlation between departments and race of South African authors in SAJHRM publications, 2005–2015 105 Correlations between departments and race of South African authors in SAJHRM publications, 2005–2015 105 Coauthorship patterns in SAJHRM publications, 2005–2015 106 Correlation between types of coauthorships, institutional type and race in SAJHRM publications, 2005–2015 107 Correlation between coauthored publications and type of institutions, race and gender in SAJHRM publications, 2005–2015109 Correlation between types of coauthorships, departments and race in SAJHRM, 2005–2015 110 Correlation between types of coauthorships, departments and race in SAJHRM, 2010–2015 111

CHAPTER 1

Management Studies in South Africa: From Practice to a Scholarly Discipline

Abstract  Management as a subject of study and scholarship is distinctive in its development and future trajectory. Course offerings and research conducted in the discipline secure management studies a favourable position amongst other disciplines in South Africa. Having had politically distinctive phases such as apartheid and democracy, South Africa makes an interesting area of study for a discipline like management. While existing studies contribute to our understanding of the discipline and its characteristics, its history and patterns of knowledge production are underexplored and can open doors to new insights. It is also vital to know how the discipline has grown into a profession and practice and who produces the knowledge in the field. Keywords  Management • Apartheid • Management history • Scientometrics • South Africa The management of people to achieve organizational and work-related goals has existed for centuries. The building of the pyramids in Egypt and the large-scale infrastructural projects during ancient times (from Roman roads and aqueducts to Indian and African precolonial organizational projects) have engaged some or other forms of managerial skills (Kamoche 2002; Kamoche and Newenham-Kahindi 2012). Sumerian stone tablets record managerial techniques that were practised as far back as 3000 BC © The Author(s) 2019 S. Ruggunan, R. Sooryamoorthy, Management Studies in South Africa, Palgrave Studies in African Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99657-8_1

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(Hodgetts 1975). In the fifteenth century, managerial knowledge took shape through the colonial experience of administering military and civilian systems across broad geographical areas. This was even before the rise of large corporations (Frenkel and Shenhav 2006; Frenkel 2008). The colonial encounter as well as the transatlantic slave trade can also be viewed as managerial projects that required the management of vast and complex supply chains and human resources (Cooke 2003; Jammulamadaka 2017). Although management was practised for centuries, its formal scientific documentation as a discipline and a science occurred in the nineteenth century with the work of Frederick Taylor. This makes it a relatively new discipline. The key to the establishment of management as a scientific discipline is the idea that the practice of managerial techniques was not sufficient to ensure managerial goals and objectives. The proponents of scientific management argue that practice had to be empirically informed (Legg 2004). Management education, informed by management scholarship, was therefore vital to ensure managerial success in work organizations. The formal writings of managerial techniques based on empirical research thus became the core to its disciplinary establishment. These writings moved management from the function of how to manage people and organizations to scientifically based managerial practices (Nienaber 2007). Management as a research-based discipline was catalysed by the rapid industrialization of Europe following the industrial revolution. At the turn of the twentieth century, the reasons to coalesce the management of workers around a set of scientific beliefs about management were published (Swanepoel et  al. 2014). These scientific beliefs were published in the book Principles of Scientific Management written by Frederick Taylor. Management, for Taylor and his followers, was a science and a decision-­ making instrument for managing workers to achieve maximum productivity. Taylor’s views of management have profoundly shaped the discipline ever since. These are reflected in contemporary managerial practices such as performativity, production, motivation, work organization and remuneration (Khorasani and Almasifard 2017). The emergence of the factory and the rise of the new technologies gave practitioners of scientific management a rich context in which to test their ideas of management science (Goldman 2016). Scientific management, also known as classical management, provided opportunities for scholars to specifically research and publish on managerial education and practices. These scholars came from diverse academic backgrounds including ­psychology, sociology and economics. An increase in the scholarly production of managerial knowledge occurred, blending these disciplines with

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scientific management principles. The upswing of knowledge production that occurred was also an outcome of the need to support the rapid industrialization of Europe and North America. This included developing insights into how to better achieve performance and work design to ensure profitable work organizations. Management can therefore be defined as the “process of creating and maintaining an environment in which employees, individually and collectively, can perform to achieve the purpose of the enterprise” (Nienaber 2007: 3). The purpose of the enterprise can differ from profit achievement to service delivery, depending on the context. Despite the differing organizational contexts, the concern of management studies is the same. This is a concern with people management in work organizations. This element of management studies has evolved into the sub-discipline of human resources management (HRM). However, as Nienaber (2007) argues, both management and HRM are focused on the work organization-­employee interface. Management studies as a scholarly discipline seems to be performing well. This is despite the emerging intellectual critiques of the discipline from those within and outside. These critiques mainly come from industrial sociologists and critical management studies (Alvesson and Willmott 2003). Work and work organizations are transforming rapidly, and as some have argued, these changes signal the end of management as a practice (Peters 2017; Hester and Srnicek 2017). While change is inevitable over time, the discipline has proven to be resilient in adapting to organizational and economic changes. Management scholars give great emphasis to work organizations that are a central feature of advanced and emerging economies. They include the psycho-social management of employees and the management of the labour relations of these employees at organizational levels. Given this purpose, HRM as the professional and applied face of management studies is an attractive profession and discipline for students, academics and practitioners. HRM has both a scholarly and an academic dimension and orientation. It is focused on generating models, theories and empirical work to aid managers to better manage the organizational dynamics of people. HRM is thus also an applied discipline. This is scholarly HRM in practice. In this sense it is about the management of people in organizations and the management of the work people do in organizations. It is therefore firmly embedded in the management of organizations. Whilst some managers may specialize in HRM work, HRM is an integral part of all managerial work (Swanepoel et  al. 2014). It is specifically concerned with the interplay between work and people in work organizations.

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HRM in particular has become an important matter and concern in view of the economic and development prospects and plans for Africa in general and South Africa in particular. Human resources are as important as material resources in an economy and in the development agenda of developing countries. This has become a topic of both academic interest and practical concern as African countries began to achieve independence from the 1950s onwards. The increased awareness about the efficient management of human resources and the need for it have focused on varying aspects of human resources. Scholars examined HRM as a profession and as a practice. For instance, Van Rensburg et al. (2011) in their study considered the contemporary drive towards professionalizing this field as found in South Africa. They also discussed the need for the body of knowledge and standards that are necessary for the practice of management. They confirm that HRM in South Africa bears the characteristics that give it the standing of a profession. HRM’s professional status is achieved through obtaining appropriate credentials. Relevant qualifications allow graduates to achieve professional status as human resources managers or practitioners. This often means that advisory boards made up of practitioners give inputs into HRM curricula and research at universities. There is a mutually reinforcing relationship between practice and scholarship in HRM.  Much of the published work in this area has a practitioner-scholar approach. This approach emphasizes practical workplace interventions to assist in the more efficient management of people in work organizations. Most of the journals in this subject insist on a practitioner value emphasis on published work. These distinctive features of management and HRM serve to make these two closely related areas different from the traditional social science disciplines such as sociology and philosophy.

Management Studies: The African and the South African Contexts Management of people has become a matter and concern in view of the economic and developmental prospects and plans for Africa in general and South Africa in particular. Africa as a continent is beginning to capture the imagination of entrepreneurs, corporations and scholars (George et  al. 2016). This makes the importance, relevance and revival of management a growing area of interest on the continent. Human resources are as important as material resources in any economy and in the development

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agenda of developing countries. This has become a topic of both academic interest and practical concern ever since African countries ended their colonial subjugation. The importance of management research has been emphasized elaborately in the literature. South Africa did not have a past of taking its human resources seriously enough (Wood and Mellahi 2001). There is also a paucity of African-generated management theory in the scholarly canon of management studies. Zoogah et al. (2015), for instance, argue that Africa-­ focused management research can address problems such as organizational effectiveness through building theoretical models. But such African interventions are all too rare in the literature. Given the centrality of work organizations to daily lives, the management of people and their work dynamics is worthy of study. The key areas of attention for management globally and in South Africa are generally: • Work design • Workforce planning • Work talent sourcing • Employment relationships • Empowerment of employees • Assessment and enhancement of work performance • Career development • Employee rewards • Development of human resources • Workplace well-being A related theme of management that is especially significant in the South African context is labour relations management. This theme has developed as a sub-discipline of management like HRM, although some universities argue that it should suffice as its own discipline. Labour relations is concerned with the legislative protections and regulation of work life in organizations. This ranges from the application of statutory labour legislation that organizations have to comply with to the management of labour legislation at the organizational level. These areas are not unique to South African management studies, but the context poses challenges to normative managerial theorizing about these topics. Contextually, for example, South African management studies pay specific attention, especially in the post-apartheid period, to issues of racial and gender equity in the workplace. The relative health of the discipline is also reflected in the

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sub-specialization areas of management that have been developed. This includes strategic HRM, international HRM, human resources development (HRD), leadership studies, public sector HRM and people analytics. How this may or may not impact on a range of variables such as motivation, performance and organizational justice is crucial for the discipline. Scientific management scholarship began to appear in the West from 1915 (McLaren et  al. 2015). South African management scholarship started appearing in the 1960s. This makes South African management scholarship very youthful. During the past 50 years, the country passed through the major political landmark of the apartheid era. Apartheid ended in 1994, and South Africa thereafter became a democracy. Management scholars had to contend with apartheid and post-apartheid configurations of the South African higher education arena. Little is known about the race, gender, institutional affiliation and coauthorship tendencies of these scholars over this time period. This is a real gap in the understanding of management studies in South Africa. The young nature of the discipline means that a management scholarship of 27 years (considering the publications in the field that began in 1966) was produced during the apartheid period. Post-apartheid management scholarship is in its 24th year. A scientometric analysis of these time periods which are almost equal can reveal significant trends and differences in who produces management scholarship. It will also show the gendered, racial and coauthorship patterns of South African management scholars. This is the first step towards assessing the state of a discipline in a country like South Africa. Management academics in South Africa enjoy international participation in the largest scholarly community of management academics, the Academy of Management (AOM). South Africa has the largest participation rates of any African country in the annual AOM meetings held in North America. South African academics have also played a pivotal role in fostering the development of the subject throughout the continent. The most remarkable initiative in this regard is the establishment of the African Academy of Management (AFAM), which had a South African academic, Stella Nkomo, as its first president. The extent to which South African academics collaborate with their African counterparts remains unknown. South Africa is the only African country with public business schools featuring in the global business school ranking system. Given the enormous need and opportunity for skilled human resource practitioners, a challenge the discipline is facing in South Africa is the retention

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and sourcing of human resource scholars in the South African academy. This is not only a national challenge but also an international challenge for professional disciplines. It is especially acute in the South African situation. Another challenge is the dominance of institutions based in only a single locale of the country. The Gauteng-based (one of the nine provinces in the country)1 universities dominate in both the scholarship and applied activities of management studies. This is to be expected given that Gauteng is the economic heartland of South Africa and that the need for human resource interventions and contributions are dominant in this area. The universities in the province of Gauteng have the strongest human resources departments, which is evident in the faculty size, research outputs and opportunities for consultancy. A geographic mismatch arises where areas seen as less central to South Africa’s economy have fewer opportunities for knowledge production (both scholarly and applied) in the discipline. This makes the discipline as it stands very “Gautengcentric”. The danger is that the values that can be added by the diversities of work organizations outside Gauteng do not enter the South African human resource domain. This practice mirrors debates about the core and periphery centres of knowledge production and practice (Van Broekhuizen 2016). In Africa and in South Africa, management courses are some of the most popular courses (Ruggunan and Spiller 2018). Management is offered as a major or as an elective subject in most of South Africa’s higher education institutions. The multi- and inter-disciplinary nature of management sees it comfortable in many academic homes. Some universities house management in social science faculties, while others situate it in commerce faculties. It is also a mainstay of Masters in Business Administration (MBA) courses and exists as a major component of today’s postgraduate business education offerings in the country. This is one of the reasons for the resilience of the discipline. Even when social science and humanities budgets are increasingly being cut, as has been done in the country in the recent years, HRM, with its chameleon nature, is often not severely impacted by austerity exercises (Pettigrew and Starkey 2016). This is also due to it being protected by its business school identity and its value as an applied and professional discipline. South Africa as a developmental state views management education of its civil service as a key element in improving its service delivery initiatives (Bonnin and Ruggunan 2016). The South African state regards the disci-

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pline highly, often consulting with its purveyors on state HRD policy (Nienaber 2007). Management claims to make work organizations more efficient and effective at conducting the work needed to achieve the outputs (services or products) needed. The state supports the large swathes of its civil service in obtaining human resource qualifications. The resilience of the discipline is also accounted for by its perception as a high-status profession. For young people this is captured as aspirational status. Not only does human resources enjoy a healthy position in public institutions in South Africa and abroad, but it is also a core offering of the most private higher education institutions (Arnold 2017). The variety of offerings provided by these institutions runs from certificate courses to postgraduate degrees. The current levels of economic growth of the continent require a range of managerial, economic, scientific and technical skills. Yet the modes of production of knowledge that inform and institutionalize these disciplines remain poorly understood in an African context. The relationship between science (including the social sciences) and development are well rehearsed in the literature and is essential to understand the contribution of the academy to Africa’s developmental goals. As Gran (1986: 132) in his assessment of the development discourse of Africa records, many of Africa’s development issues are a consequence of externally imposed knowledge systems “that has summarily ignored the legitimacy of local, grassroots knowledge”.

The Study of This Topic in South Africa South Africa is the most developed country on the African continent (World Bank 2017). It has a largely ahistorical scholarship on the history of management studies. Producing management scholarship is a deeply political act embedded in the identity, politics and epistemological viewpoints of its scholars and teachers (Zald 2002; Alvesson and Willmott 2003; Prasad et al. 2015; Fleming and Banerjee 2016; Ruggunan 2016). This is true, and especially resonant in the South African context (Ruggunan and Spiller 2014). South Africa is a relatively young constitutional democracy of 25 years. Colonial, post-colonial, apartheid and post-­ apartheid South Africa have been shaped and continue to be shaped by racialized capitalism (Terreblanche 2002). Dubow (2006) was perhaps the one who viewed race as an intellectual problem in the study of the intellectual history of South Africa. Three strategies informed this system of

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racialized capitalism. First was the creation of cheap reservoirs of black labour to supply and fuel a white-dominated economy. Second was the creation of a protected White Afrikaans-speaking managerial class. Third was the creation of the apartheid workplace regime with its racialized and gendered hierarchies. These hierarchies were based on a set of ideological beliefs about race, eugenics and gender (Terreblanche 2002; Bezuidenhout 2005; Von Holdt 2005). This required not only biological justifications of racial oppression and segregation but also a rationale based on social sciences such as psychology, sociology and anthropology (Sharp 1981; Terreblanche 2002; Dubow 2006). It is interesting to examine how far this racialism is being continued in the democratic South Africa. South Africa as a post-colonial and post-apartheid state offers a unique social milieu to explore how management knowledge is produced and concomitantly tied to particular sets of ideologies and knowledge production practices. Currently, South Africa experiences extremely high and racialized unemployment rates estimated at over 27% (Wilkinson et  al. 2017). It also has the distinction of having the highest level of inequality in the world, as expressed by a Gini coefficient of 0.65 (World Bank 2017). The public sector is the largest employer but is beset with logistical and infrastructural issues (Wilkinson et  al. 2017). Chief of these is a lack of service delivery due to poor managerial competencies and skills. A robust civil society and democratic institutions make South Africa a socially rich case in which to examine the dynamics of knowledge production in management. The official establishment of apartheid in 1948 witnessed the start of the establishment of the country’s first business schools (Ruggunan and Spiller 2018). These business schools offered management studies as a taught subject (Arnold 2017). The schools were situated in the former White universities, except for the one at the former Indian-only University of Durban-Westville (now merged to form the University of KwaZulu-­ Natal). Management education and its attendant values were therefore the preserve of White South Africans or of a White managerial class (Arnold 2017). Indian South Africans were situated higher in the racial and eugenic hierarchy than African and Coloured South Africans and were therefore afforded a business school in the 1970s (Arnold 2017; Ruggunan and Spiller 2018). The years from 1945 to 1995 were formative for the professionalization of management in South Africa (Legg 2004). Professionalization was based on Anglo-American models that culminated in the category of

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human resources manager being created. The statutory recognition for the professions is complicated by apartheid racial dynamics in South Africa that saw racial gatekeeping in accessing professional HRM status. White practitioners took their professionalization model from the Anglo-­ American examples. For the Black human resource practitioners the models of professionalization originated in the izibonda (worker representatives) and iziduna (Chiefs or advisors) system of the compound system of the gold mines in the 1930s and the municipal hostel system (Nzimande 1991). The establishment of the first human resource professional association, the Institute of Personnel Management (IPM), in 1945 spearheaded by Isobel White was the first experiment in professionalizing the discipline. As Legg (2004) observes, the IPM was conspicuously silent about the racial dynamics of the South African labour market and the official establishment of apartheid in 1948. In South Africa, the discipline was racialized both at the university and at the professional levels. Race as a gatekeeper into managerial training and practice was key during the period of apartheid (Legg 2004; Lichtenstein 2017). This racial, or linguistic division as some would argue (Afrikaans vs. English), of management studies greatly influenced the type of management research done, the type of methodologies favoured in the discipline and the areas of managerial research prioritized. This trajectory (in terms of race) has never been studied over a sustained period of time in South Africa. The apartheid workplace was viewed as a form of racialized scientific management (Adler and Webster 1999; Buhlungu 2010). For example, scientific management would form the core philosophy of organizing labour on South Africa’s gold mines from 1886 onwards (Yudelman 1984). In this context, White South Africans were inherently destined for managerial (thinking) positions, while Black South Africans were to be relegated to execution activities (labouring). This was reflected in the division of labour in the apartheid workplace which continues to resonate in the post-apartheid labour market. Management studies was made complicit in supporting the apartheid workplace regime (Duncan et al. 2001; Van Der Westhuizen 2008; Arnold 2017; Lichtenstein 2017). Work has been done on the complicities of scholars in academia providing “scientific” legitimacy to apartheid through their scholarship (Duncan et al. 2001; Dubow 2006, 2015). Management studies in Africa demonstrates its features, reflecting different national historical trajectories (Wood et al. 2011). The distinctive features are based

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on African cultural values that include shared concerns and deference to interpersonal relationships (Wood et al. 2011). Yet historiographic or bibliometric work has not been done on the way this legitimation occurred in South African management studies. Is there a distinctive South African management studies? Management studies has had a distinctive developmental trajectory in South Africa in its path towards disciplinary and professional status. This trajectory is informed by three patterns of knowledge production. The first is a racialized configuration of who publishes scholarly work in management studies. Authors of such work tended to be overwhelmingly white during the apartheid period. Some shifts towards racial diversity in authorship have occurred in the post-apartheid period. However, apartheid racial legacies continue to resonate in authorship. Race also becomes a defining feature when we look at the patterns of coauthorship amongst authors. Second is that the publications in management are primarily produced at historically white universities (HWUs). Also, the majority of publications originate in Gauteng-based universities, making Gauteng central to knowledge production of management studies. Historically this geographic area was the seat of Afrikaner knowledge production. Many Afrikaans-language universities and state research institutes were based in this province. Third is that, despite shifts in the gender composition of the academy post-­ apartheid, the discipline continues to be dominated by male authors, in both apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. Knowledge production in management in South Africa can be divided into two distinct phases, with each reflecting the particular social, economic and political realities of South Africa at the time. The first phase is up until 1993 (apartheid) and the second one during 1994–2015 (post-­ apartheid). The analysis undertaken in the book is therefore designed to reflect these two periods. High apartheid, as Von Holdt (2005) and Dubow (2015) call it, refers to the period of apartheid from the late 1960s to just before the official dismantling of apartheid in 1994. High apartheid saw the intensification of racial segregation in every aspect of the South African life, from the personal to the public spheres. This was most visible in the actual workplace. Industrial sociologists refer to this racial segregation of the workplace as the apartheid workplace regime. This racialized and repressive regime comprised five features, each targeted at ensuring the racial subjugation of Black workers, ensuring a limitless reservoir of cheap Black labour. First was the racial division of labour, second the racial segregation of facilities, third was the racial structure of

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power in the workplace, fourth was the system of migrant labour and finally was the location of workplaces in a “bifurcated industrial geography” (Bezuidenhout 2005: 76). The second period under consideration is the post-apartheid period (1994–2015). When South Africa shifted to a racially inclusive democracy, the institutional dismantling of apartheid allowed for the ending of the apartheid workplace regime. The period saw profound changes in the higher education landscape. The state made attempts to bring about parity between the historically disadvantaged and the historically advantaged universities. This was achieved through the merging of universities and technical universities. These mergers were meant to rationalize and reduce the overall number of higher education universities in the country. Did these mergers initiate any change in who produces knowledge in management (race and gender), where they are from (institutional and departmental origins) and the coauthorship patterns of management scholars in post-apartheid South Africa? This is a dimension of management studies in the country which is worth examining. Institutions of higher education offering qualifications in HRM and/or management exist throughout the African continent. However, there is a dearth of scholarly work that explores the origins, contexts and features of management scholarship on the continent. Given the marginal status of African scholarship, and the recent calls by the AFAM at their 2018 biennial conference in Ethiopia to rediscover African management histories, a study on the status of the discipline in South Africa is quite timely. The scientometric documentation of African scholarship for global audiences is an important work since it renders visible the African scholarly project that is already marginalized (Sooryamoorthy 2013; Ruggunan and Sooryamoorthy 2016). In the global knowledge system, Africa’s contribution to the international division of scholarly labour remains u ­ nderexplored and under documented (Sooryamoorthy 2010; Makhoba and Pouris 2016). Scientometric work can reveal who sets the theoretical, empirical and methodological agendas and standards in a discipline and the extent to which these are or are not relevant to local contexts and majority world conditions. Are the historical and social processes that institutionalize a discipline and make it normative still relevant for the dynamics of the African continent or the global South? This is an ambitious question and this book does not offer a conclusive answer. Rather, it argues that answers to this question need more vigorous exploration by the scholarly community. The

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search for answers requires an empirical engagement to provide evidence-­ based arguments. Scientometric methods and data are especially suited to provide this empirical basis. There are many ways in which the history of a scholarly discipline can be discovered. Scientometric studies are best placed to answer the questions we listed earlier. Using literature-based indicators such as that of scientometrics to investigate these kinds of questions is well established (Fernandez-Alles and Ramos-Rodríguez 2009; Sooryamoorthy 2009; Gleason et al. 2011; Kahn 2011; Zoogah and Beugré 2013; Carlantonio and Santiago 2015; Fogaça et al. 2018). Scientometric studies of management in South Africa are not as common as they are for other disciplines such as sociology or some of the natural sciences. Scientometrics research into South African management studies is rare and is limited to a few studies that adopt more of a content analysis of management topics over short periods of time (Coetzee and Van Zyl 2014; Pietersen 2018). Where they do exist, they focus more on thematic analyses or qualitative content analysis, and even in these cases the time periods examined are limited (O’Neil and Koekemoer 2016; Pietersen 2018). Using a scientometric approach, Ruggunan and Sooryamoorthy (2016) conducted a study on the publication patterns in the discipline in South Africa. This analysis that used the publications in a major human resources journal published from South Africa revealed the characteristic features of the knowledge production in this field. The variables included in this analysis were coauthorship and collaboration along with the demographic variables (gender and race) of the authors. The study also located the centres of knowledge production in the discipline and its implications for research in management in South Africa. Merigó et al. (2016) used the same method in the study of business, economics and management, using the records from journals listed in Web of Science (WoS). Their study was intended to provide a picture of the influential research in the selected subject areas. In the analysis of publications in a journal, Zoogah (2008) focused on the location, origin and residency of the authors. Examining the papers published in an African business journal Zoogah (2008) presented the patterns of research in the discipline. The study also examined disciplinary focus, geographic coverage and the characteristics of authors. Zoogah (2008) noted that the journal carried research publications from diverse disciplines and that the majority of the papers were empirical in approach. The data was then classified according to African and non-African authors, and their country of origin.

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A huge number of scientometric studies rely on the WoS data. The WoS remains an authoritative source of data on which to base scientometric studies of this nature. Management scholarship is published widely across a range of generic management studies journals indexed in the WoS. These include long-standing South African management journals such as the Journal of Contemporary Management Studies, South African Journal of Labour Relations and the South African Journal of Economics and Management Studies. As Fernandez-Alles and RamosRodríguez (2009) argue, journal articles are considered certified knowledge, in that they have to meet a rigorous set of criteria to achieve the WoS standards. Who was producing scholarly knowledge in management during the apartheid period? What characteristics can be inferred from the producers of knowledge in management studies for South Africa? What trends in publications in terms of race, gender, coauthorship and institution are evident? Where were they located in the racialized South African higher education and research landscape? These are the questions one needs to grapple with. The book is attempting to answer precisely these. More specifically, this study is attempting to map management studies in South Africa, using both historical and empirical data. The study: 1. Portrays the history of management studies as a discipline and its scholarship in both the apartheid and post-apartheid periods. 2. Examines the production of knowledge in the discipline over the years and in the apartheid and post-apartheid periods in particular. 3. Finds out who produces knowledge in the selected political and time periods. 4. Investigates the trends in the publications in the discipline, in terms of race and gender. 5. Examines coauthorship trends in relation to authors and their departments and institutions. 6. Examines the relationship between publications and race, gender, institutions, coauthorship, partners in coauthorships and citations. 7. Finds out the visibility of the publications as evident in the citations and how citation is related to gender, race, institutions and coauthorships of the authors of the publications. 8. Examines whether the production of publications in management studies is centred in specific provinces.

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We have chosen a scientometric approach since it measures tangible outputs of knowledge production (Sooryamoorthy 2010). Scholarly articles published in journals are the form of scholarship that we measure in this book. Scientometric methods have been successfully used in the study of knowledge (Abramo et  al. 2008, 2010). The method has received increased attention by the scientific community as it can construct a general picture of a scientific area (Merigó et al. 2016). This gives an empirical basis for hypothesizing about the social and demographic basis for knowledge production in management studies in South Africa. Scientometrics is also a well-established and widely used method of identifying patterns of knowledge production within particular disciplines. It helps to map out historically the features, trends and patterns not only of the discipline itself but also of the scholars that produce knowledge in that discipline. In this sense it allows us to follow the evolution of a discipline and its attendant challenges and achievements over time. It permits us to identify the underlying mechanism of social change in a country (Leydesdorff et al. 2013; White et al. 2015; García-Lillo et al. 2016; Merigó et al. 2016). This book is a pioneering attempt to demonstrate the trends and features of knowledge and scholarship of management in South Africa. As Kothari (1986: 278) argues, making visible the demographic and institutional trends and features of knowledge production provides insights to the astute scholar into “the political conditions and consequences of the production and use of knowledge”. This is especially true of management knowledge production in South Africa, given the need for scientific managerial legitimation of the apartheid project (Bezuidenhout 2005). It is hoped that the contribution of this book will inspire more research into management history in both South Africa and Africa. By making the development of a discipline visible we also become more alert to patterns of knowledge production. These include coauthorship, inequities in the production of knowledge in terms of gender, race and institutional location, and how this impacts on the type of knowledge produced. We can also discover changes in these patterns over time that can lead to policy interventions to address any inequities. Conceptually, this book understands management education as consisting of all forms of management education offered by public universities. This would include the various sub-disciplines of management studies such as HRM, operations management, project management, supply chain management and marketing management. It would also include both undergraduate and postgraduate management education offered at public

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universities. Management education qualifications are diploma, bachelor, honours, master’s and PhD in management or its sub-specialization areas. Business schools refer to postgraduate management education schools that offer an MBA qualification. In this study the appropriate dataset from WoS was selected to obtain all available published papers in management. They were stored for the period since 1945. The details of the methodology are elaborated in Chap. 3 in which the WoS data has been analysed. A scientometric analysis of the publications in a South African journal on management was also carried out, to supplement the WoS data. South Africa has only one “pure” HRM journal, the South African Journal of Human Resources Management, which was chosen for the analysis. This is an especially important journal given that HRM is the fastest growing subfield of management studies in South Africa (Van der Westhuizen 2008; Ruggunan 2016). This assists in providing a more country-specific character of management knowledge in South Africa. A total of 1553 (1294 from WoS and 259 from South African Journal of Human Resource Management [SAJHRM]) papers written on management and management-related subjects published in management studies journals were sourced for the study. These were produced during the period 1966–2015. Although the WoS dataset refers to the period since 1945, there were not any papers published between 1945 and 1965 in the subject. This might be due to the relative young nature of management as a discipline and its formal academic establishment in the early 1960s in South Africa. Articles were written in Afrikaans or in English, the two languages widely used in South African scientific publishing. The language of the article, the country of origin of the authors, the institution of origin of the authors and research areas of publications were extracted from the WoS. Management as a subject is multi-disciplinary and therefore many scholars that publish on management issues may not be originally from management specific departments. This has also been taken into account in this study. In order to source deeper data from the selected publications, each article was downloaded on to a computer data management programme. New variables based on each publication were then generated (for instance, coauthorship patterns) expanding considerably the list of variables under study. Two key variables that were not available in the WoS and SAJHRM were race and gender. These were to be gathered separately. Descriptive

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and inferential statistical analyses of the data were done. The data analyses covered both the high apartheid period (1993 and before) and the post-­ apartheid period (1994–2015). There are a few unique features that distinguish this book from other works in the area. For the first time, this study analyses a large quantity of data that pertains to the discipline. The data is about the publications in the discipline and refers to a longer period, that is, 1966–2015. More importantly, the study examines the racial and gender background of the authors of these publications. This has not been attempted in any previous studies. This makes a substantial contribution to the understanding of the demographic background of the authors, which is very pertinent to South Africa. As to the coauthorship patterns that exist in the discipline among South African scholars, the study was able to identify the typical coauthorship trends within institutions, between institutions and with other countries. These are useful in understanding the growth and development of a discipline. The findings derived from the analysis can help academics and administrators in deciding on the priorities of the discipline. Apart from the use of the WoS data, publications carried in discipline-specific South African journal were analysed. This was done to supplement the findings drawn from the WoS data. The book is organized into five chapters. Chapter 2 traces the history of management as a practice and discipline in South Africa from the apartheid through to the post-apartheid periods. Analysing the publications drawn from the WoS database, the trends in management scholarship are explored in Chap. 3. Chapter 4 looks at specific scholarship in the country with the support of the scientometric data from a specific management journal that is published from South Africa. Both these chapters show the dialectic between developments in South African society and in management scholarship during the apartheid and post-apartheid periods. Chapter 5 discusses the trajectories of management in South Africa, with the e­ vidence used in the study. It also reflects on opportunities and challenges facing the discipline in the South African and global contexts.

Note 1. The provinces are Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North West, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape, Eastern Cape and Western Cape.

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Pettigrew, A., & Starkey, K. (2016). From the Guest Editors: The Legitimacy and Impact of Business Schools—Key Issues and a Research Agenda. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 15, 649–664. Pietersen, C. (2018). Research Trends in the South African Journal of Human Resource Management. SA Journal of Human Resource Management/SA Tydskrif vir Menslikehulpbronbestuur, 16, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.4102/ sajhrm.v4116i4100.4825. Prasad, A., Prasad, P., Mills, A. J., & Mills, J. H. (2015). The Routledge Companion to Critical Management Studies. London: Routledge. Ruggunan, S. (2016). Decolonising Management Studies: A Love Story. In G. Goldman (Ed.), Critical Management Studies in the South African Context (pp. 103–138). Pretoria: AOSIS Publishers. Ruggunan, S., & Sooryamoorthy, R. (2016). Human Resource Management Research in South Africa: A Bibliometric Study of Authors and Their Collaboration Patterns. Journal of Contemporary Management, 13, 1394–1427. Ruggunan, S., & Spiller, D. (2014). Critical Pedagogy for Teaching HRM in the Context of Social Change. African Journal of Business Ethics, 8, 29–43. Ruggunan, S., & Spiller, D. (2018). The Transformation of Business Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa. In E. Christopher (Ed.), Meeting Expectations in Management Education (pp. 236–274). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Sharp, J. S. (1981). The Roots and Development of Volkekunde in South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 8, 16–36. Sooryamoorthy, R. (2009). Collaboration and Publication: How Collaborative Are Scientists in South Africa? Scientometrics, 80, 419–439. Sooryamoorthy, R. (2010). Medical Research in South Africa: A Scientometric Analysis of Trends, Patterns, Productivity and Partnership. Scientometrics, 84, 863–885. Sooryamoorthy, R. (2013). Publication Productivity and Collaboration of Researchers in South Africa: New Empirical Evidence. Scientometrics, 98, 531–545. Swanepoel, B., Erasmus, B., & Schenk, H. (2014). South African Human Resource Management (4th ed.). Pretoria: Juta. Terreblanche, S.  J. (2002). A History of Inequality in South Africa, 1652–2002. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Van Broekhuizen, H. (2016). Graduate Unemployment and Higher Education Institutions in South Africa. Bureau for Economic Research and Stellenbosch Economic Working Paper. Cape Town: University of Stellenbosch. Van Der Westhuizen, E. J. (2008). Gaps and Paradoxes in Theory and Practice: The Public Sector Human Resource Management Discourse in South Africa. Politeia, 27, 1–20. Van Rensburg, H., Basson, J., & Carrim, N. (2011). Human Resource Management as a Profession in South Africa. Journal of Human Resource Management/SA

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CHAPTER 2

Management Studies: From Apartheid to Post-apartheid

Abstract  Management studies both globally and in South Africa is a young academic discipline. Despite this, it is a vibrant and multi-­disciplinary field of scholarship. Management studies in South Africa mirrors the country’s political trajectory, and its development echoes apartheid segregationist policies. The discipline is complicit in supporting the apartheid workplace regimes. Post-apartheid South Africa allows for democratic access to university education for all South Africans. The democratic state advocates increased participation of public sector employees in management programmes. Student demographics are reflective of South African demographics. However, faculty demographics are less representative. Into the second decade of democracy, management studies remains vibrant despite some concerns. Keywords  Apartheid • Management studies • South Africa • Management history This chapter discusses the trajectory of management studies in both apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. It begins with a review of the state of management studies education both globally and in South Africa. The main focus falls on the discipline’s trajectory in apartheid and post-­ apartheid South Africa. The importance of MBA education necessitates a discussion of this particular management studies qualification. Similarly, © The Author(s) 2019 S. Ruggunan, R. Sooryamoorthy, Management Studies in South Africa, Palgrave Studies in African Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99657-8_2

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no discussion of management studies would be complete without a focus on HRM education. These discussions are divided into the apartheid and post-apartheid periods.

The Origins and Context of Management Education It was at the end of World War II that universities became convinced that management education was a proper academic discipline. The golden age of management education had begun with a proper integration into the university system (Kaplan 2014; Alajoutsijärvi et al. 2015). In part, this was spearheaded by the contribution of other traditional disciplines such as psychology and sociology to understand the organization of work and industrialization (Grint 2015). Universally, management education had emerged almost separately from the university system (Cooke and Alcadipani 2015). Business or management education was not viewed as a proper academic or scholarly endeavour and developed independently of universities in Europe. This was the case in Germany, France, Sweden and in the UK. In some cases, religious education organizations also shared the view that management education was not a legitimate scholarly exercise (Kaplan 2014; Alvarez 2016). This most notably occurred in countries such as Spain, Portugal, Brazil and Italy. Management education began coalescing from the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century onwards. The world’s first business school was established in 1819 in France (Kaplan 2014). Management education during this period was seen as the responsibility of chambers of commerce rather than of universities. In the US, the first courses in management education were offered from 1881 at the Wharton School of Business (Kaplan 2014). In countries such as South Africa, India, Russia, China, Poland, Slovenia, Romania and other emerging or post-colonial states, management education had an even more recent inception (Jain 2006). Globally, the MBA is viewed as the most prestigious management education qualification (Gannon and Arlow 1985; Holtom et al. 2014). These business schools are part of the formal structures of public universities but generate third stream income through executive education programmes. Their income-generation abilities have garnered them some autonomy from university bureaucracy. The extent of this autonomy is contextually dependent (Czinkota and Johansson 2015). Business school academics can sometimes escape the pressure to publish as their contribution to the academic endeavour is viewed differently. In some cases, salary scales may

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be different from normal scales (Arnold 2017). This is especially true when hiring “executive professors” from the corporate sector. Management education currently is one of the most profitable areas of higher education in the world (Durand and Dameron 2017). In Australia management education generates 15 billion Australian dollars in revenue every year (Durand and Dameron 2017). In the UK the annual revenue is 3.1 billion pounds of which 900 million is generated from overseas students (Durand and Dameron 2017). In the emerging economies, management education is a booming business. This is especially true for the BRICS (Brazil, Russia India, China and South Africa) countries (Durand and Dameron 2017). The growth of management education, especially at the MBA level, is explosive. The exponential growth of the economies of India and China (Kumar and Dash 2011), the transitioning of economies in the former Soviet Union and the emerging economies of sub-Saharan Africa all require a broad range of managerial skills (Alon and McIntyre 2006). For students, the appeal of management education may lie in its perception as an elite area of study. Management qualifications are viewed as offering potentially higher earnings and more job security than other qualifications (Friga et al. 2003). Globally, the demand for management education remains high. Yet little is known about the state of management scholars or their scholarship in these countries. Kumar and Dash (2011), in their work on management education in India, concur that work on understanding management education in emerging economies is limited. The demand has also changed the way we view academics and the professoriate at universities. Management schools often now employ executive professors. These are academics that fall outside the traditional credentialing system of academics but bring with them deep experiential skills (Trieschmann et al. 2000). They may not necessarily publish papers or books but bring the much-sought-after practitioner skills and status to management education (Clinebell and Clinebell 2008).

South African Management Studies in the Apartheid Period, 1948–1993 Apartheid, a legislated form of racial segregation, officially formalized racial segregation of South African society (Terreblanche 2002). This segregation occurred in all spheres of social, economic and political life of South Africans. Segregation occurred in education, public services and

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employment. The apartheid state legislated segregation even in private spheres of life, when they forbade interracial marriage with the promulgation of the Immorality Amendment Act of 1957 (Cornwell 1996). The most insidious part of apartheid was that different financial resources were spent on different race groups. White South Africans benefitted from having the most financial resources invested in their social and economic development. Apartheid created a racial hierarchy where race determined the extent of resources to be invested in that “race”. White people were at the zenith of the hierarchy, Indian South Africans second, Coloured (mixed-race) South Africans third and Black African South Africans last (Posel 2001). Race determined the access to a number of state resources, including education (Kallaway 2002). Not only was race a determiner of where students could study but it was also a determiner of what disciplines students could study. Hendrik Verwoerd, the mastermind behind apartheid and a university professor, said that “there is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour… what is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?” (Clark and Worger 2016: 48). It was the Verwoerdian logic that drove the racial segregation of higher education. This manifested itself in management studies as is shown in the following pages. In 1949 the University of Pretoria (UP) established the graduate school of management (Arnold 2017). This was notable as being the first business school to offer MBA qualifications outside the US. Coincidentally, the establishment of this business school occurred a year after the official establishment of apartheid in South Africa. From 1949 to 1994, only a further six business schools offering MBA qualifications were established in South Africa. Five of these six were established at Whites-only universities (Arnold 2017). Three of these were at Afrikaans-speaking White universities, two at English-speaking White universities and the sixth at an Indian English-speaking university. This sixth one was established at the University of Durban-Westville (UDW) in the early 1970s. UDW was a university created to service Indian South Africans and its business school was the only one that was allowed to admit Black students (Arnold 2017). These divisions reflect the racial and linguistic divisions and complexities of higher education under apartheid. The restriction of management education opportunities to Black South Africans was “consistent with the role allocated to Black people in the employment structure of apartheid” (Arnold 2017: 257). The Industrial Conciliation Act No 55 of 1956 and the Mines and Works Act No. 78 of

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1973 created a legislative framework that excluded Black people from the definition of employee. This excluded Black people from accessing managerial, professional and skilled work in the South African labour market (Arnold 2017). The MBA degree as a professional management qualification was exclusively accessed by White, mainly Afrikaner, students up until the early 1970s (Arnold 2017). What then about the state of undergraduate management education in South Africa at the time? It mirrored the racial and linguistic divisions of MBA education. The racial segregation of universities through the 1959 Extension of University Act established separate universities for separate racial groups. The Act made it illegal for Black students to attend the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the University of Witwatersrand (Seekings and Nattrass 2008). The state advocated for the creation of universities for White students (HWUs, Historically White Universities) and university colleges for Black students (HBUs, Historically Black Universities). The philosophy informing this segregation was the ruling National Party’s, as the architects of apartheid, belief that Black (African, Indian and mixed-race) South Africans were cognitively inferior to their White counterparts (Dubow 1995). In the racial division of labour that was the apartheid workplace, management and professional management education was then reserved for White South Africans (Bozzoli 1977). Undergraduate management education has an earlier history than MBA education in South Africa. The first faculties of commerce were established at the UP (1920) and UCT (1921) (Legg 2004). Similar trajectories of development occurred in the other HWUs. Initial offerings were sparse and qualifications were restricted to diplomas. Modules for the courses were drawn from political economy, economics and philosophy and gradually from scientific management theories. Scientific management theories were based on quantitative studies of work and managerial practice. This quantitative emphasis would become the preferred epistemological and methodological approach to management studies in South Africa (Schreuder and Coetzee 2010; O’Neil and Koekemoer 2016). The HWUs would filter this preference for quantitative approaches to the HBUs as well. The preference of Afrikaans universities for quantitative studies was also reflected in their preference for structural-functional theories of management (Dubow 2006). These theories were rooted in positivist beliefs about the nature of the social world. This resonated broadly with the Afrikaner universities’ preferences for structural-functional theories in other disciplines such as sociology and psychology. Qualitative and interpretivist traditions in management studies were more visible in the post-­apartheid academy.

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Underlying the philosophy of higher education and management education was the Afrikaner philosophy of volkekunde (Sharp 1981; Dubow 2006; Bank 2015). Volkekunde shaped much of Afrikaner epistemologies from the natural sciences to the social sciences. This shaped management education in South Africa. Volkekunde is rooted in an Afrikaner tradition of ethnology (Dubow 2006). The philosophy assumes a racial hierarchy of human beings. This hierarchy can be quantified, with some race groups considered superior to others. Separate development or apartheid was a natural outcome of this philosophical position. Volkekunde’s choice to quantify racial and cultural characteristics (e.g. IQ) was framed in a positivist worldview. The apartheid workplace regime, as described by Bezuidenhout (2005), was propped up by beliefs about which races would make better managers. These beliefs would be most visible in South African industrial psychology (a cognate discipline of management studies), with its preoccupation with psychometric testing. Management studies, through its scholarly and pedagogical practices, provided the legitimation of the apartheid workplace regime (Bezuidenhout 2005; Von Holdt 2005). There was no division in this goal between English HWUs and Afrikaner HWUs. In sociology, English HWUs developed liberal and oppositional practices towards the apartheid state. For management studies, no such liberal wing emerged. The HWUs in the Free State, Gauteng (then the Transvaal) and Western Cape provinces dominated the ideological agenda for management studies. The critique of management studies at the time came from White industrial sociologists such as Eddie Webster, Ari Sitas and Johann Maree. Their contributions would coalesce into the discipline of labour studies and that would be a counter hegemonic discipline to management studies (Keim 2017).

Management Studies in Post-apartheid South Africa Post-apartheid South Africa saw a flourishing of business schools offering MBA qualifications (Furlonger 2017). These qualifications were offered in both public and private higher education institutions. The growth in offerings was driven by three factors: the opening of the higher education sector to all races; global trends in management education, the entry of international business schools from Australia and the UK; and the need of the post-apartheid state to develop in its governance structures (Ruggunan and Spiller 2014). The newly democratic state insisted that student enrolments increase nationally for management studies qualifications. These increases were to be achieved at both undergraduate and postgraduate level (CHE 2004).

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It was hypothesized that by increasing the number of credentialed public service state employees, that there would be an increase in the quality of service delivery. All middle and top management in South Africa’s public service were expected to have a postgraduate management qualification, preferably an MBA (CHE 2004). The state mandate to both increase student intake and increase public servant qualifications saw a proliferation in the establishment of business schools. Between 1994 and 2002 the business school sector in South Africa surged to 27 schools. Much of this growth was in the private sector of management studies. The private sector could offer cheaper fees and more flexible pedagogical styles such as distance learning. In 2017 the number of MBA-offering schools consisted of 13 public universities and 5 private providers, for a total of 18. Table 2.1 shows the current list of accredited business schools in South Africa. Table 2.1  Accredited business schools in South Africa Business School

Institution

City

Year founded

UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB) University of Stellenbosch Business School (USB) School of Business Leadership (SBL) Wits Business School (WBS)

University of Cape Town

Cape Town

1964

Stellenbosch University

Cape Town

1964

Graduate School of Business Faculty of Economic and Financial Sciences Turfloop Graduate School of Leadership Potchefstroom Business School Tshwane University of Technology Business School University of the Free State Business School Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) Graduate School of Business and Government Leadership Rhodes Business School (RBS) Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University Business School

University of South Africa Midrand

1965

University of the Witwatersrand University of KwaZulu-Natal University of Johannesburg University of Limpopo

Johannesburg

1968

Durban

1974

Johannesburg

1989

Polokwane

1997

North-West University Tshwane University of Technology University of the Free State University of Pretoria

Potchefstroom 1998 Pretoria 1999 Bloemfontein

1999

Johannesburg

2000

North-West University

Mafikeng

2000

Rhodes University Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University

Grahamstown 2000 Port Elizabeth 2005

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This reduction from 27 to 18 was an outcome of a comprehensive review of MBA offerings by the Council on Higher Education (CHE) from 2002 to 2004. Many business schools lost their accreditation during this quality control review (CHE 2004). The CHE views postgraduate management education, and the MBA specifically, as part of its transformation towards creating a more capable state. For management education to be transformative it needs to meet rigorous academic standards. The proliferation of MBA schools in a short period raised concerns about the quality of MBA offerings. The CHE (2004) report, “The state of the provision of the MBA in South Africa”, reviewed all MBA programmes under three broad areas of concern. The first category was governance, the second category focused on the l­ earning programme and the third category centred on the context in which the MBA was offered. Governance referred to the articulation between business schools and the higher education system. It also concerned the ways in which the purpose of the business school was in synergy with the developmental goals of the country (CHE 2004). Learning programmes included the content of the curriculum and the pedagogy employed in presenting the curriculum. This included assessment methods and the significance afforded to research in the programme. The post-apartheid state was clearly concerned with MBA qualifications being relevant in a South African context. Context referred to the relationship between “the MBA programme, its stakeholders and its external environment” (CHE 2004). This relevance was measured by purpose and quality of the MBA. The state wanted to avoid the mushrooming of degree mills that would mass produce poor-quality MBA graduates. CHE Commission found that most business schools offered high-­ quality programmes. This assessment was made using the three criteria (governance, learning programmes and context) discussed above. However, notable areas of concern were the largely White male academic staff at business schools (CHE 2004). Research production was also extremely weak amongst academic staff. Research production was also not sufficiently encouraged amongst MBA students. Most MBA students are practising managers, or aspire to be on a managerial career. The Commission expressed concern that as managers these students would not value the importance of research in making evidence-based managerial decisions. Impacting on research production was the ratio of full- to part-­ time academic staff. There was an issue that practitioner lecturers or executive professors do not produce research yet add prestige to business

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schools. The Council on Higher Education Commission argued that prestige needs to be attained through a balance of scholarly production and practitioner participation (CHE 2004; Arnold 2017). The lack of a research culture in MBA schools at the time of the report elicited the following quote from the Commission: “This [transformation] can only take place if business schools dedicate time and resources to the production of research…” (CHE 2004: 126). As mentioned above, the academic staff demographic of business schools was composed largely of White males in 2004. What then of the student demographics? In 2009 there were 5194 MBA students and by 2015 this had increased to 8932 (Jones 2017). In terms of gender, MBA students shifted from a 69% male and 31% female split to a slightly more equitable split of 54% male and 46% female in 2015 (Jones 2017). This means that female students increased significantly over a six-year period. Gender parity has also increased amongst staff, with female academic staff shifting from 29% in 2009 to 38% in 2015 at business schools (Jones 2017). Racial transformation has occurred at the student level, with most MBA students in 2017 being Black (African, Indian and Coloured). Transformation has been slower at faculty level (Badat 2011). There are a number of transformation initiatives to change the racial demographics of staff at all public universities. The process is slow given the number of years it takes to be credentialed. In South Africa, the PhD is viewed as the final stage in the credentialing process. The journey towards PhD credentialing can take many years. Replacement of ageing White academics is consequently slow. Mobility to professorial rank can only occur after credentialing and adds another decade to the process. Disciplines grow through regional and global collaboration. Business is a global practice and management education and research has to be global in its outlook. This global outlook enhances the production of new research and its application to managerial practice. So how have South African business schools fared in this regard? South Africa experienced a double transition in the post-apartheid period. The first was a shift to a post-apartheid society and the second was the shift from nationalist concerns to an aggressive engagement with globalization (Webster and Von Holdt 2005). The growth and the number of African and global partnerships are impressive. Does this translate into more collaborative research production? The evidence shows that it does not. The collaborations are predominantly focused on teaching and student

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exchanges. Some collaborative research projects are reported but are the minority form of collaboration. International partners are used for external moderation, academic benchmarking exercises and co-hosting of international study visits (Furlonger 2017). In 2009 South African business schools had 138 agreements with their international counterparts. In 2015 this had increased to 231. The majority of these collaborations were with the US, France, Germany, India, China and the UK.  African collaboration also increased from formal agreements with 2 African countries in 2009 to 24 in 2015. Most of these 24 schools are situated in Anglophone Africa (Kenya, Namibia, Ghana and Nigeria) with Egypt being the sole North African partner (Jones 2017). The flow of international students (non-Africa) to study MBAs in South Africa is insubstantial. This is despite the number of international partners increasing. Since 2009 a stable 13% of MBA students have been international. African students from the continent remain at 2% (Jones 2017). Part of this could also be that the status of an MBA school depends on it being triple rated by external bodies. This external rating also determines the school’s international ranking. Currently South Africa only has three business schools ranked in the top 100. The “big four” business schools in South Africa are the Graduate School of Business of the UCT, Stellenbosch University Business School, the Witwatersrand Business School of the University of Witwatersrand and the Gordon Institute of Business of the UP. They are all situated in historically White universities (HWUs) and thus have the advantage of having had historical access to resources in apartheid South Africa. Consequently, they are the only internationally ranked business schools. Executive education is the core revenue stream for business schools nationally and internationally (Alvarez 2016). In this regard South African schools have fared better on the international and African dimensions. Managers from Africa enrolling for executive education programmes comprised 5.9% of the executive education student body in 2014 and 7.5% in 2015. This demonstrates a healthy growth for this type of South African business school offering. International participation excluding Africa also grew from 1.1% of the total participants in 2014 to 2.5% of the total participants in 2015 (Jones 2017). Increases in African and international student participation in executive education programmes demonstrate the confidence in South Africa’s business schools. However, none of these increases have translated into collaborative research production.

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Up to 90% of the business schools’ executive education participants are from the public sector (Jones 2017). As part of becoming a capable state, public sector managers need a variety of managerial skills and managerial coaching (Van Der Westhuizen 2005). These are best offered through short courses found on executive education programmes rather than MBA degrees. Complicating the South African scenario is the tension between the two views of management education in business schools. Some believe that the MBA is a practical professional degree and should be excluded from the academic requirements of a conventional master’s degree. This means that the dissertation requirement of MBAs only comprises 25% of the qualification. A course work master’s degree comprises a 50% dissertation requirement and a full research master’s a 100% dissertation requirement in comparison (CHE 2015). The implication of such a small research component in the MBA qualification means that students are not research literate as would be expected at master’s level. It also means that faculties are not engaging in deep supervision of research. Insignificant foci on research in obtaining an MBA qualification account for business schools lacking in a research culture and research productivity (CHE 2015). The South African Business Schools Association (SABSA) recognizes the lack of a research culture and productivity. As a result, in 2015 SABSA requested along with the state, that business schools upgrade the research components of their MBA qualifications. This would upgrade the MBA to the status of an academic master’s degree. In its previous iteration it was at the level of an honours degree, usually level eight in the South African national qualifications framework (NQF), despite the master’s nomenclature of the qualification (CHE 2015). The hope is that by giving greater emphasis to a research component, both research literacy and productivity will increase. This will elevate the qualification to a level nine qualification in the NQF system that South Africa uses. No official deadline is given for transition of the MBA from NQF level 8 to NQF level 9. At the end of 2015 all business schools submitted templates indicating how they would in theory comply with NQF level 9 requirements. However, not all business schools have the capacity to comply. Their incapacity lies in not having faculty that are research productive. Research methodology courses require high levels of expertise that business school may not always have in-house. The CHE has since recommended that compliance should happen by 2019 (CHE 2015).

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Human Resources Management in South Africa Any discussion of the trajectory of management studies in South Africa would be remiss without examining the development of its most applied subdiscipline, HRM. Beginning with a general overview of HRM, this section examines the trajectory of HRM from apartheid to post-apartheid South Africa. It is discussed separately from the previous discussion since it has followed a distinctive path as a vital sub-discipline of management studies. There is no comprehensive published history of HRM in South Africa. South African HRM textbooks have a few pages devoted to the origins of the discipline internationally and nationally. More is known about the history of the professionalization of the discipline, with published articles exploring this phenomenon. The story of the professionalization of the discipline allows us to infer much about the South African history of the discipline (Van Rensburg et al. 2011). The discipline is less than 100 years old, making it youthful and lacking historical depth when compared to social science disciplines such as law (Legg 2004). HRM in South Africa evolved to become a significant sub-discipline of management studies. Some would argue that it is the most significant sub-­ discipline with its specific focus on people management (Swanepoel et  al. 2014). HRM’s importance is often attributed to the discipline’s applied nature. If the MBA represents a professional generalist management c­ redential, then HRM is considered a professional specialist qualification. Provided certain criteria are met, registration as a HRM professional is possible. This professional status is recognized by the state (Van Rensburg et al. 2011). HRM departments are hybrids of general management, psychology and industrial psychology disciplines (Swanepoel et al. 2014). The focus of the discipline is to manage people in organizations to achieve optimal performance for the organization. HRM services in organizations are considered core to organizational success. The key difference between HRM and general management is that HRM originates from the human relations movement that views employees less instrumentally than do scientific management approaches (Bratton and Gold 2017).

HRM During the Apartheid Period The most formative years of the discipline in South Africa started from 1945 onwards. The post-World War II period saw rapid industrialization in South Africa (Fine 2018). A range of secondary industries in the

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economy also grew (Fine 2018). South Africa required a labour market with new skills and ways in which to manage these skills to further grow the economy (Burger and Woolard 2005). The National Party came to power in 1948 and enacted a raft of legislation over the next few years to restructure South Africa’s labour market (Baskin 1991). Much of this legislation was targeted at repressing the Black trade union movement. Other labour market controls included the Influx Control Act that regulated the movement of Black workers and the Suppression of Communism Act (Internal Security Act) of 1950 which banned the South African Communist Party (Baskin 1991). Organized Black labour was feared by the apartheid state. Yet despite these repressive practices, Black trade unions grew in strength throughout the 1950s. The 1960s were also momentous for South African labour. Baskin (1991) refers to the 1960s as a dark decade for South African Black people. Previous repressive legislation was given more scope and a range of new legislation was promulgated to control and oppress Black South Africans. Against this political background, the state had to find ways to provide skilled labour to keep the economic engine growing. Skilled migrant labour from European countries was brought into South Africa as a panacea to the skills shortage (Von Holdt 2003). These new migrant workers accepted the ideology and practices of the apartheid state and enjoyed the privileges accorded to White people in South Africa. Personnel managers (as HR practitioners were then referred to) were expected to enforce the various forms of labour and employment regulations of the apartheid state (Legg 2004). Inevitably these practitioners were White South Africans. Many of them would study for South Africa’s first human resources (HR) qualification at Rhodes University (RU) College in the Eastern Cape. The qualification was known as the Rhodes Diploma in personnel management. The first cohort of the Rhodes Diploma graduated in 1944 (Legg 2004). The practice of HR grew in importance. Personnel management achieved a milestone in its aim to professionalize in 1945 when the Institute of People Management (IPM) was established (Biesheuvel 1976). This became a professional body for White South African HR practitioners (Legg 2004). Mining continued to boom in the 1950s. With the growth of mines came the need to manage workers. Fifteen new personnel departments were established in the 1950s. At the end of 1968, this had increased to 39 (Biesheuvel 1976). It is not surprising that personnel management was becoming a scarce skill given the growth in personnel departments.

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Isobel White, considered the founding mother of human resources as a discipline and practice in South Africa, advocated for the credentialing of personnel managers. She submitted to the state a proposal that personnel managers should have a degree at either the bachelor or master’s level to practice (Van Rensburg et al. 2011). The intellectual structure of these qualifications was to come from the social sciences and from psychology and industrial psychology specifically (Alfred 1997; Fernandez-Alles and Ramos-Rodríguez 2009). From the 1940s onwards, industrial psychology led the scholarly structuring of HRM. In lieu of a formal HRM degree qualification, industrial psychology was considered a substitute. Stellenbosch University first offered industrial psychology qualifications in 1943. In 1949 there were 74 industrial psychology graduates and no postgraduates at Stellenbosch University. By 1978 there were 742 undergraduates and 42 postgraduates. This growth was also reflected in other HWUs offering industrial psychology programmes (Van der Merwe 1978). The HRM focus of the industrial psychology qualifications began in the third year of undergraduate qualifications. The courses in the third year mirrored the courses of the IPM RU College diploma. Some of the courses were salary and wage administration, reward systems, manpower planning, productivity, labour law, industrial relations (IR), and consulting and consultation skills (Van Der Merwe 1978). Industrial psychology was dominated by the Afrikaans universities as shown by Legg (2004). This dominance also then occurred in its intellectual shaping of HRM.  In 2018, some 40 years later, the focus of HRM education has remained the same (Ruggunan and Spiller 2014). The split between industrial psychology and HRM occurs over professional status (Painter and Blanche 2004). Industrial psychologists wanted to be registered as psychologists and not personnel managers (Painter and Blanche 2004). Advocates of HRM felt that the discipline deserved its own scholarly identity. The irony was that industrial psychologists performed the same personnel function as HR practitioners (Fullagar 1984). But they required a master’s qualification to practice. The barrier to entry for HR practitioners was lower, with a diploma or bachelor’s degree sufficing. It was only in the mid- to late-1980s that that HRM achieved independence from industrial psychology at the scholarly level. This manifested in HR-specific degrees being offered for the first time. The IPM remained a White South African organization operating in a racist labour environment. There is no record of the association actively

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opposing the apartheid regime’s employment legislation (Legg 2004). Their annual conventions sometimes focussed on race in the workplace. This was often done in a pejorative way. In 1961 the theme of the IPM annual convention was “Personnel Management and the Bantu Labour Force”. Its purpose, according to Legg (2004: 107), was to “help delegates to find the means of solving problems of ‘Bantu’ labour development through the progressive application of personnel management practice”. This would be the most progressive stance on race in the workplace that the IPM would make during the apartheid years. Linguistically, the IPM used English as its main language of communication, but by 1961, Afrikaner interest in the IPM and HRM became significant. In response to that interest both Afrikaans and English were now used in the IPM’s communications (Legg 2004). This shows the growing influence of Afrikaner practitioners and scholars within the professional personnel management community. There was a shift to have HRM develop its own identity. This identity would exist independently of industrial psychology (Sutton 1966). HRM would develop its own credentials and qualifications (Sutton 1966). This should set it apart from general management qualifications as well as from industrial psychology qualifications. Through this advocacy, the first national diploma in personnel management was offered in 1971. The Witwatersrand Technical College also began offering shorter personnel management qualifications from 1971 (Verster 1982). Black South Africans wanting to obtain these credentials were excluded from HWUs. In response the IPM offered a national diploma to Black South Africans via distance learning. RU that had offered the Rhodes Diploma in personnel management from 1944 had restructured in 1960s. In 1971 it relocated its original 1944 personnel welfare diploma to the sociology department (Verster 1982). The diploma was also renamed as personnel management (as opposed to personnel welfare). The courses comprising the new (from 1971) one-year diploma reflect the multi-disciplinary nature of the intellectual structure of what would eventually become HRM.  This included business economics, management and marketing; industrial sociology, research report, and psychology in industry (two papers, one on industrial psychology and one on statistics) (Legg 2002). Inevitably, as happened in sociology and psychology, two rival bodies emerged in the personnel management profession (Long 2016). These were divided along racial lines. The IPM was viewed as supporting White

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personnel management professionals and the personnel management association (PMA) was viewed as representing Black personnel management professionals. The PMA was driven mainly by Fort Hare scholars, such as J. B. Magwaza, Wells Ntuli, Lot Ndlovu and Felix Dlamini. They would all become prominent business executives in the transition to post-­ apartheid South Africa (Alfred and Potter 1995). Isobel White and the IPM influenced considerably the pedagogy of what would become HRM in South Africa (Swanepoel et  al. 2014). Personnel management research was driven by Simon Biesheuwel and the National Institute of Personnel Research (NIPR). The NIPR was established in 1946 and supported financially by the state (Verster 1991). Together, the IPM and the NIPR would shape the scholarship and teaching trajectories of HRM for decades. The NIPR was officially focused on researching the productivity and well-being of people in the workplace (Verster 1991). It mainly did this through quantitative and psychometric testing development. The NIPR was dominated by Afrikaner scholars that drove the positivist and structural functionalist research approach of the NIPR (Terre Blanche and Seedat 2001). The NIPR would produce a ­significant amount of published and unpublished work on personnel management issues. The critique of the NIPR came initially from the Witwatersrand University (Terre Blanche and Seedat 2001). The NIPR was accused of operating from a eugenic view of human beings. In other words, the institute advocated for a racial hierarchy in cognitive abilities (Human 1996). The critics of the NIPR accused it of ideologically supporting the apartheid state’s exploitation of Black labour. Ironically, some Afrikaner scholars were critical of the NIPR for implying, through NIPR-administered intelligence tests, that Afrikaner cognitive ability was less than that of English-speaking White South Africans. Whilst the NIPR existed outside the public university structures, it greatly influenced the research agenda of personnel management departments at these universities. It provided the national norms for personnel selection and recruitment. So highly regarded was Biesheuwel and the work of the NIPR, that in 1973, past his retirement age, he was appointed as a professor of business administration and director of the postgraduate school of business at Witwatersrand University (Verster 1991). Personnel management had a divisive relationship with industrial psychology, leading to an eventual split between the disciplines. A similar split would occur in 1954 between management studies and personnel

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management (Legg 2002). The National Development and Management Foundation was established by Ernest Oppenheimer in 1948. In its efforts to be seen as a profession and discipline on its own, management scholars argued that personnel management was a sub-discipline of management (Van Zyl and Albertyn 1995). This split would also be reflected in myriad ways in which academic departments would structure. Some would be departments of management or business management or personnel management in their efforts to assert disciplinary identity. Today the mainstream view in South Africa is that management is a broad spectrum of sub-disciplines, each with a unique focus on some managerial function (Storey 1995; Bratton and Gold 2017). The 1970s would be especially turbulent for South Africa’s labour and personnel management. The 1973 Durban strikes gave greater importance to the role of IR in the teaching and scholarship of personnel management. Yet despite growing unrest in the country, the apartheid state intensified its efforts at separate development. This often happened through violent means. The 1976 Soweto riots exemplified this. Black trade union membership was growing (Baskin 1991). In 1977 the Wiehan Commission investigated all aspects of South Africa’s labour legislation at the time. The major outcome was the recognition of Black trade unions. For personnel managers this ushered in a new challenge in their education and practice (Bendix 2010). Not only were personnel managers to be experts in employee well-being but also in the management of IR. Industrial relations began to dominate the PM scholarly space with new courses and qualifications offered in IR (Douwes-­ Dekker 1987). These were homed in management studies departments. Importantly, IR was viewed as part of HRM. All South African HRM disciplines have IR as compulsory components of their degrees today. IR was not the only area of concern for personnel managers. People and Profits, a non-scholarly personnel management journal, reflects some of the HRM themes at the time. Legg (2004) thematically analysed 495 of this journal’s articles from 1973 to 1978. He identified several themes of interest in order of frequency: Training and development, IR, productivity, recruitment/selection/testing, Black worker development and communication issues. Whilst IR appears as the second most important theme, Legg (2004) argues that an overlap existed between the training and development and IR themes. Often the training and development articles were written in the context of an IR issue. Legg’s analysis is useful in identifying thematic areas of focus through content analysis. It does not,

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however, identify the demographics of the authors of these articles and their institutional locations. Academia responded to the need for IR education and scholarship. The University of South Africa (UNISA) established the Institute of Labour Relations (ILR) in 1976 (Langenhoven and Daniels 1980). The institute was led by Professors Willie Swart and Blackie Bendix. These were two of the most prominent labour law academics at the time. The ILR offered both short courses in IR and eventually a one-year diploma in IR.  The centre also launched the first South African scholarly journal devoted to IR in 1977. The South African Journal of Labour Relations (SAJLR) served as a scholarly outlet of IR research (Langenhoven and Daniels 1980). Personnel management was increasingly influenced by American management and behavioural studies scholarship during the 1970s (Storey 1995). American scholarship was positivist, quantitative and focused on assessment and behaviour modelling (Storey 1995). HWUs adopted these behavioural modelling theories to management and personnel management scholarship (Legg 2004). There was also increasing recognition in the 1970s amongst management scholars, business owners and management professional bodies like the IPM that apartheid was becoming a costly and unsustainable policy (Fine 2018). Despite this sentiment, universities, professional bodies and workplaces continued to be racially divided. A 1974 IPM survey of personnel management education qualifications targeted all South African universities offering such qualifications (Bebb 1978). Responses were received from the following universities: UCT, University of Fort Hare (UFH), UNISA, University of Witwatersrand (Wits), University of Port Elizabeth (UPE), UP, University of Natal (UN), RU, Orange Free State University (OFSU) and Stellenbosch University (SU). Apart from Fort Hare, all these universities were HWUs (Bebb 1978). Trends reveal a shift from pure science disciplines to applied sciences in HRM education. For example, psychology shifts to industrial psychology, sociology develops an industrial sociology stream and economics develops a business economics sub-discipline. This gave management and personnel management the foundations of its own disciplinary identity. A second trend was a shift to what Bebb (1978) terms as more practical courses. These include communication, management accounting and credit bearing in-service training.

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UP offered specialized qualifications for personnel managers. This included a bachelor of commerce and bachelor of administration in personnel management. UFH also offered a personnel management degree for Black students wanting to train in personnel management (Bebb 1978). A proliferation of qualifications would follow nationally at universities. Universities tried to differentiate their offering by focusing on different elements of personnel management. The Graduate School of Business at Witwatersrand offered a higher diploma in personnel management in 1975. The curriculum of the diploma reflects the diverse nature of personnel management qualifications. The diploma included courses in statistics, marketing, financial management, management accounting and a range of personnel specific management courses (Legg 2002). In 1976 UNISA introduced a specialist master’s qualification, the master’s degree in business leadership in personnel leadership. The university already ran a successful bachelor’s degree in personnel leadership. The year 1976 was a watershed moment for UCT’s personnel management offerings when it introduced courses within their four-year bachelor of business science degree. The survey also shows that various technikons at the time also offered personnel management specific qualifications (Legg 2004). University of the Free State (UFS) conducted the country’s first longitudinal survey to track the number of personnel managers training at public universities. The surveys were conducted in 1971, 1975 and 1980. The results showed an increase over the time period in the number of graduates training in personnel management. The number of personnel managers practising with a standard ten (now grade 12) had also decreased as employers showed a preference to hire candidates with a degree qualification in personnel management (Langenhoven and Daniels 1980). Personnel management may have been greatly influenced by a range of social sciences but it was clearly emerging as an independent discipline from the late-1970s onwards. The period until the mid-1980s was characterized by growth in the number of personnel management qualifications offered by universities. Personnel management was coalescing around disciplinary identity (Langenhoven and Daniels 1980). The racial fracturing of apartheid permeated all these developments causing much discord. Only White students could access many of these qualifications, professional bodies such as the IPM remained racially divided and PM scholarship was essential led by White academics. Black academics argued that personnel management could not truly be progressive if it did not acknowledge the

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apartheid workplace regime’s lack of social justice. Professional associations such as the Black Management Forum (established in 1974) was particularly vocal about this (Southall 2004). The period 1984 to 1993 is momentous for both South Africa and personnel management. The National Party would, over this period, realize the unsustainability of apartheid. This recognition would begin the shift towards a democratic post-apartheid dispensation from 1994. Personnel management would also undergo a shift in nomenclature, and now refer to itself as HRM. The change in lexicon reflected the discipline’s increased complexity (Storey 1995). The Federated Chamber of Industries recognized this and issued a report in 1986 called Managing in Political Uncertainty: Operating Management Guidelines (Friedman 1987). Organized labour, the apartheid state, business and the private sector all recognized the unsustainability of apartheid. The resistance movements both nationally and globally grew in strength. The unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC) and the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 signalled the end of apartheid. A plethora of new labour legislation was needed to dismantle the apartheid workplace regime. Once again the pressure was on HR scholars and practitioners to respond. Management studies in the South African context was inevitably political. Much of HRM was preoccupied with IR issues. The hope of a post-apartheid society provided impetus for new ideas for the post-apartheid workplace (Bendix 2010). The discipline as shown was mired more in its fight for professional status as well as a preoccupation with applied research. Its disciplinary identity only coalesced in the late 1970s and its identity reconfigured again in the late 1980s when it shifted from personnel management to HRM. Safe to say that by 1993, HRM, despite challenges, had developed a confident disciplinary identity.

HRM in Post-apartheid South Africa By 1994, 11 universities were offering specialist HR degree qualifications. A pivotal moment for HRM as a professional and academic discipline came in 1996 when the past president of the IPM, Tony Frost, apologized for the IPM’s role during the apartheid era. This was a reckoning of the discipline with its past and provided hope for its future (Van Zyl and Albertyn 1995).

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The years after 1994 saw the dismantling of apartheid legislation. Higher education occurred as a means of rationalizing South Africa’s university sector. These included the upgrading of technikons to universities of technology. Racial transformation of student and staff demographics of universities was a key post-apartheid goal of the state. Massification of the higher education system became the norm in post-1994 (Walker 2018). Post-apartheid South Africa continued to reflect apartheid legacy trends in student demographics. A Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) survey that examined the state of HRM education in the country showed that White graduates outnumbered Black students, and that more women were choosing the courses in HRM (Van Zyl and Albertyn 1995). Recognizing the underrepresentation of Black students in higher education, the post-apartheid state prioritized access for Black students to higher education. Black students with appropriate school passes could now attend any university and study in any field they wanted. HRM was viewed as an attractive new profession for Black students in the post-­ apartheid period (Arnold 2017). The discipline has transformed its demographics of students with most being Black. In part this reflects the demographics of a majority Black country, but also the need for more Black HR practitioners in the economy. The discipline in terms of students continues to be female dominated (Walker 2018). Even in the second decade of democracy, race and gender continue to be contentious points in transforming the higher education landscape. Academic demographics have been slower to change as mentioned earlier in this chapter. Low turnover, long periods of academic training, entrenched organizational cultures and more attractive private sector salaries have all contributed to the slow transformation of the HR academy (Badat 2011). Part of the low research productivity in the discipline can be attributed to the discipline not having a rich scholarly tradition of publishing (Verster 1982). The only scholarly journal devoted to pure HRM research, namely the South African Journal of Human Resources Management (SAJHRM), was established in 2003. The youth of the discipline therefore accounts in part for its lack of prolific scholarship. The academy also reflected the racial structure of the apartheid workplace. The professoriate shaping the discipline were all White and male. This also was the case at HBUs. The HBUs may have serviced Black students but the senior faculty were overwhelmingly White. The HWUs acted as sites of knowledge production universities, passing on methodological and theoretical approaches to HRM from HWUs to HBUs.

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In terms of thematic focus, HRM in contemporary South Africa has become bolder. It is now more outward looking, after decades of being parochial. Globalization, international HRM, and a focus on Africa-wide HRM have reinvigorated the discipline. As faculty and the student body become more diverse, so too do the topics explored by HRM. Less preoccupied with issues of race, HRM now has room to focus on diverse issues ranging from climate change to corporate social responsibility. Black scholars such as Lovemore Mbigi and others have discussed bringing in African indigenous concepts into management theory. This was best captured by the Ubuntu idea of managerial style. Other developments included looking globally at more human relations approaches to management. This meant a shift towards more participative management styles rather than autocratic ones. Black management scholars gave greater voice to these ideas as threats of reprisal decreased in the democratic transition period (Horwitz et al. 2004). As part of its developmental state agenda, the post-apartheid state has made research productivity a key goal. The incentivizing of research productivity has increased publication outputs across all disciplines in ­ higher education, including HRM (Gultig 2000). The role of the HRM academic has also shifted to one that is focused more on the scholarly production of knowledge than on consultancy. Less energy is expended negotiating the intricacies of professionalizing the discipline. Initiatives instead are focused on increasing research skills of both students and staff to produce research outputs such as journal articles. Scholarly production in universities in the second decade of democracy drives the discipline’s future. This is in contrast to apartheid times when state-sanctioned bodies such as the NIPR and the HSRC set the academic agenda for HRM. Yet we know little of the patterns of knowledge production in terms of the demographics, institutional location, geographic location and collaboration patterns of producers. Have these remained similar in pre- and post-apartheid periods? What do they reveal and possibly say about the future of HRM knowledge production in South Africa? Racial transformation may have occurred at the practitioner level of HRM, but has it occurred at the sites of knowledge production?

Conclusion This chapter has shown that management studies in higher education is a growing and lucrative field both nationally and internationally. The South African case shows that the trajectory of management studies has followed

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that of both the apartheid and post-apartheid state. The academy was highly racialized and influenced considerably by government-sponsored social science bodies such as the NIPR during apartheid. The discipline developed a positivist, quantitative identity, in large part influenced by the Afrikaner philosophy of volkekunde. Access to management education was unequal for all South Africans. Universities were racially divided in terms of access. Prestigious management degrees such as the MBA were the preserve of White South Africans during the apartheid period. A major sub-discipline of management studies, HRM, also tells a racially divisive story in its trajectory. The youthful nature of management studies and its sub-disciplines means that research productivity as measured by scholarly publications is low. This is especially striking when compared to more established disciplines such as sociology. The post-apartheid state considers management studies essential for its developmental state goals. This includes providing a more competent and professional public services sector. As Badat (2011) argues, the South African academy needs to develop for the next generation. This development needs to ensure that the academic labour market is reflective of the diversity of the student body it serves. Even in the second decade of the post democratic period, racial and to a lesser extent gender equities exist in the labour market for academics. Programmes to develop the next generation of academics need to be cognizant of race in its project of transformation. Ten years after democracy, in 2003, Black academics comprised approximately 41% of all academics. Gains were made in subsequent years, but these, as Badat (2011: 2) describes, “were not impressive”. Overall numbers and percentages of the academic labour market do not reveal the demographic, institutional and collaborative patterns of individual disciplines. The next two chapters provide insights into these aspects of management studies in South Africa.

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CHAPTER 3

Research in Management: Analysis of Publications

Abstract  Based on the publication records sourced from the Web of Science database, we examine the features and trends of publications in management studies in South Africa. The analysis covers the period 1966–2015, consisting of 1294 publications. The racial and gender backgrounds of the authors are collected and examined. The analysis demonstrates the features of publications across distinctive historical periods. It also reveals the unique features of the publications in terms of the author’s gender, race, sector, institution, department and province. The inter-­ relationship between race, gender, sector, institution and coauthorship is remarkable in the field. The findings have implications for the future of the discipline in South Africa. Keywords  Management • Management scholarship • Knowledge • Race • Gender • Coauthorship • Higher education • Apartheid • South Africa In this chapter the focus is on the analysis of publications in the field of management studies. These publications were authored by South African scholars (who are affiliated to South African institutions) from 1966 to 2015. The data was drawn from the WoS. As is well known, the WoS is a recognized and widely used database for scientometric analysis. Scholars have successfully used the database to study the growth and decline of © The Author(s) 2019 S. Ruggunan, R. Sooryamoorthy, Management Studies in South Africa, Palgrave Studies in African Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99657-8_3

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specific subjects and disciplines. The WoS is also being accepted as a reliable source due to its wider coverage of publications and its effectiveness in mapping scientific disciplines (for instance, Pouris 2006; Persson 2010; Kahn 2011; Sin 2011; Gazni et  al. 2012; Sivertsen and Larsen 2012; Lewison et al. 2016; Sooryamoorthy 2018).

Data and Methods The WoS hosts multiple databases. While choosing and processing the dataset, appropriate steps were taken in several stages. In the first phase, the WoS datasets that suit the research objectives of the study were selected. The chosen datasets were the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) 1945–present, Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) 1956–present, and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) 1975–present. The subject area was then identified. The WoS groups subjects under 252 subject categories. Management is one of them. Due to the nature of research in management studies and the topics covered under the broad subject of management, scholars also publish in other related areas. Industrial psychology is one such related subject. The WoS subject area of psychology (multidisciplinary) was therefore included along with the subject category of management. The database stored documents such as articles and reviews. In the next phase, all articles and reviews, but not book reviews, that were published in all languages and written by a South African author (in other words, by one who is affiliated to a South African institution) were then filtered, sorted and downloaded. Finally, the period of analysis was to be confined. The beginning year of 1945 was selected as the datasets covered only from that year. However, there were no publications between 1945 and 1965. This made us use publications that appeared during the period 1966–2015. The collected articles and reviews were then individually captured into a software programme for statistical analysis. This was necessary as the WoS platform provides only a basic descriptive analysis of the variables of publications. Although it is labour-intensive and time-consuming to transfer individual records to a data management programme, it has its advantages and benefits for deeper levels of analysis. Once the records are captured individually, it was then easy to create and transform new variables that are essential for the objectives of this study. The variables drawn from the WoS referred to only names, affiliation (institution and partners), publication outlets and details of the paper and citations. From these ­preliminary variables, a range of other variables could be generated by

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computing and transforming the data. The newly created variables and measures were coauthorship, sector, partners (domestic and international), institutions, department and province. The dataset thus developed for this study had a final count of 148 variables. The WoS does not contain information about the race and gender of the authors. Studies that are based on WoS data therefore are limited due to the absence of these two demographic variables of the authors. These are keys to this study. In view of the central theme of the book, race and gender could not be ignored. Thanks to the individual and institutional websites, social media and other research websites, the race and gender of most of the authors of the publications taken for the analysis were determined. The dependent variables in this analysis are the number of publications. They are referred to as the factors of publication productivity of scholars. The fractional count of publications was also used wherever necessary. The fractional count of publications reflects the real share of authors of each publication as it provides a value that divides the number of publications by the number of authors. If a paper is written by four authors the fractional count is 0.25 (i.e. 1/4 = 0.25). A set of independent variables was employed: the variants of race, gender, type of institutions, departments, provinces, coauthorship, sector, partners and citations. Keeping the objectives of the study in mind, descriptive and inferential statistical procedures were applied in the data analysis. The analysis presented in this chapter examines the relationship between publications and race, gender, institutions, coauthorship, partners in coauthorships and citations. In other words, the question is does the count of publications connected to gender, race, the type of institutions to which the authors are affiliated and coauthorships in terms of gender and race, and national and international associations? Also important is the visibility of the knowledge South African scholars have produced in the subject area. What kind of connections is evident in the citations, gender, race, institutions and coauthorships is also the focus of the analysis. Only the analysis and findings are presented in this chapter. The discussion of the findings is reserved for the final chapter. Given the historical background of South Africa, the analysis follows a bifurcated path of time periods and racial categories. The time periods are to capture the trends in publications during and after the apartheid era (before and after 1994). Racial categories are meant to study the i­ ndividual contributions of Africans, Indians, Whites and other races in the production of publications. These are the racial categories the apartheid regime had created. The Other category in the analysis covers those of mixed

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race, categorized as Coloured by the South African state, and other races such as Asians. As seen in the previous chapters, there were advantages and disadvantages to being a particular race in the apartheid period. Access to higher education and employment was conditioned by the race to which individuals belonged. For a clearer picture of the publication history, trends and patterns the two time periods were broken down further into 1993 or before (the apartheid era), 1994 to 2004 and 2005 to 2015 (the post-apartheid era or democracy). In view of the feasible handling and management of individual publication records and for its entry into a data management programme, the specific details of up to the first five authors of all publications were captured. This means 98.5% of all publications were covered. Those publications that had up to five authors were captured for detailed analysis that covered gender, race, institution, department, province and other useful variables for the analysis.

WoS Publications in General After the final processing and cleaning, 1294 publications were available for analysis. These publications were the product of a sum of 2924 authors, with an average of 2.26 authors per publication (S.D. = 2.45, median = 2). The range was 1–52 authors. The classification according to race showed that there were 425 African authors, 137 Indian authors, 2048 White authors and 67 authors that were Others. In the percentage of the total of the first five authors which is 2677, African authors constituted 15.9%, Indian authors 5%, White authors 76.5% and 2.5% Other races. The WoS dataset covers publications since 1945. No publications in a management subject authored by South Africans were recorded up until 1965. Only from 1966 onwards did publications by South Africans begin entering the WoS database. Up until 1993 there were publications that involved 203 authors. They were all White authors (202) except for one who belonged to the category of Other. Between 1994 and 2004 there were 357 authors (21 Africans–5.9%, 8 Indians–2.2%, 322 Whites–90.2% and 6 Other–1.7%). Later, during 2005–2015  in the post-apartheid period, the proportion of authors changed: 414 African authors (19.8%), 86 Indian authors (4.1%), 1534 White authors (73.2%) and 62 classified as Others (3%). From this basic background of publications and authors, more information can be explored which is presented in Table 3.1.

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Table 3.1  South African publications in management, 1966–2015 Publication details

1993 or before N

Mean

S.D.

1994–2015 N

Mean value of authors* 147 1.46 0.71 1147 Fractional count of 146 0.81 0.27 1144 authors* Mean value of countries 133 1.20 0.44 1127 of authors** Mean value of citations* 146 11.90 30.59 1143 Race—mean value of all authors African authors* 147 0.00 0.00 1147 Indian authors* 147 0.00 0.00 1147 White authors** 147 1.37 0.73 1147 Other authors** 147 0.01 0.82 1147 African and Indian 147 0.00 0.00 1147 authors* African, Indian and other 147 0.01 0.08 1147 authors* Gender—mean value of all authors Mean value of male 147 1.27 0.65 1147 authors* Mean value of female 147 0.07 0.26 1147 authors* Sector—mean value of all authors University sector* 147 1.03 0.67 1147 Research institute 147 0.16 0.38 1147 sector* Industry sector 147 0.08 0.30 1147 Other sector 147 0.01 0.12 1147 Sector—mean value of all South African authors University sector* 147 0.90 0.62 1147 Research institute 147 0.15 0.38 1147 sector* Industry sector*** 147 0.07 0.29 1147 Other sector 147 0.01 0.12 1147 Sector—mean value of all non-South African authors University sector* 147 0.16 0.44 1147 Research institute 147 0.00 0.00 1147 sector** Industry sector 147 0.01 0.08 1147 Other sector** 147 0.00 0.00 1147 Note: Independent t-test, * p ≤ 0.01, ** p ≤ 0.05, *** p ≤ 0.1

All N

Mean

S.D.

Mean

S.D.

2.36 0.56

2.60 1294 2.26 0.28 1290 0.59

2.47 0.28

1.36

0.90 1260 1.34

0.86

3.94 10.69 1289 4.85 14.59 0.37 0.12 1.61 0.06 0.49

0.72 0.39 1.17 0.29 0.79

1294 1294 1294 1294 1294

0.33 0.11 1.58 0.05 0.43

0.69 0.37 1.13 0.28 0.76

0.55

0.84 1294 0.49

0.81

1.55

1.05 1294 1.52

1.01

0.57

0.80 1294 0.51

0.78

2.06 0.04

1.02 1294 1.94 0.27 1294 0.05

1.04 0.29

0.04 0.02

0.29 1294 0.05 0.14 1294 0.02

0.29 0.14

1.69 0.04

0.88 1294 1.60 0.27 1294 0.05

0.89 0.29

0.04 0.02

0.26 1294 0.04 0.12 1294 0.02

0.26 0.12

0.45 0.01

0.98 1294 0.41 0.12 1294 0.01

0.93 0.11

0.01 0.00

0.10 1294 0.01 0.07 1294 0.00

0.10 0.62

56  

S. RUGGUNAN AND R. SOORYAMOORTHY

Table 3.1 presents the features of publications grouped under two critical time periods in the history of South Africa, namely, 1993 or before and 1994–2015. These represent the periods of apartheid and democracy or post-apartheid. Of all the 1294 publications 147 (11.4%) were published during apartheid and the remaining 1147 (68.6%) were produced after apartheid. The mean value of authors per publication was higher during the period of democracy. The difference between apartheid and democracy was statistically significant in the independent t-test. There were 2.36 authors per publication referring to the period of democracy as against 1.46 authors during the apartheid period. The papers in the democratic period had 0.16 more authors than the average figures for all the publications. The fractional count of authors, that is, the figure obtained by dividing the number of papers by the number of authors, is an index to measure the size of coauthorship. For all the publications in the entire period, the figure was 0.59. When the publications were categorized into the two periods a significant difference was observed (0.81 for papers in the apartheid and 0.56 in the post-apartheid periods). This information is in agreement with the number of authors. South Africans are likely to work with their peers in the country and outside as well. The measure of the mean number of countries of authors indicates their interest in international coauthorships. There was an average of 1.34 countries per publication for the whole period, 1.20 countries in the apartheid and 1.36 countries in the post-­ apartheid periods. If no foreign scholars were involved, then the average would have been only 1. The increase was more prominent in democracy than earlier. The visibility of the research output is often assessed in relation to citations that a publication earns in its life. Most often citations continue to grow as years go by. The South African publications in management subjects have received an average of 4.85 citations for all its publications, 11.9 citations for the publications in the apartheid period and 3.94 citations in the post-apartheid period.

Race, Gender and Sectoral Affiliation As noted earlier and due to the feasibility and management of capturing the details of all authors of all publications, a maximum of five authors per publication was examined. This can be justified as it is more than double the size of the average value of authors per publication (2.26 authors).

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57

The race of the first five authors of every publication was computed for African, Indian and White authors. The remaining were grouped as Other. The mean value for each race is presented in Table 3.1. The data for each racial group should be read with the mean value of authors for these five authors which is 2.07. For all the 1294 publications taken for the analysis, the average numbers of authors per publication were 0.33 for the Africans, 0.11 for the Indians, 1.58 for the Whites and 0.05 for the authors classified as Other. The average number of authors per publication for the first five authors of every publication was 2.07. The White authors, who had a higher value of the average number than the rest, had a percentage of 76.3% of the average number of authors per publication. The comparative figures for other racial groups were 15.9% (Africans), 5.3% (Indians) and 2.4% (Other). The combined figures for the Africans, the Indians and the Other who constituted the disadvantaged groups under the apartheid regime were also calculated. They together had a share of about one quarter of all authors (23.7%). This is against the White authors who had the largest share of publications of 76.3%. The data for the two periods is also shown in the same Table 3.1. In the first period the average number of White authors per publication was 1.37, compared to none for the African and the Indian authors, and 0.01 for the Other. The White authors had a share of 98.6% of the publications during apartheid, leaving only a negligible percentage for the other racial groups. In the post-apartheid phase changes in the share of papers by different races were apparent. While the White authors continued to maintain their dominance in the production of papers in the discipline, other races had also made their way to publications. In the post-apartheid stage, the mean values of authors per publication for the Whites were 1.61, compared to 0.37 for the Africans, 0.12 for the Indians and 0.06 for the Other. In other words, it was 74.5% for the Whites, 17.1% for the Africans, 5.6% for the Indians and 2.8% for the Other. The results of the t-test indicated significant differences between the two periods. The combined contribution of the disadvantaged groups of Africans, Indians and Other was 25.5%. The change for these groups, between the apartheid and the post-apartheid phases, was from 1.4% to 25.5%. The gender of the authors was also combined and calculated in the same way as their race. The majority of authors were men for all the publications in the subject. The average number of men per publication was

58  

S. RUGGUNAN AND R. SOORYAMOORTHY

1.52 as against 0.51 for women. This amounts to 75% men and 25% women. However, between the two time periods there had been a proportionate change. The share of women authors in the publications during the period of 1994–2015 had improved from the previous period of 1993 or before. During the first period there were 95% men authors and 5% women authors. By the second period, namely, the post-apartheid phase, this proportion had been modified to 73 and 27. The sector of authors has been separated into all authors, South African authors and non-South African authors. Three major sectors emerged for the discipline: university, research institute and industry. There were a few odd sectoral affiliations for authors such as government departments and similar others that were grouped as Other. The university sector was the predominant sector to which the large majority of the authors were affiliated. The mean average of authors belonging to the university sector for all publications and for all authors (South Africans and their international partners) was 1.94 (Table 3.1). As against this, the averages were 0.05 each for the research institute and industry, and 0.02 for Other. This means about 94% of all authors came from the university sector while 2.4% each represented research institutes and industry. The remaining 1% of the authors were from miscellaneous institutions while research institutes and industry declined. The difference between the apartheid and the democratic periods for the research institute was statistically significant. In relation to the figures for the democratic period, the apartheid period had an increased level of participation of scholars affiliated to research institutions and to industry. In the democratic period the percentage of the authors from both research institutions and industry declined. In coauthored publications the participant authors came from either South Africa and/or from other countries. The authorship of publications was separated for South Africa and for other countries. The sector of the first 5 South African authors in all the publications showed that they were, as in the case of all authors, largely from the university sector. They formed 94% of the authors, or 1.6 authors of the total average of 1.71. It was 3% for the research institute sector and 2% for industry. Between the two ­periods (1993 or before, and 1994–2015) there has been a reduction in the mean value of authors for both research institutes and industry (from 0.15 to 0.04 for research institutes and from 0.07 to 0.04 for industry). This is similar to what was observed earlier for all authors in the sector analysis. For the mean value of non-South African

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59

authors, a similar pattern was evident. The low average is also a reflection of fewer authors from overseas who worked with South African scholars in the area of management studies.

Publications Across Racial Categories In line with the objective of the study and as used in the analysis above, the data has been organized according to four racial categories. In Table 3.2 the characteristic features of all publications by the race of the authors are presented. In order to pay attention to the formerly disadvantaged groups the three races, namely, Africans, Indians and Other, have been computed as a single group. Along with the basic features of the publications, gender and sector of authors are shown in the table. As seen in the first row of the table, the mean value of authors varies across the racial categories. The highest mean was for the Other (3.19 authors per publication), followed by Africans (2.4), Whites (2.36) and lastly Indians (2.2). In agreement with this finding, the fractional count also brought lower figures for the higher number of authors per publication (the higher the number of authors per publication, the lower the number of the fractional count). The number of countries involved in the production of publications was 2.02 for the Other, 1.37 for the Whites, 1.35 for the Indians and 1.34 for the Africans. Citations received according to the race of authors were varied. The average number of citations for the publications produced by the Africans was 2.17 against 4.25 for the Indians, 5.27 for the Whites and 8.46 for the Other. Gender by race is another indicator, which must be analysed in terms of both the mean and the percentage. For all publications, 22% of the authors were women. For the African authors it was little higher (23%). For Indian authors the percentage was 32 while it was 25% for the Whites. The majority of the authors (all authors), regardless of race, were affiliated to the university sector. Remember, it was the most predominant sector for the authors in management subjects. The sectoral affiliation of authors, therefore, does not differ significantly among racial groups. Despite this, a higher mean for the university sector was found for the authors under the category of Other, followed by Africans, Indians and Whites. Due to the nature of the larger share of authors coming from the university sector, there was no significant difference in the groups of either South African or non-South African authors among the racial groups in the analysis.

0.77 1051 1.37

1.35

N Mean

0.92 52 2.02

0.28 52 0.39

2.67 52 3.19

S.D.

Other N Mean

1.24 411 1.42

0.19 419 0.52

1.81 419 2.38

S.D.

N

Mean

All

0.80 1260 1.34

0.25 1290 0.59

1.24 1294 2.26

S.D.

Afr, Ind & other

0.86

0.28

2.47

S.D.

1.09 1083 1.58

0.72 1083 0.53

1.44

0.68

0.80 52 0.42

1.01 52 2.56

0.72 419 0.56

1.00 419 1.73

0.78

1.01

(continued)

0.74 1294 0.51

1.10 1294 1.52

4.25 13.22 1078 5.27 15.25 52 8.46 19.24 412 3.50 10.70 1289 4.85 14.59

0.27 1083 0.57

0.57

Mean

1.09 1083 2.36

N

2.20

S.D.

White

Mean 293 2.40 1.12 115 value of authors Fractional 293 0.50 0.23 115 count of authors Mean 287 1.34 0.64 113 value of countries of authors Mean 293 2.17 5.30 115 value of citations Gender—mean value of all authors Mean 293 1.78 1.08 115 value of male authors Mean 293 0.54 0.75 115 value of female authors

Mean S.D.

Indian Mean

N

African N

Publication details

Table 3.2  Publications according to race, 1966–2015

60   S. RUGGUNAN AND R. SOORYAMOORTHY

N

Mean S.D.

African N Mean

Indian S.D.

Sector—mean value of all authors University 293 2.21 0.98 115 2.00 1.00 sector Research 293 0.04 0.33 115 0.03 0.16 institute sector Industry 293 0.04 0.27 115 0.06 0.27 sector Other 293 0.02 0.15 115 0.03 0.184 sector Sector—mean value of all South African authors University 293 1.80 0.89 115 1.64 0.82 sector Research 293 0.04 0.33 115 0.03 0.16 institute sector Industry 293 0.03 0.24 115 0.05 0.22 sector Other 293 0.02 0.14 115 0.03 0.16 sector

Publication details

Table 3.2 (continued)

0.30 52 0.00

0.30 52 0.08 0.14 52 0.02

0.92 52 1.52 0.30 52 0.00

0.28 52 0.06 0.13 52 0.02

1083 0.05 1083 0.02

1083 1.62 1083 0.05

1083 0.04 1083 0.02

N Mean

1083 0.06

S.D. 1.08 52 2.92

Mean

Other

1083 1.99

N

White N Mean

0.14 419 0.02

0.31 419 0.04

0.00 419 0.03

0.90 419 1.71

0.14 419 0.02

0.44 419 0.05

0.00 419 0.03

1.12 419 2.18

S.D.

N Mean

All

0.12

0.26

0.29

0.89

0.14

0.29

0.29

1.04

S.D.

(continued)

0.14 1294 0.02

0.25 1294 0.04

0.28 1294 0.05

0.87 1294 1.60

0.15 1294 0.02

0.30 1294 0.05

0.28 1294 0.05

1.03 1294 1.94

S.D.

Afr, Ind & other

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61

N

Mean S.D.

African N Mean

Indian S.D.

0.13 52 0.00

0.11 52 0.04 0.00 52 0.00

1083 0.01 1083 0.00

N Mean

1083 0.01

S.D. 0.98 52 1.63

Mean

Other

1083 0.45

N

White N Mean

0.00 419 0.00

0.28 419 0.01

0.00 419 0.00

1.56 419 0.53

S.D.

N Mean

All

0.07 1294 0.00

0.13 1294 0.01

0.05 1294 0.01

1.05 1294 0.41

S.D.

Afr, Ind & other

Note: Publication total is different as this refers to publications that had at least one author from the respective race count

Sector—mean value of all non-South African authors University 293 0.45 0.94 115 0.38 0.90 sector Research 293 0.00 0.06 115 0.00 0.00 institute sector Industry 293 0.01 0.08 115 0.01 0.09 sector Other 293 0.00 0.06 115 0.02 0.13 sector

Publication details

Table 3.2 (continued)

0.62

0.10

0.11

0.93

S.D.

62   S. RUGGUNAN AND R. SOORYAMOORTHY

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63

Historical Trends in the Production of Publications The analysis of the publications by South African scholars in management studies in the two broad periods of 1993 or before, and 1994–2014, has revealed characteristic features and trends. These two periods were marked by the two distinctive political phases in South Africa, namely, during and after apartheid. About two decades have passed since the country was politically transformed in 1994. The analysis of the data referring to the period 1994–2015 is so broad that it hides trends in between. Therefore, a further breakdown of the periods becomes necessary for the specific trends that occurred in the post-apartheid period as well. Table 3.3 displays the data in three periods of 1993 or before, 1994–2004, and 2005–2015. The average number of authors per publication in the three periods had increased from 1.46 to 2.36 (Table  3.3). Since apartheid, the reported increase was 62%. There was no increase but a small decrease between the two periods in the post-apartheid (democratic) period. The trend in the growth of the average number of authors per publication continued to prevail in democratic South Africa. The decreasing fractional count of authors substantiates this finding. While the number of countries involved in the production of publications registered certain levels of growth soon after the apartheid period, the same level of growth did not continue in the two periods in the post-apartheid years. There was an initial increase from 1.20 (1993 or before) to 1.49 (1994–2004) but it declined to 1.34 (by 11%) during 2005–2015. In all these measures statistically, significant differences have been noted in the Analysis of Variance test. The visibility of the South African publications in management improved in the initial years of democracy. From the average citation count of 11.9 to 13.5 the growth in citations was 13%. During the second half of the same period the count declined substantially to 2.83.

Race, Gender and Sectoral Affiliation The contribution of African authors saw a substantial jump in the second half of the post-apartheid period. See the two periods between 1994 and 2015 in Table 3.2. The mean value of the African authors in the publications that were produced during the period 1994–2004 was 0.09, which grew into 0.4, by more than four times, in the next half of 2005–2015. The same pattern but with a different average was evident among the Indian authors (from 0.06 to 0.13 during the two periods in the post-­ apartheid phase). This increase was about two times.

Mean value of authors (df 2, F = 8.766, sig 0.000) Fractional count of authors (df 2, F = 3.927, sig 0.000) Mean value of countries of authors (df 2, F = 3.519, sig 0.030) Mean value of citations (df 2, F = 51.458, sig 0.000) Race—mean value of all authors African authors (df 2, F = 31.629, sig 0.000) Indian authors (df 2, F = 8.896, sig 0.000) White authors (df 2, F = 5.512, sig 0.004) Other authors (df 2, F = 2.713, sig 0.000) African and Indian authors (df 2, F = 42.947, sig 0.000) African, Indian and other authors (df 2, F = 46.434, sig 0.000) Gender—mean value of all authors Mean value of male authors (df 2, F = 5.979, sig 0.003) Mean value of female authors (df 2, F = 40.803, sig 0.000) Sector—mean value of all authors University sector (df 2, F = 76.905, sig 0.000) Research institute sector (df 2, F = 12.017, sig 0.000)

Publication details Mean

N Mean S.D.

N

Mean

All

0.97 1009 1.34 0.89 1260 1.34

2.87 1026 2.36 0.08 1294 2.26 0.30 1023 0.56 0.27 1290 0.59

S.D.

2005–2015

0.86

2.47 0.28

S.D.

0.26 121 0.25

0.67 121 1.79 0.38 121 0.06

147 0.07

147 1.03 147 0.16

0.09 0.06 1.83 0.03 0.15

0.65 121 1.66

121 121 121 121 121

147 1.27

0.00 0.00 0.73 0.08 0.00 0.82 121 0.18

0.00 0.00 1.37 0.01 0.00

147 0.01

147 147 147 147 147

1026 1026 1026 1026 1026

0.40 0.13 1.58 0.06 0.53

0.75 0.40 1.18 0.30 0.82

1294 1294 1294 1294 1294

0.33 0.11 1.58 0.05 0.43

1.04 0.29

0.78

1.01

0.81

0.69 0.37 1.13 0.28 0.76

(continued)

1.01 1026 2.09 1.02 1294 1.94 0.27 1026 0.03 0.27 1294 0.05

0.52 1026 0.61 0.82 1294 0.51

0.98 1026 1.54 1.05 1294 1.52

0.45 1026 0.59 0.86 1294 0.49

0.32 0.23 1.10 0.22 0.38

146 11.90 30.59 119 13.50 18.21 1024 2.83 8.80 1289 4.85 14.59

0.44 118 1.49

N

133 1.20

S.D. 0.71 121 2.37 0.27 121 0.60

Mean

1994–2004

147 1.46 146 0.80

N

1993 or before

Table 3.3  South African publications in management in three time periods, 1966–2015

64   S. RUGGUNAN AND R. SOORYAMOORTHY

0.62 121 1.33 0.38 121 0.08 0.29 121 0.07 0.12 121 0.03 0.44 121 0.48 0.00 121 0.02 0.08 121 0.01 0.00 121 0.01

0.90 0.15 0.07 0.01 0.16 0.00 0.01 0.00

Note: ANOVA results in parenthesis

0.30 121 0.07 0.12 121 0.04

Mean

0.08 0.01

N

Industry sector (df 2, F = 2.031, sig 0.132) 147 Other sector (df 2, F = 1.934, sig 0.145) 147 Sector—mean value of all South African authors University sector (df 2, F = 68.771, sig 0.000) 147 Research institute sector (df 2, F = 12.011, sig 147 0.000) Industry sector (df 2, F = 2.796, sig 0.060) 147 Other sector (df 2, F = 1.359, sig 0.257) 147 Sector—mean value of all non-South African authors University sector (df 2, F = 6.086, sig 0.002) 147 Research institute sector (df 2, F = 1.791, sig 147 0.167) Industry sector (df 2, F = 0.025, sig 0.975) 147 Other sector (df 2, F = 0.589, sig 0.555) 147

S.D.

N Mean S.D.

2005–2015 N Mean

All

0.09 1026 0.01 0.10 1294 0.01 0.91 1026 0.00 0.62 1294 0.00

0.85 1026 0.44 0.99 1294 0.41 0.27 1026 0.01 0.09 1294 0.01

0.49 1026 0.03 0.22 1294 0.04 0.18 1026 0.01 0.12 1294 0.02

0.77 1026 1.73 0.88 1294 1.60 0.38 1026 0.03 0.26 1294 0.05

0.50 1026 0.04 0.25 1294 0.05 0.20 1026 0.02 0.13 1294 0.02

S.D.

1994–2004

Mean

1993 or before N

Publication details

Table 3.3 (continued)

0.10 0.62

0.93 0.11

0.26 0.12

0.89 0.29

0.29 0.14

S.D.

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65

66  

S. RUGGUNAN AND R. SOORYAMOORTHY

As noted earlier, Whites continued to be the prominent group of authors. However, when the mean average was converted into percentages of publications for all the racial groups, the decrease in the share of publications was obvious. During 1994–2004 the percentage was 91, which had decreased to 73% during 2005–2015 for the White authors. On the other hand, it was 18% for the Africans during the second half of the post-apartheid period, growing from 4.3% during 1994–2004. The combined figures for the disadvantaged groups also showed positive differences between the first and the second half of the post-apartheid period. The proportion of women to men authors in the discipline improved after apartheid. The mean average of women authors was 0.07, 0.25 and 0.61 for the three periods (Table 3.3). Not only was the mean increasing but also the proportionate share of women authors in the publications was increasing. It grew from 5% during apartheid to 13% in the first phase of the post-apartheid period. In recent years (2005–2015) the proportion of women authors in publications constituted 28%. In the previous table (Table  3.1), the sector of authors (all, South Africans and non-South Africans) for the broad periods of the apartheid and the post-apartheid was presented. The analysis indicated that the university sector was the prominent sector for both periods and for the racial categories of authors. In Table 3.3 the data for the post-apartheid period was segregated under two timelines. This is to see what changes, if any, occurred during the post-apartheid phase. In the beginning years of democracy, the figures for the authors affiliated to a research institute or an industry were 0.06 and 0.07. In the later years the respective figures decreased to 0.03 and 0.04. If these figures are converted into percentages, there were 3.1% and 1.4% for the research institute sector and 3.6% and 1.8% for industry. The number of authors from these two sectors was getting smaller and smaller. No new trends were to be seen in the case of the South African or the non-South African authors when the data was grouped accordingly (Figs. 3.1 and 3.2).

Publications and Institutional Categories Publications were classified according to institutional categories. They are the formerly Afrikaans universities, Black universities and English universities.1 Table 3.4 provides the list of institutions to which the authors were affiliated. They can also be classified as historically advantaged and disadvantaged universities.

  RESEARCH IN MANAGEMENT: ANALYSIS OF PUBLICATIONS   

Publications

67

Gender 2.5

15

2

10

1.5 1

5

0.5

0

Authors

Fraction

≤1993

0

Countries Citations

1994–2004

≤1993

1994–2004

2005–2015

Men

Sector

Women

Race

2.5

2

2

1.5

1.5

1

1

0.5

0.5 0

2005–2015

University ≤1993

Res. Inst

0

Industry

Africans Indians Whites

1994–2004 2005–2015

≤1993

1994–2004

Others Disadtd 2005–2015

Fig. 3.1  Features of publications in management studies in South Africa, 1966–2015

Count of authors

1000

2005–2015

500

≤1993

0 Africans

Indians

Whites

Other

≤1993

1994–2004

2005–2015

Fig. 3.2  Count of authors by race, 1966–2015

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Table 3.4  Institutional categories of South African authors, 1966–2015 Institution

Category

Stellenbosch University University of South Africa (UNISA) University of Pretoria University of Free State Rand Afrikaans University University of Port Elizabeth Potchefstroom University Central University of Technology Orange Free State University North-West University University of Fort Hare Vista University Peninsula Cape University University of Zululand University of Western Cape University of Cape Town University of the Witwatersrand Rhodes University Technikon Natal/Durban University of Technology Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University University of Johannesburg University of Natal/KwaZulu-Natal University of Limpopo Tshwane University of Technology Vaal University of Technology Technikon Pretoria Walter Sisulu University Technikon Witwatersrand Port Elizabeth Technikon

Afrikaans Afrikaans Afrikaans Afrikaans Afrikaans Afrikaans Afrikaans Afrikaans Afrikaans Black Black Black Black Black Coloured English English English English/merged Merged Merged Merged Merged Merged Merged Merged Merged White White

Note: Technikon Witwatersrand and Port Elizabeth Technikon are classified as White and not as English or Afrikaans. Bunting argues that they were more aligned with Afrikaner nationalist ideologies (Bunting 2006: 47)

As seen in Table 3.5, the institutional categories are presented in the three periods of 1993 or before, 1994–2004 and 2005–2015. The average number of institutions, namely, the formerly Afrikaans, the Black and the English, the currently merged and the formerly advantaged and the disadvantaged, was computed. Black institutions were grouped as disadvantaged institutions and the Afrikaans and English universities were grouped as advantaged institutions.

Note: ANOVA results in parenthesis

Afrikaans (df 2, F = 24.594, sig 0.000) Black (df 2, F = 18.132, sig 0.000) English (df 2, F = 26.870, sig 0.000) Merged (df 2, F = 11.254, sig 0.000) Advantaged (df 2, F = 1.960, sig 0.141) Disadvantaged (df 2, F = 18.132, sig 0.000)

Institutional category

147 147 147 147 147 147

N 0.21 0.00 0.64 0.04 0.85 0.00

Mean 0.50 0.00 0.63 0.20 0.63 0.00

S.D.

1993 or before

121 121 121 121 121 121

N 0.34 0.07 0.72 0.13 1.06 0.07

Mean 0.70 0.32 0.76 0.45 0.77 0.32

S.D.

1994–2004

1026 1026 1026 1026 1026 1026

N

0.70 0.28 0.31 0.40 1.01 0.28

Mean

2005–2015

Table 3.5  Institutional categories and publications in three time periods, 1966–2015

0.97 0.68 0.74 0.77 1.04 0.68

S.D.

1294 1294 1294 1294 1294 1294

N

0.61 0.23 0.39 0.34 1.00 0.23

Mean

All

0.92 0.62 0.74 0.71 0.98 0.62

S.D.

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Table 3.5 exhibits the production of publications in the management field in South Africa under three distinctive periods. During the period 1993 or before, the English and the Afrikaans institutions had a mean of 0.64 and 0.21 publications as against zero for the Black universities. The mean value of publications for the advantaged institutions was 0.85 whereas it was zero for the disadvantaged institutions during the period, marked by the apartheid era. In percentile terms 75% of the publications during this period came from the English universities and the remaining 25% from the Afrikaans universities. In the first ten years of democracy (1994–2004), the former English universities had a lead over other Afrikaans and Black universities. The respective average number of publications was 0.72, 0.34 and 0.07. Merged institutions also made a fraction of publications (0.13). These mean figures can be converted into percentages of publications for a comparative analysis. Among the four types, the English institutions produced 57% of all publications. Afrikaans 27%, merged 10% and the Black 6%. In the last ten years (2005–2015) the formerly Afrikaans universities had a significant turn, producing the highest number of publications in the field. It had a mean value of 0.0 compared to 0.31 for the formerly English universities, and 0.28 for the formerly Black universities. The merged institutions too had a mean of 0.4. In other words, the percentage of publications from the formerly Afrikaans institutions had increased to 41%. For the English institutions the percentage was 18, while it was 17 for the Black universities, and 24 for the merged institutions. The advantaged and disadvantaged types had an average of 0.77 and 0.32, respectively, in the first half of democracy. This is about 70% and 30% of all publications, respectively. In the second half of democracy the formerly advantaged institutions gained an average of 1.01 as against 0.28 for the formerly disadvantaged institutions. This is 78% and 22% for these institutions. The relation between the institutional types and race is relevant. This information is in Table 3.6. The Karl Pearson correlation test was run to find out the inter-relationship between these two variables. The Afrikaans universities had a positive and significant correlation coefficient with White authors while a negative but insignificant correlation was found with the African and the Indian authors. The Black universities had a positive and significant correlation with the number of African authors, and a significant but lower level of correlation with the White authors.

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Table 3.6  Correlation between institutional type and race of authors, 1966–2015 Race/institutional type

African coefficient

Indian coefficient

White coefficient

Other coefficient

Afrikaans Black English Advantaged Disadvantaged Merged

−0.017 0.158** −0.086** −0.081** 0.158** 0.131**

−0.065 −0.043 −0.037 −0.089** −0.043 0.192**

0.152** 0.068* 0.121** 0.235** 0.068* 0.005

−0.030 −0.034 0.019 −0.013 −0.034 0.009

Significance: ** p