The inspiration for this book was a Summer School on State, Governance and Development presented by distinguished academics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Written by young African scholars, the chapters here focus on state, governance and development in Africa as seen from the authors’ vantage points and positions in different sectors of society.

The book opens with three forewords by eminent African scholars including Ben Turok, Johan Burger and Mohamed Halfani. The chapters that follow examine rent-seeking, patronage, neopatrimonialism and bad governance. They engage with statehood, state-building and statecraft and challenge the mainstream opinions of donors, funders, development banks, international non-governmental organisations and development organisations. They include the role of China in Africa, Kenya’s changing demographics, state accountability in South Africa’s dominant party system, Somalia’s prospects for state-building, urban development and routine violence, and resource mobilisation.

At a time in which core institutions are being tested -- the market, the rule of law, democracy, civil society and representative democracy – this book offers a much-needed multi- and inter-disciplinary perspective, and a different narrative on what is unfolding, while also exposing dynamics that are often overlooked.

Human Resource Management in Government: A South African Perspective On Theories, Politics And Processes explores the many facets of the employment relationship within government institutions.

These activities include strategic employment processes, such as talent management, trade union interactions, compensation, human resource governance (metrics) and the future of human resource management.

Auditing Fundamentals in a South African Context is a practical, applied and engaging introductory textbook that supports students throughout the undergraduate level of the Auditing curriculum.

Features:

• Learning outcomes serve as a guide to the content.
• News articles demonstrate the relevance, practical application, and real-life nature of the concepts in the chapter. They also build a broader understanding and awareness of the dynamic business environment.
• Source documents provide examples of actual company records and documents, financial statements and reports, letters, working papers and other documents issuing from the running case study.
• These documents assist students to visualise and understand the purpose within the audit process, and to understand how principles are applied in practice.
• Explanations of key terms assist readers to comprehend technical terminology clearly, and to understand the material effectively.
• End-of-chapter questions enable readers to test their understanding of key concepts throughout the text.

The world of work is constantly changing creating new careers while some are becoming redundant. In most careers, career development is no longer business as usual. How safe is your career?

This book shares global trends on the future of work, the tools to create a career development path and, most importantly, how to execute it. Nowadays, a lasting career requires adaptation and mental toughness.

With the intention to support you stand out from the crowd, this book will help you:

• Define a career that is aligned with your personal mission and values, gives meaning, and creates happiness.
• Design a career path that is adaptable and in demand.
• Manage teams of diverse culture and background and improve their performance.
• Negotiate your way to a seat at the table.
• Lead and influence when you get the opportunity to sit at the table

Finding your seat at the table needs you to take charge of your career development and do the things that play to your strengths. Whether you are looking to improve your performance and get ahead, lead your team or department, or plan to run a company one day – this book is for you.

For nearly three decades, the ANC has held South Africa’s politics in an iron grip. With the party seemingly at war with itself and President Ramaphosa battling to rein in corrupt cadres, Ralph Mathekga predicts the ANC will fall below the critical 50 per cent threshold before the end of the decade.

The decline of the ANC could bring political reform, but also uncertainty.

If the ANC loses power, who will be in charge? Who or what will come after the ANC, and how will this affect South Africa?

In What’s Your Move? Nicolette Mashile, founder of Financial Bunnies and a champion of personal-finance education across the African content, shares stories from her own life and journey with money in order to redefine personal-finance management.

An intimate and deeply personal book, in What’s Your Move? Nicolette talks openly about her experiences with money and the way she was brought up. She shares her beliefs about how our everyday behaviour influences how we manage our finances, and how, in spite of knowing better, we sometimes make the wrong financial decisions.

What’s Your Move? is a challenge: a challenge to you to make a move that will be financially rewarding. A promise to yourself that you are more than capable of managing your money.

Creativity and imagination are key catalysts to unlocking potential in the 21st century. While those in business and civil society are generally aware of its challenges, few seem able to understand or apply the creativity necessary to meet them. Creativity Explained argues that the most direct route to imaginative insight lies in understanding how genuinely creative people develop their big ideas.

Focusing on the lives of contemporary writers, musicians and artists, Priilaid examines the elements of the creative process to provide readers with a better appreciation of creativity in practice. Through looking at the work of figures such as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Bill Evans, Jackson Pollock, J.K. Rowling and the iconic Steve Jobs, he shows how artists are typically outsiders, marked by the extent of their suffering, resilience and love for the work they do.

In Creativity Explained, Priilaid presents an insightful overview of the imaginative mindset and disciplines crucial to the formulation of great ideas.

There is a change in momentum, worldwide, by progressive organisations to revise the current “outdated” approach to talent management. Business leaders are challenging the HR assumptions on which contemporary talent management are based. They are demanding a greater need for talent to add value to the bottom line. It is time to evolve once again – this time starting with the business imperatives and how key talent drive business value. Talent Value Management (TVM) is the new journey.

With over 19 years in Talent Management, Andre Pandy shows HR professionals how they can drive real value in the organisation by ensuring there is greater alignment of the talent agenda with key business outcomes – revenue, margins, cost reduction and market share. Talent Value Management presents a unique approach on how to better align your current talent strategy with organisation objectives.

This book utilises multiple contemporary strategy perspectives and practices to give leaders and strategy practitioner’s deep insights about the dynamics and options available in developing good and robust strategies. The core of the book is about stimulating new strategic thinking and action to enhance the competitiveness of a firm.

Navigating strategic possibilities involves the invention and re-invention of an organisation. Strategic leadership, as a part of this navigation journey, is an integral guiding force of the strategic choices an organisation makes to fulfil its future aspirations. In this book, the key strategic choices related to the competitive advantage and positioning of an organisation are presented in an integrated strategic architecture perspective, and the following seven strategic architecture building blocks are discussed:

• Strategic leadership as a key capacity that gives life, meaning and on-going momentum to the strategy of an organisation.
• The development of views on the external and internal strategic landscape and context of an organisation.
• Strategy formulation and development which include a menu of strategic options and choices to consider.
• The development of multiple futures perspectives for an organisation.
• Strategy execution practices to make it a lived reality for stakeholders.
• Strategy renewal and innovation practices to refresh the strategy on a continuous basis.
• Entrepreneurial leadership and strategy practices to foster both entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship.

The future holds an abundance of possibilities for those conscious enough to spot them. The strategy navigation tools contained in this book provides the identification and execution tools needed to flourish. This book complements the book Crystallising the Strategic Business Landscape by the same authors.

Prof Marius Ungerer is a core faculty member of the University of Stellenbosch Business School (USB) where he research and teach strategic management, leadership and change management for post graduate degree programs like MBA, MPhil in Management Coaching and PGD in Leadership. He is also an annual visiting academic to University of Johannesburg and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business, Japan.

Dr Gerard Ungerer is an industrial engineer and a competitive strategy gamer with a passion for complex systems, strategy, business models, technology and innovation, e-business and management. Aptly, his postgraduate studies focused on competitive business strategy in the digital economy.

Johan Herholdt is a management thinker and an experienced author of more than 10 books (five as editor) and various book chapters. He is an expert facilitator concentrating on individual and team coaching, discourse processes and dialogics, as well as systemic problem solving

Re-authoring the World: The Narrative Lens and Practices for Organisations, Communities and Individuals, invites readers to a transformational way of being in the world.

It translates the Narrative Therapy approach and practices for people outside the therapeutic context that are interested in shifting the stories of their own lives as well as the communities and organisations that they work in. The book invites readers out of docility and complacency into active participation and accountability of the worlds that they are connected to.

This book provides different portals into understanding, and you can roam about in the chapters you are interested in. If you do not want to read the whole book, you can read short descriptions of the different parts at the start of each section.

The world remains uncertain. Africa is fragile. Many issues remain unresolved and the African, and global, situation is worsening. South Africa has been at the crossroads for long enough. There can be no more delays – the time has come to address the many critical issues.

In Africa’s Wellbeing in an Uncertain World, Vusi Gumede discusses these critical issues about Africa, with specific focus on South Africa. He has revisited opinion articles and blogs he has been writing since the mid-2000s and taken his ideas and arguments, together with his deliberations on the recent changes globally and in Africa, and presented them in this thought-provoking book. While taking into account what others have said about similar issues, this is an attempt to get us to talk about these challenges, the important issues and fundamental problems, with a view to finding solutions.

The future of the African continent could be bright if all the efforts that are being pursued for the improved wellbeing of Africans succeed. But, as Vusi Gumede reflects in this book, if South Africa is to achieve the society envisaged in the Constitution, then all South Africans – whatever the colour of their skin – have an important role to play.

Most of the time, the road to riches is a closely guarded secret, until now. Jacana Media presents Mpho Dagada, one such young, self-made millionaire who in his memoir, Mr Bitcoin, shares his story of triumph and failure. He tells his story from the beginning: being brought up by business-minded and accomplished grandparents who planted in him the seeds of what it means to be successful in business.

Mpho Dagada’s interest in Bitcoin was ignited when he was in his first year at the University of Johannesburg in 2013 after opening his own laundry and cleaning service company. He invested his profits from this company in Bitcoin. He currently owns a logistics company, a chain of fast food restaurants and is in the process of developing the first black-owned cryptocurrency exchange platform.

This book is both motivational and practical, examining the errors and pitfalls that Dagada had to go through in his business pursuits. These included falling for Ponzi schemes like Kipi and losing his money on more than one occasion. Through these many lows were lessons of great value which ultimately led to the endless possibilities that Bitcoin presents for those interested in creating wealth through trading cryptocurrencies and running a successful business.

Dagada is confident in the viability of Bitcoin and ascertains that "we will never understand the money of the future without learning how money came about in the first place. Blockchain and Bitcoin are now pioneering a new online financial world. Cryptocurrencies will replace fiat money in the end, as they are faster, better and more convenient than all the earlier forms of currency."

The way businesses buy from one another has changed profoundly in recent years. Markets have evolved, disruptive technologies have sprung up and buyers’ expectations have changed. But despite this, the fundamentals of business-to-business marketing have remained constant: today’s corporate decision-makers still need to know who you are, what you do and why you matter to them.

In Business-to-Business Marketing, Mark Eardley and Charlie Stewart review the basic rules of B2B marketing. They offer guidance on how to:

• motivate your markets to buy from you,
• how to differentiate yourself from your competitors and
• explain which tactics to use to reach your customers with the right messages at the right time

Their step-by-step guide will help your marketing effort deliver three critical results – increased sales, rising market share and rock-solid margins. Written in straightforward, punchy language with simple, practical take outs at the end of each chapter, this is a must-have book for anyone involved – in any way at all – with attracting and retaining profitable customers.

Human Resource Metrics teaches practitioners and managers a wide range of strategic, quantitative and financial tools for assessing requirements and issues in HR. Strategic tools include broader frameworks for assessing organisational HR, such as the analysis of organisational architecture as an HR tool, process analysis and mapping for performance, and how to decide whether to outsource or externalise work in other ways.

Quantitative tools include:

• HR data issues such as analysing HR databases, forecasting for HR, assessing employee turnover and absenteeism, assessing incentive plan set-up, and the like.
• Financial, Return on Investment, Economic Value Added and the like, applied to HR situations.

This is the first book to approach the analysis of human resources from such a multi-dimensional aspect as well as the first to use a practical, hand-on and step-by-step approach: the book teaches the 'how to' of each technique in a step-by-step manner, including a wide variety of MS Excel examples and practice datasets.

This book offers an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to thinking about inequality, and to understanding how inequality is produced and reproduced in the global South.

Without the safety net of the various Northern welfare states, inequality in the global South is not merely a socio-economic problem, but an existential threat to the social contract that underpins the democratic state and society itself. Only a response that is firrmly grounded in the context of the global South can hope to address this problem. This collection brings together scholars from across the global South to address broad thematic areas such as the conceptual and methodological challenges of measuring inequality; the political economy of inequality; inequality in work, households and the labour market; and inequalities in land, spaces and cities. The book concludes by suggesting alternatives for addressing inequality in the global South and around the world.

The pioneering ideas and theories put forward by this volume make it essential reading for students and researchers of global inequality across the fields of sociology, economics, law, politics, global studies and development studies.

The world has entered a period of accelerated change. This has everything to do with the disruptive events of 2020, the cognitive rewiring which each of us is going through, and the profound macro shifts reshaping the world as we know it.

We are living through an unprecedented period of rapid and pervasive transition. Every aspect of our reality is shifting, from how we work and play, to how we educate our children and care for the health and wellbeing of our families, ourselves and our neighbours. How does this affect the future of strong, dominant sectors such as tourism and travel, consumer, retail, property, education, health, automotive and financial services, among others?

• Can we rewire these and other sectors for a new reality?
• Do we even have the wherewithal to reimagine the future?
• How do we start the process of pressing the reset button?
• Can we reimagine the world we live in and take proactive steps to play a part in it?
• Do we have the tools to shift our business strategies?
• Are we primed to take advantage of the opportunities on offer?
• Can we sidestep our fear of the unknown and open our minds to exciting new possibilities?

Transport yourself into the future with global future strategist, speaker and disruptor Abdullah Verachia as he leads you through the fundamental shifts taking place at every level and how these will reshape the world as we know it. Envisage a new reality, new cross-border opportunities and new avenues for personal and business growth.

Unlock key insights revealed in Disruption Amplified that will inspire your own rethinking during this remarkable and transformative time, and step boldly into a new tomorrow.

Footprints is a captivating story about intellectual property (IP). It speaks to its role in society, trade, industry, and economy and expounds on the actual meaning of IP. The book lays a solid foundation for innovators, entrepreneurs, businesses, and nations to realise their full potential through IP policy, legislation, use and practices.

McLean Sibanda shares his personal story, together with stories and testimonies of fellow travellers, taking us through their journey into the field of IP. He meticulously recounts South Africa’s path in transforming the management of IP emanating from publicly financed research and development (R&D), development of critical human capital and other infrastructure to ensure effective IP commercialisation and technology transfer.

Footprints is a timely masterpiece given IP issues in Africa’s scramble for Covid-19 vaccines and implementation of the agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). The book provides strategies of how African countries can use IP and innovation to develop industries to ensure health security and trading of goods that can benefit from the AfCFTA. Narrated through a series of significant moments, Footprints demonstrates the importance of vision, solid foundation, collaboration, champions, and intentional steps, for economic transformation. With glimpses into how countries such as China and Korea used IP to develop their economies, this book makes a compelling case for embracing IP, increased R&D investment, relevant human capital, and appropriate use of IP, in the development of new products and services necessary for knowledge-based and industrialised economies.

Footprints is a must-read for any academic, aspiring intellectual property scholar, policy maker, economist, development activist, entrepreneur, researcher, innovator, professional, and technology transfer specialist.

What does it take for entrepreneurs to be effective competitors? What are the factors affecting entry and participation in sectors where there are historically strong incumbent firms? Opening the South African Economy brings to light the challenges of concentration, inequality and exclusion in different sectors of the South African economy.

The book begins with an assessment of the current state of the economy. Detailed case studies then recount the experiences – good and bad – of well-known South African entrant firms in sectors that are critical for facilitating economic growth, including retail, food, fuel, telecommunications, airlines and banking. Important cross-cutting chapters reflect on the role that government policies can play in achieving a more open, inclusive and competitive economy and the use (and misuse) of policy tools such as competition law, black economic empowerment and state procurement. It concludes with a set of concrete recommendations for opening up the South African economy, improved coordination among state institutions and inclusive industrial development.

Accessible and practical, Opening the South African Economy will appeal to a broad readership of business people, policy-makers, students and academics.

Many things have changed over the past couple of centuries. You don’t have to be born wealthy to be successful. And you can amass unimaginable wealth in a single lifetime. Most people just don’t know how . . .

You are very likely already an entrepreneur. Or, if not yet, you long to be one. You want to start your own business – a business where you are the boss.

Daniel Strauss, the Strauss in the investment firm Stocks & Strauss, is his own boss – and a highly successful venture capitalist. But this has not always been the case. Growing up, Daniel was convinced that the rich must be smarter than others, or have special skills or insights.

A chance meeting with a billionaire entrepreneur led him to realise that the wealthy are ‘normal people’ just like him – the difference being that those who have gone from penniless to rich know how to Think Above the Line. They have the mindset of a billionaire.

In The Billionaire Mindset, Daniel explains what this means and how to adopt this life-changing mindset yourself. He shares his secrets of success, including how to access capital, where to find the right people to help you reach your goals, and how to free your mind from self-imposed limitations, so that you can also think like – and eventually become – a billionaire.

In 2011, the sharing economy was dubbed by Time magazine as one of the ‘Ten ideas that will change the world’ and it has been widely hailed as a major growth sector, by sources ranging from Fortune magazine, to the World Economic Forum, to former President Obama.

The sharing economy is a new economic model that focuses on access to assets or resources, instead of ownership. It has exploded in popularity over recent years and has disrupted a significant number of mature industries such as accommodation, automotive, and entertainment. The total value of the global sharing economy is estimated to grow from $14 billion in 2014 to $335 billion by 2025. With limited resources, the desire to become more environmentally conscious, the high cost and burdens of ownership, and a rapidly growing population, living increasingly in densely populated cities, consumers are faced with greater challenges and opportunities to fill their consumption needs.

People are experiencing a significant value shift with a desire to reconnect with products and services in a more meaningful way, are becoming more cost and environmentally conscious, and are prioritising experience over ownership. An organisation’s ability to reimagine and reinvent its business model to offer unique opportunities for humanising technology and developing innovative sharing platforms, such as Uber and Airbnb, would be a game changer for them. While the Fourth Industrial Revolution and COVID-19 pandemic are influencing and changing consumer behaviour, organisations are facing a dilemma that is affecting the future of their profitability, existence, and sustainability.

In The Rise of the Sharing Economy, Kevin Govender shares his insights and expertise on the evolution of the sharing economy, consumer behaviour, and alternative business models, and empowers consumers to rediscover and realise the enormous benefits of access over ownership, and the potential savings in time, money, space and the opportunity. Access is a cultural and socio-economic phenomenon that is transforming businesses, consumers, the way we live, work, learn, consume, commute and play.

We cannot underestimate how critical strong leadership is in all aspects of our lives. It enables us to run our lives, homes, communities, workplaces and nations. Given its importance, it is pertinent to ask: What is the source of good leadership?

Albert Einstein once said, ‘The only source of knowledge is experience.’ Many philosophers have observed this and, if we accept experience as the only source of knowledge, can we extend this conclusion to leadership? Or is the basis of good leadership intuition or instinct? Or is it perhaps a combination of these?

In Leadership Lessons from Books I Have Read, Tshilidzi Marwala adopts the theory that the source of good leadership is knowledge, and the source of knowledge is experience, and these can be in the form of reading, listening and engaging in discussion. If leadership is derived from knowledge and knowledge is derived from the experience, the ‘experience’ in this book is from 50 books that Tshilidzi has read, and the source of knowledge informing leadership is the collective experiences of more than 50 authors who wrote these books.

Broken into four sections, Tshilidzi shares his leadership lessons on the topics of Africa and the diaspora; the search for ideal polity; science, technology and society; and the leadership of nations.

Next time you go to a conference or hire a consultant to be told, ‘We live in a VUCA [Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous] world,’ leave the room. You are wasting your time. In a world of fake news, deep-fakes, manipulated feeds of information and divisive social-media agendas, it’s easy to believe that our time is the most challenging in human history. It’s just not true.

It is a time of extraordinary opportunity. But only if you have the right mindset. Fear of the future breeds inaction and leads to strategic paralysis. We put off decisions until we can have certainty. We look for signals. We wait. And while we do that, the world moves on around us. Problem solvers thrive in chaotic and uncertain times because they act to change their future. Winners recognise that in a world of growing uncertainty, you need to resort to actions on things you can control. And the only things over which you have absolute control are your attitude and your mindset. These, in turn, determine the actions you will take and that will define your future.

A robust mindset is the one common characteristic Bruce Whitfield has identified in two decades of interrogating how South Africa’s billionaires and start-up mavericks think differently. They are not naive Polly-Annas. They don’t ignore risk or hope that problems will go away. They constantly measure, manage, consider and weigh up opportunities in a tumultuous sea of uncertainty and find ways around obstacles.

If, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller suggests, the stories we tell affect economic outcomes, then we need to tell different stories amidst the noise and haste of a rapidly evolving world.

Trade marks, copyright, designs and patents involve different forms of intellectual property rights. In our daily lives, from the music we download, to photographs we post, to goods we buy and products we manufacture, intellectual property is present. However, their laws have terminology and concepts that can be difficult for us to understand.

This book simplifies the nature, creation, and ownership of these different intellectual property rights. It explains the procedures for registration, and the remedies for enforcement, all in bite-size sections which are easy to read and simple to understand.

"Behold the turtle – he only makes progress when his neck is stuck out."

This proverb, included in Bonang F. Mohale’s best-selling first book, Lift As You Rise, sets the tone for his second book, which includes fresh insights and wisdom from one of South Africa’s best-loved leaders.

As a change agent, defender of democracy and a social justice activist, Bonang continues to stick his own neck out, addressing issues of key societal importance. Following on from the success of his first book, his new book, Behold the Turtle – Thoughts on Ethically Principled Leadership, expands on issues of leadership, resilience, ethics and social justice – sounding a call for change.

Never one to avoid tough issues, Bonang tackles the role that business, institutions of higher learning and other organisations need to play in creating South Africa’s future, as well as the risk and responsibility required of each of us as individuals. The book incorporates insights from Bonang’s respected colleagues, such as Mteto Nyati, Adrian Gore, Andile Nomlala, Vukani Mngxati, and Nicola Kleyn, who add personal lessons and anecdotes, creating a pool of wisdom from which readers can drink deeply.

Citing Alexander the Great, Bonang says, ‘I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.’

This book focuses on ethical leadership and embracing our own agency.

"Can't" is not a word in Kevin Chaplin’s vocabulary.

From humble beginnings he realised that the only way to change his world was to act - a philosophy that has stood him good stead ever since, first with a 26 year-career in banking from which he took the bold step to establish the South African Ubuntu Foundation, and second to rescue the Amy Biehl Foundation (now Amy Foundation) from the brink of bankruptcy.

A lateral thinker, Chaplin’s success can be ascribed to an ability to see business and personal challenges as a means of motivation to generate creative and innovative ideas and ways of solving problems.