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This paper examines the exercise of Black employee voice in South Africa over the past 53 years. Black workers constitute almost 4 out of every 5 workers in the country and experienced racial oppression from the time of colonisation up to the end of apartheid in 1994. They are still congregated around the lower skilled occupations with low incomes and high unemployment levels.

The paper draws on the theory of voice, exit and loyalty of Albert Hirschman, but extends voice to include sabotage as this encapsulates the nature of employee voice from about 2007 onwards. It reflects a culture of insurgence that entered employment relations from about that time onwards, but was lurking below the surface well before then.

The exercise of employee voice has gone through five phases from 1963 to mid-2016 starting with a silent phase for the first ten years when it was hardly heard at all. However, as a Black trade union movement emerged after extensive strikes in Durban in 1973, employee voice grew stronger and stronger until it reached an insurgent phase.

The phases employee voice went through were heavily influenced by the socio-political situation in the country. The reason for the emergence of an insurgent phase was due to the failure of the ruling African National Congress government to deliver services and to alleviate the plight of the poor in South Africa, most of whom are Black. The failure was due to neo-patrimonialism and corruption practised by the ruling elite and politically connected. Protests by local communities escalated and became increasingly violent. This spilled over into the workplace. As a result many strikes turned violent and destructive, demonstrating voice exercised as sabotage and reflecting a culture of insurgence.

Competitive intelligence failures have devastating effects in marketplaces. They are attributed to various factors but seldom explicitly to information behaviour. This paper addresses causes of competitive intelligence failures from an information behaviour lens focussing on problems with key intelligence and information needs. The exploratory study was conducted in 2016/2017. Managers (end-users) identify key intelligence needs on which information is needed, and often other staff members seek the information (proxy information seeking). The purpose of this paper is to analyse problems related to key intelligence and information needs, and make recommendations to address the problems.

The study is placed in a post-positivism research paradigm, using qualitative and limited quantitative research approaches. In total, 15 participants (competitive intelligence professionals and educators/trainers originating from South Africa and the USA) contributed rich data through in-depth individual interviews.

Problems associated with articulation of information needs (key intelligence needs is the competitive intelligence term – with a broader scope) include inadequate communication between the person in need of information and the proxy information searcher; awareness and recognition of information needs; difficulty in articulation, incomplete and partial sharing of details of needs.

Participant recruitment was difficult, representing mostly from South Africa. The findings from this exploratory study can, however, direct further studies with a very understudied group.

However, revealed valuable findings that can guide research.

Little has been published on competitive intelligence from an information behaviour perspective. Frameworks guiding the study (a combination of Leckie et al.’s 1996 and Wilson’s, 1981 models and a competitive intelligence life cycle), however, revealed valuable findings that can guide research.

The nature of paid domestic work is changing, with the growth in companies delivering domestic cleaning services. Few studies have looked at why people opt to use these services and the underlying drivers. As with the outsourcing of non-core tasks in businesses, outsourcing domestic work is motivated by similar, yet different reasons, which have to do with the personal and private nature of domestic employment. This study aims to establish the reasons why “clients”, who were former employers of domestic servants, opted to outsource domestic work to a domestic cleaning service provider.

Given the limited research on domestic cleaning services in South Africa, a mixed-methods research approach is used.

The findings showed that there are three key motivations: the nature of the domestic cleaning service supplier, the services rendered by domestic workers and the tripartite employment relationships. These three benefits imply that clients have access to functional and numerical flexibility, unlike employing a domestic worker directly. This study contributes to the literature on outsourcing and domestic work by showing that clients not only look to change the economic structure of the relationship with domestic workers, but it allows them to psychologically and emotionally distance themselves from domestic workers.

This study shows that some people are no longer willing to have a relationship with the people who clean their homes, and that they believe it is simply not worth the effort to maintain a relationship. This is an aspect that needs further research, as this is the one sphere where women are united in their plight, albeit from different worldviews. Thus, a limitation is that this study only focuses on clients' views of outsourcing. Have domestic workers employed by the outsourced domestic cleaning service supplier become just like assembly-line workers, where they are anonymous to their clients, performing routine tasks with little recognition from those whose homes they are servicing? Future studies could focus on domestic workers' views on outsourcing and the effects it has on their working conditions and employment relations.

Firstly, studies mainly focus on the Global North where domestic work and outsourcing have different dynamics, regulation policies and social changes when compared to South Africa. Secondly, few studies have sought to establish why people shift from employing a domestic or care worker directly to an outsourced domestic agency when direct domestic help is available and affordable. Considering these shortcomings, this study aims to provide a better understanding of domestic cleaning service suppliers from the perspective of clients, often omitted from the literature. Accordingly, this study aimed to establish what the benefits are for clients (former employers of domestic workers) who use domestic cleaning service suppliers.

Contends that the management of information services should consider the pricing of information products as a challenge which demands an understanding of economic principles. Illustrates the range of ideas and tools economists offer for the practical development of a price strategy for information products. Uses three scenarios to demonstrate the formulation of different pricing strategies for different information products. The information products used as examples in these scenarios are a CD‐ROM database, a training programme and a report on the involvement of mechanical engineers with the Reconstruction and Development Programme in South Africa.

South Africa as a country continues to rank low in the world of competitiveness. It is the aim of this paper to focus on the need for South African organisations to perceive competitive intelligence (CI) as one of the most important tools to improve their competitiveness through a systematic, practical approach to make the CI cycle worthwhile, especially through skills development. The paper intends to identify the skills CI professionals in South Africa need in order to conduct the CI process in organisations effectively, thereby improving the country's competitive position.

The research for the paper is based on an extensive review of literature to identify the skills needed by CI professionals. A survey was conducted, by questionnaire, among organisations in South Africa with existing CI units in which the respondents had to identify the skills they deemed necessary for the CI professional to run the CI process effectively.

Findings suggested that the majority of respondents were 40 years and older, in the top structure of larger organisations and had been using CI for longer than five years. The overwhelming result is that there are skills inequalities between what skills respondents view as crucial and those that rated highest in their self‐evaluation. Skills identified as most important include, among others, networking, research skills and analytical abilities.

CI in South Africa is still in its infancy and in 2008 no professional CI groups existed. As a result, there is no recognised list of practising South African CI professionals available in South Africa. For this reason the respondent database consists of attendees of CI courses, workshops and seminars held by the Department of Information and Knowledge Management at the University of Johannesburg.

The research indicated that where CI had been established in certain organisations for at least five years, it did not reflect positively overall on South Africa's current competitive situation. Where there is a systematic CI approach, however, problem‐solving is easier to address and negatives could be turned around. With this in mind and a proper “buy‐in” into skills development, it will have a very positive outcome for all the organisations that wish to improve their competitiveness.

For a country such as South Africa (and other developing countries) this research is of extreme importance as the country is facing a serious shortage of skills. Skills development of CI professionals can create a strategic advantage for the country and increase South Africa's competitiveness.

Climate change adaptation (CCA) has emerged as a significant new theme in development and many large development agencies, including bilateral, multilateral or non‐government, are embarking on new programs focusing on CCA. However, the development sector has witnessed the rise and fall of many new development themes over the past 60 years around which funding has coalesced, only to see them fade away. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the new concept of CCA is being conceptualised and utilised by aid workers in order to shed light on challenges and opportunities for effective CCA and development practices.

This paper has emerged from a broader study that involved 35 semi‐structured interviews, focus groups and participant observation with various stakeholders engaged in development and CCA. The research sought to understand how development actors defined CCA, what activities they associated with it, and how they were using the concept in their work.

This paper finds that there is a range of different, and at points contradictory, conceptualisations of CCA within the field of development. CCA discourses are being used in at least two different ways: to enable the re‐legitimisation and repetition of old development practices as well as to open a space for new practices and imagining of alternatives.

This paper offers a unique perspective of how a set of development actors are conceptualising and utilising the concept of climate change adaptation in their work. This timely contribution builds on a long history of critical development theory, which has interrogated development discourses, by investigating original data that explores this increasingly prominent theme in aid and development.

Bangladesh recently experienced frequent demonstrations by drivers of ridesharing applications. Since the drivers are not excluded from the technology environment, rather they are a part of the digital ecosystem, these protests may point toward the existence of unequal interactional outcomes for different stakeholders afforded by the digital system within the country’s social and cultural contexts. This research is an attempt to unveil the reasons behind value inequality experienced by drivers of ridesharing applications in Bangladesh and understand how power asymmetries influence adverse digital incorporation that can result in the emergence of resistance.

We obtain the data by conducting interviews with 91 drivers of ridesharing platforms in Dhaka, Bangladesh and analyze our data using thematic analysis. We propose an integrated framework unifying adverse digital incorporation (ADI) with the “powercube” model to illuminate our inquiry.

We find the existence of all three drivers to ADI – ignorance/deceit, direct compulsion and exclusion – exclusion being the most prevalent – that are experienced by the drivers of ridesharing applications in Bangladesh. We also find support for the four causes behind value inequality – design inequality, resource inequality, institutional inequality and relational inequality with the respondents placing the highest emphasis on relational inequality. There are visible, hidden and invisible forms of power involved in how the drivers are incorporated into the ridesharing platforms. The forms of power in the platform environment are exercised primarily in closed spaces and the invited spaces for the drivers are very few. The drivers in response to the closed spaces of power create their own space (claimed space) through the help of social media and other messaging apps. We also find that the power over the drivers is exercised at global, national and local levels.

Our research identifies norms specific to the social and cultural contexts of Bangladesh and can help decision-makers to make more informed choices during the formulation of future digital platform guidelines. Based on the research findings, the paper also makes short-term and long-term policy recommendations.

This research has implications for creating a decent work environment for ridesharing drivers which broadly falls under the Sustainable Development Goal 8 (SDG 8).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that integrates the ADI model with the “powercube” framework to reveal that the drivers working on the ridesharing platforms in Bangladesh are adversely incorporated into the digital system where value inequalities are operating within the power dimensions.

This chapter focuses on a case study of attempts at one South African university to widen access to adult learners from diverse race, class and gender backgrounds. It locates the education of adults within a post-apartheid policy framework aimed at transforming higher education on the one hand and pressures on universities brought about by changes in the global economy on the other. It then outlines the history of adult education programmes at the University of Cape Town, an institution that has an elite, colonial history and that privileges research over teaching. The chapter then considers the results of a 2008 survey of adult learners' experiences of the institutional culture and institution's systems, and the ways in which these present barriers to adult learners. It critically assesses three strategies adopted by staff on the ‘periphery’ of the institution to widen access to adult learners; these focus on: changing the institutional culture, developing policies and processes of recognition of prior learning (RPL) and transforming the curriculum. The chapter concludes that programme innovations have been possible with the aim of ensuring that curriculum is responsive to adult learners; however, widening access and increasing participation for adult learners also needs to be accompanied by significant changes in how the university is administered and run and that while alternative access routes into the university are theoretically possible, practical and political barriers remain.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the theoretical and ideological foundations for a research agenda on the social economy in South Africa.

The paper combines relevant literature research and case study work in a selected geographical region in the Western Cape province of South Africa to meet its research aim.

The perspectives emanating from the case study research on the nature of the diversified forms of new capitalist expansion and entrepreneurial activity in the case study area and particularly the way in which the new developments impact on the working conditions of farm workers lead to the consolidation of the authors' option for a constructive research agenda in which the realities of new‐found economic opportunity and prevailing conditions of exclusion are both negotiated.

From the point of view of an ongoing research agenda, further empirical and literature research will be required to deepen the understanding of the socio‐economic dynamics in the case study area and in the process further refine the identified theoretical and ideological position.

The paper contributes towards defining the theoretical and ideological foundations of a research agenda on the social economy in South Africa. As such, the way in which binary positions are avoided in positioning this research agenda in relation to the mainstream capitalist economic system can be considered as provocative.