Sustainable Wealth Research Articles

Agriflection: A Learning Model for Agricultural Extension in South Africa

Prosperity—continuous and sustainable wealth creation—is an elusive goal in South African smallholder agriculture. This paper suggests that agricultural extension can facilitate realising this objective if an appropriate approach to extension can be developed. To develop such an approach requires that the definition of extension and the assumptions on which that definition rests are challenged. The objective of such an interrogation would be to reshape principles and assumptions so that extension can be re-cast enabling extension to strengthen the capacity of people engaged in agriculture and thereby tap the agricultural potential of rural communities. Such an approach would need to give practical expression to South Africa's policies to revitalise rural agrarian communities, putting them on a pathway to enduring prosperity. This paper proposes the Agriflection extension model. The model arises out of fundamental changes in thinking about extension. Incorporating elements of livelihoods approaches and learning theory, Agriflection is a learning model that shifts i) the context and locus of learning, ii) what is learned, and iii) the learning process. The model fosters a culture of continuous reflective learning that is submitted as the highest purpose of extension. The model suggests that prosperity can be realised through engaging smallholder farmers in scientific discovery, innovation and technology development based not on what they lack, but on what they have.

DIRECT EVIDENCE ON THE MARKET‐DRIVEN ACQUISITION THEORY

AbstractWe provide direct empirical evidence that share overvaluation is an important motive for firms to make stock acquisitions. We find that more overvalued firms are more likely to acquire with stock, and acquirers are more overvalued in successful stock mergers than in withdrawn mergers. Acquirers' overvaluation, on average, exceeds the targets' premium‐adjusted overvaluation. Shareholders of stock acquirers, whose overvaluation is greater than their targets' premium‐adjusted overvaluation, realize sustained wealth gains from one day before the merger announcement up to three years after the merger completion, as compared with a matching sample of similarly overvalued but nonacquiring firms.

Partnering, poverty reduction and rural enterprise advancement

NEPAD\'s (New Economic Partnership for African Development) overall vision for agriculture seeks to maximize the contribution of Africa\'s largest economic sector to achieve self-reliant and productive economies. In essence, NEPAD aims for agriculture to deliver broad based economic advancement, to which other economic sectors, such as manufacturing, petroleum, minerals and tourism, may also contribute in significant ways, but not at the same level as agriculture. Agriculture has been identified as the vehicle through which Africa will have to alleviate its poverty, hunger and food insecurity problems. Given this scenario, the University of Fort Hare (UFH) has, through its establishment of the Rural Enterprise Advancement Programme (REAP) and its implementation through the Nguni Cattle Project and the Agri-Park Business Training Programme, restructured its agricultural research, training and community partnering activities and established a strong partnering relationship with NEPAD Council. The main focus of REAP, as advancement programme, is to actively and constructively contribute to: i) Cost effective harnessing of the best available expertise and knowledge; ii) fulfilling all its functions optimally through the creation and fostering of purposeful and effective dynamic relationships or linkages – both of strategic and operational value; iii) organically growing, developing and replicating rural enterprises in other areas at the best possible costs; and iv) building a frame of reference for purposeful agricultural and agriculture related business and social growth research, training and community partnering programmes. Agricultural extension has now (through the design and implementation of REAP) started with new strategies to create opportunities for greater participation in agriculture as well as greater sustainable wealth creation opportunities for small-scale farmers. South African Journal of Agricultural Extension Vol. 35 (2) 2006: pp. 258-277

Michael Norster, co-founder of Australian Energy Limited (Powerdirect): sustainable wealth

Entrepreneurs shouldnt just leap from deal to deal, says bright spark Michael Norster who recently moved from electricity to telecommunications. Entrepreneurs should be more about delivering a sustainable business scenario. Helen McCombie reports. Copyright 2005 Helen McCombie. No part of this article may be reproduced by any means without the written consent of the publisher.

Getting it right on the inside

The world is dominated by brands. Almost everywhere we look and in most things we do, brands touch upon and influence our lives. According to Rita Clifton – Chairman of the world’s leading brand consultancy Interbrand – brands are one of the most stable of corporate assets, “demonstrably the most powerful and sustainable wealth creators in the world”.

Review - Robin Paul Malloy, Law and Market Economy: Reinterpreting the Values of Law and Economics

Robin Paul Malloy's Law and Market Economy presents a concept of the relation between the market and the law that departs from orthodoxy. The mainstream Chicago School approach posits that the function of the law is to promote the efficient allocation of societal resources to productive activities, whether by market action or by the action of public and private institutions, in order to maximize aggregate societal wealth. Malloy uses semiotic theory as a framework for developing a concept of law and market economy in which the function of the law is to enhance societal processes of creativity in order to serve sustainable wealth formation. Although this concept is developed at a substantial level of abstraction, the consequences of Malloy's prescriptions entail the development of societal institutions, especially including the law, that engage in the ongoing redistribution of wealth toward equality. This approach differs markedly from the consequence of the prescriptions of orthodox law and economics, which inevitably drive the distribution of wealth toward substantial and growing inequality.

Transitioning from Dysfunctional to Normal Banking System after The 1997 Crisis: Thailand Policy Considerations

Transitioning from dysfunctional to normal banking system after the Thailand 1997 crisis is fundamentally a dynamic, trust building, process-oriented management problem. It is not a static goal oriented process with close-end solution because of multi-dimensions and dynamic complexity nature of the problem. The critical factor for success is to have adequate understanding and prudent addressing of all the stakeholders' interests - foreign and domestic, private and government, borrowers and lenders. It is very important that banks should be restored to its normal function as 'bridge of trusts' for fund users and fund providers to nurture a recreation of innovative SME entrepreneurs. The objective is to stimulate new value added private investment for sustainable growth and wealth creation. To mitigate the principle and agent problems in this process, one must dynamically understand, monitor and administer the management process well. Good theoretical knowledge and practical experience on banking operations in incomplete and imperfect market are also required. The proposal for transitional process in stages on Schumpeterian ground is designed to facilitate environment for identifying and creating incentive compatibility with risks and rewards sharing among stakeholders in cooporative competition setting. Government as a principle first endows all agents with trust capital in the form of limited, but contestable, banking competition, partial credit guarantee scheme and demand side intervention in value added business activites. All agents would have strong incentives to compete with one another in repeated game-like transactions to build information capital and reputation capital over time. The agency problems are alleviated by reputation building, efficient truth telling, self-sorting tournaments game with third party monitoring. The main focus is to jump start the economy through the fostering of new SMEs by providing partial credit guarantee with limited time, market based incentives and other related measures.

THE CEO: A VISIBLE HAND IN WEALTH CREATION?

Commensurate with the growth of their pay packages and public visibility, the role of the CEO in the corporate value creation process has increased significantly in recent years. This article argues that sustained wealth creation in a corporation has three distinct elements. The first and most basic is the selection of the lines of business in which to operate; this element is probably the most visible manifestation of CEO action in large corporations today. The second element is the value creation model, which answers the question: How is this particular set of businesses expected to add value over and above the sum of the values of each business or asset category standing alone? The third element is the internal governance system, which establishes the corporate structure and administrative processes of the firm and, perhaps even more important, defines the corporate values that drive the strategic and operational priorities of the different business units. The authors suggest that the essence of the work of the CEO is to develop and maintain a balanced relationship among these three elements of wealth creation and to ensure that the relationship evolves in the face of changing circumstances. CEOs are inevitably faced with dilemmas in managing this process—in particular, the need to balance continuity and change and to maintain the integrity of short-term performance disciplines while encouraging not only investment in growth opportunities (which can hurt near term performance), but also experimentation and collaboration among business units (which are difficult to measure and reward with most performance measurement and incentive schemes). Adding to the difficulties of managing such dilemmas, visibility and a strong public image are often thrust upon (if not sought by) CEOs, who must then determine how they can use that image to strengthen the commitment of their employees and investors.

Sustainable Wealth Creation At The Local Level In An Age Of Globalization

(1998). Sustainable Wealth Creation At The Local Level In An Age Of Globalization. Regional Studies: Vol. 32, No. 9, pp. 863-871.

Developing a national science culture under free trade: What kind of knowledge do we need?

Increasingly, advanced societies are becoming committed to the Baconian assumption that knowledge-expert knowledge of science-based technologies-is the national basis for wealth and power. Liberal knowledge is seen as a luxury item that our educational systems can only afford to offer after it fulfills its primary obligation of reproducing and extending expert knowledge. In a “free trade environment,” however, the narrowness of expert knowledge will not be able to deliver the kinds of decisions and insight that will ensure sustainable wealth and standards. The lesson for both science policy and national science cultures is that our emerging environments demand both expert and contextual knowledge.