Zimbabwean Companies Research Articles

Determinants of Human Capital Disclosure in the Mining Industry: Comparative Analysis of South African and Zimbabwean Companies

Determinants of Human Capital Disclosure in the Mining Industry: Comparative Analysis of South African and Zimbabwean Companies

Effects of Horizontal Multiskilling of Tradesmen on Employee Performance for the Zimbabwean Manufacturing companies in Harare

One of the key concerns in the manufacturing industry is technical skill acquisition. The present incompetence and poor performance among many tradesmen in their specialized work environment expose them among other factors, the inadequacy in; diversity of knowledge, different practical know-how, diverse skills and approaches. This is against the backdrop that many factors have created uncertain working environments due to rapid changes in technology, economics, globalisation and internationalisation. Consequently, they created an unbalance between staffing and staff skills as well as skills demand. It also significantly increased both under and over staffing costs. However, the use of polyvalent employees who initially had one skill minimizes such mismatches. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of multi-skilling on employee performance for tradesmen in manufacturing companies in Zimbabwe. The study adopted a survey research design. The target population was one thousand one hundred and eighty-seven tradesmen from all large manufacturing Zimbabwean companies based in Harare, from which a sample of four hundred was drawn through stratified random sampling technique. Then two hundred and ninety-nine questionnaires were dully filled, returned and analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences to facilitate descriptive and inferential analysis of the study variables. Linear regression results indicated that multi-skilling of tradesmen significantly explained employee versatility which intrinsically motivates them to enhancing their performance and consequently organisational performance. Pearson correlation results showed strong positive relationship between horizontal multi-skilling and employee performance. The study concluded that multiskilling plays a significant role in employee performance in the manufacturing sector. The study recommended manufacturing companies in Zimbabwe to rigorously implement multiskilling training programs for their technical maintenance staff.

Factors Affecting Employee Retention in Zimbabwean Companies

The decline of the Zimbabwean economy characterised by the high inflation rate has rendered it difficult for Zimbabwean manufacturing to retain talented employees. The quantitative research methodology was adopted in this paper. The sample size of the study comprised 100 respondents who were randomly selected from the manufacturing companies in Zimbabwe. The sample size of the study was made out of 10 managing directors 10 managers 10 supervisors and 70 employees drawn from the 50 manufacturing companies that were randomly selected. It was established that the companies are failing to retain talented employees and a lot of the employees are leaving the organisations. Retrenchments and restructurings have become the order of the day. The study recommended that employees needed to implement employee retention strategies to remain viable.

The Zimbabwe Code on Corporate Governance (Zimcode) and Financial Performance

ABSTRACT This paper examines the impact of a set of corporate governance provisions (CGI) as provided in the Zimbabwe Corporate Governance Code (Zimcode) and financial performance using a sample of 48 companies listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange between 2013 to 2018. The Zimcode was introduced in 2015 in Zimbabwe and its main purpose was to curtail corporate scandals that had ravaged listed companies as a result of inadequate corporate governance compliance and was meant to augment the outdated colonial-era Companies Act of 1951. The study uses a market-based measure (Tobin's Q) and an accounting-based measure (ROA) as proxies for financial performance. A CGI is constructed using three dimensions: board, directors and ownership; accounting and auditing; and risk management. Least Absolute Value (LAV), Ordinary least Squares (OLS) with heteroscedasticity consistent standard errors and Fixed Effects estimators are used to examine if the introduction of the Zimcode has improved the financial performance of companies. The results show that the corporate governance reform in Zimbabwe through the introduction of the Zimcode did not significantly affect the financial performance of Zimbabwean companies. This might be a signal that the regulators need to overhaul the code or gravitate toward mandatory compliance.

Loyalty programs for the passenger transportation industry: a study of Zimbabwean Companies

The paper examined firstly whether companies in the passenger transportation industry have utilised loyalty programs and then ascertained how much value the companies have drawn from them in enhancing market share, operational efficiency and financial benefit. Specifically, the study assessed the influence of loyalty program on customer relationship management, operational efficiency and profitability. The research was undertaken on ten companies who have implemented some form of loyalty programs through applied research’s in-depth interviews with the top executives. The qualitative methodology was utilised to simplify and manage the collection of data without affecting the environment and context. Data collected were further analysed via Chi-square statistics and the three hypotheses were tested at 5% level of significance. The results indicate that companies have begun to utilise loyalty programs in their operations, though not entirely sweating the programs to attain the best possible value from them. Most importantly, the study concluded on the positive significant relationship between loyalty program and customer relationship management, operational efficiency and profitability in the Zimbabwe loyalty program. Both filled a few highlighted gaps in the literature. Research for the road passenger transportation sub-sector offers useful theoretical and managerial implications as few studies have been conducted for the airline industry, which has successfully implemented loyalty programs through frequent flier schemes. It is recommended that companies should ascertain passenger behaviour through passenger registration, thereby enhancing the sustainability of the relationship. This study provides theoretical support for the importance of loyalty programs as passenger relationship management tools if appropriately applied and implemented. Loyalty programs offer companies across industrial sectors with useful benefits such as brand loyalty, business efficiency due to enhanced planning and profitability due to increase in patronage from passengers who are less sensitive to the marketing efforts of competing brands. This knowledge should, therefore, enable transporters to ascertain the value of adopting and using loyalty programs appropriately thereby enhancing their competitive advantage in a fast-paced world economy.

'In Zimbabwe There Has Been a Non-Strategic Cost Cutting Associated With the Zimbabwe Is Open for Business Mantra and Zimbabwe Companies Have Been Grappling With the Fallout of the Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP) and the Excessive Short-Term Thinking' Examining This Statement Using the ‘Evidence-Based Management’ and Any Other Strategic Human Resources Management (SHRM) Tools

Zimbabwe companies have been grappling with the fallout of the Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP) and the excessive short-term thinking and arguably non-strategic cost cutting associated with the Zimbabwe is Open for Business mantra. Some human resources professionals feel that they have been forced out of the loop as their companies undertook organisation-wide transformation to survive the attended economic crisis. According to Ndimande and Moyo (2018) the Zimbabwe is open for business is a foreign policy under President Emmerson Mnangagwa and this foreign policy has shifted from focusing on the political towards the economic. Ndimande and Moyo (2018) denotes that Zimbabwe’s foreign policy has been designed in such a way that provides assistances to Zimbabwe’s economic recovery, aids economic growth, generates employment and reassures a climate conducive to attracting investors into the country. This paper seeks to gain an understanding of the Zimbabwe is Open for Business mantra and the Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP), to examine that in Zimbabwe there has been a non-strategic cost cutting associated with the Zimbabwe is Open for Business mantra and Zimbabwe companies have been grappling with the fallout of the Transitional Stabilisation Programme and suggesting any other strategic human resources management tools which supports actions of Zimbabwean companies grappling with the fallout of the Transitional Stabilisation Programme.

Determinants of the Return Migration of Household Heads from South Eastern Zimbabwe to South Africa During Prolonged Crisis, 2000-16

The study assessed return migration by heads of households that migrated during the prolonged crisis, 2000-16. It collected data among 166 households from four districts in South Eastern Zimbabwe. Most of the male household heads had previously migrated, half of them to South Africa. Non-migrant heads were mainly females who remained behind when their husbands migrated to South Africa or urban areas. Both heads who returned from migrating to South Africa and locally to urban areas came back during 2011-15 with the desire to reunite with families. This period was associated with severe retrenchments by Zimbabwean companies that attempted to survive the shrinking economy. Yet it was also an attractive period to return home for international migrants because of the stability brought by the adoption of multiple currencies. Xenophobic attacks in South Africa in 2015 also ‘pushed’ some of the heads into returning home. International return migrants were significantly younger and had lower levels of education than internal and non-migrants. Three-tenths of them returned into households having traditional huts as their main houses which suggested that migration was unsuccessful for them. There is a need for restoration of stability soon after a crisis since this helps attract back human capital.

The Impact of the Buy Zimbabwe Campaign on Performance of Zimbabwean Companies in the Retail Sector

Abstract: The majority of the Zimbabwean retail companies were in the collapsing mode over the past ten years. This miserable predicament necessitated the government to craft locally-driven remedies, and one of them was the Buy Zimbabwe campaign. This prompted the researcher to assess the impact of the “Buy Zimbabwe” campaign on the performance of the Zimbabwean firms. The study objectives were to establish the impact of “buy Zimbabwe” campaign on demand for local products and factors affecting demand for local products. Furthermore to establish if a company participating in the “buy Zimbabwe” campaign performs better than non-participating firms, earnings per Share was used in the inter-firm performance comparison. The descriptive research design was employed, although the research was both quantitative and qualitative in nature. The classical linear multiple regression analysis was used to establish and explain the relationship between company performances. The results indicated a positive linear relationship between “buy Zimbabwe” campaign and company performance in case of those that adopted Buy Zimbabwe, whereas in case of those that did not adopt Buy Zimbabwe there was a negative linear relationship. The results also discloses that quality and affordability of the product are the most influential factors affect demand for local products and buy Zimbabwe campaign was regarded as the least factor to be considered by consumers. Results from this study point towards the need to put in place supportive policies for the “buy Zimbabwe” campaign to be effective. Keywords: Buy Zimbabwe, retail sector, local products, competitiveness, customer loyalty

Intellectual Capital’s Leverage on Shareholder Value Growth: A Lesson for Developing Economies

The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether there is a correlation between the intellectual capital of employees, i.e. top managers (<i>the agent</i>) and the shareholder (<i>the principal</i>) value growth among Zimbabwean companies, listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. By using these results the aim is to further examine a possible indicator for leveraging the efficiency of intellectual capital in a developing economy as a lesson. In order to perform this investigation, intellectual capital and shareholder value are quantified with, respectively, value added per employee and share price value per employee. These measurements are gathered from 17 Zimbabwean listed companies, divided into five industry sectors, that is, <i>services</i>, <i>manufacturing</i>, <i>agriculture</i>, <i>mining</i> and <i>information technology</i>, and tested statistically in order to find a relationship. This means, according to the researcher`s propositions on the return on intellectual capital, that there also is a correlation between intellectual capital and shareholder value growth. In order to provide an indicator for improving companies’ intellectual capital, a statistical examination concerning the relationship between the Intellectual Capital Multiplier (IC Multiplier) and value added is also performed. This examination shows that there is a strong correlation between the IC Multiplier and value added, value added can to a degree of 84 percent be predicted by the IC Multiplier, and that working with the ratio between structural and human capital is an excellent method for companies in developing economies to increase their intellectual capital. In conclusion it can be said that most companies in this investigation show moderately low values regarding the IC Multiplier, leading to an erosion of the companies’ human capital. In order to become more stable and lower the degree of risk, these companies must improve their IC Multiplier. What this study demonstrates is that an improvement of the IC Multiplier also will have an extensive effect on the company’s shareholder value growth.

Electronic Commerce Technology Adoption at the Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre

This paper focuses on the level of adoption of E-Commerce Technology at the Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre (SIRDC), a Zimbabwean organization established by an act of parliament, with a mandate to develop, adopt and adapt new technologies for the benefit of Zimbabwean companies and organizations. The study was done in 2004 and the findings reviewed in 2012 with similar results. The objective of the study was to establish whether E-commerce technology adoption would result in the organization being more efficient and effective in delivering its mandate and then establish the level of adoption of the technology at the centre using abstraction and a questionnaire survey. Abstraction results showed that organizations which had fully embraced the technology were more efficient and effective while the survey revealed that the centre had partially adopted the technology. It was recommended that the centre should fully embrace the technology and market it to other organizations as per its mandate.

Training employees as a management attribute of successful companies.

This paper discusses training as an important attribute of successful companies and identified as characteristic of excellent Zimbabwean companies. Although confident this attribute contributes to successful performance by companies in which it is applied, it is possible that contributions could be more effective were all characteristics implemented collectively. However, the research suggests that training alone can offer significant improvement in employees' performance.

Market and channel preferences of manufacturing exporters: A study of Zimbabwean companies

This article reports the results of a study on market and channel selection and preferences of manufacturing exporters. The main objective of the study is to identify market and channel preferences of Zimbabwean firms. Results show that exporters from Zimbabwe target their exports at developing neighbouring markets. Exporters realise there is a high probability of failure if they focus their effort exclusively at developed markets. Although developed markets absorb a higher proportion of Zimbabwe’s aggregate exports, they take only a very small proportion of purely manufactured exports. Channel selection and preferences show 19% of the exporters using sales offices to spearhead exports in regional markets but preferring agents and distributors in most developed markets.

Japanese techniques in Africa? Human resources and industrial restructuring in Zimbabwe

The article presents research findings examining the process of organizational restructuring in a sample of six Zimbabwean companies which had introduced a package of Japanese techniques, including total quality control, just-in-time and cellular manufacturing. The research findings highlight the importance of treating organizational reform not merely as a set of technical solutions, but as a process which also involves social innovations. While new organizational techniques were found to yield rapid and tangible improvements in production indicators, those companies which lacked the participation of upper management and had inadequate policies for human resource development and training had difficulties sustaining and advancing these improvements over time.