The Expanding Horizons of South African Business: Strategic Management, Innovation, and SME Development
Adapted from "The Expanding Horizons of Business and Management, Volume I: Organisations, Industries and Markets" by Demetris Vrontis, Alkis Thrassou, Leonidas Efthymiou, Yaakov Weber, S. M. Riad Shams, Evangelos Tsoukatos
South African Institutional & Regulatory Alignment
This course recalibrates international management science into the South African economic context. All frameworks incorporate statutory compliance standards and local market dynamics:
Outcomes-based governance, ethical leadership, and succession charters for (Pty) Ltd family and commercial enterprises.
SARS compliance (15% VAT, Corporate Income Tax), SARB cross-border exchange controls, and ZAR currency volatility hedging.
Real-world case analysis of Checkers Sixty60, Capitec Bank, Takealot, Yoco, and township micro-enterprise transition models.
Executive Mastery Progression
Progress through 3 rigorous evaluation tiers to unlock post-matric professional badges and verify strategic competence.
Mastery Progression Ladder
1000 Max XPProve your skills across 3 mastery tiers and unlock employer-verifiable credentials.
Tier 1: Associate Business Strategist
Demonstrate comprehension of cross-disciplinary business strategy, corporate governance principles under King IV, SME growth determinants, and cost accounting fundamentals.
Tier 2: Senior Management Practitioner
Apply strategic frameworks to resolve operational dependencies, design resilient supply chains under infrastructure volatility, and leverage B-BBEE supplier development programs.
Tier 3: Executive Enterprise Leader
Synthesize enterprise governance, evaluate crisis turnaround strategies, design multi-generational succession roadmaps, and lead institutional policy transformation.
Academic Syllabus & Modules
Complete all 5 intensive modules comprising 16 master lectures, interactive SVG concept trees, and scenario case evaluations.
Module 1: Strategic Foundations, Governance & Performance Dynamics
Master the fundamental principles of strategic management, organizational performance, corporate governance, and long-term business case development under volatile market conditions.
Cross-Disciplinary Strategy: Breaking Silos for Strategic Agility
Successful enterprise survival requires moving past organizational silos to implement integrated, cross-disciplinary management strategies that synthesize marketing, finance, and operations.
Corporate Governance: Steering Growth in Family and Non-Family Firms
Sustained corporate performance and growth are driven by formal governance structures, active board oversight, and clear succession strategies.
Strategic Controlling and Budgeting in Volatile Markets
Robust strategic planning combined with agile controlling frameworks enables enterprises to maintain flexibility and resilience during macro crises.
Performance Heterogeneity: The Functional Theory of the Firm
Firms outperform competitors by building superior epistemic (learning) and adaptive functions, creating a 'predictive knowledge budget' to manage market uncertainty.
Module 2: Youth Entrepreneurship, SME Growth & Accelerators
Unlock the mechanisms of small firm growth, identify personal and regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship, and master the dynamics of the startup incubator ecosystem.
Determinants of Small Business Growth and Sustainable Trajectories
Small firm growth is shaped by a complex interplay of owner-manager traits, industry concentration, and sustainable growth strategies that avoid cash-flow insolvency.
Overcoming Barriers to Youth-Led Business Growth
Developing an entrepreneurial mindset requires systematic mitigation of personal, financial, and regulatory barriers that stifle early-stage startups.
Business Accelerators and Resource Dependence Management
Startups and incubators operate as open systems that must strategically manage their dependence on external corporate sponsors and investors for critical resources.
Module 3: Leadership, Engagement & Customer Recovery
Align human resources with technological capability by mastering digital leadership, internal marketing practices, and B2B customer service recovery models.
Internal Marketing: Driving Employee Engagement and Job Satisfaction
Treating employees as internal customers through structured internal marketing—including recognition, empowerment, and transparent communication—is the key driver of employee engagement.
Digital Leadership: Aligning Human and Technological Transformation
Successful digital transformation is fundamentally a leadership challenge, requiring transformational behaviors and psychological safety rather than mere IT investments.
Service Failure and Recovery in B2B Emerging Markets
Resolving business-to-business service disruptions requires a structured, multi-stage recovery journey (failure, expectation, strategy, evaluation, and post-recovery behavior) to retain corporate clients.
Module 4: Emerging Market Operations & Supply Chain Agility
Optimize operations in volatile markets by mastering logistics costing (TDABC), predictive demand management, change management, and global expansion barriers.
Strategic Demand Management & Predictive Analytics
Strategic Demand Management (SDM) integrates advanced demand forecasting with Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) to align production with market changes and optimize inventory.
Navigating Barriers to Startup Global Expansion
Startups expanding internationally must overcome key barriers including liability of foreignness, regulatory differences, and institutional distances between home and host countries.
Operationalising Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC)
Traditional overhead costing fails in complex logistics; TDABC allocates expenses precisely based on the unit cost of supplying capacity and the practical time required for each activity.
Supply Chain Agility and Foresight in Volatile Industries
Change management and foresight methodologies (such as the combination of trend analysis and expert panels) enable supply chains to survive sudden macroeconomic shocks.
Module 5: Governance & Policy in the Social Economy
Examine the unique regulatory and operational environment of NPOs/NGOs and formalize SME policies using comparative institutional benchmarks.
Steering the Third Sector: Governance & Accountability in NPOs
Social economy entities (NPOs and NGOs) require formal governance, transparent reporting, and strategic KPIs to secure social legitimacy and maintain continuous access to external donor resources.
Institutional Quality & SME Development: Comparative Lessons
The effectiveness of formal SME credit and public financing is heavily dependent on the surrounding national institutional quality, regulatory simplification, and policy stability.