From humble beginnings in 1986 with a single store in Lobatse, Botswana, by 2015 Choppies was the leading supermarket chain in Botswana. It was listed on the Botswana and Johannesburg stock exchanges and it had 134 stores in three countries: 75 in Botswana, 38 in South Africa and 21 in Zimbabwe. Choppies was also planning expansions into three other sub-Saharan countries – Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya – by the end of 2016. The company’s aggressive expansion outside Botswana was partly the result of frustration caused by the Botswanan government’s restrictive policies.

William Wilsnagh, business unit director of technology services at NamITech, reflected on a rather alarming incident that had just occurred one of NamITech’s clients. A virus had hit the client’s network, resulting in downtime of a full day. NamITech had won this client a year previously, in November 2002 and the client’s IS security had improved greatly. But, for Wilsnagh, the virus incident highlighted the need to extend the scope of NamITech’s services. Information systems security was all about ensuring the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information.

By now, it was June 2018 and group chief strategy and operations officer, Rob Collins, had just received the Sun Way (described below) measurements for Sun City from the company Blueprints. Sun International had contracted Blueprints to help integrate and embed its new business philosophy, as well as to re-engage its staff in the business. As Collins read the scores, he thought about the Blueprints process and how it had evolved since he last used it at Tsogo Sun Gaming in 2005.

It was December 2016 and almost three years since Rob Collins had been appointed chief operating officer (COO) of Sun International. When Collins arrived at the organisation, he felt that there was a pervasive air of “nostalgia” for the heydays when Sol Kerzner led the group, and that it was in need of change. Since his arrival, he had implemented a number of changes, some of which were still in progress.

André Botha, acting knowledge management (KM) officer for Sasol Limited, faced considerable challenges. In 1998, Sasol had embarked on a KM journey, championed by KM officer Marina Hiscock. In 2000, the group had adopted a global KM strategy to extend KM to all strategic business units (SBUs) throughout the group. While some SBUs had implemented KM successfully, in others implementation had progressed slowly.

In April 2010, Siza Mzimela was appointed as chief executive officer (CEO) of the government-owned South African Airways (Pty) Ltd (SAA). She was the seventh CEO to be appointed since 1993. As far back as 2007, the South African government had issued the airline with an ultimatum – ‘get your affairs in order or you are on your own’. Yet the airline was still in a financially disastrous position. Mzimela knew that she had to come up with a workable strategy for SAA, and wondered what the organisation had to do to turn itself around.

No of Pages: 13

In September 2016, Seapei Mafoyane, chief executive officer (CEO) of Shanduka Black Umbrellas (SBU), a business incubator targeting emerging black-owned enterprises, was busy writing her annual review for inclusion in SBU’s 2016 annual report. She believed that SBU had an essential role to play in ensuring the success of black entrepreneurs[1] in South Africa, among whom the failure rate was notoriously high.

No of pages: 18

A number of factors affected the chemicals and plastics industry in South Africa during the late 1990s. With South Africa’s acceptance into the global economy after the election of a democratic government in 1994, a new export oriented strategy was implemented to increase international competitiveness. Sasol consulted with the Competition Board in 1998 in order to gain approval of a merger with AECI. The merger was expected to bring about economies of scale and to create a globally competitive explosives giant within the South African borders.

No. Pages: 24 

In 1984, three former Wits MBA graduates established BSW (Pty) Ltd. By the late 1980s, the founders of BSW recognised that knowledge management was the basis of their company’s vision and philosophy. In April 1999, BSW’s chief information officer, Pauline Smith, was charged with the task of recommending a knowledge management strategy to guide the company.

In November 2010, Clifford Barnett – director and co-owner of family business, SA Metal Group (SA Metal) – put his hard hat down on his desk, looked out on the busy scrapyard below his window in Epping, Cape Town and pondered the company’s growth. In 2001, the company had expanded to Gauteng, and its operations there were fast exceeding his expectations. The question confronting him was multifaceted, given the high standards achieved by SA Metal in the Cape.