It was the night before Wits Business School (WBS) economics professor, Eve Smith, was to teach a case for the first time ever in her 12 years as a university lecturer. As she thought about the session the next morning, her major concerns were whether the case would achieve her objective of integrating the theory that she had presented in the previous lecturers, and whether she would be able to keep the discussion focussed so that the session would cover all the necessary material.

No. Pages: 4 

In September 2014, Calum McCracken, chief executive officer (CEO) of Next Generation Network Telecommunications (Pty) Ltd (NGN Telecoms), met with his partners to discuss the company’s Kenyan dilemma.

It was Monday 14 May 2001. Nedcor chairman, Chris Liebenberg, was facing spiralling criticism of an incentive scheme that the organisation had introduced for top executives. Nothing he had done so far had stopped the negative publicity. In reality, it seemed to have made it worse. Since the end of April, when details of the scheme had been released in Nedcor’s Annual Report 2000, the press had lambasted the company and the scheme almost daily as an example of poor governance and greed.

No of pages:  28

On the evening of 6 October 2002, ‘Mr Fix-It’, Peter Flack, who was a partner in Coronation FRM, a firm of corporate turnaround specialists, hurried back to his hotel after dinner.  It was the night before his testimony at the hearing into the collapse of LeisureNet, a company with the majority of its interests in the fitness industry, and he wanted to prepare properly for the next day.  LeisureNet had been placed under provisional liquidation exactly two years previously, with contingent liabilities of almost R1 billion.  Flack, in his capacity at the time as acting CEO, had

Matome Modipa, executive chairman and founder of the Sebata Group of technical engineering and management consultants, enjoyed coming to work. His offices in Midrand, near Johannesburg, had an open and friendly feel, and the pervading ethos reflected the African philosophies of ubuntu and letsema that he had worked hard to instil in the organisation. Sebata had enjoyed steady growth since its inception in 2006.

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 November 1998, Rob Angel experienced a major challenge. As CEO of Engen, he had spent almost a decade working on the transformation of the largest South African oil company into a successful, empowered organisation. Petronas, a Malaysian state-owned oil company, had recently taken over Engen. Engen was considering a merger with Sasol Oil, a South African state-owned oil company. Both Petronas and Sasol, adhered strongly to the old command and control leadership culture.

Pravin Gordhan, Commissioner of the South African Revenue Services (SARS), had managed to improve tax collection substantially over his six years of office, whilst also managing to keep changing the institution internally. He was proud of the leadership role he had played in making such a complex public organisation operate efficiently.

In January 2008, the black-owned Pamodzi Investment Holdings (PIH) was at a crossroads, as its chief executive officer (CEO), Ndaba Ntsele, sat down with his board to discuss how to finance the growth of the business. Ntsele and co-director, Solly Sithole, had founded PIH’s predecessor, Pamodzi Property Developers, and grown it from nothing in 1979 to a multi-million rand concern, using only debt finance and working capital.

It was January 2005, more than one year after Mavuso Msimang had accepted the position as CEO of the State Information and Technology Agency (SITA). In its five years of existence, SITA had experienced tumultuous times and had been accused of poor service delivery, mismanagement and corruption. In 15 months Msimang had laid the groundwork for a turnaround and he believed that SITA was now finally on the road to recovery. Still, there was some way to go before the organisation was functioning optimally. Was he on the right track, he wondered.

No. Pages: 19