Adèle Thomas

Governance at South African state‐owned enterprises: what do annual reports and the print media tell us?

Purpose – The overall objective of the study was to track, over a two‐year period, the reported incidences of corporate governance transgressions at five strategic South African state‐owned enterprises (SOEs).Design/methodology/approach – Transgressions for each SOE were documented against the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Developments framework of best practice in governance for SOEs by reviewing annual reports and newspaper article citations over a two‐year period.Findings – While political intervention in the operational running of each SOE is apparent, government appears not to have fulfilled its oversight role of ensuring the sound governance of SOEs according to best practices. While the SOEs appear to comply with external governance demands, compliance to internal, self‐regulated governance appears to be lacking.Research limitations/implications – The use of annual reports and media reports to document governance practices are open to subjectivity. The broader extrapolation of finding...

Student academic dishonesty: What do academics think and do, and what are the barriers to action?

The aims of the study were to explore the awareness of and attitudes towards student academic dishonesty at a South African university, and to explore perceived personal and institutional barriers to taking action against such dishonesty. All full-time academic staff at the University of Johannes- burg were anonymously surveyed during late 2009. The findings indicated a high level of awareness of student academic dishonesty, with few faculty members taking action against it. Four groups of barriers to preventing and acting on student academic dishonesty were identified, with two of these barrier groups being significantly related to willingness to report student academic dishonesty.

Faculty reluctance to report student plagiarism: A case study

Internationally, student plagiarism is on the rise despite measures introduced by universities to detect its occurrence and to institute actions to prevent and address this practice. One of the reasons that contributes to this problem is the reluctance of faculty to report student plagiarism. Through the medium of a disguised South African case study, this paper advances reasons to explain this oversight. Such reasons include psychological discomfort, opportunity costs, administrative bureaucracy and a prevailing culture of managerialism. Recommendations are furnished to faculty alerting them to practices of which they must be aware when intending to report student plagiarism. Recommendations are also proposed to university leaders and administrators with regard for the need to support faculty who report student plagiarism.

Managing plagiarism of South African Honours students: Does an intervention have any effect?

The aim of the study was to investigate whether an intervention to address post-graduate student plagiarism in an Honours programme in Human Resource Management at a South African university had an impact one-year later. In a quasi-experimental design, the sample comprised 34 students in a control group and 70 students in two intervention groups. Student essays were examined for different types of plagiarism at two different times and compared by means of Wilcoxon Signed-Rank and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Findings indicate that students who were exposed to both parts of an intervention evidenced less plagiarism in their essays one year later than those who were exposed to only one part of the intervention or no intervention at all. https://doi.org/10.19108/KOERS.82.1.2305

Internal governance imperatives for universities

In a world of increasing concern about corporate governance, universities should be at the forefront of role modelling sound governance and promoting the development of moral standards in society in accordance with one of their central mandates. This paper argues that compliance with relevant legislation and higher education policy of the country is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for sound and meaningful governance within universities. What is also required is the exposing and addressing of those ‘less easy to articulate’ and often subtle practices that render meaningless espoused values and that hamper full collegiality that can contribute to the achievement of university objectives. In addition, this omission has resulted in poor role modelling of governance standards to students who pass through universities on their way to becoming future leaders and decision-makers. These are the students who may translate their university experience into the way they influence, in some way, the moral standards of society. The paper concludes by posing three questions, as a start, to guide the interrogation of governance and to begin the process of developing moral responsibility at universities.