Department of Business Management

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Browsing Department of Business Management by browse.metadata.advisor "Breytenbach, W. J."

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    Review of postal reform in South Africa
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2000-12) Tiso, Sithembele Sydwell; Breytenbach, W. J.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Business Management.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The political transition that has occurred in South Africa can be viewed as the country's first liberalisation process. In order to ensure sustainable political democracy, it must be accompanied by a second liberalisation, socio-economic development. The new government recognised that the second liberalisation entails an economic transformation process that will re-gear the economy towards attaining the objectives of economic growth and human development. The restructuring of state owned enterprises (SOEs) has emerged as one of the major trends in new economic thinking of the present government. A list was drawn of all the state owned enterprises that were to be restructured. The Post Office as a state owned entity was also in the list. The purpose of this study is to assess the South African Post Office Limited (SAPOL) as a typical state-owned enterprise in the context of the restructuring debate. It analyses and reviews the achievements and developments that took place in the Post Office since commercialisation in 1991 up to the stage where government decided to restructure the postal industry. It first starts with the issues that led to government's decision for restructuring, the options for the restructuring of the Post Office and the selection of acquiring a Strategic Management Partner as the most favourable option. More important, the study explains the approaches that postal services have taken to improve performance even when they have been faced with widely differing legal, institutional, and regulatory environments and bottlenecks. This study looks at the international trends and compare SAPOL with other postal administrations in particular those that have gone through a similar process of postal reform. This restructuring process of the Post Office is discussed in detail. The case studies of the two postal administrations namely, New Zealand and the UK, and the steps taken and lessons learnt by these countries in reforming their enterprises are explored. The purpose of this is to outline several different approaches available to the postal service to meet these and related challenges. Lastly, the study looks at the implications of the Strategic Management Partner (SMP) within the enterprise and whether to employ them was a strategic initiative for the government. It also attempts to solicit important information where aspects of postal reform seem to succeed and also identify the problem areas.