Browsing by Author "Viljoen, Jacobus"

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    The application and testing of smart beta strategies in the South African market
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2018-03) Viljoen, Jacobus; Conradie, W. J.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Statistics and Actuarial Science.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY: Smart Beta portfolios have recently prompted great interest both from academic researchers and market practitioners. Investors are attracted by the performances produced by these portfolios compared to the traditional market capitalisation weighted indices. The question that this thesis attempts to answer is: Do smart beta portfolios outperform the traditional cap-weighted indices in the South African market? According to BlackRock’s smart beta guide (Ang, 2015), the smart beta strategies aim to capture stock return drivers through rules-based, transparent strategies. They are generally long only and usually implemented within an asset class, in the case of this assignment, only equity. Smart beta is thus an investment strategy that positions itself between active and passive investing. Smart beta strategies are active in the sense that they invest in factors that drive return to improve risk-adjusted returns. In the same way, these strategies are closely related to passive strategies in that they are transparent, systematic and rules based. In this assignent five different fundamental factor portfolios (value, quality, momentum, volatility and a combination of the four, called multi-factor) were created based on the smart beta methodology. The factors that were used are well researched in the market and have been proven to provide investors with excess return over the market. Firstly, stock selection was done using two different techniques (time series comparison and cross-sectional comparison). The best stocks were selected based on their fundamental factor characteristics. Secondly, two different smart beta weighting strategies as well as a market-cap weighting strategy were applied to the selected stocks in order to create the various portfolios. The risk and return characteristics of the created portfolios were compared to those of the two benchmarks (JSE All Share Index and the JSE Shareholder Weighted All Share Index). The smart beta portfolios created in this thesis outperformed the benchmarks as well as the market-cap weighted portfolios. Lastly, the estimation of the macroeconomic exposure of the smart beta portfolios using a methodology outlined in a Citi Research paper is presented (Montagu, Krause, Burgess, Jalan, Murray, Chew and Yusuf., 2015).
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    Dosente se belewing van die ontwikkeling van akademiese identiteit binne ’n privaat hoëronderwysinstansie met ’n dominant tegnologiese modus: ’n fenomenologiese ondersoek
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2023-12) Viljoen, Jacobus; Frick, Liezel; Strydom, Sonja; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. of Curriculum Studies.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Academic identity gained attention in the last decade within public higher education institutions with few studies focusing on private higher education institutions. There is no standard definition of academic identity where academic identity is considered a concept, which includes the dimension of the individual, the occupation the lecturers have qualified for, the institution where they work (or have worked previously) as well as the use of technology. In this study, the focus is on the concept of academic identity as well as the development thereof through the lived experience of full-time lecturers at a private higher education institution in South Africa. This study also investigates the dominant focus on technology in the development and functioning of higher education institutions. This research undertakes a phenomenological approach using the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) framework. In-depth phenomenological interviews were conducted with eight full-time lecturers at a private higher education institution that provides training through face-to-face and distance learning. The data was collected through means of three-phase interviews (as suggested by Seidman, 2019) and analysed using IPA. This analysis was done through the theoretical lens of the Cultural Historic Activity Theory (CHAT). A homogeneous group of lecturers from the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences was selected to participate in this study.The conclusions from the study suggest that lecturers are more focused on the mandatory work they must do as stipulated in their job description in contrast to the roles that lecturers traditionally have to undertake (teaching, research, and community engagement). With this, lecturers focus mainly on performing the role of teaching as this is the role they have been appointed to perform and will be evaluated on. Even so, lecturers mentioned that they do not regard being engaged with the community as part of their academic identity because the institution aims to be identified as a community-based university. Lecturers associate their role with teaching and must be adaptable within different learning environments (face-to-face and distance learning). Lecturers admit that industry experience is necessary for teaching even though all of them are not currently working in the industry. The lecturers who are actively working in the industry suggest that their academic identity is aligned with their professional identity with no differences between them. Regarding the findings related to technology, it was found that technology provides more possibilities but increased the workload. However, lecturers experience that technology is more important than their pedagogy. Lecturers’ experience was that the intensity of the use of technology is different between learning environments but that there exists an expectation that both learning environments should use technology to the same degree. This study indicates how lecturers initially adopt the academic identity from the idea of the institution before they start to develop and adapt their own academic identity. The overall academic identity found in this study is adaptability (as a process) where this study contributes to the literature regarding the academic identity in private higher education institutions within South Africa. Further research is proposed to confirm the concept of academic identity as used in this study. The investigation of the lived experience of developing and adaption of academic identity could be investigated in other faculties to confirm the experience of adaptability to academic identity.