Orientation: Human capital lies at the heart and centre of any organisation’s success. It is for this reason that entrepreneurial envisioned corporations embrace the role of psychological capital in order to optimise their employees’ competences and potential.Research purpose: The study underscores the role that psychological capital plays on employee engagement, job satisfaction and employees’ performance in the manufacturing sector of a developing country context.Motivation for the study: The study was motivated by the need to assess the impact of psychological capital on employee engagement, job satisfaction and employee performance in the manufacturing sector organisations.Research approach/design and method: Quantitative approach and design was used in this study, with 257 respondents selected from 15 manufacturing firms based in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Collected data were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM) technique.Main findings: The results showed that psychological capital significantly positively influence employee engagement, job satisfaction and employee performance. Employee engagement significantly positively influences employee performance and mediate the influence of psychological capital on employee performance. Whilst job satisfaction positively influences employee performance and employee engagement, respectively, it mediates the influence of psychological capital on employee performance.Practical/managerial implications: Human capital drives organisational success. The manufacturing companies’ management need to maximise their human capital core-competence by strategically embracing psychological capital to optimise employees’ performance.Contribution/value-added: This study extends the theoretical academic debate on psychological capital, its effects on employee engagement, job satisfaction and employee performance beyond the current and existing discoveries.

Background: The automotive supply chain (ASC) is mainly composed of Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) who are the most crucial drivers of South African economic activities. However, the sector faces many challenges that threaten its survival. Besides the added impact of COVID-19, the industry is experiencing financial and operational pressures, which are exacerbated by the proliferation of cheap imported components that have flooded the local market. These factors affect not only the component manufacturers but also the complete automotive supply chain. Hence, in order to survive, management has realigned its operational strategies to the open innovation archetype to stimulate sustainable competitive advantage.Objectives: This study investigates how an open innovation strategic alignment influences sustainable competitive advantage decision-making amongst the various levels of management of selected automotive supply chain in South Africa.Method: This article adopted an exploratory, qualitative approach. Fourteen semi-structured interviews were conducted amongst Chief Executiver Officers (CEOs), senior managers and Research and Development (RD) managers of four selected firms who understood their organisation’s research and development initiatives. Thematic analysis was used to process the dataResults: This study identified that the process of strategic alignment is central to the implementation of open innovation strategies, which hinges on the operational levels of the employees in an organisation.Conclusion: This study provides a further academic understanding of the open innovation strategic alignment imperatives and assists management to understand how they can ensure that strategic alignment between and amongst themselves, as managers should cascade to all levels in their firms to enhance sustainable competitive advantage.

Aim: The study sought to assess the informal trader’s perceptions of the post-multicurrency regime financial inclusion confidence challenges in Zimbabwe and also through further future studies explore the potential of explicating a framework for achieving optimal financial inclusion in an economy recovering from a recession through further future studies. Setting: A non-probability judgment sample of 1000 informal traders in the Avondale area of Harare was used in this study. Method: The study established four potential financial inclusion construct pillars: demand side factors, supply side factors, behavioural factors and individual factors; these were largely influenced by age, which can be investigated in further future grounded theory studies to develop a framework. Results: The results indicate that healing from the financial experiences of the hyperinflation era of 2008 still has not been achieved. The study suggests a need for Zimbabwe to restore human rights, political stability, and ensure compliance with the Financial Action Task Force regulations regarding money laundering and terror financing in order to boost external confidence in the financial system of the country. Conclusion: There is still a challenge of confidence in the country’s financial system. The proposed framework is envisaged to minimise the negative impacts of the mistrust of formal financial service providers and boost confidence in the financial system. It is hoped that the findings will aid government to craft policies that will be perceived as supportive of the informal sector to achieve optimal financial inclusion. The study further suggests penetration of the rural areas through technological advances such as mobile networks.

The increased usage of computer based decision support systems is perceived as transferring decision authority to software programs. This has led to the notion that decision making power has been somewhat transferred from human decision makers and over centralized on the machine in the decision loop. The question is, has this enhanced the effectiveness of the decision support system in selected Universities in Zimbabwe? The findings of this study are that, to a great extent decision support systems are effective in assisting decision making in organisations. Responses from management were concentrated on the higher positive side showing that they agreed that most of the human resource elements were improved by use of the decision support systems. It was recognized that the older the respondent the quicker they solve problems and accurate data collection was found to increase the decision scope.