Background: Work satisfaction of nurses is important, as there is sufficient empirical evidence to show that it tends to affect individual, organizational and greater health and social outcomes. Although there have been several studies of job satisfaction among nurses in South Africa, these are limited because they relate to studies of individual organizations or regions, use small samples or are dated. This paper presents a national study that compares and contrasts satisfaction levels of nurses in both public and private sectors.
Background: South Africa has large public and private sectors and there is a common perception that public sector hospitals are inefficient and ineffective while the privately owned and managed hospitals provide superior care and are more sustainable. The underlying assumption is that there is a potential gap in management capacity between the two sectors. This study aims to ascertain the skills and competency levels of hospital managers in South Africa and to determine whether there are any significant differences in competency levels between managers in the different sectors.
A lack of management capacity has been identified as the key stumbling block to attaining the goals of health for all in South Africa. As part of the overall management development process, this research aims to identify the skills that are important for health services management and to evaluate managers' self-assessed proficiency in each of these skills. We also examined the impact of past training on perceived competency levels. A cross-sectional survey using a self-administered questionnaire was conducted among 404 hospital managers in the South African public and private sectors. Respondents were asked to rate the level of importance that each proposed competency had in their job and to indicate their proficiency in each skill. Both public and private sector managers rated competencies related to 'people management', 'self-management' and 'task-related skills' highest followed by 'strategic planning' and 'health delivery', respectively. The largest differences between mean importance rating and mean skill rating for public sector managers were for people management skills, task-related skills and self-management skills. The largest deficits for private sector managers were for people management skills, self-management skills and health delivery skills. Informal management development programmes were found to be more valuable in improving management skills. These findings reflect the reality of the local health service environment and the need of health managers. It will be useful in the conceptualization, design and delivery of health management programmes aimed at enhancing current and future management and leadership capacity in the health sector in South Africa.
This research confirms that there is a lack of management capacity within the public health sector and also identifies the areas in which the lack of knowledge or skills is most significant.
In a base-of-the-pyramid context, the ability to start ventures is often quite robust because micro-entrepreneurs are able to start with few resources and can often sustain ventures for extended lengths of time in the absence of meaningful revenues. Yet, the ability to grow ventures tends to be much more problematic. This paper examines the role of resources in yielding competitive advantage for microenterprises in base-of-the-pyramid markets, arguing that the value of resources is a function of their ability to supplement formal institutional voids. We consider access to formal infrastructure, assets that provide stability and business skills as potential sources of competitive advantage. We also examine the effect of resource allocation tactics on microenterprise growth. We test our theory using a sample of South African microenterprise owners. Implications are drawn for ongoing theory development and practice.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.