Historically, patriarchy has manifested itself in the workplace and influenced career opportunities afforded to women in the public sector. The slow progress in the transformation of organisations indicates there is a need for a structural developmental approach for women's career advancement. Mentoring has been recognised as a valuable development strategy and an affirmative action tool that can be used to support and promote women and groups that have been viewed as previously disadvantaged. The aim of the study was to highlight the significance of mentorship as a career advancement mechanism for women in the South African public sector. The study identified dimensions of mentorship (female mentors, career support, mentoring policy and leadership development) and tested the proposed hypotheses to determine whether a statistically significant relationship existed between mentorship and career advancement. A quantitative approach was followed to collect data from a sample of 200 women employed in the public sector in the different provinces of South Africa. Statistical methods used to conduct the data analysis included descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The results indicate that women employees in the public sector view mentorship as an important factor for development; however, the gender of the mentor does not necessarily influence career advancement. Mechanisms to support mentoring have not been established in the public sector, highlighting the urgency for managers in the public sector to ensure that mentorship policies are put in place.

The study was motivated by the question of what challenges and enablers women encounter as they progress in their academic careers. A qualitative research method was used. This participatory action research involved 19 members of a South African university’s permanent academic staff who shared their perspectives on women's academic advancement. A literature review was conducted to provide contextual insight. The four key themes that underpinned the data analysis are: factors hindering women's academic careers; challenges faced by women academics; advancing women’s academic careers; and advancing the employability of aspiring female academics. Unfair recruitment processes, intrinsic societal attitudes, low self-esteem and a lack of mentorship programmes were identified as critical factors impeding women's academic careers. Revised recruitment policies, promotion opportunities and support programmes for women are evidenced as critical to advancing women's academic careers. It is suggested that a concerted effort be made by women as individuals, universities and the government to advance women's academic careers.

Women’s empowerment (WE) is one of the main challenges to economic development in African countries. Scholars have criticized national development initiatives to focus on well-being issues and treat women as the passive beneficiaries of welfare-enhancing assistance. This study uses panel fully modified least square and vector error correction model to investigate the impact of interactive effects of WE and financial development (FD) on employment and economic growth based on the World Bank income group as follows: upper-middle-income countries (UMIC), lower-middle-income countries (LMIC), and low-income countries (LIC). The findings show that the interactive effects of WE and FD on output and employment is not significant in the long run in LMIC and LIC. Despite the significance of these interactive effects in UMIC, the coefficient is less than one. Also, the causality result in the UMIC shows feedback between WE and economic growth. And that FD has a direct influence on growth in LMIC, while WE has a direct influence on employment in LIC.

There is massive and growing volume of literature on human capital and productivity. However, there is little emphasis on the growth channels of human capital, particularly on women’s empowerment, despite its theoretical underpinning and relevance in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Understanding the effective channels of human capital is essential for policymakers in promoting sustainable growth and improved welfare. Given this, the study examines the effect of women’s empowerment through the ‘factor accumulation channel’ and the ‘productivity channel’ on SADC using cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) and the Dumitrescu–Hurlin non-causality test. Evidence from short- and long-run effects using the CS-ARDL shows that the factor accumulation and productivity channels of women’s empowerment have not benefited productivity growth in the SADC, although causality flows from the human capital indicators to productivity growth. The vital way for policy to boost productivity in SADC is to improve investment in female education and ensure that human capital is appropriately distributed and matches the economy’s dynamic demands. Based on the findings, the study suggests developing a framework to ascertain from time to time the marginal benefits of investment in female education compared to the marginal costs, both at the levels of the factor accumulation channel and the productivity channel in SADC.

Managing diversity is one of the major challenges in higher education institutions in South Africa. Additionally, effective strategy implementation is vital for an institution to be successful and sustainable. Questionnaires were distributed to the management of Walter Sisulu University, South Africa, to investigate the relationship between diversity factors and effective strategy implementation. The questionnaires interrogated the effect of the acculturation process, the degree of structural integration, the degree of informal integration, institutional bias and intergroup conflict, and how these factors influence strategy implementation. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was employed as the statistical tool to confirm the hypothetical model. Results of this study revealed that there is no statistically significant relationship between diversity and strategy implementation at the institution, and imply that diversity among staff do not impact on the successful achievement of strategic objectives in the institution. The findings of the study are contrary to empirical evidence by other studies.

Social media platforms have become essential to organisations in developing countries as they can offer a business advantage. This comes with security risks and privacy concerns as numerous scientific literatures have testified. Although the majority of employees are using social media privately and at the workplace (using the same device such as a smartphone), some organisations have not effectively established information security awareness programmes to protect their electronic information backbone. It is a fact that professional hackers are prowling constantly to gain access to systems of organisations and sometimes employees make naïve mistakes that can open the door to cyberattacks, which exploit vulnerabilities in the organisation’s system. The current Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis is a prime example where employees and students are encouraged to work from home. No organisation does have complete control over the security measures each employee has in place for his or her private connection. This study applied a desktop review to identify the cyber risks associated with social media use at the workplace. A scoping literature review gathered the data following a qualitative approach. The theories of reasoned action and deterrence were used as a theoretical foundation for the study. A model is proposed to enhance employee information security compliance when using social media at the workplace and demonstrates how awareness strategies can be employed to improve employee information security compliance. It is recommended that organisations implement methods to minimise social media risks to ensure that the integrity of information is preserved through these awareness programmes to employees.