Having secured the approval of Ashanti’s management team and major shareholder, Lonmin, AngloGold’s strategy for getting the Ghanaian government (as shareholder and regulator), and the over required proportion of institutional and retail shareholders on board centred around demonstrating that the transaction would add value to all stakeholders. However, Steve Lenahan, AngloGold’s corporate officer of corporate affairs, needed to reassess his campaign strategy following the surprise entry of competing bid.

It was the beginning of March 2003 and STRATE, the organisation that settled all equity trades in South Africa electronically, was about to merge with the Universal Exchange Corporation (UNEXcor), an organisation that settled bond transactions electronically. Monica Singer, CEO of STRATE, and future CEO of the merged entity, wanted to implement a balanced scorecard driven knowledge management process in UNEXcor that STRATE had successfully embarked on a year ago. Yet the process had been demanding: one that had required time and trust from all in the firm.

In May 2011, Vino Govender, CEO of the Johannesburg-based On Digital Media’s (ODM) TopTV, felt pleased about the 200 000 subscribers that had been secured in less than one year in the competitive South African satellite pay television (pay-TV) market.

From humble beginnings in 1986 with a single store in Lobatse, Botswana, by 2015 Choppies was the leading supermarket chain in Botswana. It was listed on the Botswana and Johannesburg stock exchanges and it had 134 stores in three countries: 75 in Botswana, 38 in South Africa and 21 in Zimbabwe. Choppies was also planning expansions into three other sub-Saharan countries – Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya – by the end of 2016. The company’s aggressive expansion outside Botswana was partly the result of frustration caused by the Botswanan government’s restrictive policies.

William Wilsnagh, business unit director of technology services at NamITech, reflected on a rather alarming incident that had just occurred one of NamITech’s clients. A virus had hit the client’s network, resulting in downtime of a full day. NamITech had won this client a year previously, in November 2002 and the client’s IS security had improved greatly. But, for Wilsnagh, the virus incident highlighted the need to extend the scope of NamITech’s services. Information systems security was all about ensuring the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information.

By now, it was June 2018 and group chief strategy and operations officer, Rob Collins, had just received the Sun Way (described below) measurements for Sun City from the company Blueprints. Sun International had contracted Blueprints to help integrate and embed its new business philosophy, as well as to re-engage its staff in the business. As Collins read the scores, he thought about the Blueprints process and how it had evolved since he last used it at Tsogo Sun Gaming in 2005.

It was December 2016 and almost three years since Rob Collins had been appointed chief operating officer (COO) of Sun International. When Collins arrived at the organisation, he felt that there was a pervasive air of “nostalgia” for the heydays when Sol Kerzner led the group, and that it was in need of change. Since his arrival, he had implemented a number of changes, some of which were still in progress.

André Botha, acting knowledge management (KM) officer for Sasol Limited, faced considerable challenges. In 1998, Sasol had embarked on a KM journey, championed by KM officer Marina Hiscock. In 2000, the group had adopted a global KM strategy to extend KM to all strategic business units (SBUs) throughout the group. While some SBUs had implemented KM successfully, in others implementation had progressed slowly.

In April 2010, Siza Mzimela was appointed as chief executive officer (CEO) of the government-owned South African Airways (Pty) Ltd (SAA). She was the seventh CEO to be appointed since 1993. As far back as 2007, the South African government had issued the airline with an ultimatum – ‘get your affairs in order or you are on your own’. Yet the airline was still in a financially disastrous position. Mzimela knew that she had to come up with a workable strategy for SAA, and wondered what the organisation had to do to turn itself around.

No of Pages: 13

In September 2016, Seapei Mafoyane, chief executive officer (CEO) of Shanduka Black Umbrellas (SBU), a business incubator targeting emerging black-owned enterprises, was busy writing her annual review for inclusion in SBU’s 2016 annual report. She believed that SBU had an essential role to play in ensuring the success of black entrepreneurs[1] in South Africa, among whom the failure rate was notoriously high.

No of pages: 18