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The transformation of the agricultural landscape is deemed as an essential nation-building priority in post-democratic South Africa. Part of the activity of transformation is affording disenfranchised groups opportunity to participate in careers where they were excluded. The purpose of the study is to investigate the motivational factors that influenced emerging Black farmers as entrepreneurs to choose agriculture as a career path in post-democratic South Africa.

This study adopted a qualitative study using a semi-structured interview technique. The sample comprised of 29 emerging Black entrepreneurs working within the agriculture context in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa.

Upon analysis, the individual stories of Black emerging farmers as entrepreneurs showed the role of personal influences; the community; the quest for financial influence through economic sustenance; and socio-economic influences as playing a part in informing career entrance into agriculture amongst the Black emerging farmers.

A limitation, familiar with qualitative research, concerns the use of a small sample size. However, a strength of the study is the in-depth focus, especially through interviews lasting a minimum of 1 h.

This study answers the call for a contemporary understanding of career processes in professions such as agriculture that have not received attention. This can be a practical basis to encourage more recent entrants into occupations and entrepreneurial pursuits that have been restricted. This study thus offers a practical basis for career counselling interventions in the agricultural space. This includes farmer training and development opportunities and provision of financial support to Black farmers.

The findings offer insight into the role of a range of socially embedded factors and how they influence occupational aspirations and individuals fulfilling their entrepreneurial pursuits.

This study ignites focus into an under-researched area, especially on the African continent.

Entrepreneurship.

The case can be pitched to undergraduate and postgraduate students and is applicable especially in cases when lecturers want to teach an introduction to entrepreneurship.

This case study is about Xoliswa Tini and how she started Xoliswa Tini Properties, an emerging and growing player in the South African property industry. This case seeks to be used not only by commerce students but also by those outside this subject discipline. The motivation here being that entrepreneurship is not restricted to a specific subject discipline. The case profiles how an ordinary person from humble beginnings becomes an important player in an industry that she may have been excluded from based on her gender and race. This case can be used specifically to motivate and inspire students on the importance and processes that accompany the entrepreneur. The case can be used within an academic setting to teach undergraduate and postgraduate students. Outside the academy, individuals training in the area of entrepreneurship can use the case in their facilitation.

To facilitate the case study participant in: understanding the lived experience of an entrepreneur from how they started to key high and low highlights on the entrepreneurship journey; providing an analysis of the role of the micro- and macro-environment in influencing the entrepreneur’s journey and their decisions; appreciating the difficulties the entrepreneur faces in establishing their journey and the strategies used to deal with such difficulties.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The study explores experiences of African immigrants in their self-employment journey. South Africa has been receiving many African immigrants seeking for socio-economic survival. This presents a gap to understand the self-employment journey of such immigrants post-settlement.

A qualitative inquiry is used with semi-structured interviews using a sample of African immigrants based in South Africa. Narrative enquiry was utilised in trying to understand the African immigrant self-employment journey.

The findings show strategies used by African immigrant entrepreneurs in their self-employment journey. These include immigrant relying on established relationships to respond to contextual challenges. Further, immigrant entrepreneurs turned to borrowing from family, including personal savings and using fronts as a capital generation strategy.

Based on the findings strategies are suggested as a useful precursor in advancing understanding of the African immigrant self-employment journey. This becomes useful especially considering ideals for assisting post-settlement of migrants.

The study explores growth barriers experienced by a sample of women subsistence entrepreneurs operating within the informal sector in South Africa.

The paper utilizes a descriptive-exploratory research approach and design relying on semi-structured interviews. A purposive sample of 45 women subsistence entrepreneurs formed the participant pool.

Three main narratives emerged. First, a sense of personal contentment existed as a potential barrier for women subsistence entrepreneurs. Second, the women subsistence entrepreneurs had no expansion strategy due to their circumstances. This served as a barrier to growth. Finally, challenges emanating from the home-front served as a limit to the growth of the informal sector business.

Based on the findings, strategies are offered to assist the women subsistence entrepreneurs in tackling the identified barriers to the growth of the informal sector business. A limitation of the research concerns issues that accompany qualitative research. Notably, these include sampling issues.

Based on the findings, strategies are offered to assist women subsistence entrepreneurs in tackling the barriers that affect their businesses.

Given the popularity of the informal sector in emerging nations such as South Africa, the study proffers suggestions that assist the advancement of subsistence entrepreneurship, especially within the informal sector. The role of women in all this is heightened.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the challenges and resolution tactics of women middle managers in the South African public service.

A qualitative research approach using semi-structured interviews was used as a data collection technique. Narrative analysis was used with a sample of 20 women middle managers working within the South African public service.

Narratives of challenges faced by women middle managers in the South African public service included relational issues, with a subtle undermining of women managers, challenges rooted within the socio-cultural milieu – perversely undermining the experience of being a manager and challenges stemming from public service in general such as corruption, in turn, questioning the ability of women managers to handle such. In addressing these challenges, the women middle managers exercised three individual performative actions in response to the identified challenges. These include using direct confrontation, relying on networks for guidance and relying on indirect confrontation.

Sample size challenges feature as a notable limitation including the research being conducted in only one political province of South Africa. Caution should be exercised when seeking to generalise the findings to other contexts.

Understanding the challenges and resolution tactics of women middle managers can be a useful precursor to management development interventions.

The study answers call for more processual career and management development studies that help understand not only challenges but also resolution strategies. This study illustrates both the difficulty of this and ensures opportunity for the advancement of women in management.

South African Black graduates experience a transition challenge between the higher education context and the labor market system. The study focuses on rural Black students' perceived work readiness and assessment of labor market access in South Africa.

Focus groups and unstructured individual interviews were conducted with 30 final-year students enrolled at a historically Black university in South Africa.

Four main narratives were found to affect rural Black students' perceptions of work readiness and their assessment of labor market access in South Africa. These include: (1) language of instruction within the higher education system, (2) challenges around access to career counseling and guidance services, (3) dealing with a curriculum system not relevant to the lived experiences of Black people and finally, (4) challenges inherent within higher education institution attended by Black students. A thread among these four appraisals appears to be the rural Black students' concern around the entire education system from basic to higher education.

The paper sheds light and presents an understanding of perceptions of an educational system and issues around work readiness and labor market access in South Africa.

South Africa has witnessed an increase in self-initiated academic expatriates (SIAEs) coming into the country from all over the world. This movement of labour can result in South Africa performing better than any other African country. However, expatriation is accompanied by several challenges which affect both work and non-work scopes. Given that more is needed to understand the lived experiences of the expatriates, especially self-initiated expatriates from and in Africa, the purpose of this paper is to provide the basis for interventions to assist the expatriates in overcoming challenges by understanding their lived experiences.

The study used an interpretivist approach to understand the lived experiences of SIAEs. The data were collected through the use of unstructured interviews of 25 expatriate academics within South Africa. The individual narratives were analysed through structural and thematic analysis to develop themes.

Through the stories and narratives, the expatriation experience was one framed to be a challenging process. The lived experiences can be grouped into life and career experiences. The life experiences consist of immigration difficulties, family separation, social adjustment difficulties and unavailability of accommodation. Career experiences include remuneration differences, gender discrimination, limited professional development opportunities and communication difficulties, which affect both work and non-work experiences. Person–environment fit did not play a significant role in the experiences of the academic expatriates.

The findings showed that the lived experiences of SIAEs in Africa were mostly negative. Higher education institutions looking at hiring academic expatriates should assist the expatriates to have better experiences not only for individual benefit but for institutional benefit as well. However, this role is not only placed in the hands of the organisation but may also require individual effort.

The findings outlined in this study provide a picture of the lived experiences of SIAEs in an African context. The findings are fundamental in understanding this neglected sample group in the extant literature. They also assist in advancing literature and proposing possible solutions. All this is important, given global talent shortages which have warranted the need for highly skilled employees in countries like South Africa.

The aim was to assess the quality of newspaper reporting of university student suicides in South Africa, using the World Health Organisation guidelines. Suicide among university students is a growing public health problem. The media has an important role to play in preventing student suicides by adhering to international best practice guidelines on ethical reporting of suicides.

This study conducted a content analysis of print medium newspaper articles in the 13 most widely read English language South African newspapers from the period of January 2017 to January 2020.

The initial search yielded a total of 28 news reports, of which 19 met this study’s inclusion criteria and were analysed using content analysis. The quality of reporting showed both potentially harmful and helpful characteristics. Poor adherence to international reporting guidelines were found in the description of method and location of suicide, sensational headlines, publishing photos of the deceased, linking suicide to criminality, simplistic narration of the life events leading to the suicide and use of sensational and potentially triggering language. No reports adhered to all reporting guidelines. Findings suggests that there are widespread potentially unhelpful practices in the reporting of student suicides and a need for suicide prevention experts to work with journalists to promote critical reflexivity and ethical reasoning when writing about student suicides.

This study only included news reports published in English in the most widely read newspapers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of its kind to systematically examine media reporting on suicide in South Africa.

This study examined the influence of social media use on graduateness and the employability of exit students in South Africa.

The study used quantitative and descriptive research designs to test the proposed hypotheses. An online survey was used to collect the data from a study sample. A sample of 411 respondents was received, with structural equation modelling (SEM) being used to assess the model fit.

The study found that the direct effect of social media use on graduateness skills is significant. Secondly, the direct effect of graduateness skills on perceived employability is also significant. The results also showed existence of support for the mediation of graduateness skills on the relationship between social media use and perceived employability.

The study provides empirical evidence to the proposed model and infers the potential role of social media in addressing issues related to graduateness and the employability of exit students.

In addressing the challenge of unemployment, the use of social media can potentially aid in matters of skills acquisition.

The results demonstrate how technology through the use of social media potentially fits within enhancing graduateness and employability skills.

There is noted emphasis on the role of small businesses as conduits for economic development especially in emerging economies. Given this, there is need for constantly seeking for ways to assist small businesses achieve success. Calls exist in the literature to investigate the combined role that strategy and human resource management practices can play leading to efforts of financial success.

A structured questionnaire was utilised and data collected from 401 small businesses operating in the Eastern Province of South Africa. Pearson product–moment correlation and hierarchical regression were used in the data analysis.

The results confirm that a direct relationship exists between strategy and financial performance. Further, the relationship is made significant only through the mediation effect of human resource management practices.

To fully realise the enactment of strategy within small businesses there is need to pay attention to the role that human resource management practices may potentially have on financial performance. Small business owner-managers need to ground their strategies with sound human resource management practices. Through this, firm financial performance can be attained.

The paper sheds light and presents a model that illustrates the mediating role of human resource management practices on the relationship between strategy and financial performance.