https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/14473 2026-10-08T13:24:27Z https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/33003 Beyond Formal Support: Appraising Micro-Level Interventions in the Black African Chartered Accountancy Pipeline in South Africa Leballo, Tebogo The chartered accountancy profession in South Africa continues to underrepresent Black Africans in its membership. The government, accounting professional bodies and other affiliated institutional stakeholders within the profession have introduced various support initiatives to address this underrepresentation. Despite these initiatives, the success rate of Black African aspiring candidates remains low, posing a significant challenge to the country's economic transformation imperative. The study is therefore positioned to explore support initiatives emerging amongst individuals in the profession, specifically within digital communities. Using Ubuntu as a theoretical lens and applying a qualitative netnographic approach, support initiatives available to aspiring Black African CAs were identified and appraised. The study collected data from publicly available LinkedIn posts that provided or referred to support for aspiring CAs in South Africa. Selected posts were identified using keyword searches related to the CA(SA) pathway and support for aspiring CAs. The collected data was analysed and categorised based on the support offered, the support engaged by aspirants and the gaps that remain. The study found that support was primarily offered by individuals who had walked the journey. The support was primarily academic, with mental, networking, mentorship, financial, and learnership support also evident. It was evident that aspirants were engaging in the support. The identified gaps indicate a segmented, siloed approach to support, often leading to duplication, which could overwhelm the aspirants. The informal nature of the support also casts doubt on its credibility. Based on the study, it therefore recommends that macro- and meso-level institutions collaborate with micro-level support providers to complement one another and broaden the reach and capacity of support initiatives. This collaboration would strengthen the comprehensive support available to aspiring candidates 2026-07-02T00:00:00Z https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/32621 Developing a Compliance Index to Improve the Performance of Major State-Owned Enterprises: An Analysis of South Africa Galane, Oupa Madala; Makoni, Patricia Lindelwa; Chikutuma, Chisinga Ngonidzashe Performance evaluation frameworks are essential for monitoring and enhancing the performance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Nonetheless, the existing frameworks exhibit particular deficiencies in delivering a comprehensive assessment of SOE performance or facilitating significant improvement. This study developed a comprehensive compliance index (PCI) to measure SOE performance. The PCI was developed through a systematic and integrative review of the current performance frameworks and refined using the Delphi technique via an online questionnaire. This study contributes to public sector performance evaluation research by offering a more integrated tool that captures the full scope of SOEs’ performance, including financial, non-financial, and developmental dimensions, based on the South African context. It is recommended that policymakers, especially the National Treasury, promote the adoption and use of the PCI to assist SOEs in assessing, monitoring, and improving their performance. 2025-09-02T00:00:00Z https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/32620 Assessing the strategic impact of a performance compliance index on the performance of state-owned enterprises Galane, Oupa Madala; Makoni, Patricia Lindelwa; Chikutuma, Chisinga Ngonidzashe The persistent poor performance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) remains a significant topic in public-sector discourse. This ongoing issue has sparked extensive debate among scholars, policymakers, and government officials (Erasmus, 2024). The existing literature indicates that the absence of a universally adopted performance framework fosters an environment conducive to several influencing factors, such as significant power distance, cronyism, and materialistic culture (Kaunda & Pelser, 2022). The objective of this study was to examine how components of the performance compliance index (PCI) impact the performance of SOEs in South Africa. Adopting a positivist approach and a quantitative research design, the analysis examined the annual reports of 18 SOEs over a 10-year period (2013–2022). A panel fixed effects (FE) model was applied, with Hausman tests used to select the most appropriate estimator and address model limitations. The results show that the Z-score has a negative and statistically significant effect on SOE performance. The corporate governance index (CGI) demonstrated a positive, significant relationship with performance, whereas developmental performance index (DPI) showed a significant adverse effect. Conversely, the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) and human capital index (HCI) indicators had limited measurable effects during the study period. Data limitations and the absence of qualitative evidence constrained the scope of the study. Future research should include all SOEs and adopt mixed-method approaches to gain a deeper understanding of broader organizational dynamics. 2026-05-13T00:00:00Z https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/32174 ACCOUNTING EDUCATION IN AN OPEN DISTANCE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT: CASE STUDIES FOR PERVASIVE SKILLS ENHANCEMENT Reyneke, Yolande; Shuttleworth, Christina Cornelia Distance learning institutions allow access to many students who do not enjoy the luxury of studying fulltime at contact-based universities by providing flexibility in terms of time, space and finances. Globally, accountants are vital for the economy and it is important that higher education institutions empower them with the necessary skills to face the volatile working environment. Equipping accounting students with only discipline-specific knowledge, does not result in practice-ready accountants, which cause great concern for professional accounting bodies as well as employers. Pervasive skills are soft skills, also sometimes referred to as personal attributes allowing effective interaction between people. Using case studies to develop pervasive skills in accounting education, specifically in Open Distance Learning (ODL) institutions, is regarded as a fairly unexplored area. A qualitative research approach was followed whereby interviews were conducted with management members of the College of Accounting Sciences (CAS) at the University of South Africa (UNISA). The interviews provided insight into how ODL accounting educators in a developing country perceived the need to introduce a case study-based module to develop pervasive skills. It is recommended that the training of distance education accounting students should be adapted to include case studies for pervasive skills development. 2018-07-01T00:00:00Z