https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/10467 Wed, 13 May 2026 00:53:22 GMT 2026-05-13T00:53:22Z https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/31375 Knowledge management for effective and ethical management of public schools Romm, Norma; Nkambule, Bongani In this article, we consider the instituting of effective and ethical knowledge management in the arena of public schooling, with reference to a multiple case study involving three schools in Emalahleni Circuit 1,2 and 3 in South Africa. Teachers, HoDs, administrative clerks, and principals (20 participants altogether) were interviewed in depth concerning their understandings of knowledge management. We explicate Nonaka and colleagues’ model of knowledge management, which they developed to apply to business and public organizations and which is considered seminal in the literature on knowledge management. It is tied to (Japanese) principles of ba – where people recognize their occupation of a shared space with others. We relate this model to a discussion on the applicability of the African concept of Ubuntu to the knowledge management practices in the selected public schools. We use these cases to consider Ubuntu-directed knowledge management as a process of developing sharedness of purpose among the stakeholders within the schools (internal stakeholders) and outside thereof (in the wider community and society). We indicate to what extent and in what ways the participants experienced knowledge management in this way Tue, 31 May 2022 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/31375 2022-05-31T00:00:00Z https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/31367 Systemic thinking for re-generative development Romm, Norma; McIntyre, Janet The chapter offers a way of systemic thinking linked to a systemic ethics in which thinkers and actors strive to re-generate life chances of people and the living systems on which they depend. The argument takes into account the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of 2015, and extends these by propounding an ethic of inclusive wellbeing: this is based on appreciating (along with many authors advocating the relevance of Indigenous worldviews for sustainable ways of living) our connectivity to others, and nurturing compassion across all forms of life. The chapter spells out some possibilities for activating a non-anthropocentric ethic in (all) our relationships, while focusing on facilitating/strengthening our own and others’ capabilities for recognising that everything we think and do to living systems matters. Our thinking shapes the material world of which we are part. Put differently, our ways of observing/interpreting “systems” are not innocent in their consequences. The chapter offers two examples of taking co-responsibility with others for the understandings and values that affect the ongoing development of social and ecological life. Some implications for protecting the global commons as a matter of social and ecological justice are expected. Sat, 30 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/31367 2023-09-30T00:00:00Z https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/31341 Indigenous interventions, sociological understandings of inequalities and Covid-19 Romm, Norma The ways in which Covid-19 exacerbated already existing inequalities across racialised, gendered, and class relationships (within and between countries across the globe) has been expressed in a myriad of forums by, for instance, academics, journalists, NGOs , international organisations, and activists. I start with the links between ‘race’ (or what I prefer to call ‘racialised groupings’ so as not to imply that race is a biological category, but a social construction with social consequences) and ’class’ (as an indication of position occupied in the capitalist economic system). A United Nations (UN) Report in 2020 entitled Racial Discrimination in the Context of the Covid-19 Crisis addresses the question of access to health care and notes that “the Covid-19 pandemic has aggravated long-standing [and racialised] structural inequalities in terms of access to healthcare facilities, goods and services”. The chapter, which consists of my answering questions posed by the editors, explores this starting point and elaborates on its implications for Indigenous sociological understandings, Indigenous methodologies, and transformative educational processes. Fri, 30 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/31341 2023-06-30T00:00:00Z https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/31336 An Indigenous relational approach to systemic thinking and being: Focus on Participatory Onto-Epistemology Romm, Norma This article is structured around my locating a lacuna in the (mainstream) literature describing the history of the field of “systems thinking”. I investigate how dominant accounts of this history do not include an account of the contributions of Indigenous sages and scholars’ systemic thinking. Such thinking (and being) is grounded in a relational onto-epistemology and attendant axiology – where knowing is consciously tied to (re)generating reciprocal relations with others – human and more-than-human – as we enact worlds-in-the-making. The argument is that at the moment of “knowing/inquiring” we co-constitute with other agents (and not only human ones) the worlds that are brought forth. Otherwise expressed, there are never spectators, only participants in ongoing world-construction. I explore the way of explaining this as proffered by authors from a variety of geographical contexts as a backdrop to indicating how Indigenous critical systemic thinking has not been catered for by those writing the history of the so-called “systems community”. This is despite many Indigenous scholars self-naming their understandings as being systemic. I indicate that exploring global superwicked problems from the standpoint of an Indigenous onto-epistemology includes pointing to, and experimenting further with, radically different options for thinking-and-being than those that thus far have been storied by those writing the history of systems thinking. I indicate why it is important to take seriously this approach, rather than drowning its contribution. In this article I discuss in depth an Indigenous systemic view of relationality with the focus on a participatory onto-epistemology (and attendant axiology). Wed, 01 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/31336 2024-05-01T00:00:00Z