BEE Partner, South Africa Economy Watch

Deciding which entity to develop

In most instances, the business probably has most expertise in its own operational field. Ideally, the business should look to share this knowledge with Black business by contributing to an enterprise development beneficiary in the same field. In many circumstances, it makes no sense to share knowledge and operational capacity with a potential competitor. Before making a judgement on this comment, consider whether the beneficiary is actually a competitor or another business of similar nature servicing a different market. Read the rest of this entry »

The problem in most organisations seems to be that value innovation is kept at the corporate level and does not permeate the entire organisation. Employees need to see themselves as a critical resource in the job that they do, not just for the organisation, but also for themselves. Put simply, if an organisation creates an environment in which value innovation is encouraged and rewarded, the participating individual’s self-worth will improve, which in turn will have a positive spin-off on job satisfaction, job involvement, and, ultimately, customer satisfaction and loyalty. Read the rest of this entry »

William Vickrey (1996: 10) argued, ‘The “deficit” is not an economic sin but an economic necessity. Its most important function is to be the means whereby purchasing power not spent on consumption, nor recycled into income by the private creation of net capital, is recycled into purchasing power by government borrowing and spending. Purchasing power not so recycled becomes non-purchase, non-sales, non-production and unemployment.’ In an endogenous money world, there can be no crowding out unless the monetary authority stops lending.

The recent Asian financial troubles and IMF intervention have once again given credence to the view that increasing levels of debt will eventually lead to lenders refusing to take up further public borrowing. Usually this is cast in terms of countries with low levels of capital that have major private debt denominated in a foreign currency used to finance imports. Crises occur when the export revenue, which services the debt, falls for one reason or another. But none of these countries would have any trouble issuing debt in its own currency. Read the rest of this entry »