Story Analyzing als Zugang zur Organisationskultur

The Psychohistory of Lloyd deMause as a key to corporate culture - The corporate culture approach is considered a central key to the understanding of the dynamics of organizations. Since the corporate culture mirrors unconscious contexts of meaning, culture analysis in organizations gain in importance. Narratives convey culture. So why not use narratives for the analysis of organisational cultures? The combination of data collection through work biographies with a resembling »narrative analytical method« such as the psychoanalytical fantasy-wordmethod of Lloyd deMause points out new ways of approaching organizations and their knowledge potential. This article describes the background and the accomplishment of such a research process.

Rural households’ social capital and welfare: A case study of Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

In a household or nations production system, social capital has been recognized as an input having major implications for project design as well as policy development. Using a structured questionnaire, household level data was obtained from a representative sample of 300 rural households in Msinga, KwaZulu-Natal. This study employed the conventional household economic behaviour model under constrained utility maximisation to examine the effect of social capital on the welfare of household, testing the hypothesis that the possession of social capital improves household welfare. The result shows that social capital endowments have a statistically significant positive effect on household welfare, in addition to the some household’s demographic and socio-economic characteristics. The study concluded that, access to social capital among other factors, is very crucial for improved rural household welfare and poverty reduction. It is therefore important for government to have knowledge of existing social groups and networks as this will improve the effectiveness of the present strategies aimed at reducing poverty.

Smallholder farmers’ access to credit in the Amathole District Municipality, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

Provision of credit has being identified as an important instrument for improving the welfare of smallholder farmers directly and for enhancing productive capacity through financing investment by the farmers in their human and physical capital. This study investigated the individual and household characteristics that influence credit market access in Amathole District Municipality, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, using a cross sectional data from smallholder farmers’ household survey. The aim is to provide a better understanding of the households’ level socio-economic characteristics, not only because they influence household’s demand for credit but also due to the fact that potential lenders are most likely to base their assessment of borrowers’ creditworthiness on such characteristics. The results of the logistic regression suggest that credit market access was significantly influenced by variables such as gender, education, households’ income, value of assets, savings, dependency ratio, repayment capacity and social capital. Implications for rural credit delivery are discussed.