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Prof Peter Rosseel delivers guest lecture during UFS visit

13 August 2024 | Story Anthony Mthembu | Photo Sibahle Dayimani and Amandla Kulu

The Business School at the University of the Free State (UFS) hosted Prof Peter Rosseel, Managing Director of Management Consulting and Research – a spin-off of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium – for a guest lecture during his visit to the UFS Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences (EMS).

The guest lecture took place on 19 July 2024 in the Business School Auditorium and was attended by academics from the UFS.

Reflecting on the lecture

The lecture presented by Prof Rosseel focused on how combining strategy, strategy implementation, culture transformation, leadership, and learning successfully leads to sustainable growth, creates engagement, and delivers tangible results. Throughout the lecture, Prof Rosseel spoke about how experts tend to make bad leaders and therefore stop change from happening within an organisation. In fact, he highlighted that, “Experts stop change from happening within the workplace because experts, by definition, look through the eyes of their expertise, but you cannot reduce the world to different forms of expertise, as it is holistic.” As such, he argued that to change an organisation, one must see things from the point of view of others.

Furthermore, Prof Rosseel delved deeper into the hierarchical operating model within organisations. He indicated that the above model should be one community within organisations; however, unfortunately it is not. This is because organisations are made up of several departments such as finance and human resources. As such, he regards these departments to be silos that could prove to be detrimental to organisations, as each silo can create its own culture as opposed to an organisational culture. These are some of the points he discussed throughout the lecture.

After the lecture concluded, the audience had the opportunity to engage with Prof Rosseel on his viewpoints. In fact, Lyle Markham, Academic Head of Department and Lecturer in Industrial Psychology at the UFS, was one of the audience members and described the lecture as insightful.

News Archive

Housing strategy must accommodate special needs

2005-10-17

Dr Mark Napier of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)

South Africa’s housing strategy must give attention to people with special needs, including people with disabilities as well as people living with HIV / AIDS and those in poverty.

This was the view expressed by Dr Mark Napier of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) during his recent presentation to the Housing Research Day organised by the Centre for Development Support (CDS) at the University of the Free State (UFS).

Dr Napier previously worked in the national Department of Housing and was involved in shaping the recently launched “Breaking New Ground” housing strategy of Minister Lindiwe Sisulu.

He said the changing social and demographic trends in South African society, especially after 11 years of democracy, required more flexibility in housing delivery to address the housing needs of different groups of people. “For example, there are people who wish to or may be required to be spatially mobile because of their work or other reasons. There are also those communities who are vulnerable to disasters,” he said.

According to Dr Napier, housing delivery faced a number of challenges which needed to be addressed, including:

the withdrawal of larger construction firms
perceptions of low profit margins in the private sector
the slow process of developing an emerging contractor sector
access to bridging and other finance
the ability to retain capacity and expertise mainly at municipal level
the acquisition of well located (especially inner city) land

Dr Napier said the new housing strategy – which is called “Breaking New Ground” – tries to go beyond the provision of basic shelter to the establishment of sustainable settlements. It is also tries to be more responsive to housing demand rather than being supply led.

The new strategy also allows for greater devolution of power to municipalities in the provision of housing, through accreditation to manage subsidies, Dr Napier said.

He said a survey of people who had benefited from government’s housing programme had shown mixed results, with beneficiaries reporting a sense of security, independence and pride. Although the location of the houses was poor and there were increased costs, most beneficiaries said they were better off than before, according to the survey. Beneficiaries also highlighted the problem that they had very little personal choice between houses, sites or settlements.

There was also the perceived failure of developers and municipalities to repair defective houses or adequately maintain settlements, the survey found.
Many beneficiaries also reported that they felt unsafe in their settlements as well as in their own houses.

Prof Lucius Botes, the director of the Centre for Development Support, said the research day highlighted the Centre’s ability to interact with real problems faced by communities, by government, the private sector and civil society. “This is how we can ensure that the UFS is engaged through our research with our people’s problems and challenges and enables the UFS as a place of scholarship to assist in finding solutions,” Prof Botes said.

Media release
Issued by:Lacea Loader
Media Representative
Tel: (051) 401-2584
Cell: 083 645 2454
E-mail: loaderl.stg@mail.uovs.ac.za
17 October 2005

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