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13 August 2024
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Story Anthony Mthembu
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Photo Sibahle Dayimani and Amandla Kulu
Prof Peter Roseel, Managing Director of Management Consulting and Research – a spin-off of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium; and Prof Nicolene Barkhuizen, Director of the UFS Business School.
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.
Sesotho dictionary to be published
2008-04-15
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| Mr Motsamai Motsapi, editor-in-chief. |
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A comprehensive bilingual Sesotho dictionary will be published in the 2008/2009 financial year, thanks to the efforts of the Sesiu sa Sesotho National Lexicography Unit hosted by the University of the Free State (UFS). ”Sesiu” is a Sesotho word meaning ”a reservoir for storing grains”.
According to the Editor-in-Chief of the Sesiu sa Sesotho National Lexicography Unit, Mr Motsamai Motsapi, the unit intends to continuously develop and modernize the Sesotho language so that its speakers are empowered to express themselves through Sesotho without any impediments, in all spheres of life.
The unit is one of the 11 nationally established Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) structures representing South Africa’s 11 official languages.
Their main objective is to preserve and record the various indigenous languages by compiling user-friendly, comprehensive monolingual dictionaries and other lexicographic products, and to develop and promote these languages in all spheres of life.
The Minister of Arts and Culture, Dr Pallo Jordan, has lamented the fact that it is virtually impossible to find a bookstore in any of the country’s shopping malls that distributes literature in the indigenous African languages.
The minister said the capacity to both write and read in one’s home language gives real meaning to freedom of expression.
Therefore the publication of this Sesotho dictionary should be seen in the context of the development of the indigenous languages, as encapsulated in both the minister’s vision and that of the Sesiu sa Sesotho National Lexicography Unit.
The pending publication of this dictionary is the culmination of years of hard work invested in this project by the Sesiu sa Sesotho National Lexicography Unit.
“I believe that slowly but surely we have made some strides, as we have produced a Sesotho translation dictionary draft in 2006 covering letters A to Z. We have also built a considerable Sesotho corpus. But we still have a mammoth task ahead of us, because the work of compiling a dictionary does not end”, said Mr Motsapi.
“All Sesotho speakers should be involved, as the language belongs to the speech communities, and not to certain individuals”, he added.
He said given the reality that the UFS is situated in a predominantly Sesotho-speaking province and is part of its general community, it will always benefit the university to be part of the efforts of the South African nation to address the past by ensuring the development of the Sesotho language.
The unit is located in the African Languages Department of the Faculty of the Humanities at the UFS, and collaborates closely with the Language Research and Development Centre (LRDC) at the UFS to further the development of the Sesotho language. It is funded by PanSALB.
Media Release
Issued by: Mangaliso Radebe
Assistant Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2828
Cell: 078 460 3320
E-mail: radebemt.stg@ufs.ac.za
15 April 2008
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