UWCScholar

This repository serves as a digital archive for the preservation of research outputs from the University of the Western Cape

Communities in UWCScholar

Select a community to browse its collections.

Now showing 1 - 5 of 11

Recent Submissions

Homage to a gentle giant: concepts, creativity, and collaboration in our flowing with Elmarie Costandius
(University of the Western Cape, 2025) Collett, Karen; Verster, Belinda; van den Berg, Carolien
This paper revisits our collaborative process of concept development through the use of the Flow process, introduced to us by Elmarie Costandius. We track and trace her influence on our lives as we re-member1 and honour how she shaped our intellectual and personal journeys in higher education. Using post-humanist pedagogy and new materialist frameworks, we explored how the Flow process encouraged non-linear thinking, sensory engagement, and experimentation in collaborative learning environments. Our methodology incorporates Jackson and Mazzei's zig-zag concept and Derrida and Barad's notion of hauntology to analyse how past influences continue to shape present and future pedagogical practices. Through collective re-membering and diffractive analysis of notes and artefacts, we documented how this approach promoted awareness and created new possibilities for knowledge creation. Results demonstrate that the flow process successfully facilitated anti-disciplinary thinking and the assemblage of multiplicities, leading to innovative teaching practices across different disciplines. Ultimately, this paper pays homage to Elmarie and affirms how the collaborative, creative process of concept development can both honour intellectual legacies and open new avenues for innovation and critical engagement in higher education teaching and learning.
Fostering environmental performance through green human resource management practices in hotels: the moderating role of green inclusive leadership
(Routledge, 2025) Vakira, Elton; Shereni, Ngoni C
The purpose of this study is to assess the association between Green Human Resource Management Practices (GHRMP) and Environmental Performance (EP) moderated by Green Inclusive Leadership (GIL) in hotels. The study conveniently sampled 274 respondents working in the hotel sector in Zimbabwe. Structured questionnaires were used to gather data that was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results revealed that GHRMP such as green rewards, green training and green appraisal enhance the EP of an organization. The findings further show that GIL moderates the nexus between GHRMP and EP. There is a dearth of literature focusing on the association between GHRMP and EP moderated by GIL in hotels, particularly in developing countries. Previous studies have focused on the nexus between GHRMP and EP moderated or mediated by other variables like green ethical leadership and transformational leadership. The study noted various initiatives that can be adopted by hotel establishments including designing training programmes that increase environmental awareness, training employees on recycling and waste reduction methods, communicating environmental awards in the organization as well as setting environmental targets for employees and evaluating their performance based on that.
Bayesian data analysis for sky-averaged 21-cm experiments with contamination from linearly polarized foregrounds
(Oxford University Press, 2025) Shen, Emma; Anstey, Dominic; Spinelli, Marta; De Lera Acedo, Eloy; Fialkov, Anastasia
The precise measurement of the sky-averaged H I signal against the radio background is the goal of global 21-cm cosmology. This measurement has the potential to unravel the underlying physics of cosmic structure formation and evolution during the Cosmic Dawn and the Epoch of Reionization. It is, however, hindered by various non-smooth, frequency-dependent effects, whose structures resemble those of the signal. One such effect is the leakage of polarized foregrounds into the measured intensity signal: polarized foreground emission undergoes Faraday rotation as it passes through the magnetic fields of the interstellar medium, imprinting a chromatic structure which complicates the extraction of the cosmological H I absorption feature. We investigate the effect of polarized Galactic foregrounds on extracting the global 21-cm signal from simulated data using REACH’s data analysis pipeline; the Radio Experiment for the Analysis of Cosmic Hydrogen (REACH) is an experiment designed to detect the sky-averaged 21-cm signal using physically informed models. Using the REACH pipeline, we successfully recover injected global 21-cm signals with an amplitude of approximately 0.16 K, centred between 80 and 120 MHz, achieving a low root-mean-square error (less than 30 per cent of the injected signal strength). This includes scenarios with simulated polarized Galactic diffuse emissions and polarized point source emissions, provided the overall polarization fraction is below ∼3 per cent. The linear mixing of contamination, caused by the superposition of multiple patches with varying strengths of Faraday rotation, produces patterns that are more distinct from the global signal. This distinction makes global signal recovery easier compared to contamination resulting from a single, slow oscillation pattern.
Factors Affecting the Development of Non-Traditional Export: A Case Study of the Cut Flower Industry in Malawi
(University of the Western Cape, 2006) Kubwalo, Max
Malawi has a narrow export base comprised mainly of tobacco (65%) tea (8%) and sugar (6%) as the main sources of foreign currency. Cut flowers were identified as one of the export products that could help wean the country’s economy off its high dependency on tobacco leaf exports. The decreasing price of tobacco at the auction floors coupled with new anti smoking legislations worldwide has made alternative crop exports critical. The Malawian cut flower industry has its roots in a horticultural pilot project set up by the government in 1988. Lingadzi Farm was the largest and the first to be set up. Maravi Flowers then followed it. Lingadzi Farm closed in 2000 due to high freight costs and was closely followed by the opening of Zikomo Flowers. However, the Malawian cut flower industry has been unable to develop at the same rate as those other Southern African countries like Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa. Her cut flower exports has dropped to under 0.5 million Euros from a high of 2.5 million Euros in 1996. Zambia and Tanzania, two neighbouring countries, on the other hand started at the same time as Malawi and have grown tremendously reaching 20 and 15 million Euros in exports respectively. Unlike the Kenyan and Zimbabwean industries, the Malawian cut flower industry has been unable to develop an out grower or smallholder scheme to increase volumes. The two cut flower farms continue to operate amid rather difficult circumstances.
A mathematical model for managing equity-linked pensions
(University of the Western Cape, 2007) Elmerie, Julie
Pension fund companies manage and invest large amounts of money on behalf of their members. In return for their contributions, members expect a benefit at termination of their contract. Due to the volatile nature of returns that pension funds attain, pension companies started attaching a minimum guaranteed amount to member’s benefits. In this mini-thesis we look at the pioneering work of Brennan and Schwartz [10] for pricing these minimum guarantees. The model they developed prices these minimum guarantees using option pricing theory. We also look at the model proposed by Deelstra et al. [13] which prices minimum guarantees in a stochastic financial setting. We conclude this mini-thesis with new contributions where we look at simple alternative ways of pricing minimum guarantees. We conclude this mini-thesis with an approach, related to the work of Brennan and Schwartz [10], whereby the member’s benefit is maximised for a given minimum guaranteed amount, which comprises of multi-period guarantees. We formulate a method to find the optimal stream of these multi-period guarantees.