WSU Faculty of Commerce and Administration

Our Motto 

From the bush to the globe!

We seek to grow from Rural village to Global Village!

Mission  

We will achieve our vision by developing, implementing and continuously evaluating research initiatives, learning and teaching programmes, as well as community engagement endeavours that are innovative, while working in partnership with our respective communities or stakeholders, with a view to achieving practical development and growth.

Our values 

In all our learning and teaching, research and community engagement endeavours, we demonstrate and uphold the highest standards of:

• Professionalism v Excellence v Accountability v Ethics
• Integrity

Research niche areas  

We are conscious of the inextricable link between our teaching role as academics and our research role and how the two should influence each other in an upward spiral to add to the value chain.  Our mantra is to teach what we research and to research what we teach.  Our research niche areas below are proposed against this backdrop.

Generically, the following are the broad areas of research focus for the Faculty.

• Entrepreneurship development with a focus on SME’s within the context of the Eastern Cape Provincial Growth and

Development Plan (EC-PGDP).  Among others, these include agro-processing, downstream manufacturing and hospitality.  The enquiry also includes different forms of entrepreneurship, such as co-operatives and the search for effective models that include and empower communities.

• Accounting for service delivery in the Eastern Cape Province in general and in local authorities in particular. This includes research into financial skills, management controls and practices, ethical issues in management, compliance with King II and III Codes of Governance, etc.

• Alternative governance and leadership models (e.g. traditional leadership, national, regional and local leadership) within a human rights framework.

• Economic growth and development models for rural and peri-urban areas, with a focus on the Eastern Cape, but with lessons and implications for the SADC region. This includes new models of Black economic empowerment, environmental impact assessment, the Global Financial Crisis and its impact on developing economies, particularly poor and rural communities

• Human Capital Development and contemporary challenges such as HIV/AIDS at work, human resources management challenges in Africa, productivity enhancement models in the developmental context, new and relevant management and leadership paradigms. etc.