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The impact of mobile financial services on households in the cash shortage era in Zimbabwe

Benjere, Loki — 2018-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: The impact of mobile financial services on households in the cash shortage era in Zimbabwe Authors: Benjere, Loki Abstract: The study focused on the effect of mobile financial services on households in a cash strapped society. This research was prompted by the increase in usage of mobile money services due to increasing mobile penetration and internet usage in the Zimbabwean society. It was expected that with increase in use of mobile phones would assist in reducing the need for cash by integrating mobile phone usage and mobile money transfer as the country is experiencing liquidity challenges. Evidence in the body of literature points to the possibility of reducing the need for handling cash in a community which has embraced mobile money transfers. On the contrary, despite increasing mobile phone usage in Zimbabwe and the rise of mobile financial services, there persist increasing outcry over cash shortages. This study adopted a descriptive survey research design in order to investigate the extent to which mobile financial services have eased the problems associated with cash shortage.This research was conducted through a survey where pre-coded structured questionnaires were administered to users of Ecocash, OneMoney and Telecash platforms. The questionnaires were pilot tested with 20 users selected Dzivaresekwa 2 High School. Out of the 150 issued questionnaires, 124 questionnaires representing 82.6 % of the total questionnaires distributed were returned fully completed, while 26 questionnaires were not returned representing 17.4 % of the total number of respondents.These questionnaires were eventually used for further data analysis and presentation of results upon which this study is based on. The significance level is 0.001<0.05 which shows that model is valid because p-value is less than 0.05. As such, the regression model was a good fit for the current data. The study found out that mobile financial services frequently used pertained to mobile money transfer, followed by mobile banking and mobile finance. Also, on the factors hindering the uptake of mobile financial services in Zimbabwe, macroeconomic factors like inflation and economic output were the major driver of factors hindering the uptake of mobile financial services. The inability of using mobile money to procure from outside the country has result in the demand for cash as people and businesses require cash to import goods from other countries. ese influenced the actions and reactions of mobile money operators and the individual users of mobile financial services.The regression results obtained revealed that mobile financial services have had a moderate impact on the need for cash in Zimbabwe. Amongst the available mobile financial services, only mobile payments had a positive impact on the need for cash. It was recommended that the government should develop and implement policy frameworks which encourage the usage of mobile money. Also, there should be measures to avoid rating of mobile money against physical cash. This enables physical cash to be considered at par with mobile money and this increases its usage.

An assessment of competitive strategies used by the Zimbabwean state owned passenger road transport industry.

Zimvumi, Rumbidzai — 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: An assessment of competitive strategies used by the Zimbabwean state owned passenger road transport industry. Authors: Zimvumi, Rumbidzai Abstract: The research sought to assess the competitive strategies used by the Zimbabwean state owned passenger road transport industry. The basis of the research is that there have been many competitive strategies adopted by state owned road passenger transport organisations but there has not been any significant improvement in the performance of their organisations. Hence, it is with this background that the researcher saw it fit to assess the competitive strategies used by these state owned organisations. The research focused on identifying challenges to competitive strategy implementation, to establish competitive strategies used by their competitors, to identify factors influencing choice of competitive strategies as well as to identify how the government influences the competitive strategies used by the state owned passenger road transporters. The study used several scholars as a basis of literature to the study. Michael Porters model (1980) of five forces to competitive advantage was used as a backdrop to identify challenges that can affect competitive strategy implementation while studies done by Niclas (2014) explained the key factors to strategy implementation being strategy, structure and behaviour. The research was a pragmatic study which explored data using both the quantitative and qualitative methods. The target organisations were Zupco and Cmed, with a population of 183 employees and the sample was for 75 employees. Stratified random sampling was used to divide the target population into two groups of strata, management and general employees. Judgemental sampling was then used to select management representatives while simple random sampling was used to select respondents from the general employees’ category. Questionnaires and interviews were used to collect primary sources of data while secondary sources of data was collected from annual reports, journals, internet and books related to the subject matter. There was an 87% response rate from both the management and general employees due to their keen interest in the subject matter. The findings of the research highlighted that there are several challenges that affect competitive strategy implementation in state owned passenger road organisations. Some of these challenges are common in bureaucratic organisations while poor leadership is also a contributing factor. However, there are other strategies like effective leadership, communication, pricing and customer care that can be adopted to overcome the challenges to competitive strategy implementation. The competitive strategies being used by the private sector transporters are very effective and have pushed state owned transporters out of business but some of the strategies are illegal like touting, bribery and pick and drop at illegal points. While there are a lot of marketing and external factors that shape the choice of competitive strategy, the government contributes greatly to influencing competitive strategy implementation through its legislation as well as deliberate means like intentionally choosing state owned companies to ferry passengers during all state occasions. Conclusively, the study identified the main challenges to competitive strategy implementation and these were centralised around leadership and bureaucratic issues. The private road transporters have effective strategies that they use to be competitive like advertising, innovation and use of technology, a proper benchmark of these strategies could positively improve the performance of state owned passenger road transporters. The researcher recommended that state owned organisations should emphasise on effective leadership so as to improve communication between management and employees, encourage innovation and creativity and include employees in the formulation of competitive strategies. State owned organisations should also benchmark their major competitors and adopt other effective competitive strategies like customer care, diversification, making use of technology and promotions/advertising.

The impact of government subsidy on the perfomance of companies in the cotton industry in Zimbabwe

Taruba, Future — 2019-10-01T00:00:00Z

Title: The impact of government subsidy on the perfomance of companies in the cotton industry in Zimbabwe Authors: Taruba, Future Abstract: The study seeks to establish the impact of government subsidy on the performance of companies in the cotton industry in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean cotton industry had collapsed to production levels of 9 500 tonnes in year 2014 and the government of Zimbabwe intervened by subsidising cotton farmers through free Presidential inputs support scheme. The costs associated with financing cotton farming, processing it into cotton seeds and lint has proven to be very high and unsustainable to cotton companies in Zimbabwe as the prices fetched by cotton in world markets has decreased over the years and companies post losses each year despite the presence of a subsidy in the industry. The government argued that cotton production is important in reducing poverty as well being as a foreign currency earner for the country. While the government reasons are valid, the companies used as an instrument should also see their performance improve as a result of a well crafted subsidy policy. 23 participants in three cotton companies were selected from a population of 25 managers using Yamane’s formula (1967). The research data was gathered through questionnaires and interviews. A descriptive analysis approach including correlations was used by the researcher. The study revealed that the model boosted national cotton production to as high as 136 000tonnes in 2018, but the performance of companies did not respond in the same quantum. Further, the study shows that subsidising the costs associated with cotton farming was not enough, since cotton companies adopt a producer price set by government of Zimbabwe and they use their resources to pay farmers. The study recommends that the government should allow the market forces to determine producer price of cotton and should consider subsidising the producer price. The study recommends that cotton companies need to invest in reserving funds for free inputs scheme post government support, because the government subsidy in place may not be relied upon as it hinges on political will. The study shows that the free inputs support is one of the pillar that is sustaining the cotton industry at the moment.

The impact of implementation of change management processes on staff turnover : a case of Zimbabwe telecommunications industry

Mutesva, Gladmore — 2017-10-01T00:00:00Z

Title: The impact of implementation of change management processes on staff turnover : a case of Zimbabwe telecommunications industry Authors: Mutesva, Gladmore Abstract: Telecommunications companies, over the last decade, have undergone major change in terms of the manner in which they do business. The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of change implementation on staff turnover in telecommunications industry by reviewing the following key issues, the effect of change implementation on staff turnover, the implementation of change within the industry, the communication of change initiatives by management in the industry, and the effect of change implementation on employee morale and retention. The rationale of this study was to allow top executives to review their current implementation strategy of change management initiatives in the industry. Thereafter, it provided guidelines for improvements in change implementation for the leaders. Staff turnover can negatively impact service delivery and financial performance of a company, so these recommendations are aimed at improving change management initiatives. The study was descriptive and quantitative in nature, involving the application of a questionnaire, with a sample of staff from all departments in the industry. The questionnaire focused on assessing the impact of the implementation of change management processes on staff turnover in the telecommunications industry and was developed from the literature review. Data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), Version 24 for both descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings show that a significant percentage of respondents were in disagreement with the way management had handled issues related to change implementation, turnover, communication, retention and morale. With this in mind, recommendations on ways to reduce the impact of the key issues on the organization were made. These included the recommendation of lean methodology in order to deal with the first three key issues, namely, communication, implementation, and turnover. Finally, recommendations were made on ways to improve employee retention. The primary issue that has come to light is that although management is, to a certain extent, communicating change implementation, there is a noticeable lack of engagement with employees. The onus, therefore, lies with leadership to lift the levels of engagement with employees, thereby reducing the impact of change implementation on the organization by increasing the level of transparency in the organization. Improving communication would lead to improved trust, which would then result in improved employee morale, ultimately leading to a reduction in the staff turnover rate.