Unisa’s College of Economic and Management Sciences (Cems) has set up a specialised support unit to bolster its expanding research actitivities.
A growing number of universities serious about South Africa’s research output and its quality have set up similar structures.
Cems — a mega college with more than 170 000 registered students — has made dramatic strides in its research activities in the past five years with the number of published research articles in local and internationally accredited journals doubling in only two years.
The Mrad Shahia Research Support Unit, named after the executive dean, Professor Mrad Shahia, will be positioned as a Cems research support function within the Bureau of Market Research.
The primary function of the new unit will be to support Cems academics in particular but also master’s and doctoral students in the college in undertaking sound research.
This includes helping to students from the first stages of developing research proposals to data collection, research methodology, database management and data analysis. Academic staff will also receive guidance on how to write research papers, publish in scientific journals and design scholarly presentations.Â
The unit will also:
- Give advice on the costing and pricing of research;
- Establish a pool of research experts who can assist Cems staff and postgraduate students and mentor new researchers; and
- Develop a repository of Cems research outputs that could be accessed electronically by users.
Shahia said: “Cems wants to make a meaningful contribution to the value, growth and improvement of business knowledge in South Africa and Africa by means of its research.
“There is a strong focus on applied and commissioned research and we value our close relationship with the private and public sectors.”
An example of the institution’s applied research is its involvement with operational risk in the banking sector. According to Professor Jackie Young, programme manager of the Absa chair in banking, operational risk is one of the fastest-growing management disciplines in a banking environment.
As the preferred provider for all higher education level qualifications of the Institute of Bankers, Cems is at the forefront of banking research and education.
Since its establishment in 1960, the Bureau of Market Research has completed a wealth of different research projects. Commissioned research includes work done for the government, local companies, the European Union and the World Bank.
Research projects in collaboration with other tertiary institutions and the public and private sectors (often through funding) include research projects about the African economy in the School of Economic Sciences, comprehensive research on the auditing function in South Africa and the development of an operational excellence model for hi-tech SMEs by the department of business management.