Service Departments in HIT
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://cris.hit.ac.zw/handle/123456789/808
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Item Applied education technology(HIT, 2024-12-03) HIT, HITItem Teaching and learning in higher education(HIT, 2024-12-03) HIT, HITItem Scholarship in Innovation Leadership and Internationalisation- The Case of Harare Institute of Technology, Harare, Zimbabwe(Harare Institute of Technology, 2014-06-01) Muredzi, PerkinsThe Harare Institute of Technology (HIT) is a new age university which prides itself in being the stimulant of scholarship in innovation and whose overarching principle is governed by developing a technopreneurial oriented graduate. Internationalising the curriculum in HIT’s understanding refers to course content and teaching and learning approaches which incorporate an intercultural and international perspective. The focus, therefore, is not only on the subject matter of the curriculum, but also on the pedagogical implications of teaching and learning approaches that will promote the inclusion of international students. The case of Harare Institute of Technology is given in this paper highlighting the efforts made in internationalising curriculum for Bachelor of Technology degree programmes in engineering and technology established in four schools since 2005. The paper also highlights attempts to enable education that produces global citizens cognisant of the developmental needs of Zimbabwe and aligning the issue to fundamental principles in global citizen education. Emerging knowledge societies around the world are creating global competition for the best students to provide skilled labour. As the global knowledge paradigm is embraced , requiring swift access to a highly skilled work force, there will be increased competition for international students, many of whom will stay on to fill the skills shortages of their host countries.Item A Collaborative Framework between Industry and Academia to Stimulate Entrepreneurship through Business Incubation(World Technopolis Review, 2016-06-01) Chanakira, Maxwell. A; Kanhukamwe, Quinton,CEntrepreneurship development has increasingly become a global solution to address the problem of rising unemployment. Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) have become important tools in improving the economic performance and social well-being of nations. When universities and industry work together to push the boundaries of knowledge, they become a powerful engine for innovation and economic growth. This paper is based on focus group interviews and discussions conducted with key players involved in the HIT-Sandown-UNDP Business Incubation Programme in Harare Zimbabwe. The business incubation project sought to support young Zimbabweans to transform their technical prototypes into commercially and socially viable ventures. As a result, a total of 10 prototypes were refined and investor ready business plans were developed for capital sourcing purposes. It was only through the coming together of the partners that real transformation of the lives of the participants was achieved through learning valuable business skills, coaching and mentoring. University-industry partnerships are a useful vehicle of setting up sustainable business incubation centres.Item Time Series Analysis of Road Traffic Accidents in Zimbabwe(International Journal of Statistics and Applications, 2015-01-02) Mutangu, KudakwasheIn this paper, focus is on finding a suitable model for the annual Zimbabwe Traffic Accident statistics from 1997 to 2013 and to forecast the number of annual traffic accidents likely to occur in future. The Box-Jenkins model building strategy is used. The Augmented Dickey Fuller test showed that the accident data was non-stationary. After first order differencing, the data became stationary. Three ARIMA models were suggested based on the ACF and PACF plots of the differenced series, these were ARIMA(0,1,0), ARIMA(1,1,0) and ARIMA(1,1,1). The model with the smallest corrected Akaike Information Criteria (AICc) and Bayesian Information Criteria (BIC) was chosen as the best model. The Ljung-Box statistics among others were used in assessing the quality of the model. ARIMA (0,1,0) was the best model for the Zimbabwe annual Traffic Accident data. Forecasting retained the value at the forecast origin. The implications of these findings are that based on the annual road traffic accident data for the period under consideration, it is difficult to make reasonable forecasts of the number of road traffic accidents for the years ahead of 2013. This is due to the fact that the values at different times of a white noise process are statistically independent.Item Globalization and Sustainable Development: A Conceptual Mode(Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences MCSER, 2015-08-12) Makasi, Africa; Govender, Krishna. KThe purpose of this paper is to argue conceptually, that globalization entails challenges, opportunities and realities. It integrates and extends existing theory, focusing on the three pillars of sustainable development into a general framework presenting the fundamental importance of sustainable development strategies in a globalized world. Moreover, the objective of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework for globalization and how development can be sustained. A critical review of the multidisciplinary literature on globalization and sustainable development reveals a lack of a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding sustainable development and accompanying strategies for sustaining development. Through a schematic representation of the relationships of the three pillars of sustainable development the paper concludes that a lasting solution to the impact of globalization on sustainable development can be crafted when current debate shifts from theory to the development of strategies to sustain development. The model if empirically evaluated, could serve as a blue print to guide policy and global discourse on how to achieve sustainable development; particularly so in developing economies.Item EVALUATING VALUE CHAINS IN TERTIARY EDUCATION: SETTING THE DEVELOPMENTAL AGENDA FOR AFRICA(European Journal of Business and Social Sciences,, 2015-05-01) Makasi, Africa; Govender, Krishna. KIn comparison to the World average (15.25%), a relatively large (17.4%) share of the national budget in SubSaharan Africa is devoted to education. However, upon closer scrutiny of the value chain, it would become evident that education is not really addressing the broader development agenda of Africa. Porter’s generic ‘value chain’ model requires activities of an organization to be separated into discrete components for value chain analysis to be performed, and recent trends in higher education make such segregation possible, since Higher Education Institutions (HEISs) are seemingly under intense pressure to create value and focus their efforts and scarce resources on activities that drive up value for their respective customers and stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of value chains on Tertiary Education (TE) in Zimbabwe through information gathered by conducting in-depth interviews with 12 representative authorities from the 17 registered universities (13 public and 4 private), and a sample of graduates and captains of industry. From a qualitative study using a structured questionnaire, it became evident that while both primary and secondary activities need to be well supported, it is critical that universities develop industry- driven value adding programmes in order to make the degrees awarded more relevant and addressing the broader development agenda. It is therefore proposed that by unbundling the academic process into its discrete components with well developed performance measures, a balance between university output and industry demand can be created and, thus help drive Africa’s developmental agenda. Key Words: Value chains, tertiary education, impact, knowledge creation, development. IItem The impact of value chain constraints on potato farmers: A survey of Nyanga District smallholder Irish potato farmers (2008-2013)(Prime Journal of Business Administration and Management (BAM), 2014-02-17) Makoni, Ephraim; Tsikirayi, Catherine M.; Urombo, Jack; Mandisodza, FaraiThe impact of value chain constraints for low resourced smallholder farmers in developing countries is not readily known, making it difficult to prescribe how the same farmers could penetrate high value formal markets. This study investigates the impact of value chain constraints on smallholder Irish Potato farmers in Nyanga district in the eastern province of Manicaland in Zimbabwe. The results assist the smallholder Irish potato farmers in ascertaining value chain bottlenecks to resolve and in accessing high value potato markets. A survey of the smallholder Irish potato farmers in Nyanga was done in which the Rapid Participatory Market Appraisal (RPMA) and a semi-structured interview questionnaire were the dominant data collection instruments. The study found out that the core actors in the Nyanga smallholder Irish potato value chain included input suppliers, business services developers (market linkage and production support), the Irish potato farmers themselves and the fresh potato commodity buyers. Results also show that the value chain presents several constraints for the smallholder Irish potato farmers with the main bottleneck being their inability to afford transportation of both inputs and produce. The road network is poor and the few truckers who come to the area charge high fees which the farmers cannot afford. As the smallholder potato farmers lie in the middle of the value chain, there are middlemen on either side (between the farmers and the input suppliers and between the farmers and the market) who take advantage of the farmers’ inability to raise the exorbitant transportation charges. These middlemen dictate the prices at which to sell seed and other fertilizer and chemical inputs to farmers and at the same time dictate the prices at which to buy produce from the same farmers. Irish potato supply chain constraints are thus hindering farmers from accessing high value markets in the absence of farmer consortiums through which collective bargaining especially in relation to transportation could be negotiated. Meanwhile, Irish potato farmers should carefully screen out the middlemen they deal with as a good number of them are motivated by profiteering at the expense of the farmers.Item The Impact of Operational Customer Relationship Management on Customer Loyalty(Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences MCSER, 2014-11-01) Makasi, Africa; Saruchera, FannyThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of operational customer relationship management (OCRM) on customer loyalty with special reference to the mobile telephone industry in Zimbabwe. Motivation for the research was generated by the need to find out how customer loyalty can be created through OCRM. The research was conducted by reviewing various streams of literature and interviews with 7 representatives from the 3 dominant companies in the industry and 15 sampled customers from these three competing companies in the mobile telephone industry (MTI). A semi-structured questionnaire was used. All qualitative responses were grouped into themes for coding purposes. The data gathered was coded and captured to form panel data for further analysis using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS0. Results of the research showed that because of the highly dynamic market environment, consumers have become highly demanding calling for the strategic significance of the intelligent network in OCRM for the creation of customer satisfaction. The research also revealed that increasing organizational performance through operational CRM implementation can increase customer perceived value which results in customer loyalty and competitiveness. Our current research focused on operational CRM’s influence on customer loyalty. Future research should assess the impact of analytical CRM on customer loyalty. The measurement and critical analysis of customer life time value against company investments in building loyalty should redirect future research towards this areaItem The Effects of Corporate Social Responsibility (Csr) on Corporate Brand Positioning(Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences MCSER Publishing,, 2014-09-01) Makasi, Africa; Govender, Krishna. K; Munyoro, TendaiThe purpose of this paper was to investigate the role of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in corporate brand positioning in the printing and packaging industry in Zimbabwe. The research was conducted by reviewing various streams of literature and interviews with 10 representatives from 5 companies and 10 customers also participated in this research. A semi-structured questionnaire was used. Two representatives from each of the ten competing companies were selected while customer representatives (both industrial and ordinary) were selected using the companies’ customer records as the sampling frame. These were selected on the basis of the ratio of their revenue contribution which stands at 1: 2 in favour of industrial customers. All qualitative responses were grouped into themes for coding purposes. The data gathered was coded and captured to form panel data for further analysis using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 19. Results of the research indicated that15 out of the sampled respondents of 20 confirmed that indeed CSR directed towards employees through provision of health care services and education and other activities as highlighted help to improve corporate image and position. The research also concluded that communities are intertwined with companies and their perceptions matter in corporate brand positioning. Using results of the T-Tests, it was concluded that CSR programs directed towards the environment play an important role in positioning corporate brands. Future research can refine CSR input by recognizing these differences and theorizing about employees’ reactions.