Women Academics From South Africa

"Nowadays, everyone wants to be an overnight success."

"Talent that is not supported by hard work ultimately runs out of steam and fails."

"Success requires hard work whether you are a tennis player, an artist, a scientist, a writer or an entrepreneur."

"Start with the “why” and then the “what” and the “how” will be clear"

"You can’t win on talent alone. Talent on its own does not produce success."

"It is only through “doing” that we can find solutions."

"A sense of urgency in our young people about succeeding in higher education."

"There are people today, who tell our young people not to work hard but to work smart."

"If you want to travel, be clear about why you want to travel."

"There is no doubt that I work hard."

"Hard workers do not wait for things to be done for them. They make things happen."

"The lack of a desire to work hard is a great weakness."

"Hard workers take on the responsibility of changing their lives."

"You can change your life and your situation by working hard"

"Everyone can get better over time through hard work"

"With hard work and consistency, anything is possible."

"Smart work only happens after hard work. There is no substitute for hard work.There is no smart work without hard work."

"Go ahead and be ambitious, but be ready for the hard work."

"You do not have to agree with me. A disagreement does not mean that we are enemies or that we have to be disrespectful to one another."

"The world out there will test your ethics and therefore teach you ethics every day."

"Human beings have a tendency to be mean to others in order to feel better about themselves."

"When things are tough, I remind myself of what big dreams, faith and optimism can produce."

"Turbulent times taught me a lot about life. I learned that some of life’s brightest moments come in the darkest hours. I learned to never lose hope."

"Life is going to be challenging, unfair and difficult. Whatever happens, make sure you never ever give up."

"Success is built on persistence, patience and consistence"

"The global crisis we are experiencing right now I believe, is showing us the need for universities."

"My move was controversial because it stepped on a few toes"

"Transformation must happen in a way that sees disadvantaged communities receive the resourcing they need."

"And everyone wants to know: Who? Why? The victims ask the hardest of all the questions: How is it possible that the person I loved so much lit no spark of humanity in you?"

"I'm a poet. I distrust anything that starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop because people don't think in full, clear sentences."

"By not dealing with past human rights violations, we are not simply protecting the perpetrators' trivial old age ; we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations."

"It's hard for me to speak, whether in English or Afrikaans. The reason I write is because I cannot speak. I feel blunt."

"Don't think for a moment that Mbeki is not anti-white - he is, most definitely. His speeches all have anti-white themes and he continues to convince everyone that there are two types of South African - the poor black and the rich white."

"Mugabe has destroyed that country while South Africa has stood by and done nothing. The way Mugabe was feted at the inauguration last month was an embarrassing disgrace. But it served well to illustrate very clearly Mbeki's point of view."

"I had hoped for something much better... [T]he poor in this country have not benefited at all from the ANC. This government spends "like a drunken sailor". Instead of investing in projects to give people jobs, they spend millions buying weapons and private jets, and sending gifts to Haiti."

"[T]he prime minister has been trying to bully me for twenty-eight years and he has not succeeded yet. I am not frightened of you. I never have been and I never will be. I think nothing of you."

"Every Nationalist MP should go to at least one funeral for unrest victims heavily disguised as human beings, instead of sitting on their green benches in parliament, insulated like fish in an aquarium."

"Are you going to put me under house arrest or put me on Robben Island?"

"I do not know why we equate—and with such examples before us—a white skin with civilisation."

"It is not my questions that embarrass South Africa; it is your answers."

"You say your people brought the Bible over the mountains and ask what mine did. They wrote it, my dear."

"Go and see for yourself."

"In South Africa, Joe Slovo, Ruth First, Albie Sachs, Nadine Gordimer, Abie Nathan, and Helen Suzman are only among the most famous of the many Jews who joined the fight to bring down apartheid."

"For all my criticisms of the current system, it doesn't mean that I would like to return to the old one. I don't think we will ever go the way of Zimbabwe, but people are entitled to be concerned. I am hopeful about any future for whites in this country - but not entirely optimistic."

"Technology has always been a central variable in organizational theory, informing research and practice. Despite years of investigative effort there is little agreement on the definition and measurement of technology, and no compelling evidence on the precise role of technology in organizational affairs. I will argue that the divergent definitions and opposing perspectives associated with technological research have limited our understanding of how technology interacts with organizations, and that these incompatibilities cannot be resolved by mutual concession. What is needed is a reconstruction of the concept of technology, which fundamentally re-examines our current notions of technology and its role in organizations."

"The approach that dominates organizational theory, teaching, and practice for most of the twentieth century looked at organizations from the top-down, starting with a view of the CEO as the "leader" who shapes the organization's strategy, structure, culture, and performance potential. The nature of work and the role of the workforce enter the analysis much later, after considerations of technology and organization design have been considered. However, if the key source of value in the twenty-first-century organization is to be derived from the workforce itself, an inversion of the dominant approach will be needed. The new perspective will start not at the top of the organization, but at the front lines, with people and the work itself — which is where value is created. Such an inversion will lead to a transformation in the management and organization of work workers, and knowledge. This transformation was signalled by McGregor, but we must go further."

"Technology - and its relationship to organizational structures, processes, and outcomes - has long been of interest to organizational researchers. Over the years, different research perspectives on technology have developed in parallel with research perspectives on organizations - for example, contingency theory (Woodward 1965, Galbraith 1977, Carter 1984, Daft and Lengel 1986), strategic choice models (Child 1972, Buchanan and Boddy 1983, Davis and Taylor 1986, Zuboff 1988), Marxist studies (Braverman 1974, Edwards 1979, Shaiken 1985, Perrolle 1986), symbolic interactionist approaches (Kling 1991, Prasad 1993), transaction-cost economics (Malone et al. 1987, Ciborra 1993); network analyses (Barley 1990, Burkhardt and Brass 1990, Rice and Aydin 1991), practice theories (Suchman 1987, Button 1993, Hutchins 1995, Orr 1996), and structurational models (Barley 1986, Orlikowski 1992, DeSanctis and Poole 1994)."

"As both technologies and organizations undergo dramatic changes in form and function, organizational researchers are increasingly turning to concepts of innovation, emergence, and improvisation to help explain the new ways of organizing and using technology evident in practice. With a similar intent, I propose an extension to the structurational perspective on technology that develops a practice lens to examine how people, as they interact with a technology in their ongoing practices, enact structures which shape their emergent and situated use of that technology. Viewing the use of technology as a process of enactment enables a deeper understanding of the constitutive role of social practices in the ongoing use and change of technologies in the workplace. After developing this lens, I offer an example of its use in research, and then suggest some implications for the study of technology in organizations."

"Technology is built and used within certain social and historical circumstances and its form and functioning will bear the imprint of those conditions."

"Rather than positing design and use as disconnected moments or stages in a technology's lifecycle, the structurational model of technology posits artifacts as potentially modifiable throughout their existence. In attempting to understand technology as continually socially and physically constructed, it is useful to discriminate analytically between human action which affects technology and that which is affected by technology. I suggest that we recognize human interaction with technology as having two iterative modes: the design mode and the use mode. I emphasize that this distinction is an analytical convenience only, and that in reality these modes of interaction are tightly coupled."