NRF Rated Researchers

 

Professor Barac is Head of the Department of Auditing in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences and one of only three NRF-rated researchers who are qualified chartered accountants. Her research focuses on education in and the development of skill and competency requirements for auditors (both internal and external), and governance from an internal auditing perspective. In a field where the focus is primarily on professional examinations and is influenced by these, she has produced quality research at regular intervals and received various research and best publication awards. Professor Barac played an instrumental role in the iKUTU research group, the members of which have been collaborating in research on internal auditing since 2006 and have published three reports and 19 accredited articles. She is the leader of an international research team that was awarded a research grant by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland and the UK Financial Reporting Council. The findings of their study on skill and competency requirements for auditors in today’s complex global business environment will be presented during a dedicated session at the BAFA Audit and Assurance Conference to be held in Edinburgh, Scotland in April 2015. She received a C3 rating from the NRF. 

 

 

 

 

Prof Stephen Coetzee PhD (CA) SA is an Associate Professor of Accounting. He has taught Financial Accounting at the undergraduate and post-graduate levels. He supervises postgraduate research students and is dedicated to continued research in the field of Accounting Education. Within any discipline, a key unifying characteristic of those who undertake research is to be found in their role as educators; hence Prof Coetzee's research seeks to explore key unanswered questions in Accounting Education. He has published in the Top 3 accounting education journals, namely Issues in Accounting Education, Accounting Education and Journal of Accounting Education. He has also received the Exceptional Young Researcher Award at the University of Pretoria. As teacher, Prof Coetzee has received the Teaching Excellence and Innovation Laureate Award at the University of Pretoria and the CHE and HELTASA National Excellence in Teaching and Learning Award.

 

 

Prof Charl de Villiers from the Department of Accounting is also a professor at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand, an adjunct professor at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, an extraordinary professor at the University of the Western Cape, and a research fellow at the Centre for Sustainability Management at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany. His research explores the impact of accounting choice and focuses on sustainability and integrated reporting. He has also published and presented extensively on the choice of research topics, what constitutes a contribution to the literature, theory, methodology, and the writing of academic research. His more than 200 research based publications and presentations include in excess of 50 refereed articles in journals such as Accounting, Organizations and Society, Journal of Management, and the Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal. He publishes in both the qualitative and the quantitative research traditions and continues to develop new research projects in both traditions. Prof de Villiers is the editor of Meditari Accountancy Research and serves on several editorial boards, including Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ); Accounting and Business Research; and Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal. He has published 27 articles in refereed journals during the last five years (2011 to 2015).

 

His principal areas of research are tax administration, tax legislative analysis and tax policy/reform. These three connected strands enable him to work on the design and development of tax systems throughout the world that can operate efficiently, equitably and simply in their key task of raising revenue for the provision of appropriate services and – in the context of developing countries – can contribute to the critical tax of state and capacity building.

 

In the period from 2013 to 2016 Professor Evans received a major research grant from the Australian Research Council, which enabled him to lead and conduct a research project titled, ‘Assessing and addressing tax system complexity’. The project has led to numerous articles in international refereed journals and the publication of a major book on tax simplification (2015). He recently completed projects on the relationship between tax and corruption, the burden of tax compliance, and the impact of corporate tax aggressiveness on firm value. He has published separate books on capital gains taxation (2016) and Australian Taxation Law (2017) and is working on a book on comparative taxation scheduled for publication later this year.

 

Prof Mike Ewing    

 

 

 

 

Prof Franzsen is a professor in the Department of Economics and Director of the African Tax Institute. He holds a BLC and LLB from the University of Pretoria and a postgraduate certificate in tax law from Unisa. He obtained the LLD from the University of Stellenbosch with a thesis on transfer duty in South Africa for which he received the South African Fiscal Association’s prize for best tax thesis in South Africa. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the International Property Tax Institute and was co-editor of the Journal of Property Tax Assessment & Administration. On behalf of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (based in Massachusetts, United States) he has acted as an instructor on property taxation in China and Slovenia. Prof Franzsen has authored or co-authored numerous conference papers and-, journal articles, has contributed various chapters to local and international textbooks and is the co-author of Land Value Taxation: An Applied Approach, published in Ashgate. He has acted as an advisor to the governments of Egypt, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda as well as the World Bank.

 

Prof Augustin Fosu   

 

 

 

 

Prof Gupta is a professor in the Department of Economics. His academic interests are monetary theory and policy, business cycles and time series econometrics. His work has appeared in many major publications, including international Economics and Finance Journal, International Economic Journal, Journal of Economics and Business, International Journal of Economic Research, South African Journal of Economics and South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences. Prof Gupta is a member of the Economic Association of South Africa (ESSA), the African Econometric Society (AES), the African Institute for Economic Modelling (AFRINEM) and Economic Research Southern Africa (ERSA).

 

 

Prof John Hall is a full professor in the Department of Financial Management. He lectures Corporate Finance to undergraduate and post graduate students and act in supervisory capacity for a number of masters and PhD students. His main research theme is shareholder value creation and a related topic, capital budgeting. A number of accredited articles on these topics had been published, some of which has received best paper awards. These publications led to an invitation by Prof Kent Baker, regarded by The Journal of Financial Literature as among the top 1% of the most prolific authors in finance during the past 50 years, to co-author two chapters on capital budgeting with another international scholar in a specialist subject reference book, Capital Budgeting Valuation: Financial Analysis for Today’s Investment Decisions, published in the USA in 2011. After being approached and invited to co-author papers by an established and acclaimed researcher, prof Hall’s research topics and horizon broadened to include economic growth, stock market development and inflation. Prof Hall continuously receives invitations to review articles of accredited journals. He was awarded a NRF research rating with effect from 1 January 2016.  

 

 

 

 

Prof Yolanda Jordaan is a full professor and Head of the Department of Marketing Management. As marketing researcher and specialist, with the focus on consumer information privacy and higher education marketing, Prof Jordaan has published numerous articles in local and international academic journals and is also the author and co-author of seven books on marketing and direct marketing. Her most prestigious publication is in the Journal of Advertising, which is considered one of the top 10 international journals within the marketing discipline. She also acted as reviewer for several local and international academic journals.

 

Prof Jordaan has also been chosen to represent the Services SETA at the European Marketing Confederation (EMC) Academic Group. She has been elected out of a number of nominations that was received.

 

Prof Jordaan’s specialist topic is direct marketing and as part of her academic career, she has facilitated several training and management programmes for companies and has lectured at universities in the United States, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands. She is one of the recipients of the Mellon Foundation Award for research excellence and has also been honoured with an achievement award as an exceptional young researcher, as well as a Laureate Award for education innovation. She was the first lecturer to include direct marketing as a specialised subject within the marketing field at university level.

 

 

 

Prof Jordaan is an associate professor in the Department of Economics. His main research interests are international economics and trade. He received the Junior Researcher and Top Achiever awards as well as the Dean of Economic and Management Sciences Faculty Research Award. He is the co-author of three textbooks his and reviewing activities include all learning local journals. He was awarded a post-doctoral bursary by the University of Pretoria and also obtained two research bursaries from the Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies Institution. His most significant research contribution of late was the development of an international trade gravity model for South Africa. The model is based on trade between South Africa and 147 trading partners within 33 sectors. It is currently used for trade policy analysis by the Department of Trade and Industry. Prof Jordaan completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and has lectured at universities in the United Stated and Australia. He is a member of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Switzerland as well as the North-South Network on Trade and Development, among others. He was invited by the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, Germany to sign a formal agreement of cooperation.

 

 

Prof Koch is a full professor and Head of the Department of Economics and serves on the Senior Appointments Committee of the Council and the Research Committee of Senate. His research focuses on the application of applied microeconomics and microeconometrics to the understanding of health, health behaviours, health policy and the relationship between health and other activities. Recently, that focus has been extended to include other household-level decisions and behaviours, especially within energy, forestry and forestry policy. Prof Koch has been the managing editor of the ISI-accredited South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences from January 2008 to December 2012. He has served on the Council of the Economic Society of South Africa, as well as on the Academic Committee of Economic Research Southern Africa (ERSA).

 

Dr Eileen Koekemoer 

Prof Eileen Koekemoer is an associate professor in the Department of Human Resource Management in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences and is registered as an Industrial Psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA). She serves on the postgraduate committee of the Department and is committed to quality teaching and research. Her areas of research include work−life interaction, career success and the wellbeing of employees. Over the past five years she has published 17 journal articles and received substantial NRF Thuthuka grant funding for her projects.  She is involved in various research projects that investigate the interaction between employees’ work and family life and how it influences their career success and/or wellbeing. She is a section editor of the renowned South African Journal of Industrial Psychology. 

 

Prof William McCluskey is an extraordinary professor in the African Tax Institute within the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. He also held academic positions at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland (Research Reader), Professor of Property Studies at Lincoln University, New Zealand, Visiting Professor at University of Lodz and University of Technology, Malaysia. He obtained his PhD from the University of Ulster in the field of property tax and computer assisted mass appraisal.

Prof McCluskey’s principal areas of research relate to real property tax administration, computer based application to mass valuation including artificial intelligence and machine learning, valuation and geographic information technologies. His academic reputation has resulted in him being appointed as an international expert by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, European Union and Food and Agriculture Organization. Prof McCluskey has published extensively in international journals, edited and authored several books, working papers and commissioned research reports. He serves on the editorial boards of several leading real estate journals. He has delivered several doctoral students and master’s students. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the International Property Tax Institute. Prof McCluskey has been an invited instructor on courses held in China and Slovenia on behalf of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (based in Massachusetts, United States).

 

 

Prof Meiring is an associate professor in the Department of Human Resources Management. He is registered as an Industrial Psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) since 1995 and received his Master’s degree from the University of South Africa and his PhD from Tilburg University in the Netherlands in 2007. Most of this research falls into one or more of the following categories: personality measurement in the work place, cross-cultural assessment, personnel selection, assessment centre research, situational judgment testing and applied cross-cultural methodology. His field of specialisation is advance assessment practice and he has extensive experience with personality test construction and assessment and development centres design. In 2010 he received an honorary membership from the Assessment Centre Study Group (ACSG) for his work in assessment centre field in South Africa. Over the past decade he has also been involved in the development of the South African Personality Inventory (SAPI): a culture-informed Instrument for the main ethno-cultural groups in South Africa. He also serves as an executive committee member in the Society for Industrial and Organisational Psychology of South Africa (SIOPSA), International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) and the World Association for Personality Psychology (WAPP).

 

Professor Mostert is a professor in the Department of Marketing Management in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. His research focuses on services marketing, relationship marketing and relationship intention. Research on organisation-customer relationships established that organisations want to build long-term relationships

with customers because it leads to higher profits, a better competitive position, and a greater chance of success. Professor Mostert’s research contributes to the current debate by considering organisation–customer relationships from the customer’s perspective. Specifically, his research found that it is possible to identify groups of customers who want to reciprocate the relationship-building efforts of organisations by

displaying higher levels of relationship intention. Based on these findings, his research also considered the influence of customer relationship intention on their relationships with organisations following service failures in the service delivery process as well as following organisations’ service recovery efforts to restore customer satisfaction.

 

Professor Mostert’s current research focuses on a new field in relationship marketing, namely service brand avoidance. His future research will include determining the influence of organisations’ service recovery efforts following service failures on customers’ brand

avoidance behaviour.

 

 

 

Prof Ruthira Naraidoo is an associate professor in the Department of Economics. His main research interests are applied macroeconomic theory and policy and time series econometrics. His work has appeared in international publications, including Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, Empirical Economics, European Journal of Political Economy, International Journal of Forecasting and South African Journal of Economics among others. Prof Ruthira is a member of the Economic Association of South Africa (ESSA), the African Econometric Society (AES) and Economic Research Southern Africa (ERSA).

 

 

Professor Nkomo holds a strategic appointment as professor in the Department of Human Resource Management, Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Her internationally recognised research on gender and diversity in organisations has been published in numerous journals and books. She is listed in the international Who’s who in the management sciences and serves on the editorial boards of top journals in the field. In 2009, her research earned her the Academy of Management’s prestigious Gender and Diversity in Organizations Award for Scholarly Contributions. 

 

 

Prof Marius Pretorius is a professor in the Department of Business Management. His research focuses on business rescue and therefore covers both strategy and leadership. Business rescue is very new in South Africa and relatively little academic research for this context exists.

 

His PhD and masters students focus on relevant issues and problems associated with business rescue practitioners in particular. Currently there are eight students working in this research theme with several reports and publications seeing the light in collaboration with government and the turnaround industry. As NRF-rated researcher he drives a web based business resource at www.brportal.co.za to serve the rescue community.

 

Prof Rensburg is a full professor in the Communication Management Division of the Department of Business Management. Her areas of specialisation are communication and reputation management, strategic communication in corporate governance, and international communication. Prof Rensburg is the immediate past President of the Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa (PRISA), a board member of the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management (GA), a member of the European Public Relations Education and Research Association (EUPRERA), and a member of the Eurasian Communication Association and the International Communication Association (ICA). She has coordinated international exchange activities and collaboration initiatives in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences and is a founding member and the caretaker-director of the recently established Centre for Communication and Reputation Management (CCRM) at the University of Pretoria. She is a speechwriter and trainer for politicians and captains of industry, and writes a regular column for Business24 that focuses on communication and reputation management issues.

 

 

Prof Schaap is an associate professor in the Department of Human Resources Management in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. He is head of the Department’s psychometrics programmes and lectures at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Prof Schaap is registered as an Industrial Psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa and registered as a Master HR Practitioner with the South African Board for People Practices. He is a sectional editor for the SA Journal of Industrial Psychology.

The use of psychometric and related measurements has always been highly contentious in South Africa. After 1994, strict non-discriminatory labour practices were implemented in South Africa in terms of the Employment Equity Act 56 of 1998. This legislation prohibits the use of psychometric tests and similar assessments unless scientific evidence shows that the tests are reliable, valid, non-biased and can be applied fairly to all employees. The legislation poses enormous challenges to researchers in a country with 11 official languages, as language and cultural factors may affect test results.

More specifically, Prof Schaap’s research focuses on the use of skill, behavioural and cognitive measurement in organisations and the extent to which measurements can be considered valid and reliable for diverse groups. He received a C3 rating from the NRF.

 

 

Prof Strasheim is an associate professor in the Department of Human Resource Management in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, and she lectures quantitative research methods at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Her main research focus area is on statistical methodological issues in the analysis of survey data. Specifically, her interests include extended uses of multi-level structural equation modelling for analysing the psychometric properties of scales, such as dimensionality, discriminant and convergent validity and measurement equivalence when studying multiple groups. These multivariate statistical methods are used to develop attitudinal and behavioural models for modelling data from employees or post-modern consumers in the digital age. In the field of organisational behaviour and marketing, her study interests include greening in organisations, cultural intelligence, talent development, resilience, cognitive style and social interaction among individuals and in teams, leadership and the links among employee attributes and their effects on individual and organisational performance. She received a C2 rating from the NRF.

 

 

Prof Jan van Heerden is a full professor in the Department of Economics. His research in the field of computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling focuses mostly on how environmental policies affect the South African economy.

 

His research has been recognised internationally through publications in high-ranking journals such as The Energy Journal and Ecological Economics. He collaborates closely with Monash University in Melbourne who are the world leaders in the field. His current research includes the following: (i) Building a model for the Ugandan Ministry of Finance to model the effects of the newly discovered oil on the country’s economy; (ii) Modelling the effects of increases in electricity prices in South Africa on the national economy, its income distribution and poverty; (iii) Modelling the effects of toll roads in Gauteng.

 

 

Prof van Vuuren is a Professor at the University of Pretoria and Co-ordinator of the Danie Cronje, SAB Chair of Entrepreneurship in the Department of Business Management. He initiated and developed the first Bachelors Degree with specialisation in Entrepreneurship in South Africa and was instrumental in developing the Masters and PhD degrees offered by the Department.

At the age of twenty-five, Prof van Vuuren started the first of four entrepreneurial start-ups as a beginning of an entrepreneurial career. In 1992 he started an Entrepreneurship Education and Training Company that since then has trained over 10500 delegates all over South Africa and the African continent. He authored articles in various South African journals and in more than 20 international conference proceedings from all over the globe. He has lectured at various universities in South Africa, the USA, New Zealand and in African countries. His corporate entrepreneurship clients include companies like First National Bank, African Life Insurance, Denel, Exxaro, Kynoch, Transnet, Sanlam, Transnamib, Netcare, Development Bank of Southern Africa and a number of other smaller companies.

 

 

Elmar Venter is Associate Professor of Accounting at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, where he has held tenure since 2008. He has taught both Financial Accounting and Taxation at the undergraduate and post-graduate levels. He supervises postgraduate research students, and is dedicated to continued research in the field of Financial Accounting. He is a Chartered Accountant (South Africa) − he held the overall first position in South Africa for the final professional examination written in 2004.

During 2011, Elmar obtained a PhD in Accounting from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His thesis dealt with the pricing and value relevance of earnings components in a setting where earnings disaggregation is mandatory. He publishes in leading international journals such as The International Journal of Accounting; Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal; Abacus and in a number of South African journals. During 2013, he was internationally recognized when he became one of only five emerging researchers from across the globe to be invited to join the Deloitte-International Association for Accounting Education and Research Scholar Programme. He holds the Y1 rating from the National Research Foundation.

 

 

 

Prof Alexander Zimper is a full professor in the Department of Economics. His research interests focus mainly on decision theory, game theory, general equilibrium theory under asymmetric information, asset pricing, financial markets and banking regulation, Bayesian learning under ambiguity and bounded rationality. His research has been recognised internationally through publications in numerous high-ranking journals such as the German Economic Review, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control and British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, to name but a few.

 

Research grants,were awarded to him, such as the 2010 Netspar Research Grant for his research project “On the Role of Biased Survival Beliefs in a Structural Life-Cycle Model,” joint with Alexander Ludwig and Max Groneck and the 2010 NRF research grant and the 2007 Steven H. Sandell Grant (Centre for Retirement Research at Boston College) for the research project “Life-Cycle Consumption and Savings: On the Interactions Between Mortality Risk, the Notion of Death, and Dynamically Inconsistent Household Behavior,” joint with Alexander Ludwig.