Case studies

AngloGold Ashanti has been working with the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business since 2004 on its suite of management development programmes, which bring together employees from all parts of the world in a process of shared learning and development. Following in this vein, the company collaborated in 2008 with the university and with other companies in the sector on the design of a postgraduate diploma in management tailored specifically to the mining industry’s sustainability practitioners, which applies the concepts of systems thinking and action learning to the field of strategic stakeholder engagement.

The Graduate School of Business integrates ideas underpinning adult learning, systems thinking and action learning to design and deliver programmes which are based on an entirely new concept in management education and have been acknowledged as some of the most innovative available in South Africa today. Targeted at practising managers, the starting point is that the world of management is too complex to lend to simple prescriptions and formulaic methods. Process and knowledge are emphasised, rather than just technique. The main thrusts are nurturing self-awareness in the relevant institutional and societal contexts and building analytical and systems thinking skills. This process fosters empowerment to tackle fresh problems of all kinds and in any context.

With a successful track record of corporate learning with AngloGold Ashanti, the company approached the Graduate School of Business and collaborated with them and other companies and organisations in the sector, to design a programme oriented towards sustainability practitioners and which would address in depth the concept of strategic stakeholder engagement.

The initial programme got underway in September 2009 with over 30 delegates from various mining companies and business organisations taking part. Nine delegates from AngloGold Ashanti’s global operations, based in DRC, Ghana, South Africa and Tanzania participated.

“The programme was a response to the complexities of the mining industry and the wide variety of stakeholders whose needs must be considered and addressed,” says Paul Hollesen, vice president of environment and community affairs and a member of the business sustainability team at AngloGold Ashanti’s corporate office in Johannesburg.

“In an increasingly interconnected and complex world it has become an essential organisational skill to be able to effectively identify and properly engage with stakeholders. Organisations need a better understanding of the multiple perspectives of their many stakeholders and the inter-relatedness of the systems in which they operate. They also need to understand how to delineate the issues they face so that they can meaningfully address them in an ethical manner. This requires a skills-set and change in perspective as offered by this course.”

The programme runs for eighteen months and is based around three full-time modules – the foundations of systemic management, strategic engagement as an organisational function and strategic engagement practices. Each module is interspersed with 12-14 weeks project work by students. The project work is integrated into each student’s own work environment to ensure that the skills learnt can be applied in practice. A fourth module is the strategic engagement project, involving the design and implementation of a relevant strategic engagement initiative within an organisational context. It is intended as a synthesis of the work done in the first three modules and to deliver practical value to the organisation.