How Organizational Dynamics Impact Human Capital In Creating Brand Loyalty Within A Multi-National Agricultural Context
Monarch is happy to announce the recently authorised research proposal by PhD in Business Research, Mr. Renier Krige, addressing Organizational Dynamics and how it impacts human capital in creating brand loyalty within a multi-national agricultural context.
The Research
Developing, growing and sustaining relationships with customers is fundamental to the success of an organisation. In a rapidly changing environment where work has become vulnerable, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (“VUCA”), this remains a key challenge (Raja, 2021). Amid this VUCA world, a variety of tri-partite relationships exist, specifically between organisations, employees and customers. Organisations assess how they can generate product or service value and offer it as brand promises to customers to indicate how they will solve the product or service issue of the customer. Brand promises are, more specifically in the service industries, brought to life through engagements between employees and customers.
The contemplated research examines how organisational dynamics impact human capital to enable brand loyalty,specifically in a multi-national agricultural context. Building loyal customers necessitates organisational understanding of customer expectations and the fulfilment of these expectations (Olsen, 2003). Fulfilling brand promises, whether implicit or explicit, regularly manifests in the relationships between employees and customers (Miles, 2004) and the formation of consistency of brand promise experiences plays an essential role in helping shape overall loyalty (Kingshott, 2020). Employees and customers who are disengaged with a brand will have negative consequences for organisations at all levels. The cost of disengaged customers in the United States in 2018 ranged between $75 billion and $1.6 trillion a year (Hyken, 2018). In the United States, companies with disengaged employees have 37% higher absenteeism, 18% lower productivity and 15% lower profitability, which translates to a cost averaging $16,000 per employee per annum (Borysenko, 2019). Disengaged employees cost the United States economy as much as $350 billion yearly (McDade, 2020) and according to the 2022 Global Consumer Trends report, disengaged customers cost the US $4.7 trillion in 2021 (Petersen, 2021). The research focuses on the dynamics within organisations and how culture, leadership and change affect human capital as an enabling driver in building loyalty towards a brand.
The Researcher
Mr. Rénier Krige is a Professional PhD in Business Research Candidate. He holds a Master of Arts in Leading Innovation & Change from York St. John University, UK. He also holds a B.Com from the University of South Africa. He is also a graduate of the Senior Management Program at Stellenbosch Business School, the Program in Leadership Development at UNISA and the Global Executive Development Program at GIBS. He has been a people practitioner for 35+ years, of which 24 years were corporate and 11 years in management consulting. He presently holds the Group Chief Human Resources Officer position at Unifrutti, a global fresh fruit producer headquartered in Abu Dhabi, UAE. His industry experience includes transport, retail, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, aviation, energy (generic, nuclear & renewables), engineering, supply chain, financial services, logistics & warehousing, healthcare, mining (coal & iron-ore) and agriculture. He has worked in the UAE, Cyprus, the Philippines, Japan, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Lesotho and has done study tours to China and Singapore.