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The purpose of this paper is to interpret current global events to extrapolate the issues of twenty-first century for consideration by African mining policy and decision-makers.

The high-level mining issues are identified to assess what lies ahead for the twenty-first century. Some of these require innovation, called beacons for twenty-first-century mining in this paper, so that decision-makers can consider policy instruments and management strategies to craft a more desirable future for governments and companies, without affecting other stakeholders negatively.

It is proposed that African mining should consider three cross-cutting elements as subsets for the existing policy themes and management decisions, namely, broad benefit, mine sustainability and business improvement. Digital technologies have the potential to significantly support the three elements for fast-tracking Africa’s sustainable economic development.

Although the findings can be applied to most of the developing world, the focus of this paper is on the African mining industry.

Practical considerations for policymakers in Africa.

This paper includes novel/original policy considerations that have the potential to become cross-cutting elements for the existing policy themes of the Africa Mining Vision.

This chapter discusses the miners’ informal working strategy of making a plan (planisa) in context of the relationship between teamwork training that was provided to the mining teams above the ground and its implementation in the underground mining workplace. The training programme was essentially about empowering and transforming frontline mining teams to self-directed work teams (SDWT) to understand the gold-mining business through the eyes of management. Its aim was to create new kinds of mineworkers who understood the what, how and why of the twenty-first-century mining business. AfricaGold sought to restructure the underground workplace through SDWT training in order to create a congenial, humane, democratic and more meaningful form of work processes, which permitted the mining teams to have greater flexibility in the production tasks they performed. The chapter reveals that the SDWT training seemed to have motivated the mining teams. Interestingly enough, this motivation tended to prevail even in situations of production bottlenecks. At the heart of this motivation was the miners’ organisational practice of making a plan. It is arguable that the SDWT training enhanced the desire of the mining work teams to make a plan in response to production blockages and managerial inefficiencies. This is essentially what the training aimed to do – to create new kinds of frontline mineworkers who are committed to achieving the productivity goals of a modern mining workplace. Ironically, the management of production did not seem to complement the inspiration and energy that the training instilled in the minds and hearts of the mining teams.

This chapter examines the changing nature of frontline supervision in light of the supervisory training and development programme which was provided to shift-bosses in order to complement the workplace change processes that AfricaGold embarked on to improve operational efficiency, productivity and safety of its mining operations. Although the training course was an important workplace change initiative taken by top management to improve organisational, individual and team performance at the rock-face where it mattered most, lack of organisational and managerial support prevented frontline supervisors from effectively implementing what they learned on the training course. The chapter highlights the importance of not only providing organisational change-focused training, but also systematically and strategically involving frontline supervisors in the conceptualisation, design, execution and evaluation of workplace change initiatives. It is only when frontline supervisors are supported, managerially and organisationally, that they can be deal-makers rather than deal-breakers for a successful introduction and execution of change initiatives on the shop-floor.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the South African mining sector’s contribution to the national economy. It also discusses the socio-economic challenges that the sector has faced in terms of operational efficiency, productivity and safety. The chapter then briefly discusses the formal and informal organisational aspects of restructuring work processes in the South African mining industry. It concludes with a synopsis of each of the chapters of this book.

This chapter examines the interaction between formal and informal organisation of work in a deep-level mining workplace. In response to organisational constraints, underground mining teams make a plan (planisa) to offset production bottlenecks which affected the daily running of the production process at the rock-face down the mine. They ‘get on and get by’ inside the pit to cope with organisational dysfunctions and management inefficiencies. The chapter highlights the limits of formalised work methods and the significance of the frontline miners’ informal work practice of making a plan (planisa) as an existing and alternative working practice that shapes their subjective orientation, agency and resilience to deep-level mining work processes and managerial initiatives. While the informal work practice of planisa has pros and cons, any managerial strategy designed to improve organisational productivity, safety and teamwork must recognise and systematically articulate the frontline miners’ work culture of planisa. This is especially important if we are to fully understand the limits of contemporary organisational strategies and workers’ orientations towards modernised work processes and managerial practices.

Governor Robert F. Casey made his first state visit to Homestead, Pennsylvania the day after his inauguration in January 1987 to announce a package of plans for restoring economic vitality to metropolitan Pittsburgh in the wake of steel's collapse. Earlier urban renewal had involved large-scale demolition of older downtowns for conversion to commercial and industrial use, but state and local officials now emphasized a two-pronged redevelopment approach largely modeled on the success of the postwar suburbs. The closure of the Monongahela River (Mon) Valley's mammoth steel mills opened large swaths of land and prompted calls for planned riverfront manufacturing and retail districts similar to those sites sprouting up at suburban interchanges. A second and related effort involved schemes to build new highways tying aging communities in the river valleys to both Pittsburgh and new suburban growth areas, such as the sprawling “edge city” of Monroeville less than 10miles away. Indeed, Casey had a special project in mind for revitalizing the iconic Homestead – construction of the long-delayed Mon/Fayette Expressway that would parallel the river south of Pittsburgh. “This is another big step [to] help bring businesses and jobs into the region,” the governor later declared. “No longer is this valley a forgotten valley” (as cited in Basescu, 1989, p. 1).

This research aims to examine the smelter industry’s investment competitiveness in Indonesia as well as to find solutions to improve its competitive advantage for the nation.

This research applies a sequential mixed-methods approach with a second quantitative phase building on an initial first qualitative phase. The qualitative phase is conducted by interviews to find the root causes of problems as well as solutions to gain smelter industries’ competitiveness. The quantitative phase is conducted by a system dynamics model. A descriptive causal loop diagram is created based on interviews and focus group discussions to describe the problems. The concept of competitive advantage of a nation from Porter’s diamond model is applied in this research.

The results reveal the complexity of smelter industries in Indonesia. The paper also addresses the causes of problems and interaction of variables using a causal loop diagram. To gain the smelter industry’s competitiveness, this paper suggests the potential policy development to increase competitiveness of the smelter industry such as policy for different fiscal incentives to each different mineral, effective export duty and exploration obligation.

The result of this study provides a good basis for government in making policy to improve the competitive advantage of the smelter industry investment in Indonesia.

This is the first research on smelter industry competitiveness that applies Porter’s diamond model and system dynamics model to find solutions in designing appropriate policy to gain competitiveness.

Conventional rock blasting promotes many negative environmental impacts including ground vibration, flying rock, air blast, and the emission of noise, dust and gases. An unconventional alternative process is the application of electrohydraulic principles. Electrohydraulic blasting is able to create a state of fracturing and rupture in the rock, almost instantly. A high current impulse generator produces the energy, without the above environmental impacts caused by conventional explosives. It is particularly suitable for application in urban areas. The paper describes laboratory experiments, theoretical analysis, consideration of the geomechanical criteria of rock failure and analysis of the electrical parameters of impulse generators related to rock fragmentation. The laboratory experiments included geomechanical and electrohydraulic tests on limestone samples from 50kg up to 150kg. The test results show satisfactory efficiency and energy losses.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the current state of marketing analytics and how it should become a standard marketing research tool in the twenty‐first century.

The design of this paper is both a review of the field of marketing analytics and a discussion of how these factors must be enhanced and incorporated into twenty‐first century marketing research. As such this paper is offered as a viewpoint based on years of experience in the field and should serve as the basis for discussion and discourse by both academicians and practitioners.

In the realm of marketing, primary research has traditionally focused on quantitative or qualitative methodologies to provide customer insights. With advances in technology, especially data mining, marketing analytics has become an invaluable tool and should be viewed as an equal component of the marketing research toolkit. Analytics requires marketers to use data to understand customers at every touch point throughout their lifecycle with the business. To do this the analyst must mine, analyze, interpret, and present the information so that it is converted into actionable intelligence. In this process, the customer's information DNA is tracked, segmented, modeled and then acted upon. As these concepts and tools become standard operating procedures, academic marketing departments must internalize analytics into their overall curriculum in order to provide students with a compelling career advantage.

The value of this paper is that it presents marketers with a strong argument for the integration of marketing analytics into their practice of researching marketing issues and problems. Analytics completes the research triangle of qualitative, quantitative and data mined information gathering, analysis, and interpretation. It is hoped that this paper will generate additional discourse and research in this area and, especially, the adaptation of analytics as a standard research tool by marketers.

Increasing international competition requires companies to empower and develop the skills of workers at the lower levels. This paper will show how implementing change from below through self‐directed teamwork enhances the understanding of the changing nature of work and the relationship between work and training. The case study of African Gold Mine (a pseudonym of one of the world’s deepest gold mines) illustrates the South African gold mining industry’s attempt to create a twenty‐first century workforce through self‐directed work team (SDWT) training conducted within the mine. However, underground participatory research reveals that in the workplace, organisational constraints hinder the effective implementation of SDWT training. In order to cope with these organizational constraints and inefficiencies, workers resort to planisa; “they make a plan”. In other words, they “get on and get by” underground through improvising and the team’s self‐initiated action. This paper argues that planisa is part of the existing occupational culture of miners and is an embryonic form of teamwork. Any strategy to increase the productivity of mineworkers must draw on these experiences.