http://www.sajim.co.za/editorial.main.9nr3.asp?print=1


   
  Editorial Vol.9(3) September 2007 

In the September issue, there is a report on an investigation to establish the typical content of 
corporate Web sites. For many years enterprises have created better exposure for themselves 
via the Web and also created a more efficient way of communicating with clients. However, 
to answer their research question Do corporate Web sites in Africa communicate investor 
information according to best practice guidelines?, Nel and Baard developed a 20-point 
checklist that focuses on the six categories of best practice for investor information on a 
company Web site, namely annual reports of the current year and archive, relevant news, 
shareholder information, bondholder information, corporate governance and corporate 
responsibility. Read the article to establish the results where 78 companies in Africa (40 from 
South Africa and 38 from the 'rest of Africa') were evaluated against this checklist. 
Companies from the 'rest of Africa' rated lower than South African companies in all 
categories on the checklist. 

Research done and reported by Kruger and Snyman, as published in March 2005 in this 
journal (Formulation of a strategic knowledge management maturity model), was followed 
up by further research in the area of assessing knowledge management maturity. 
Consequently, in Guidelines for assessing the knowledge management maturity of 
organisations, the reader is supplied with a practical toolkit or roadmap (a time-related 
matrix, or questionnaire) to successfully measure succession in knowledge management 
maturity. Drawing on the expertise of numerous knowledge management experts, this article 
proposes a questionnaire consisting of six sections, containing 101 descriptive questions, to 
enable the empirical measurement. The proposed questionnaire provides a bridge between 
theoretical propositions and practical usability, not only enabling knowledge management 
practitioners to successfully assess the level of knowledge management maturity reached but 
also serving as a guideline to institutionalize an enterprise’s future knowledge management 
activities.  

The third article in this issue reports on an in-depth investigation by Burger and Rensleigh on 
e-mail overload in the South African banking industry. The empirical part of this study was 
done at the Standard Bank of South Africa, whereby questionnaires were distributed to three 
categories of employees. Most respondents felt overloaded by the amount of information 
they received every day at work, which influenced their physical well-being, relationships 
with colleagues, friends and family. It is clear from the responses that e-mail was one of the 
most used computer-mediated applications and was used more than the World Wide Web, 
instant messaging or peer-to-peer file sharing. Two thirds of the respondents felt 
overwhelmed by the amount of e-mails they received every day – in one category 25% 
received more than 60 e-letters per day! A third of the respondents dedicated three hours or 
more on e-mails a day. From this research it is evident that company policy is imperative to 
ensure compliance with legislation, protection of employee privacy rights and copyright, as 
well as the filtering of spam. The article concludes with a set of guidelines with regard to the 
essentials of e-mail archiving. Formal training in e-mail management seems essential to 
reduce the pitfalls of information overload! 

Pieter van Brakel 
Scientific Editor  

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ISSN 1560-683X

Published by InterWord Communications for Department of Information and Knowledge Management, 
University of Johannesburg