Table 8. Joint display comparing the... | Emerald Publishing

Table 8.

Joint display comparing the business environment and regressive city leadership

Quantitative results (n = 300)	Qualitative results (n = 15)	Interpretation
Central tendency: M = 2.08 (SD = 0.85) Range on Likert scale = 1–5 Correlation: r = −0.537 (medium negative correlation) Independent samples t-test for growth vs no-growth companies: Business Environment (t = −4.092, p < 0.001) Regression: high negative relationship for Business Environment Obstacles (β = −0.185, t = −3.892, p < 0.001)	There was a strong consensus around political instability and, in particular, the impact of corruption on local economic development. The political instability hindered accountability, and because of the political agenda recruited individuals into key positions Quotations: “So, a fish rots from the head. Right. We have created such an unethical work culture in the public space… not prepared to roll up the sleeves unless there’s something in it for them something backhanded, you know to them” (P7). “I know a couple has failed because the municipality didn’t honor their side of payment structures” (P15)	Confirmation (Convergence between data sets). Political instability, corruption, bribery and unethical behaviour have a significant impact on the economic potential of the city. This has also impacted the social contract with the citizens These findings reinforce that there are significant issues in Nelson Mandela Bay, and the confirmation between the two data sets underlines maladaptive self-organisation where the institutional agents coordinate around rent-seeking rather than governance. This creates a situation of wide trust breakdowns (emergent dysfunctions). CAS property demonstrated – negative emergence and nonlinearity: The convergence between the quantitative suppression effect (β = −0.185) and the qualitative accounts of corruption and procurement capture constitutes evidence of negative emergence – a CAS property in which system-level dysfunction (institutional trust collapse, suppressed entrepreneurial activity) arises from decentralised agent interactions (individual corrupt appointments, informal rent-seeking networks) rather than from any single point of failure. This is nonlinear: the cumulative ecosystem impact is disproportionate to any individual act of corruption, because each instance reinforces the feedback loop of low trust → reduced investment → reduced tax revenue → weaker municipal capacity → further governance failure. The quantitative coefficient alone cannot reveal this mechanism; it is the qualitative accounts that expose the self-reinforcing nature of the loop, which is precisely what the joint display meta-inference is designed to demonstrate. “Emergent dysfunctions” refer here to CAS-consistent outcomes: negative system-level properties (trust collapse, investment withdrawal, informal exclusion) that are not designed or intended by any single agent but arise from the aggregate of decentralised interactions among institutional actors operating under misaligned incentive structures

Quantitative results (n = 300)	Qualitative results (n = 15)	Interpretation
Central tendency: M = 2.08 (SD = 0.85) Range on Likert scale = 1–5 Correlation: r = −0.537 (medium negative correlation) Independent samples t-test for growth vs no-growth companies: Business Environment (t = −4.092, p < 0.001) Regression: high negative relationship for Business Environment Obstacles (β = −0.185, t = −3.892, p < 0.001)	There was a strong consensus around political instability and, in particular, the impact of corruption on local economic development. The political instability hindered accountability, and because of the political agenda recruited individuals into key positions Quotations: “So, a fish rots from the head. Right. We have created such an unethical work culture in the public space… not prepared to roll up the sleeves unless there’s something in it for them something backhanded, you know to them” (P7). “I know a couple has failed because the municipality didn’t honor their side of payment structures” (P15)	Confirmation (Convergence between data sets). Political instability, corruption, bribery and unethical behaviour have a significant impact on the economic potential of the city. This has also impacted the social contract with the citizens These findings reinforce that there are significant issues in Nelson Mandela Bay, and the confirmation between the two data sets underlines maladaptive self-organisation where the institutional agents coordinate around rent-seeking rather than governance. This creates a situation of wide trust breakdowns (emergent dysfunctions). CAS property demonstrated – negative emergence and nonlinearity: The convergence between the quantitative suppression effect (β = −0.185) and the qualitative accounts of corruption and procurement capture constitutes evidence of negative emergence – a CAS property in which system-level dysfunction (institutional trust collapse, suppressed entrepreneurial activity) arises from decentralised agent interactions (individual corrupt appointments, informal rent-seeking networks) rather than from any single point of failure. This is nonlinear: the cumulative ecosystem impact is disproportionate to any individual act of corruption, because each instance reinforces the feedback loop of low trust → reduced investment → reduced tax revenue → weaker municipal capacity → further governance failure. The quantitative coefficient alone cannot reveal this mechanism; it is the qualitative accounts that expose the self-reinforcing nature of the loop, which is precisely what the joint display meta-inference is designed to demonstrate. “Emergent dysfunctions” refer here to CAS-consistent outcomes: negative system-level properties (trust collapse, investment withdrawal, informal exclusion) that are not designed or intended by any single agent but arise from the aggregate of decentralised interactions among institutional actors operating under misaligned incentive structures

Source(s): Authors’ own work