Recognising the injustices of South Africa’s apartheid past, there is a responsibility on employers to ensure that employment equity practices are implemented, without harming important aspects regarding the employment relationship, such as the psychological contract. The psychological contract is a construct that is relevant to employment and yet there is little research on the influence of external regulations on the psychological contract. To cater for this void, this study therefore focussed on the effects that employment equity legislation and practices have on the psychological contract. In this regard special attention was given to the influence of employment equity on employees’ intention to resign, which forms an important part of the psychological contract. The study also focussed on the differences that exist between the three social groupings that are present in South African organisations, namely white males, Africans and a group consisting of white females, Coloureds and Indians, regarding their perceptions about how employment equity influences the psychological contract. A structured questionnaire comprising standardised scales was used to explore the effect of employment equity legislation on the psychological contract in the context of a tertiary institution. A sample of 399 employees from a tertiary institution participated in the study. A number of statistically significant relationships between the research variables were evident for each of the three groupings of participants. The overall outcome of the study was that employment equity does not have a significant effect on the psychological contract in a tertiary institution and no significant differences were found between the responses of the three social groupings involved in the study. This study makes an important contribution to an area potentially rich in research opportunities; with subsequent meaningful practical implications for managers implementing employment equity strategies. / Dissertation (MPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / gm2014 / Human Resource Management / unrestricted

M.Comm. (Business Management) / An exploration into the level of high staff turnover in the recruitment industry and the possible reasons for the turnover. A quantitative study using a survey with carefully considered reasons for why consultants would leave the recruitment industry. Making use of Binary Logistic Regression modelling and Boosted Regression Tree analysis (BRT), the main reasons for why consultants leave the recruitment industry were identified with applicable outcomes and recommendations for future study.

Magister Commercii - MCom / There is usually much reaction among employees when a new system is introduced in an organization. These things are intended to improve performance but sometimes cause considerable controversy amongst the employees and management. This study examines the implementation of LE and it attempts to analyse the reactions of employes in a manufacturing company in South Africa - GKN Sinter Metals (GKN), Cape Town. According to the literature review, the implementation of the LE can play a significant role in improving the company's performance. / South Africa

Magister Commercii (Industrial Psychology) - MCom(IPS) / After the 1994 elections South Africa had to undergo drastic changes for it to become a more just society to address past injustices experienced by various ethnic groups. Issues such as equality and social justice have frequently appeared on top of various organisations’ agenda. The South African Government realised legislation was of paramount importance to guide organisations in promoting justice in the workplace. These changes in the legislation have had several impacts on organisations operating in South Africa, namely turnover, recruitment and retention of employees in the workplace. Attempting to preside over the promotion of social justice and eliminate inequalities experienced in the workplace, Government realised it had to intercede, not only to prevent additional discrimination, but also to promote the employment and advancement of individuals who were disadvantaged by previous policies. The Government therefore in 1998 implemented the Employment Equity Act to fulfil a constitutional mandate to prohibit discrimination in the workplace and encourage Affirmative Action (AA) measures. Describing and explaining the role of fairness as a concern in the workplace, the term organisational justice was coined. Individuals will base fairness judgements by taking into consideration the actual decision or the procedures used to reach a decision. Organisational justice can be divided into distributive, procedural and interactional justice. Organisations in South Africa face the challenge of finding ways to implement EE strategies to gain competitive advantages without creating negative employee attitudes; attention will focus on how to overcome the barriers that hinder the successful implementation of EE practices and procedures.

Objectives: Extending working lives is a major strategy in policy responses to ageing populations. This is currently being implemented by means of the increasing UK state pension age. However, the health effects of such changes are highly debatable. A systematic review conducted by this thesis revealed that previous research on the topic has provided a diverse set of findings. One of the reasons for the lack of agreement between previous studies is the high degree of heterogeneity in the study samples of older adults. This is statistically revealed by a meta-analysis conducted in this study. The research presented within this thesis examines whether extending working lives is beneficial for health, and focuses on the importance of accounting for quality of work when considering these effects. Methods: The study used respondents from waves 1 to 5 of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing who worked until state pension age and then entered either later-life employment or retirement. Linear spline regressions examined trajectories of depression, self-rated health and cognitive function across the retirement age period, stratified by work quality and retirement. Propensity score matching was subsequently used to estimate unbiased treatment effects of extended working as opposed to retirement, and then of poor and good quality work individually in relation to retirement. Results: The spline models indicated entering retirement from work was associated with a significant change in patterns of depression and self-rated health, but continuation of work was not. Retiree trajectories consistently showed poorer outcomes than those of respondents who were working. The results of the propensity score matching found no significant differences in health on the basis of belonging to the group of overall workers compared to retirees. However when work was stratified on the basis of its quality, significant differences became apparent. Belonging to the group of poor quality workers was associated with significantly worse depression than belonging to both the good quality workers and retirees, and belonging to the group of good quality worker was associated with significantly better self-rated health than belonging to the group of retirees. Discussion: The heterogeneous socio-demographic and health characteristics of the older working population should be taken into account when examining impacts of employment on health. Failure to account for differences in quality of work may lead to the incorrect assumption that extended employment is beneficial to the health of all workers. If older people are going to be encouraged to work for longer periods of time, beneficial effects need to apply to all working groups. Employers need to ensure adjustments to individual working patterns and environments are made in order to suit the needs of an ageing workforce.

A Generalized Leontief Inverse Indirect Utility Function and its estimation are discussed; a data base compatible with the requirements of the function is created, and we attempt to estimate postwar Canadian preferences (for consumption with and without the simultaneous supply of labour). The parameters of the function are estimated in a two-stage (generalized) least squares procedure due to Zellner [1961]. The empirical results indicate that the functional form behaves rather well and our estimated expenditure shares and elasticities of substitution between goods seem to conform to our theoretical expectations. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

The successful implementation of the Canada/British Columbia Agreement to Enhance the Employability of Social Assistance Recipients (the “SAR”, or Four Corner” Agreement) can be explained by a revised version of Mazmanian and Sabatier’s 1983 theory of implementation. This framework is also able to account for some of the limitations that the initiative faced. The analysis of the SAR Agreement is placed in the context of the on-going dilemma of work and welfare and in the evolving ideological climate in the B.C. welfare system from an ideology of redistribution, to one of liberal developmentalism, emphasizing opportunity before work. The case-study provides a history of the implementation of the SAR Agreement in B.C. at both the policy-formulation and field levels of government, and gives an overview of the agreement and its results. This information is gained through reports, government documents and interviews with officials involved in the SAR Agreement. Application of the revised theory of implementation to the agreement illuminates the ingredients critical to the success of the SAR initiative in British Columbia. Among the most important determinants of success were the intensive cooperation between federal and provincial agencies, the amount of discretion given to local officials when combined with the expertise and resources of those officials, the correct causal theory underlying most project designs, and the flexibility of the agreement respond to past successes and failures. The agreement was limited by the lack of general guidelines to provide officials with a sense of direction, by the possibility of conflicting goals of outside agencies, and by problems with the invalid causal theory underlying a few programs. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

Underemployment is a much discussed but little researched topic. The thesis begins with a broad discussion of the theory and methodology underlying the recent research on underemployment. It then proceeds to a quantitative analysis of underemployment using data from the 1995 follow-up of B.C. college leavers from vocational, technical and two-year academic university transfer programs. The study finds that, overall, one third of B.C. college leavers were employed in jobs that did not require the level of education that they had attained. As expected, there were significant differences by field of study and subsequent occupation. The rate of underemployment among students from academic programs was eight times the rate of underemployment for students from vocational programs and twice that of students from career/technical programs. Additionally, almost a third of all college leavers were employed in Sales and Service occupations and roughly two-thirds of those were underemployed. Labour market segmentation theory provides the most useful theoretical explanation for these findings. The markedly uneven rates of underemployment experienced by college leavers in the core and peripheral sectors support the labour market segmentation perspective. In conclusion, underemployment is a useful, though limited construct. Such a measure should only be used in conjunction with other measures of employment outcomes like unemployment, salary and full/part-time employment status. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

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The role of work-family reconciliation policies in female employment and fertility recuperation in selected EU member states Kamila Utegenova Abstract Currently an increasing number of parents, in particularly women, experience conflict in work-family balance, which significantly affects the level of fertility in developed countries. The European Council is actively involved in solving this problem, since the general welfare of the country may directly depend on the balanced population reproduction. This work is aimed at identifying the effects of the special measures taken to improve women's employment efficiency - in the spheres of childcare arrangements, parental leave and gender equality. Keywords: fertility, employment, work-life balance, European Union member states