Magister Commercii (Industrial Psychology) - MCom(IPS) / Since the early 2000‟s there has been a wave of global downsizing of employees in many organisations. A question can be posed, to what extent have organisations focused to adopt a downsizing policy framework for ensuring a balance of procedural and efficiency imperatives (Chew & Howitz, 2002). Organisational downsizing has recently become an increasingly important issue that needs to be addressed to ensure fair employment practices. Companies worldwide have used downsizing to improve employee competitiveness, profitability, organisational effectiveness, efficiency as well as to reduce the size of their workforce. Downsizing has ramifications for everyone in the organisation, regardless if employees are remaining in the organisation or those. As a result of restructuring, employees might be suspicious about the future direction of the organisation and their role in it. Trust is especially important in knowledge-based organisations because it is known to support knowledge-creation processes and related interactions (Blomqvist 2002; Tyler 2003). Employees are often sceptical about change, as new work roles assigned may cause them anxiety and previous interpersonal relationships may be lost; however companies regard downsizing positively. The reaction of those who survive the downsizing determines the future success of the organisation (Hopkins & Weathington, 2006). An organisation, in a dominant market, share position due to downsizing and restructuring its strategic business units, thus is more complex and emotionally draining than being the leader during periods of growth. Different organisations, at present, have joined the military march of the global epidemic infected with layoffs that is redefining effective leadership and employee motivation, loyalty and commitment (Noer, 2010). Downsizing essentially involves the reduction in the number of workforce within the organisation, which can be achieved through several techniques including, retrenchments, early retirements or casualisation of staff (Hellgren, Nȁswell, & Sverke, 2005). Robbins (as cited in Ndlovu & Parumasur, 2005, p. 14) intensifies the above by defining downsizing as a practice of reducing the organisations size through extensive layoffs, whereby whole layers of the organisation are eradicated and management is done with fewer people. On the other hand, as outlined by Chew and Horwitz (2002), downsizing may not necessarily result in the loss of jobs where employees are retrained and re-deployed, or where other measures such as non-replacement of staff that leave occur.

Magíster en Ciencias, mención Computación. Ingeniero Civil en Computación / Chile es un país que sufre regularmente catástrofes naturales como terremotos, tsunamis, aludes, etc. En condiciones de catástrofe mantener el funcionamiento de infraestructuras como las de telecomunicaciones puede significar un gran desafío. Dentro de estas el Internet es una pieza importante pues se ha transformado en la alternativa a las redes teléfonicas para comunicarse con otras personas y además permite tener acceso a información sobre los eventos que estén ocurriendo. Sin embargo estas mismas catástrofes pueden afectar de forma negativa el funcionamiento de Internet. Asimismo el funcionamiento de Internet puede verse dañado por otros eventos como ataques cibernéticos o fallos de equipos, cables, antenas, etc. Para mantener la red de Internet chilena en funcionamiento bajo cualquier evento primero hay que preguntarse ¿qué tan preparado se encuentra el Internet chileno para resistir fallos? a la capacidad de resistir fallos le llamamos robustez. Así, para responder la pregunta anterior es necesario estudiar la robustez del Internet chileno. Esto último requiere además contar con una caracterización de Internet en Chile, qué elementos son los que definen su estructura y cómo se comportan. Por ejemplo, el Internet chileno podría ser visto como aquella red que se compone por cables, fibras ópticas y diferentes instalaciones físicas distribuídas a lo largo del país, pues es a través de estos equipos que la información viaja de un lugar a otro. Sin embargo esto no necesariamente muestra si los usuarios tienen acceso a Internet, si acaso han perdido acceso al resto del mundo o si han perdido total o parcialmente la conexión dentro del país. Entonces se podría establecer que la red compuesta por conjuntos de redes IP es realmente lo que conocemos como Internet. Sin embargo esta red puede perder funcionalidad si cables o instalaciones físicas son dañadas, y viceversa. Así, la red de Internet realmente estaría compuesta por varias redes distintas interactuando entre sí, interacciones que generan comportamientos nuevos y distintos a los que cada red tuviese por si sola frente a los mismos fallos. La red de Internet es entonces una red multi-capa (también conocida como red multi-layer o redes interdependientes). En esta tesis se realizó una revisión sistemática de la literatura existente sobre frameworks de estudio de robustez de redes multi-layer, la cual consideró 57 artículos publicados entre los años 2005 y 2016. En esta revisión se encontraron 4 categorías mayores para clasificar los frameworks: Modelo de redes interdependientes, tipo de métrica para medir robustez, estudios realizados y redes usadas para testear el framework. A partir de la revisión sistemática en esta tesis se propone y justifica el uso de un determinado framework de estudio apropiado para el caso del Internet chileno. Finalmente se ofrece una forma de construir el sistema a partir de datos reales y una implementación en código para analizar el sistema. / Este trabajo ha sido parcialmente financiado por NIC Chile Research Labs y el Proyecto CORFO 15BPE-47225

South African government has since 1995, developed a considerable body of legislation that defines a holistic Human Resource Development Framework for the Private Security Sub-sector. Through this legislation development process, the Private Security Sub-sector has made considerable progress in implementing this body of legislation. However, in spite of this achievement, policy implementation success indicators are not commensurate to the policy development success indicators and several challenges are still impeding skills development of workers. In particular, the Private Security Industry has moved steadily beyond the systems development phase. It has made strong progress in implementing stipulations of the skill development legislation in the sector with the support of the skills levy fund as well as donor support. Considerable attention has been paid to the implementation of the different types of skills development related legislation including funding the skills development initiatives and employment equity. The cases examined in the study reflect varying and different degrees of success in achieving set targets as well as challenges that have emerged in the implementation process. There is an indication that the dire shortage of skills in the private security subsector persists and the efforts of the drivers of training and development in the sector, the Safety and Security Sector Education and Training (SASSETA), the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (PSIRA) and employers have made little impact on this need. This state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely. The study revealed a range of critical National Skills Development Strategy targets that have not been met throughout the period under study. For instance employers have failed to meet obligatory targets of employing training employees to achieve at least ABET level 4. In addition, only 54% women have been trained and 4% people with disabilities. Furthermore, there are a number of other training obligations that compounds the challenge by infringing on the rights of the affected groups. This also retards the social and economic development of workers as well as that of the country. South Africa continues to lack effective, robust crime fighting groups of skilled crime fighters in spite of the training levy funds that have been spent on skilling the Private Security Sub-sector. The point of departure of this study is that the Skills Development initiative is a sector programme which must be led by the sector itself, especially the employers. The employers in the workplace constitute a valuable source of capacity to effectively implement the skills development legislation. SASSETA and PSIRA are the promoters and drivers of the participation of Private Security Service providers in skills development in pursuit of the 2014 vision. It is imperative that SASSETA and PSIRA, as proponents and catalysts of skills development, listen to the concerns raised by employers and continuously engage them as well as the intended beneficiaries, the workers. The research revealed that benefits of the skills development legislation will only be realised when critical elements such as prioritising the identified challenges and shortcomings are the focus. The study highlighted the need for industries to capacitate their employees to understand the intended benefits of training regulations and requirements. Developing management and leadership capacity, creating conditions that are conducive for skills development at the workplace, and building the capacity of Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) through innovation and support were also identified as critical for successful implementation of policy in this regard. The need to train and capacitate leaders in corporate governance and financial management was also among the findings identified by the study. The findings will present an opportunity for scholars and researchers to debate and argue their merits and demerits which will in turn influence policy-making processes positively. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / School of Public Management and Administration (SPMA) / unrestricted

The analysis of cultural and value-related differences and the development of a workable and effective leadership culture for business in South Africa takes place against the backdrop of a unique socio-political history. Since 1992 the process of political and social transformation that affects all organisations in South Africa, including the public service, is a process of radical change and involves the unification of individuals from many diverse cultures. The public service, directed by the principles of reconciliation, restructuring and development, finds itself within a process of both structural and cultural transformation. The culture change process of the SA Air Force, one of the Arms of Service and the organisation on which this study focussed, involve the transformation of policies, practices and behaviour (especially leadership practices) towards a culture being much more transformational and participative than what it was in the past. The question under study was whether a transformational leadership approach is suitable for the African social and work environment. South African organisations are still being conceptualised and structured in a largely Western mould. Yet, the appropriateness and application of Western-centric leadership and management theories and philosophies in all other cultures are increasingly being challenged. Through focussing on work-related values and locus of control orientation, the researcher wished to uncover the common ground between eurocentric and indigenous African philosophies, principles and practices (which underlie the SA reality) as part of the challenge to find a workable approach for effective leadership in South Africa. The research investigated the appropriateness of the elements of a transformational leadership approach (as opposed to the task focussed transactional approach) to fit the huge array of cultural identities in the African world of work. Self-administered questionnaires were used to obtain feedback from 509 respondents, all being leaders at different levels in the organisation. The survey data included preferences on work-related values as expressed by both the Survey of Work Values (Wollack, Goodale, Wijting&Smith, 1971) and the Value Survey Module (Hofstede, 1980), locus of control orientation as expressed by the Internal Control Index (Duttweiler, 1984)) and leadership behaviour as expressed by the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Bass&Avolio, 1997). Statistical methods for data analysis included analysis of variance, discriminant analysis, correlation statistics, non-parametric statistics, multiple regression and descriptive statistics. The research has shown that the answer for developing a workable, practical approach for effective leadership in Africa is neither singular, nor simplistic. The research findings do not support the argument of building a unique African leadership model which is purely based only on indigenous African values, thereby rejecting all tested and proven western principles and philosophies. The search for a suitable leadership model for a transforming South Africa should not run the risk of only focusing on either African- or Western-specific cultural value systems. Instead, the existence of culture-universal values impacting on effective leadership processes were confirmed. Many of the so-called humanistic African values proposed, are reported not to be truly African, but rather universal in nature. It was also found that many of these culture-universal characteristics could be associated with the principles of transformational leadership. The validity of adopting a transformational leadership culture for the military was also confirmed. Respondents have shown an awareness of a large power distance and a tendency towards high uncertainty avoidance as well as a strong collectivistic orientation. Support was also found for the fact that business success is not only achieved through masculine influence. In terms of Upward Striving, Pride in Work and Job Involvement as work value dimensions, employees across all culture groups were found to attach a high value to the intrinsic rewards of work in shaping work-related behaviour. Despite the general tendency towards internality, Africans provided significantly lower scores on internality than all the other population groups. However, the results in this study have firmly rejected the notion that most organisational behaviour theory is limited to only internals. Although internality predicts more natural transformational behaviours, the critical factor remains whether leaders have the ability to ensure the required outcomes of extra effort and follower satisfaction. This can be achieved by both internals and externals. The research established the fact that, also in the African context, leadership styles differ in terms of follower effectiveness and that higher levels of employee participation and involvement, inspirational motivation and individualised consideration (i.e. transformational behaviours) lead to higher levels of follower performance and effectiveness across all four culture groups. Copyright 2005, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Beukman, TL 2005, The effect of selected variables on leadership behaviour within the framework of a transformational organisation paradigm, DComm thesis, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-11082005-083347 / > / Thesis (DCom (Human Resources Management))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Human Resource Management / unrestricted

This conceptual study aimed at refining the conceptual rigor of D. W. Sue’s tricomponential model of multicultural counselling competency, and enhancing with an addition of new attitude component. This study anchored its theoretical basis on a concept of nomological network (Cronbach & Meehi, 1955). Construct explication approach (Murphy & Davidshofer, 1998) was taken to develop full explication of four componential model of MCC, containing attitude-awareness-knowledge-skills components. Comprehensive literature review was conducted in the area of multicultural counselling competency to develop working definitions of awareness-knowledge-skills component. Another review was conducted to develop a working definition and a conceptual model of attitude. Under the four-componential framework, a total of 284 characteristic descriptions previously developed under the tricomponential model were conceptually re-examined and re-categorized. Result of the analyses revealed a total of 13 subcategories under the four components. Full construct explication of the four componential model was developed. Research implications of the new model to MCC measurement studies and practical applications to training models will be discussed. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

The landscape of the childhood victimization literature is shifting, with a growing number of researchers emphasizing the importance of designing studies that account for and aim to disentangle the interconnections among victimization experiences. This is a notable contrast to the bulk of the scientific inquiry to date, which has tended to examine victimization experiences in isolation from one another and has created victimization-specific models of risk. On the other hand, the multiple victimization field aims to better understand the overlap among risk factors and the co-occurrence across victimization experiences to create general or non-specific risk models for childhood victimization. From this field emerged the concept of multiple victimization (defined as exposure to more than one type of victimization within a specified time period), that has been established as the unfortunate norm among victimized children. The current dissertation was designed not only to help attain a better understanding of the phenomenon of childhood multiple victimization but also to contribute to our understanding of the frequency, co-occurrence, and risk (grounded in the ecological framework) of childhood multiple victimization. This dissertation addresses important shortcomings of the published literature, such as the scarcity of studies that account for the co-occurrence among victimization experiences, the limited victimization data on school-aged children and clinical samples, and the dearth of studies that test comprehensive risk models of multiple victimization. Caregivers of school-aged children (N = 213) in the Ottawa/Gatineau area participated in the online study, which involved the completion of a 30-minute questionnaire package that assessed their child’s victimization experiences as well as child (e.g., sex, age), family (e.g., caregiver psychosocial functioning, family functioning), and neighbourhood (e.g., safety) factors. Results provided support for the ubiquitous nature of childhood multiple victimization (in the past year and lifetime) as well as for the common co-occurrence of various victimization experiences. Specifically, while a certain overlap was found across all victimization forms, conventional crimes and peer and/or sibling victimization co-occurred most often in this school-aged sample. In addition, victimization forms that may be qualified as “severe” (sexual victimization, Internet victimization, maltreatment) tended to co-occur with many additional forms and were rarely reported on their own. Findings highlighted the important associations between victimization exposure and psychosocial difficulties (anxiety, depression, aggression, and posttraumatic stress), and weighting techniques (i.e., weighting severe victimization forms more heavily) were not found to significantly contribute to better predictability of psychosocial difficulties. Turning to the risk models, a number of correlates of childhood multiple victimization were identified, most notably family variables including family dysfunction, caregiver psychosocial functioning, and substance use problems. However, a number of correlates (particularly socio-demographic factors) were also found to vary according to the victimization experiences assessed, providing partial support for the specificity assumption whereby victimization risk models vary according to the victimization form assessed. The theoretical and applied implications of research findings for efforts aimed at addressing childhood multiple victimization were also discussed.

Mobile apps are very popular and widely used to collect data. However, traditional web development tools like .Net and J2EE take a generic approach to such applications that leads to high code complexity and poor quality assurance. At the same time, Business Intelligence (BI) portals and dashboards provide interactive reports that allow one to flexibly explore, analyze, and visualize data. However, they are usually defined independently of the applications which are the source of the data. As a result, complex ETL (Extract, Transfer, and Load data) processes are required to integrate and transform data for reporting. We propose an application framework that flexibly integrates mobile apps and BI dashboards. We implemented three different versions of the framework and conducted case studies using two different health care applications to evaluate the framework. They demonstrated the potential to develop BI applications that integrate mobile forms data with less effort, less complexity, more consistency, and better ease of use. More importantly, the application framework provided the ability to seamlessly integrate data collection and reporting in a single mobile app. The final version of the application framework, QuickForms 3.0, is now published as an open source project, and a growing community of developers are now using the framework to build a wide variety of mobile apps.

This diploma thesis compares Grails and Play frameworks. The main goal of the thesis is to provide its readers a comprehensive view of benefits and disadvantages of the two frameworks using thorough comparison.In the first part of the thesis Grails and Play are introduced. In the next part the author defines criteria for comparison and analyses the sample application. The crucial part of this work is the comparison of the frameworks and their results. This work is intended to make the decision proces easier for developers who wants to choose one of these frameworks for their projects.

La programación reactiva es un paradigma enfocado en el trabajo con flujos de datos de manera asíncrona. En este webinar veremos cómo Spring Framework implementa la programación reactiva con WebFlux.

Today, thin client applications often rely on the infrastructure of the WWW to deliver their user interfaces (UIs) to clients. While this approach does not require the deployment of application logic on the client, web-based UIs typically do not provide the same level of usability as window-based UIs. We therefore present a UI framework that combines the flexibility of a thin presentation logic with the usability of a full-featured UI: Our approach uses an XMPP-based instant messaging infrastructure to exchange XUL interface descriptions and events between the application logic on the server and a generic UI rendering engine on the client.