Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1965. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: l. 108-114.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1973. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 130-138). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

Thesis (M.Com.(Human Resources Management)) - University of Pretoria, 2005. / Abstract in English and Afrikaans. Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.App.Psy.)--University of Waikato, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 44-51) Also available via the World Wide Web.

Emotional labor has been defined by Hochschild (1983) as “the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display” (p. 7, 1983). Many jobs contain an emotional component that goes beyond the normal burden on feelings caused by work and thus require “emotional labor”. Hochschild (1983) distinguished between two approaches available to the emotional laborer - surface acting and deep acting. This thesis examines the relationships between employee emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983), customer perceived interaction quality and customer intention to continue the private banking service relationships. It also tests the mediating effects of customer expectations of emotional labour on the relationship between employee emotional labour and customer perceived interaction quality. Dyadic data was generated from customer-relationship manager pairs involved in private banking service relationships. Key findings demonstrate that employee deep acting relates positively with customer perceived interaction quality; however, employee surface acting does not relate negatively. At a more specific level, the greater the customer expectations of deep acting - the more positive the relationship between employee deep acting and customer perceived interaction quality and the more negative the relationship between employee surface acting and customer perceived interaction quality. The lower the customer expectations of surface acting, the more positive the relationship between employee deep acting and customer perceived interaction quality. Higher levels of customer perceived interaction quality then relate positively to the customer intention to continue the service relationship. This work helps simultaneously explore the flow of emotional labour from employees to customers and helps understand the service relationship holistically. Findings establish the importance of emotional labour and how it influences customers’ perception of their interactions. This knowledge is useful in building sustainable and fruitful service relationships for the benefit of the customers, employees and organizations.

No description available.

Twenty years ago David Ulrich presented a new concept asking HR to move away from administration and routine and to become strategic. By using new technological developments (newly developed software, the internet, and the segmentation of HR services) he created the foundation for HR to become a ‘business partner’. However, contemporary HR departments still seem be dominated by administrative tasks, now executed by new IT systems. This is reinforced by the Roffey Park “Management Agenda 2014” which states that the vast majority of HR professionals view themselves as “too reactive” spending “too much time on unimportant things” (p.33). Working as a consultant in HR I am confronted with these realities and the impact of Ulrich’s model on relationships between HR and its customers. By interviewing experts and surveying line managers and employees, the evidence indicates that the relationship between HR and employees faces disturbances, as benefits from business partnering are not obvious to HR’s customers. Hence, HR is at a crossroads as a function; it can either contribute to business by using current (and future) technological tools, or increasingly lose significance within the business. This research develops an ‘in-partnership’ approach that aims to re-connect HR and business. The in-partnership approach addresses relationships and helps to overcome the segmentation in HR by entering into a dialogue between HR and business. This research therefore provides novel insights into HR by understanding the importance of the relationships with the different communities which need to benefit from Business Partnering, allowing a useful contribution to practice that values the relationships to HR customers, internally as well as externally.

The broad aim of the research presented in this thesis was to explore the process by which small firm owner-managers become employers, their early experiences as employers and the impact of these experiences on their subsequent management decisions. The research topic derived from the researcher’s interests and experience in human resource management and small business and was designed to contribute to a richer understanding of early employment in small firms, as there was a lack of published research in the field. The study used an interpretive, qualitative approach. The research design derived from an analysis of four pilot interviews, in which issues emerged that were then explored in the literature review. These issues included motivation to become an employer; the use of social capital within networks as an alternative to employment; the experiences and learning process of the owner-manager during and after the decision to become an employer; and subsequent employment policy and behaviour. The main fieldwork comprised a further fifteen semi-structured interviews with micro-business owner-managers, eight of whom had become employers and seven who had not. The analysis of both the pilot and subsequent interviews was conducted through thematic analysis that gave rise to approximately fifty themes. These were then reduced on the basis of inter-case frequency to ten key issues. A ‘thick description’ of these was presented and used as the basis for the development of a model of the process, as presented in Chapter Five. The findings highlighted the use of social capital as an alternative to initial staff employment, that once exhausted led to the hiring of first employees by members of the ‘employer’ sample, most of whom could be characterised as ‘reluctant employers’. Contrary to expectations, the first employment experience was not of high salience to the majority of these owner- managers. Instead, the later experiences of employment were perceived by the employers to be of greater significance, in particular the emergence of skilled and trustworthy employees enabling the gradual development of early formal structures in the firm. In some cases, such an employee was perceived as significantly contributing to the business and its growth potential - one who in the thesis is referred to as ‘first line manager’ These positive experiences of employment tended to be self-reinforcing, leading to further enhancement of the owner-managers’ self-concept as employers and bringing some stability and formality to employment relations practices within the firm, with the characteristics of these employees tending to become informal templates for further employment decisions. In developing the model, an understanding is advanced of the various tensions to which owner-managers were subjected in becoming employers. These included finding a balance between the use of social capital versus employment, the desire to recruit versus perceptions of the risk of needing to terminate employment, the benefits of additional human capital versus the costs and other risks, and different degrees of formality in employment practices. The implications of these insights are profound, in the light of the need to facilitate employment in small firms. They point to ways that support practices might be better tailored to meet the needs of this significantly large group of owner managers. It is suggested that through sustained engagement and mechanisms which serve to support owner-managers in the development of social and business networks, both social and economic benefits will be accrued.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka huruvida och på vilket sätt unga individer med behovs- och deltidsanställning upplever att deras anställningsform påverkar deras hälsa, livssituation och vardagsliv. I uppsatsen beskrivs behovs- och deltidsanställningar som otrygga då de i många fall innebär ett oförutsägbart schema och en oförutsägbar inkomst. Studien är kvalitativ och bygger på fem intervjuer med unga individer mellan 20–30 år som alla har, eller under de senaste sex månaderna har haft, en behovs- eller deltidsanställning som huvudsaklig sysselsättning. Det insamlade datamaterialet analyseras med hjälp av fyra sociologiska teorier, dessa är flexibilitet på arbetsmarknaden, krav- och kontrollmodellen, ekonomi-skam och ekonomi-sociala band modellen samt psykologiska kontrakt. De slutsatser som dras är att en otrygg anställningsform leder till psykiska påfrestningar hos de anställda, som i stor utsträckning upplever stress och oro inför framtiden. Konsekvenserna grundas till stor del i en ostabil och oförutsägbar ekonomi. Av resultatet framgår även att de sociala relationerna med både chef och kollegor spelar stor roll för upplevelsen av den otrygga anställningsformen. Om arbetstagaren har en god relation med chef och kollegor upplever denne i större utsträckning anställningsformen och dess medföljande villkor som bättre. / The purpose of this essay is to gain further knowledge of how young adults with temporary and part time employment experience the consequences of their employment regarding health, life situation and everyday life. In this study temporary and part time employment is described as insecure employment because of their often unpredictable schedule and income. The study is built on five qualitative interviews with young adults between the age of 20–30 years old. They all have, or within the last six months have had, a part time or temporary employment as their main occupation. The result is analysed with the help of four sociological theories. These include flexibility on the labour market, the demand and control model, the economy-shame and economy- social bonds model and the theory of psychological contracts. The conclusions made are that an insecure employment leads to psychological tension. The individual tends to experience a lot of stress and worries for the future because of increased psychological tension. These are consequences that are based on an unpredictable and unstable personal economy. The result also shows that the experience of an insecure employment can depend on the individual's relationship with manager and co-workers. If the individual has a good relationship with manager and co-workers, it is more likely to experience the form of employment and its accompanying terms as better.

The purpose of this grounded theory study was to better understand the differences in the way older, male workers perceived themselves as they aged, particularly with reference to work and aspects of the work environment. Career theorists have, for the most part, paid scant attention to this population. Research efforts that have focused on the “older worker” implicitly assume that they are homogeneous, that aging itself has a uniform impact, and that aging is a process of inevitable loss. A grounded theory approach was chosen because it was deemed most suitable to explore the phenomena because the basic variables were not readily identifiable, the field was rather ill-defined, and the research questions were best asked from within the “lived experience” of the participants. A sample of older, male workers, who were actively employed, were interviewed using a semi-structured interview format. A number of major categories and subcategories emerged through the research analysis including attitudes toward aging, the meaning of work, and the value of interpersonal relationships. The content of these categories were observed to change over the lives of the respondents, and these changes were neither uniform nor necessarily predictable. The differences that were observed among, and within, the respondents were attributable to the interaction of the level of cognitive development, locus of control, self-knowledge, interpersonal orientation, adaptive competence, spiritual courage, and the emotional viability of one's life story. The results of the study suggest that “older workers” do not constitute a unique population within the general workforce and that, in the future, researchers must attend to their individual differences. The findings of the study provide strong support for the notion that adult development is not the result of the passage of time alone, but rather is the result of an interaction among a diversity of factors. The results also affirm that, for many older workers, aging is a time of ongoing growth and renewal, and further that personal development is inseparable from career development. Older workers have the potential to not only contribute to the postmodern workplace, but also markedly enhance the quality of working life for all. / Graduate