Human and financial costs generated by nurse shortages, within a context of increasing numbers of patients requiring nursing care, demonstrate the potential significance of this study which aims to identify work related factors contributing to New Zealand nurses' intent to leave the job. Two hundred and seventy five usable paper and pencil surveys (Response rate = 68.8%) from a random sample of 400 nurses employed in one New Zealand District Health Board were used to explore intent to leave the job. Three research questions directed the description of levels of job satisfaction, job stress, and burnout found in nurse participants, correlations between the three variables, and the identification of variables predicting intent to leave the job through regression analyses. Levels of job satisfaction were high, job stress was low, and burnout was average. Specifically, lack of opportunity to participate in organisational decision making, control over work conditions, control over what goes on in the work setting (key Magnet Hospital characteristics) were not evident, and with pay rates, were the main sources of job dissatisfaction. Workload was the most frequently experienced source of stress by nurse participants. Twenty-five per cent of nurse participants reported high levels of intent to leave the job. Correlations suggested that reductions in job satisfaction influenced increases in job stress and burnout. Job stress was associated with increases in emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion was influenced by eight job satisfaction, job stress, and burnout subscales. Five subscales (professional opportunities, praise and recognition, interaction opportunities, extrinsic rewards, lack of support) explained 26.2% of the variance in nurse participant's intent to leave. Issues of power and control were associated with job dissatisfaction, job stress and burnout in nursing practice. However, predictors of intent to leave the job suggest a growing realisation by nurse participants that postgraduate education and nursing research may provide the tools to create positive change in the health care environment and make nursing visible, valued and appropriately rewarded.

International assignments are increasingly important in the global business world but many assignments end up in failure causing heavy losses on many expatriates and their organizations. This study employees a multi-dimensional approach, as suggested by much of the literature on international assignments of Australian expatriates in Korea and Korean expatriates in Australia. Hierarchical regression indicated that their expatriate success in performance can be accurately predicted by ‘Family Adaptation’ how well the family adapted to the overseas location, ‘Nationality’ where Korean respondents reported a much higher level of family adaptation with the move compared to Australian managers, and ‘Age’ that older managers were more likely to report success with an overseas posting. ‘Family adaptation’ with overseas work assignments, was determined by the level of ‘Spouse Agreement’ and ‘Nationality.’ Overall, Korean expatriates rated their own performance and level of adaptation much higher than those of Australians in all measurement categories. The Korean group may have outperformed the Australian expatriate group in adjustment and performance, possibly due to their strength in language skills, educational level, religious and socialization commitments, situation-orientation, but most importantly, due to the stability in family and spouse relationships. The outcome suggests that organizations should address the issues related to spouse adjustment in order to ensure successful expatriate operations, from the stage of accepting assignments to the repatriation stage. There is some evidence at least in this research to suggest that these findings need to be replicated with larger samples and considered in future management policy.

This study examined the understanding of workplace expectations of a group of deaf workers. Nine males and fifteen females, ranging in ages 18 to 48, all prelingually deaf, and whose preferred mode of communication was Auslan (Australian Sign Language), participated in the study. All had a history of extended periods of unemployment, interspersed with short-term vocational training courses that had not resulted in long-term employment. Ten of the participants were individuals identified as low-functioning deaf (LFD) characterised by their limited communication skills in sign language, English and presence of secondary disabilities. The purpose of this research was to investigate the extent the deaf participants understood employer expectations and how this knowledge may have impacted their employment success. Each deaf participant completed a 25-item written questionnaire exploring their views about workplace behaviours. A group of 100 employers from the Western Sydney area completed the same survey. The 24 deaf participants were interviewed regarding how they prioritised the items in the questionnaire and were asked to describe their workplace experiences. Subsequently, both data sets were analysed and compared. The participants were divided into four subgroups based on their employment status: employed/unemployed and functional levels: medium/LFD. Analysis of questionnaire rankings indicated the employed participants? responses showed good understanding of employer expectations. Results for the unemployed participants were divided; the rankings for the medium-functioning unemployed participants were very similar to the employed participants except in four areas. Predictably, the unemployed participants with LFD demonstrated a much lower understanding of employer expectations. The qualitative interviews provided further insight into the deaf participants? attitudes towards employment and the importance of meeting employer expectations. Additionally the interview transcripts identified many workplace problems experienced by the deaf participants which contribute to a lack of correspondence. The findings suggest deaf workers? dissatisfaction with their workplace conditions may play a role in their ability to sustain employment. Therefore, meeting employer expectations can be seen as only one of many components of successful employment. The findings suggest that both deaf workers and employers would benefit from greater understanding of each others? perspectives about the workplace. Seven topics are recommended for inclusion in future curricula. Better understanding of each others? views can support improved workplace relationships, employment retention and satisfaction levels.

This thesis investigates Japanese married men??s views on their wives?? employment and married women??s employment in general. I was inspired to undertake this study by the relatively low rate of wives, particularly mothers, in full-time employment in Japan. 291 Japanese husbands in Kawasaki and the Tokyo area answered the questionnaire. Their occupations were company employees, teachers and self-employed men and their ages ranged from the 20s to 50s. The results of my survey revealed that these Japanese husbands did not actively participate in housework and childcare. Their participation increased somewhat when wives were highly educated or older. However, a wife??s higher income was the most powerful incentive to encourage their participation. Husbands also participate in these tasks in accordance with their preferences rather than their expressed abilities. With respect to their views on married women and employment, many husbands acknowledged a general relationship between power and finance (that is, that income-earning is connected with domestic power), yet denied that it applied to themselves when asked about it. The majority showed supportive or sympathetic attitudes towards full-time housewives, which were rarely extended to employed wives except for those who work (part-time) due to clear financial necessity. Concerning men??s views on their wives, they were likely to appreciate a wife??s additional income. Nonetheless, a majority wanted their wives either to earn less than themselves or to have no income, even though the majority had income-earning wives. Their most popular employment status for a wife was part-time employment. The study revealed that most of these husbands had a strong identity as the ??breadwinner?? or ??head of the house??. In this study I explored a new dimension to Japanese husbands?? perceptions of their wives?? employment: the possibility that husbands?? attitudes and preferences were militating against their wives?? employment. My study demonstrated that husbands especially resist full-time employment for their wives, and seek to maintain traditional gender roles because this sustains their self-esteem. This is clearly one significant reason for the comparatively low rate of participation of Japanese wives in full-time employment.

The affect of restructuring of organizations on individuals is an area of change that has received little attention from researchers. The literature points to a number of factors that influence how individuals cope with transition. Theorists agree that stages are an intregal part of this process. This study outlines the changes experienced in the ACT Technical and Further Education system between 1987 and 1989- It focuses on the stages model and how individuals perceived themselves moving through particular levels of stages during this time of change. Data from a questionnaire completed by 259 ACT Institute of Technical and Further Education teachers was analysed along with observations and documents produced during 1987 to 1989. Results of the analysis show that individuals felt powerless and alienated by the process of transition. They moved across the stages in a cyclical motion, returning to earlier stages as each new event during the transition impinged on their working lives.

This thesis examines the values and criteria American companies use in hiring or placing expatriate employees in China. These values and criteria affect the success or failure of expatriate employees and a company's bottom line - profitability. Investigating this topic required an examination of the history of the political, economic, and social philosophies that have shaped contemporary China. It was also necessary to examine expatriates and their role, and to define an American company. Cultural comparisons are made between the United States and China using Hofstede's Four Dimensions, Ronen and Shenkar's Country Clusters, and Hsu's analysis of internal versus external motivation. I explored the relationship between two primary personnel parties in an effort to define how success and failure are measured in overseas assignments. To this end, I interviewed 42 Americans working in China categorized into two groups - the Management Group and the Employee Group. AU participants were located in either Shanghai or Beijing. Based on the interviews, an analytic distinction was made between expatriates hired locally and those employees who were transferred from the United States to China. The results of this study found that local hires tended to be younger and have linguistic and cultural skills, while the expatriates sent from the United States tended to be older and have managerial and technical skills. Challenges confronting both managers and employees will be shown to primarily stem from: 1) External motivations, such lucrative compensation packages, not guaranteeing a successful assignment in China; 2) the focus of companies when hiring or placing an expatriate employee being based on technical and management expertise; 3) cultural and linguistic skills being important for successful expatriate assignments; and, 4) cultural and linguistic training positioning an expatriate to have a successful assignment. These findings lead to the following recommendations: 1) Top managers should be provided with cross-cultural training to understand the importance of cultural and linguistic skills; 2) companies in China should hire local expatriates who have linguistic, cultural, and adaptability skills; and, 3) an investment should be made in technical skills training for local hires rather than linguistic and cultural training for technical expatriate employees. / Graduation date: 2001

Youth unemployment has been a persistent problem in the European Union for many years and the affected countries spend a substantial part of their budget on active labour market policies, with the aim to integrate young unemployed workers into the labour market. Employment subsidy programmes are one type of active labour market policies that have been implemented. Although important amounts of money have been spent for these programmes, little is known about the effects of participation in subsidised employment on the labour market transitions. This thesis incorporates several studies that aim to estimate the effect of a subsidised employment programme. The programme provides a reduction of the social insurance contribution for employers that hire eligible workers. All three studies provide estimates for the participation of long term unemployed school leavers. In order to evaluate whether programme participation is useful for their integration into the labour market, the effect on different duration outcomes has been investigated. A major difficulty in causal analysis with non-experimental data is that the characteristics of the group of participants may by systematically different from those of the group of non-participants. Estimates may therefore reflect both the effect of participation as well as the particular selection of participants. To control for this selection bias, multivariate mixed proportional hazard models have been applied and a large number of control variables have been incorporated. The results of this thesis show that participation in the employment subsidy programme accelerates the transitions into regular, non-subsidised employment. Moreover, the employment duration is increased, compared to a regular employment spell. Finally, the estimates show that the effect of a former participation on the duration of a subsequent unemployment spell is similar to the effect of a former regular employment spell.

After their release from prison, offenders are faced with many hardships that hinder their reintegration efforts. Often, offenders are stereotyped and face community exclusion due to their criminal record. Much of the literature on reintegration has focused on the way in which society stereotypes offenders, but not how offenders interpret and internalize these stereotypes. This study examines the way offenders internalize the stereotypes associated with having a criminal record, and how this affects their reintegration. Data was gathered by conducting 18 in-depth interviews with offenders at the John Howard Society in Toronto. The interviews showed that all participants felt that they had been negatively labeled by others based on the fact that they have a criminal record and/or spent time in prison. Additionally, five participants indicated experiencing stereotype threat, and believed this phenomenon to have had a negative impact on their ability to reintegrate back into society. / UOIT

This thesis covers three issues: the aggregate and welfare effects of environmental policies when plants are heterogeneous; what causes the different patterns of employment dynamics in small versus large firms over business cycles; and the welfare costs of expected and unexpected inflation. In the first chapter, we show that accounting for plant heterogeneity is important for the evaluation of environmental policies. We develop a general equilibrium model in which monopolistic competitive plants differ in productivity, produce differentiated goods and choose optimally a discrete emission-reduction technology. Emission-reduction policies affect both the fraction of plants adopting the advanced emission-reduction technology and the market shares of those with high levels of productivity. Calibrated to the Canadian data, the model shows that the aggregate costs of an emission tax to implement the Kyoto Protocol are 40 percent larger than the costs that would result with homogenous plants. In the second chapter, we incorporate labor search frictions into a model with lumpy investment to explain a set of firm-size-related facts about the United States labor market dynamics over business cycles. Contrary to the predictions of standard models, we observe that job destruction is procyclical in small firms but countercyclical in large ones. Calibrated to U.S. data, the model generates this asymmetric pattern of employment dynamics in small versus large firms. This is because a favorable aggregate productivity shock tightens the labor market. A tighter labor market hurts investing small firms. As a result, workers move from small to large firms during booms. In the third chapter, we analyze the welfare costs of inflation when money is essential to facilitate trades among anonymous agents and information about nominal shocks is incomplete as in Lucas (1972). In the model, the transactions in which money is essential coincide with those in which agents are affected by monetary shocks. Consequently, the average value of money and its variation in value in different markets affect agents simultaneously when the supply of money changes. Calibrated to U.S. data, we find that the welfare costs of expected inflation are almost three orders higher than the welfare costs of unexpected inflation.

This dissertation seeks to investigate the relationship between public sector employment and fiscal decentralization. We develop a theoretical model that helps us understand the interaction of the central executive's and subnational governor's decisions on the level of public employees at the central and subnational levels. Our empirical work shows that fiscal decentralization policy shifts central government employees to the subnational government level and that the increase in public employees at the subnational government level overwhelms the decrease in public employees at the central level. As a result, the level of total public sector employees increases with the degree of fiscal decentralization of a country. We also find that the levels of total public sector employees as a percentage of population are higher in unitary country systems than those in federal countries. The level of public employment also increases with the degree of urbanization and with the exposure to risk of a country. This is a somewhat surprising result. Typically, more public employment is associated with an excessive number of public sector employees, and, therefore, with unproductive spending. On the other hand, fiscal decentralization policy has been generally thought to result in an increase in allocative efficiency, since a decision on public expenditures made by a level of government that is closer and more responsive to a local constituency is more likely to reflect the demand for local services than a decision made by a remote central government. In addition, decentralization has been thought of as having the potential of improving competition among governments and of facilitating technical innovations. Therefore, one might expect that fiscal decentralization should help to retrench the public sector employment. However, from our empirical result, we find that subnational governors without taking full responsibility for subnational public finance tend to bloat the levels of subnational government employees and ask the central government to pay the bill. As a result, the level of total public sector employees increases with fiscal decentralization policy. These findings are much in line with Oates' and Wallis' anticipated results, but they are based on different explanations. Employing the two most commonly used spatial dependency tests, Moran's I and Getis and Ord's G statistics, we also find evidence of spatial dependency in terms of the level of public sector employees as a percentage of population among the countries in our dataset. This finding suggests that while using a country's own domestic variables to explain the level of public sector employment, we should not ignore that the neighboring countries' policies also play an important role in determining it.