Magister Legum - LLM / Thirty years after it has achieved its independence, the Republic of Chad, which has faced a long political instability, decided to exploit its oil resources in order to achieve its development objectives. Owing to the difficulties encountered in mobilizing financial resources for the realization of the project, the Government obtained from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) a loan US$39.5 millions. The loan Agreement, signed between the two parties on 29 March 2001 included a provision referring to the Petroleum Revenue Management Program, described in schedule 5 of the Agreement. This Petroleum Revenue Management Program imposed a number of obligations, related to the actions to be undertaken by the Chadian Government prior to the release of the funds by the Bank, and to the modalities to be followed in the course of the management of the oil revenues. These obligations are also known as governance conditionalities. This theses raised the issues of the legitimacy of the Bank's Governance conditionality, its impact on both the sovereignty of the borrower to freely determine the use of its resources and the effectiveness of the loan. / South Africa

This research study was conducted to determine the need for an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) at Kalafong Hospital as a way of assisting troubled employees to deal with either personal or work-related problems they experienced. These problems affect their job performance negatively if left unattended. An EAP is effective in dealing with employees’ problems as it addresses all social problems that affect employees’ job performance. The aim of the study was to explore the feelings, experiences and needs of employees of Kalafong Hospital with regard to an EAP at Kalafong Hospital. Data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews utilising a schedule as a guideline for the researcher during the interviews. Twenty (20) respondents participated in the study. This investigation revealed that employees of this hospital experienced personal and work-related problems that, if left unattended, had a negative effect on their job performance. Methods currently used to help troubled employees of this hospital are not as effective as that of an EAP. Social workers provide very little help to employees as their services are earmarked for patients of this hospital. Supervisors and union representatives are also not formally trained to assist troubled employees and thus provide very little help to the employees. It is therefore concluded that there is a need for a structured Employee Assistance Program in this hospital, as it will provide comprehensive services to employees. / Dissertation (MSD (EAP))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Social Work and Criminology / Unrestricted

This research project was concerned with the description of the Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) mainly in the South African mining industry. The focus was on the impact of legislation on the practice of EAP in the South African mining industry. The researcher used a qualitative approach in this applied research study. The researcher employed a phenomenological strategy within the exploratory study. This was done through the utilization of semi-structured interviews. The researcher first looked at the evolvement of EAP as a field of practice, following by a discussion of the current state of the EAP in the South African mining industry. The researcher continued by discussing relevant pieces of legislation that have a direct influence on the practice of EAP in the mining industry. The second part of the project was the empirical study. Ten respondents were drawn through the process of purposive sampling. The researcher mainly dealt with the views of four Human Resource practitioners and six EAP practitioners in the mining industry. Through this exercise, the researcher looked at what the practitioners’ views were on the role of legislation as specifically to two issues. The first was the general provision of EAP services. The second was the stipulation of the legislation according to them, pertaining the practicalities of the provision of the service. The researcher’s conclusions regarding impact of legislation on the practice of EAP in the South African mining industry can be presented in the following manner: • Legal provisions have played a significant role towards the development of the field of EAP in general; • Other implications have been difficult to implement for mostly two main reasons. The first is that they are too general and therefore are seen to mean different things to different people. The second is that the people who matter most do not know them. These are either human resources practitioners, occupational social workers and/or EAP professionals or union and/or employee representatives. / Dissertation (MSW)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Social Work and Criminology / unrestricted

The researcher is employed at Aventis Pharma as an Employee Assistance Practitioner since 2001. Employees at Aventis Pharma do not utilize the Employee Assistance Programme (EAP). They wait for supervisors to refer them to the EAP for assistance. The purpose of this study was to explore the reasons for the resistance of troubled employees to utilize the EAP at Aventis Pharma. In this study, a qualitative approach was the most appropriate because the researcher’s intention was to get information on employees’ perceptions, not numerical data. The researcher intended to ascertain the respondents’ feelings, perceptions and opinions based on their resistance to utilize EAP. The researcher utilized applied research because Royce (1991:19) states that its findings are used to solve problems of immediate concern. The researcher utilized applied research in order to understand the problem in detail and to generate knowledge with regard to solving the problem of resistance. The researcher utilized an exploratory design that is more qualitative in nature. The purpose of the exploratory study was to gain insight into a situation, phenomenon, community or person (Bless&Higson-Smith, 1995:42). The researcher explored the respondents’ perceptions, feelings and opinions of EAP to find out their reasons for not utilizing the EAP. A phenomenological strategy was utilized. The aim of the researcher was to understand perceptions, feelings and opinions about utilizing the EAP from various respondents. A literature study as well as an empirical investigation was implemented in this research project. Respondents were gathered on a sampling basis and a semi-structured interview schedule was used to gather information from the respondents at Aventis Pharma. In this study the semi-structured interview schedule helped the researcher to gain knowledge and understand the respondents’ perceptions, feelings and opinions on the utilization of an EAP. The interview schedule consisted of open and close-ended questions. A tape recorder was used to ensure that all the necessary information was recorded. After collecting information, it was analysed and interpreted and the researcher compiled a report to document the research findings. The researcher conducted a pilot test with 2 employees who were not part of the main study and this helped the researcher to check the effectiveness of the interview schedule before it could be done on a large population. The research population for this study was the employees of Aventis Pharma. The company is situated in the east of Pretoria. It consists of 215 employees. The boundary of the sample consisted of 12 employees at Aventis Pharma. The company consists of skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled employees. The respondents were employees who are semi-skilled, those who have standard seven to a diploma. The respondents were between the ages of 20 and 55 years, males and females from various race groups. For the purpose of this study, the researcher utilized the non-probability purposive sampling. The in-depth interviews revealed the following: The majority of employees knew about the EAP, marketing was done within the company but some employees could not differentiate between the EAP and social work. Different types of written materials were used to introduce the programme in the company. Employees do not want supervisors to refer them to the EAP; they want to consult on their own. They believe that if a supervisor refers you to the EAP, it means you have problems. The employees’ resistance to consult on their own forces the supervisors to apply a mandatory referral. On the issue of supervisory training, employees feel that supervisors should not be trained on EAP. They believe that supervisors will not leave their jobs and became EA practitioners. For most employees, supervisory training is a waste of time. / Dissertation (MSD (EAP))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Social Work and Criminology / unrestricted

Employee Assistance Programmes are the various interventions in the workplace, which are aimed at helping employees who are experiencing personal and work-related problems. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is a need for a structured Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) at Sterkfontein Psychiatric Hospital. In this study, the researcher utilised a quantitative approach due to the nature of the research topic under investigation, which is geared towards the assessment of the needs of employees for an EAP, because she wants to base her knowledge gained on objective measurements of the real world, not on someone's opinion, beliefs or past experiences. The researcher utilised research in this study to explore the need for an EAP programme that might be designed/introduced to solve employee problems. For this study, the researcher opted for a combination of an exploratory-descriptive design, due to the fact that little is know about the phenomenon, group or programme. The researcher used a combination of interval/systematic sampling and random sampling to complement each other in eradicating any bias that has the potential of occurring when applying interval/systematic sampling. To achieve representation and precision in this study, the researcher divided the total population of 525 Sterkfontein employees into five categories according to their departments and attached the actual number of employees in a particular department as reflected in the staff establishment document of Sterkfontein Psychiatric Hospital to the appropriate stratum. The results derived from this endeavour were thus: Management (25), Clinical Staff (45), Administration (44), Nurses (253) and the General Assistants (158). The researcher divided each employee in each respective category by one tenth or 10% in order to know how many respondents from each category could be included in the sample, and added together all the figures derived from such a division to obtain a sample size of 53 respondents for the study. As a result, the researcher came up with the following respondents in five (5) categories of employees: - Management (3), Clinical (5), Administration (4), Nurses (25) and General Assistants (16). The researcher compiled only one questionnaire for all five (5) categories of Sterfontein Psychiatric Hospital employees because EAP recognises that employees start from the CEO to the lowest paid employee in the company and, as such, considers all employees to be equal. The investigation illustrated some limitations in the normal running of the hospital. Most of the respondents had both personal and work-related problems, which impacted negatively on the hospital. There were no mechanisisms in place that were geared towards helping troubled employees or providing skills in handling troubled employees. Hence, from these limitations, it became clear that there is a need for an Employee Assistance Programme at Sterkfontein Psychiatric Hospital. / Dissertation (MA (SW))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Social Work / unrestricted

Poverty alleviation is not only a South African problem; it is a global concern as well. After 16 years of democracy, poverty and unemployment are still major issues facing South Africa. Poverty is not evenly distributed in South Africa; it is largely concentrated among black Africans. This study examines the impact of income generating projects in alleviating poverty and sustaining livelihoods in Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality South Africa. The study also demonstrates the impact of income generating projects and challenges that face these projects and makes recommendations on identified challenges. The critical question is whether the income generated meets the needs of project members and their households. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used and a questionnaire was distributed in three projects. The research findings revealed that the projects are at the heart of alleviating poverty given the fact that these projects are formed by (a) marginalised community members, (b) very low income, (c) large family size, (d) widowed breadwinners and (e) ageing group. A limitation to the study is the fact that it was small scale; therefore findings cannot be generalized to the whole Eastern Cape and South Africa. Future aspects of the study include training of project members on marketing and project management skills.

M.Ing. (Engineering Management) / Logistics management has been extensively researched and implemented in the private sector, but it is gradually gaining traction in the humanitarian sector. Most humanitarian organization operations involve a mix of many activities. Some of them are involved in disaster relief, as short-term operations carried out immediately after a disaster, while some are involved in continuous aid work aimed at restoring normalcy to the disaster ravaged society and such efforts are longer term. Humanitarian organizations, particularly Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are the primary vehicle through which donors channel their contributions, but it is unfortunate to note that many of these organizations face challenges with the logistics of effectively getting the relief aid to the intended users. The purpose of this study is to improve the understanding in humanitarian logistics (HL) and identify the key challenges affecting aid agencies during humanitarian action. The study adopts a quantitative approach; data were collected using a semi-structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was used to identify the most outstanding subjects and areas of interest in line with humanitarian logistics challenges identified in the literature. The findings from the research survey shows that there is an awareness of the importance of humanitarian logistics in the sector, but the results also show that only half of the participants of the survey reported that they have a logistics professional employed in their organization. Furthermore, only 50% of the participants of the survey indicated that their organization has a preparedness plan in place in the event of an emergency. Other challenges identified are: lack of fund; difficulty to obtain real time information and poor knowledge management. The author identified unavailability and tagging of funds as the most critical challenge the humanitarian organizations face because it hinders capacity building and organizational development. The study also suggests that learning and forging closer ties with private organizations is an effective means of overcoming some of the identified challenges.

Research applications in the field of positive organisational behaviour are developing as part of the paradigm of fortology. Both psychofortology and positive psychology support the development of the strengths (fortology) of human behaviour. Health and wellness research in working contexts build theory in the field of Industrial Psychology. The objective of the present research is to develop and test a holistic work-wellness model for employees of a life insurance organisation in South Africa. Holistic work-wellness research requires that wellness, organisational factors and individual dispositions be treated as part of an integrated and dynamic system. The relationship between these constructs provides some understanding of total work wellness. A cross-sectional survey designed was used with a sample of 673 participants. The 5 Factor Wellness Survey, the Maslach Burnout Inventory – General Survey, Utrecht Work Engagement Scale and the Job Diagnostics Survey were administered. The empirical research results have shown that a positive relationship exists between motivational job characteristics, sense of coherence, engagement and wellness. A somewhat negative relationship exists between burnout and wellness in the holistic work-wellness model. The structural equation modelling statistics provided reasonable goodness of fit indices with some room for modification. According tot the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation criterion, the results support the acceptance of the holistic work-wellness model. A path diagram, in which cause and effect arrows flow from the exclusive latent variable back to the primary factors, was developed. The development of this holistic work-wellness model addresses the research problem and builds theory with which to holistically understand work wellness. It can be concluded that the development of this particular model can be used in the insurance organisation to implement employee health and wellness care. The Indivisible Self: An Evidence-Based Model of Wellness that consists out of 17 wellness and 4 contextual factors were successfully applied as a clinical wellness model in an organisational context (Myers and Sweeney, 2005). A principle factor analysis confirmed the factor structure of previous wellness research for the first time in a South African study. Structural equation modelling statistics on the wellness model confirmed the 19-factor model with adequate goodness of fit indices. The empirical research data confirms The Indivisible Self: An Evidence-Based Model of Wellness for the insurance organisation. This wellness model can therefore be used as an independent wellness model to explain wellness from the theory and from the present empirical study. From the literature it is clear that research on wellness in relation to motivational job characteristics are developing as a research topic. The empirical research in the present study confirmed that a positive relationship exist between these two phenomena. Goodness of fit indices confirm that the six-factor motivational job characteristics model cannot be used as an independent model in the insurance organisation. Subsequently this did not validate the practically significant positive relationships in the independent job model. However these findings were still useful in an explorative study that focused on the development of a holistic work-wellness model. A strong sense of coherence can therefore be hypothesised to help employees to face stressful situations and to handle complex tasks because demands from the environment are understood and believed to be under their personal or significant others’ control. They are likely to regard the tasks as challenging enough to spend energy on. It can be described as the characteristic inherent to individuals, which assists them in their interaction with their work-environment and situations that might arise as a consequence thereof. Empirical statistical results indicated that the three factors meaning, comprehension and manageability are confirmed for the sense of coherence construct. A principle factor analysis confirmed reliable Cronbach alphas for meaning and comprehension in the present research. Structural equation modelling proves that the sense of coherence model cannot be used independently due to poor goodness of fit statistics. However, sense of coherence is still useful in the development of a holistic work-wellness model. The research results also showed that engagement could be considered a positive indicator of employee wellness. Findings validated and confirmed the factorial validity of vigour and dedication. Goodness of fit statistics produced goodness of fit indices of intermediate quality. Empirical statistics verified and validated burnout as a four-factor model. Researched statistics showed internally consistent results for the four-burnout subscales (exhaustion, cynicism, professional efficacy and cognitive weariness). It can be concluded that these factors are reliable and valid factors. Results from the structural equation modelling proposed good fit (RMSEA) for the four-factor burnout model, with some modification required to improve the other indicators. Conclusions and recommendations in terms of the implementation of managed health and wellness care for employees in the insurance organisation are based on the development of the holistic work-wellness model. Health and wellness programmes should be researched to develop the empirical application of the holistic work-wellness model. / Prof. R.P. De la Rey

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the learning styles of supplemental instruction leaders at a large, public university during the fall 2010 semester and determine whether or not their personal learning styles influenced the way they designed and developed out-of-class study sessions. The total population of supplemental instruction leaders was 37, of which 24 were eligible to participate in the study. Of the 24 eligible supplemental instruction leaders, 20 completed the entire study. Participants in the study included nine male and 11 female supplemental instruction leaders with a median age of 22.25 years-old. Seventeen participants indicated their classification as senior, two as junior, and one as sophomore. Of the participants, 16 indicated white as a race or ethnicity, one indicated Asian, two indicated African American, and one indicated both American Indian/Alaska Native and white. Supplemental instruction leader learning style was assessed using the Kolb Learning Style Inventory. Leaders were then interviewed, and their study sessions were analyzed. Through triangulation of data from learning style, interviews and actual study session documents, four major themes emerged. The four themes were: 1) incorporation of personal experience into study session design, 2) the sense of impact on student learning, 3) a feeling of the need to incorporate varied activities into study session design, and 4) the concept that students must take ownership over their own learning. No consistent pattern emerged among the themes; however, the results attributed out-of-class study session design to both the incorporation of personal learning style preferences as identified through the Kolb Learning Style Inventory and training conducted by the institution. Implications for future research include the need for continued research addressing how and if supplemental instruction leader learning style influences out-of-class study session design. Also, as institutions of higher education seek to expand academic support services to all students, future research should explore supplemental instruction leader training and the impact such training has on students seeking support from the supplemental instruction program.

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