The objective of this research is to study how to successfully implement organizational change in a large organization. The study deals with an approach for implementation that incorporates both efficiency and flexibility. Within the domain of organizational change, this research focuses on business process change, more specifically the Human Resources Information systems planning and implementation and evaluation. The research question is approached by first studying how to carry out planning, implementation and evaluation according to the relevant existing theories of organizational change. Then, an ERP change implementation program is reflected with the existing implementation approaches and finally characteristics of a successful approach for change implementation are concluded. This study follows the logic of inductive theory building and qualitative case study. The research is designed as an embedded case study, the primary research object being an extensive change program that focuses on SAP implementation at Johannesburg Water. The case data is mainly qualitative in nature and is collected through participant observation, archives and numerous and diverse documents created within the program. The focal terms and the scope of the study are defined based on relevant theory of organizational change. For understanding the existing body of knowledge on change planning, implementation, a multidisciplinary review is carried out including the theories of organization development, organization transformation, business process reengineering, project management and organizational learning. As a conclusion of the review, four research constructs are elaborated for guiding the case study. The constructs define essential elements of change implementation: initiation, management structure, and process and change advancement. Using the elaborated constructs, two generic implementation approaches are conceptualized, planned and emergent. The former represents centrally managed, sequentially proceeding holistic change, whereas the latter is about locally managed, continuous and incremental change. / Dr. R. Huysamen

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This study is directed toward learning more about intervening variables, or social mechanisms of change, within the process of socialization. It focused upon one social mechanism: "degree of commitment". The contention of the thesis is that "degree of commitment", within the socialization process, is directly connected with (a) the experiences of learning during the process of becoming a member of a social system; and (b) the "socialized" resultant when the learning process is complete. The concept of "degree of commitment" is to be understood in its relation to three other sociological concepts: decision-making, socialization, and social-change. Each of these bears directly upon the concept of "degree of commitment". The factors which work together to result in a decision at the same time result in “degree of commitment". Once a "degree of commitment" is established, it can not only be estimated at a point in time, but it can be examined as a social mechanism -effecting change. Of course, both decision-making and socialization involve "change" and, this concept as a disequilibrating force, similar to the familiar physics concept, is of paramount importance. Five different stated "degree of commitment" groups were analyzed, first, whether or not their stated commitment changed over a period of time; and second, according to different responses to factual and attitudinal questions by commitment group. Data was gathered and examined, according to commitment group, in areas such as: performance, age, socio-economic class, students' self-image and career choice, conceptions of medicine as a career, attitudes toward faculty, peers and toward competition. The constellation of groups and the patterns of change vary by commitment group. As a social mechanism, degree of commitment restricts and governs action. From this study, it is submitted that degree of commitment is an integral part of the socialization process and, therefore, it is one of the social mechanisms that must be studied in any analysis of socialization as a sociological concept. The first year medical students at the University of British Columbia, in the university year 1959-60, comprised the sample. A questionnaire was the main source of data. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of teachers' perceptions of innovations in a curriculum. The study examined three teachers' perceptions of the integrative approach and ecological perspective in the Family Management curriculum document in British Columbia. Two interviews, sixty to one hundred and twenty minutes in length, were conducted with each teacher. During the interviews, each teacher was asked to submit documents that illustrated the meaning the innovations had for their teaching. Through subsequent transcript and document analysis, descriptions of the teachers' perceptions were developed. For none of the teachers were the innovations immediately meaningful. However, they were able to give meaning to both concepts. Two teachers perceived the integrative approach as relating topics and concepts through discussions and work sheets. The third teacher used assignments that related topics and concepts although she did not perceive this as integrative. Teachers had similar perceptions of the ecological perspective: the interrelationship among the individual and family with the school, peers, and the local community. Teacher perceptions were influenced by multiple factors: lack of need for the innovations, the lack of pedagogical and conceptual clarity in the innovations, complexity of the innovations, time, inservice, peer meetings, teaching experience and students. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of three strategies for achieving more positive measured attitudes toward the Native Indians of Canada; namely, role playing, reading, and principle testing. The literature suggested that the most effective strategy for changing attitudes would be the one that would introduce inconsistency into one's psychological system for the purpose of demonstrating the potential psychological satisfaction of a new attitude without, at the same time, posing a threat to the subject's perceived psychological freedom. Although the literature suggested that all three strategies should produce significant attitudinal change, there was not enough clear empirical evidence to employ directional hypotheses. The role play strategy most closely fit the requirements for attitudinal change; therefore, it is stated in hypothesis one that the role play strategy would produce an attitude change significantly different than either reading or principle testing. It was also hypothesized that each of the strategies, (role playing, reading, and principle testing) would produce an attitude change significantly different than the control group. The literature also suggested that the dogmatic personality was an intervening variable in the process of attitude acquisition; dogmatic students were expected to resist change in all three experimental situations. Therefore, it was also hypothesized that there was a strong inverse relation between the degree of one's dogmatism in one's personality and the amount of attitude change. A 2 x 4 (dogmatism x method) factorial design was used in this study; the four levels being compared consisted of three experimental strategies and one control group; the two levels of dogmatism consisted of dogmatic and non-dogmatic students, (as determined by ranking out scores on a dogmatism scale pretest). The student sample consisted of four intact groups taking a compulsory English 11 course in a large senior secondary school located in a predominantly Caucasian, middle income socio-economic area. The students had been assigned previously to these groups in an arbitrary manner but the treatment levels were assigned to the groups randomly. The treatment period ran approximately four days. The role playing strategy required that various students take on the role of either Native Indians or Whites and attempt to convince other members of the class of the validity of their adopted value positions. The reading strategy required that the students read and discuss a short novel that showed some degree of empathy toward Native Indians. In the principle testing strategy the teacher attempted to clarify the value positions of students toward Native Indians by using various discussion strategies. An analysis of covariance revealed that none of the strategies produced a significant attitude change; furthermore, it showed that dogmatic personalities were not interacting significantly with attitude change. The researcher suggests several possible reasons for these results, some of which are: the device used to measure attitude change may not have been sensitive or subtle enough to measure the true feelings of the students; the materials used in the strategies may not have been long or strong enough to demonstrate that a legitimate inconsistency was present; and perhaps a longer incubation period is needed to assimilate the inconsistency and to reorganize one's attitudes toward the subject. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this study was to make explicit some meanings teachers give to the process of curriculum implementation, in order to understand how they typically experience this change. From their experiences and meanings, some typical structures of curriculum change were defined. The major question asked was: What are the typical structures of curriculum change? Methodologically this major question was divided into the following questions: 1. How is curriculum change experienced by teachers? 2. What commonalities (i.e typical structures) underlie these experiences? 3. What ideal type of curriculum change emerges from these typical structures? Through taped interviews and subsequent transcript analysis, three structures of change emerged. The first structure was 'actual use', what teachers did during daily activities when working with the new curriculum. The second structure was their experience of 'time', how teachers perceived and organized their time during implementation. The third structure consisted of various 'influences' upon the teachers' experience of implementation. These 'influences' included their beliefs about teaching, their talking with other educators, the kinds of support they received during the change, and the student responses towards the new curriculum. Included in the study were twenty primary teachers within two school districts who were implementing the Ginn 720 Reading Program during the 1979-80 school year. Fourteen teachers were individually interviewed three times: first, to elicit their experiences of change; second to validate the researcher's interpretations of transcript conversations; and third to validate the researcher's conclusions regarding curriculum change as experienced by teachers. Six others who were not involved in the data gathering interviews, also participated in individual interviews as a final validation of the study's conclusions. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

M.Comm. (Business Management) / The objective of this study is to develop guidelines for management and all other participants in the transition process of turning a former Second Wave company upside down to be a flat, network structured, Third Wave company. It is a process where much guidance and support is needed in order to lessen the confusion on goals, roles, responsibilities and skills needed. Many theories and examples exist on all the aspects involved in Second Wave companies. The theories on Third Wave management are emerging everywhere, the examples are in the making, but not necessarily ready for reuse yet. This makes it very difficult for newcomers, who want to follow the footsteps of those before them, to form expectations of what might happen along the way to the new destination. The aim is to bring all these theories, examples and fears together to produce one set of guidelines that can help form the expectations involved and preparation needed for each step along the way to the goal.

D.Ed. / This study is my account, as an educational psychologist and newly educated educational ethnographer, of how a school community experiences major social political change. I had ventured into a school to inquire into matters related to educational psychology and found a culture in flux- a school in crisis. The notion of an ethnographic inquiry was conceived at the time when I realised that broader systemic changes were impacting the school to the extent where the institution became a concert, to some degree a Bakhtinian medieval carnival -thus the style and format, or design type of the study. The research, which had commenced as a conventional qualitative inquiry, metamorphosed into something of a critical ethnography, written up as an integrated account of research, narrative and also, ultimately, as a way of doing school counselling. The study is thus presented as an illustrated account of what I observed, interpreted, and came to understand at some levels. My interaction with children experiencing learning and developmental barriers in my private practice, led me to the decision to interrogate the impact that change has on their behaviour and their emotional experience. In my initial assumption, I considered the policy change with regard to the 'national' curriculum to be the major change confronting school communities. My interaction as a participant observer in a predominant white, Afrikaans primary school on the East Rand during the course of 1999 introduced me to their experience of chaos in a rapidly changing world as reflected in a changing education system. Curriculum 2005 seemed of little consequence in their struggle against redeployment, uncertainty, poverty, crime and a general sense of futility and isolation. During the course of the year, their preparation for the school variety concert, known in these schools as a "revue", commanded specific attention, due to the amount of time, energy and money invested in presenting a concert of outstanding quality. Through the use of an ethnographic methodology, I tried to capture their story, using the songs sung in the concert to present the framework of the ethnographic stage on which I was planning to present the findings emanating from the inquiry.

MENVSC (Geography) / See the attached abstract below

The present research aimed first at testing the Theory of Planned Behaviour and the extended model of the Theory of Planned Behaviour in a non-WEIRD nation context (i.e., western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic); and secondly, at exploring the role of social and economic status not as an outcome of climate change but as a factor that influences the appraisal of climate change and the responses to climate change (i.e., pro-environmental behaviour). Two cross-sectional studies were conducted. Study 1 (N = 452) replicated previous findings in support of the Theory of Planned Behaviour; but also showed the important role of moral obligation and emotions such as guilt. Different to previous research, instrumental rather than experiential attitudes revealed to be associated with intention and pro-environmental behaviour. The latter finding was replicated in Study 2 (N = 681), which also aimed at exploring the role of social and economic status for both appraising climate change as threat and responding to climate change. Both objective and subjective socio-economic status did indeed influence responses to climate change (i.e., pro-environmental behaviour) and whether climate change was appraised as a threat. However, the effects of objective and subjective socio-economic status were opposite than expected. Implications of the present research are outlined in detail with regards to current discourses on appraisals of and responses to climate change. / Psychology