Global growth in mining activities has resulted in stiff competition for talented employees and characterised the mining industry with high turnover rates. The South African mining environment has not been an exception to this phenomenon. The aim of this study was to inform the design of talent retention strategies through determination of turnover intention predictors and exploration of the turnover process experienced by employees. The study hypothesised that job satisfaction and affective organisational commitment mediate the effect of overall justice, centralisation, trust and job challenge on turnover intentions. A cross-sectional survey design with a random sample of trainers and learners from a South African gold mining company was used (n=171 and n=230, respectively). Results indicate that job satisfaction mediates the effect of centralisation on turnover intention for learners. Only job satisfaction directly predicts turnover intention for trainers, and overall justice and trust play a direct role in the prediction of turnover intention for learners. It was also found that job challenge predicts job satisfaction for trainers, whilst job challenge, centralisation and trust predict job satisfaction for learners. Therefore, to retain trainers, the mining company should focus on enhancing those factors that facilitate job challenge perceptions and job satisfaction. In retaining learners, its thrust should be increasing job challenge, decentralisation, overall justice, trust and job satisfaction. / Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

The objective of this study was, firstly, to investigate the reliability of a measure of qualitative and quantitative job insecurity and, secondly, to determine the relationship between qualitative and quantitative job insecurity, job satisfaction, affective organisational commitment, turnover intention and locus of control. A cross–sectional survey design was used which included participants randomly selected from a retail banking group across junior, supervisory and middle management levels (n=178). The job insecurity scales of Hellgren, Sverke and Isaksson (1999); job satisfaction scale of Hellgren, Sjöberg and Sverke (1997); affective organisational commitment scale of Allen and Meyer (1990); turnover intention scale of Sjöberg and Sverke (2001) and the locus of control scale of Levenson (1981) were administered. Descriptive statistics were used in order to analyse the data. Structural equivalence was used for the comparison of the factor structures of the job insecurity scale for the three language groups. Furthermore, in order to determine the relationships between the variables, the Pearson product–moment correlation coefficients were used, while the dependent variable turnover intention was predicted by means of a regression analysis. As indicated at the outset, two research articles form the basis of this mini–dissertation: Based on the first article, results indicate that both the qualitative and quantitative scale presented satisfactory levels of reliability across different language groups, and a relationship between these dimensions (quantitative and qualitative) was noticeable. However, the item “I think my future prospects and opportunities within the organisation are good” included in the qualitative job insecurity scale could well be problematic, the deduction being that language barriers probably played a role in participants’ interpretation of the question. According to the second article, both qualitative and quantitative job insecurity positively related to turnover intentions. Furthermore, job satisfaction reported a negative relationship with turnover intention, and a negative relationship between qualitative job insecurity and job satisfaction came to the fore. Locus of control, on the other hand, had a direct bearing on qualitative job insecurity, while only job satisfaction and quantitative job insecurity directly predicted employees’ turnover intention in the banking sector. Finally, locus of control seemingly had no mediating effect when predicting turnover intention. Based on the afore–going, this mini–dissertation will conclude by offering deductions and making recommendations for further research as well as offering possible solutions to the commercial banking sector as far as the retention of staff is concerned. / Thesis (M.Com. (Human Resource Management))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Community-pharmacy is in a state of flux with a series of significant recent changes including the Community-pharmacy Contract, the reconstitution of the RPSGB and the General Pharmaceutical Council. There are also socio-cultural changes such as greater numbers of women in the profession, and an increase in pharmacists reducing their hours of work. The latter comes at a time when workload/roles are expanding and diversifying, leading to potential scenarios in which there are shortfalls between the hours worked and workload demands. This will have an impact on community pharmacists, but its magnitude may be dependent on how they are professionally and organisationally committed. Whilst there has been some promising commitment research in the USA, little research has been published in GB. However, multidimensional models of commitment have been researched extensively in other professions.A programme of research was developed and conducted to characterise and understand the role of professional and organisational commitment in community-pharmacy in GB using the Three-Component Model of commitment (TCM). Various methods were used to answer the research questions including focus-groups to assess qualitatively the contextual appropriateness of the constructs (stage 1.1), and cognitive-interviews to assess construct validity (stage 1.2). Stage 2 consisted of a large survey study, which examined the psychometric validity of the measurement scales as well as salient a-priori theoretical relationships found in both community pharmacy in GB and other professional contexts. A total of 32 participants were recruited for stage one and 713 community-pharmacists participated in stage two. Ethical approval was attained from the University of Manchester Ethics Committee for both stages one and two.The research found that beyond the affective facets of professional and organisational commitment both normative and continuance facets made significant, unique and yet varied contributions to the influence of both withdrawal-behaviours and work-performance behaviours in the community pharmacy population in GB. However, the levels and strengths of the different facets of professional and organisational commitment also appeared to differ amongst the different subgroups in community pharmacists in GB. For example, independent/small-chain pharmacists exhibited significantly higher levels of affective and normative organisational commitment and significantly lower levels of organisational withdrawal behaviours compared to large-multiple pharmacists. The implications of these and other differences were highlighted and recommendations made salient to the profession and community pharmacy organisations about how the levels of the different facets of commitment may be managed to foster greater work-performance behaviours and mitigate the different withdrawal behaviours.