Student Number : 9910820A - MA research report - School of Human and Community Development - Faculty of Humanities / The literature review presents a discussion of the various aspects within organisational climate as it relates to a call centre environment. It also examines past research on the notions of job satisfaction, life satisfaction and self-esteem pertaining to call centre agents. The literature review places particular emphasis on the affect organisational climate has on call centre agents. The present research takes the form of a quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional, ex-post facto design, on a sample of two-hundred and nineteen (N=219) call centre agents from four South African call centres. The Job Content Questionnaire was used to measure the organisational climate (Karasek, 1985), Taylor and Bowers (1972) General Satisfaction scale measured call centre agent’s job satisfaction, the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) assessed the global cognitive beliefs of call centre agent’s life (Pavot and Diener, 1993), and Rosenberg’s (1989) Self-Esteem Scale was used to measure call centre agent’s self-esteem. Descriptive statistics and correlations were used to analyse the data and answer the research questions. Results from the analytical procedures suggested that call centre agents were given more decision latitude, there was a perception of general social support within the organisation, work roles were clearly defined and self-esteem was not significantly associated to the work environment. Thus, implying that the organisational climate of call centres may not be as bleak as past literature has suggested.

Irrespective of the previous investigations, dependence of the image of the urban environment on a combination between a) physical objects, b) relationship and connection between objects and c) dynamics of human activity rather than on the material expression of the activity alone, remains insufficiently investigated in both Lithuanian and foreign works. It is this aspect that forms the subject of the investigation of the present work. Its main attention is focused on the impact the urban environment has on city image. The novelty of the work consists in the following: 1) criteria and methodology forassessing city image are presented, indicators for city image-building are proposed; 2) dependence of city image on the urban environment is considered; 3) urban measures that help create city image in the desired direction in an organised way are reviewed. Objective and Goals of the Work. The objective of this work is to define the principles of analysing and applying city image as a result of human activity. The goals of this work are as follows: 1) to define the concept of city image as a psychological construct; 2) to specify the connection between city image and behaviour of the people; 3) to establish major indicators of a contemporary city image – the criteria according to which it is expedient to investigate city image; 4) to review key measures for urban planning, having an impact on the modification of city image; 5) to substantiate the advantage of the city centre... [to full text]