Research indicates that effective talent management is essential in achieving organisational excellence and is a driving force for business success. This study focused on investigating VWSA Group Service division’s employee talent management process as seen or perceived by employees. The employee attitude and understanding of the 2010 strategy was also evaluated. In achieving this objective a literature review on talent management was conducted and questions formulated which formed part of the survey. The questionnaire was self-administered and sent to the stratified random sample of individuals who were eligible for survey. The main findings of this research are that the 2010 strategy was well received by the employees and that seventy seven percent of the respondents who took part in the study do understand the 2010 strategy and what it is all about. The study also highlighted that employees believe Project 1 in the 2010 strategy will be achieved. Employees were uncertain that compensation and leadership style are variables that influence or promote talent management. From the literature review it is explained that in order for talent management to be effective it must be aligned to organisational strategy. Various recommendations were made, for example conducting of skills gap analysis with a view to identify skills employees need to possess in order to meet the objectives of the 2010 strategy. Another recommendation was the formation of talent pools from which to recruit high talented staff and whose skills will be required to meet the objectives of the organisational strategy. A final point emanating from the study, is that when it comes to talent management and achieving organisational strategy it is not business as usual. Companies need to be aware of brand profiles most desired by highly talented individuals; they also need to be aware of various recruiting strategies as well as acknowledge that different employees are at different levels of the motivational hierarchy.

In an attempt to manage scarce health care resources and keep drug expenditure low, health care administrators worldwide have to make careful considerations regarding the choice of drugs to be provided to patients within their systems. One of the key strategies that is being employed to achieve this goal is the use of formularies. A major challenge in the formulary development process is to use pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research effectively to arrive at formularies that simultaneously provide patients with effective pharmacotherapy whilst maintaining financial stability. The extent to which this can be successfully achieved depends to a large extent on the availability of appropriate pharmacoeconomic data. The primary objectives of this study were to describe the availability and quality of literature pertaining to South African based pharmacoeconomic research, and to establish the manner in and extent to which pharmacoeconomic data is used in drug formulary decision-making processes, in both the private and public health care sectors in South Africa. A structured bibliographic search for South African pharmacoeconomic studies was conducted and a qualitative assessment of the identified studies which met the predetermined inclusion criteria was completed, using a pre-validated quality evaluation tool. In order to determine the use of pharmacoeconomic data in the formulary decisionmaking processes, by various stake holders in both the public and private of health care sectors in South Africa, a cross-sectional, descriptive study using a self-administered questionnaire was conducted. The results suggest that there is a limited availability of pharmacoeconomic research data in South Africa. Only 16 full pharmacoeconomic studies could be identified as having been published between 01 January 1995 and 30 June 2007. The quality of 3 of these studies was considered to be ‘dubious’, one study was found to be of high standard whilst the other 12 (74.95%) were of acceptable quality and thus could be considered as suitable to be used in formulary decision-making. The results of the national survey indicated that pharmacoeconomics is considered to be of importance and is used in formulary decision-making processes in both the public and private sectors. The primary source of pharmacoeconomic data used in formulary decisions appears to be international peer-reviewed publications. Of concern however, is the finding that this data, mostly from studies conducted outside of South Africa, is applied directly without sensitivity analysis or modelling. The results of the literature search and the subsequent quality appraisal suggest that pharmacoeconomic research and the use of pharmacoeconomic data in formulary decisions is at its infancy in South Africa. Thus efforts are needed to develop and grow the discipline of pharmacoeconomics in South Africa.

A fundamental shift occurred in the global economy during the last three decades and even more so in the period since the 2008 financial crises. As a result of the advancing technology, national economies no longer self-contained entities protected from international competition by geographical distances, times zones, languages barriers, government regulations and culture or business systems. The effect of globalisation has further manifested in the global economic slow-down since 2008, where spending is constrained and consumers have become more discerning in their value considerations. The dual challenge of globalisation of competition and global economic slow-down is increasingly forcing businesses to do some introspection not only in terms of their cost structures, but also in terms of their value propositions in search of sustainable organisational success. Given the limited influence that businesses have over its external environment, an internal perspective is proposed where this problem is approached by means of a high-performance evaluation case study. The aim is to identify constraints that have resulted from more recent responses to market challenges and to establish which interventions to elevate in order to alleviate such constraints. It is proposed that if management and organisational practices that organisations employ in their daily functions affect the discretionary effort that employees contribute, then organisations should be able to gain insight into variations in organisational performance through evaluating and understanding these practices. This treatise focusses on organisational characteristics that drive high performance and propose interventions to enhance the environment for the development of a high performance culture within a single organisation. The research topic fell within the quantitative paradigm with data being collected through the use of a questionnaire. The results were analysed and interpreted to ascertain how current practice aligns with the theory. Recommendations are submitted within the context of the prevailing literature on the subject of high performance organisations and the related high performance characteristics of the organisation as based on the empirical data.

Mergers have been described as the most complex business process that an organisation can be faced with, requiring executives and other stakeholders to discharge the promise of a more successful merged organisation. However, several studies have highlighted the factors that led to the demise of the merged organisations. One of the often quoted and frequently blamed aspects related to merger failure has been the lack of effective post-merged organisational culture integration and alignment. Where mergers have been successful, it was attributed to a structured approach to integrating and aligning all aspects related to organisational culture thus ensuring the creation of a high performing organisation, conducive to effective performance management. The main research problem in this study centred around the identification of strategies that could be used to design an integrated model for creating a post-merged organisational culture which is conducive to effectively managing performance. To achieve this objective, the following approaches were adopted: A literature study was conducted with the view to identifying the challenges facing merged organisations in general and post-merged South African Higher Education institutions in particular. The researcher also conducted interviews with senior HR practitioner at the institutions participating in this study to gain insights into their experiences of performance within their merged institutions. The institutions involved in this study were Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT and Durban University of Technology (DUT). The insights gleaned from these interviews were incorporated into the survey questionnaire. The literature study also concerned itself with the identification of strategies that merged organisations could use in its pursuit of organisational culture alignment and integration. These strategies included conducting critical pre-merger assessments or due-diligence studies, adopting structured approaches to dealing with resistance to change, employee engagement, the design, implementation and communication of monitoring and evaluation of merger success measures as well as several other moderating variables referred to in figure 1.2. In terms of sub-problem six of the study, the findings of sub-problems one, two and five were used to develop an eight-step integrated theoretical model to create an organisational culture conducive to effective performance management in a post-merged environment. The model served as a basis for the design of a survey questionnaire. The questionnaire was used to ascertain the extent to which respondents from the three participating institutions (NMMU, CPUT and DUT), perceived the various strategies as being important in establishing a post-merged organisational culture conducive to effective performance management. The results that emerged from the empirical study showed a strong concurrence with the strategies identified in the literature study and included in the integrated theoretical model. The quantitative and qualitative results from the empirical study where incorporated into the integrated theoretical model, which lead to a refined Eight-Step Integrated Post-merged Organisational Culture Creation Model as depicted in Figure 7.1 with associated details in Figure 7.2.

The study investigates teachers’ perceptions of their professionalism and how this professionalism is observed by both teachers and school community. The investigation takes place at three Junior Secondary Schools. In composing the research, the researcher adopted a qualitative and quantitative approach based on an interpretive paradigm. The study is concerned with how teachers view themselves as professional people. Since the extent of teachers’ professionalism is always questioned by the school community, teachers’ professionalism is not guaranteed to be easily accepted and recognised. The findings reveal that teachers in general accept the fact that they face an enormous challenge in performing their duties as they are required to act professionally and ethically at all times. SACE, the education “watchdog” has further strengthened the issue by proclaiming legally enforced ethical standards for teachers in South Africa. The study describes how teachers who joined the teaching profession for different reasons conceptualise teacher professionalism differently from each other but also agreeing on other issues. The findings of this study also show how educational policies, teachers’ conditions of service, personal beliefs and relationships between parents, learners and teachers can influence teacher professionalism.

This study examines the theoretical framework underlying Chilean legislation on sexual harassment in the workplace, notably to determine if the legislation has succeeded in uncovering and addressing the gender injustice and inequality involved in sexual harassment. This study further reviews whether the legislation adopted in 2005 is meeting its intended goal of protecting targets from harm by providing effective relief, penalizing perpetrators, and promoting adequate labour relations and climate. A combination of research methods were employed, notably a review of the legal scholarship, of Chile’s regulatory framework for sexual harassment, and of administrative and court system jurisprudence involving targets and perpetrators from the period prior to the enactment of the legislation in March 2005 through to October 2014. Quantitative sexual harassment data were drawn from a nationwide household survey conducted in 2011 by Proyecto Araucaria (“Research, Policy and Practice With Regard to Work-Related Mental Health Problems in Chile: A Gender Perspective”) The study also included interviews with key informants and focus groups with female workers. This study concludes that the debate between the equality versus protection of personal dignity paradigms is an abstract discussion not reflected in the practices of justice system actors, and that for the law to be effective, a sociopolitical and legal context facilitating recourse to it is required. Rather than considering only the formal resort to the relief provided in the law, it is crucial to examine the actual practices of individuals seeking to advance the protection of their rights.

Control of groundwater plays an important part in operations at many open pit mines. Selection of an efficient and cost effective dewatering program that will improve slope stability of the pit walls is frequently complicated by the complex and somewhat uncertain hydrogeologic environment found at most mine sites. This dissertation describes a risk-cost-benefit (RCB) framework that can be used to identify the most effective dewatering strategy under such conditions, because the stochastic framework explicitly accounts for uncertainty in hydrogeologic and shear strength parameters in the groundwater flow, slope stability and economic analyses. In the framework, the monetary worth of each design alternative is measured in terms of an economic objective function. This function is defined in terms of a discounted stream of benefits, costs and risks over the operational life of the mine. Benefits consist of revenue generated from the sale of mineral concentrate. Costs include normal operating and dewatering expenses. Monetary risks are defined as the economic consequences associated with slope failure of the pit wall, multiplied by the probability of such a failure occurring. Selection of the best design strategy from a specified set of alternatives is achieved by determining the economic objective function for each design and then selecting the alternative that yields the highest value of the objective function. Estimation of the probability of slope failure requires an accurate assessment of the level of uncertainty associated with each input parameter, a forecast of how dewatering efforts are expected to affect pore pressures in the pit wall in light of the uncertain hydrogeologic environment, and an evaluation of the effect that the pore pressure reductions will have on improving stability of the pit wall. Prediction of the pore pressure response to dewatering efforts is achieved with SG-FLOW, a steady state, saturated-unsaturated finite element model of groundwater flow. Slope stability is evaluated with SG-SLOPE, a two dimensional, limit equilibrium stability model based on the versatile Sarma method of stability analysis. To account for input parameter uncertainty, both the groundwater flow stability models are invoked in a conditional Monte-Carlo simulation that is based on a geostatistical description of the level of uncertainty inherent in the available hydrogeological and geotechnical data. Besides documenting the methodology implemented in the framework to conduct the geostatistical groundwater flow and economic analyses of the objective function, this dissertation also presents a sensitivity analysis and a case history study that demonstrate the application of the RCB framework to design problems typically encountered in operating mines. The sensitivity study explores how each set of input parameters, including hydrologic data, shear strength parameters, slope angles of the pit wall and dewatering system specifications impact on the profitability of the mining operation. The study utilized a base case scenario that is based on overburden conditions at Highland Valley Copper; therefore, the conclusions cannot be applied blindly at other sites. However, the framework can be used to formulate site specific conclusions for other large base-metal open pit mines. After the objective function was calculated for the base case, the aforementioned input parameters were systematically perturbed in turn to study how each parameter impacts on profitability of the mine. The sensitivity study showed that in the particular case analyzed changes in the slope angle and dewatering efforts can improve profitability by many millions of dollars. In particular, steep slope angles can be utilized in the early stages of mine development while the pit walls are relatively low, and then flattened as the pit wall height increases and the monetary consequences of slope failure become more pronounced. Furthermore, the sensitivity results indicated that pit dewatering is likely to be effective over a range of hydraulic conductivities from lxlO"8 m/s to lxlO'5 m/s and that accurate estimation of the mean hydraulic conductivity is much more important than estimating other statistics that describe the hydraulic conductivity field, including the variance and the range of correlation. Results of the sensitivity study clearly demonstrate that the RCB framework can be used effectively to identify the most effective dewatering strategy given a limited amount of geologic and hydrologic information. Also, it is shown that the framework can be used to identify the most important input parameters for each specific dewatering problem and to establish the approximate monetary worth of data collection. The case history study documents how the RCB framework was applied at Highland Valley Copper (HVC). Groundwater control is recognized as an important component of mining operations at this mine site; dewatering measures utilized on the property involve both high capacity dewatering wells and horizontal drains. The benefits of pit dewatering include improved slope stability, drier operating conditions in the pit, and a convenient production water supply. These benefits do not come cheaply, HVC is expecting to spend in excess of six million dollars on groundwater control in the next ten years. Before investing such large sums in groundwater control, mine management should be confident that the capital investment is justified, i.e. that the resulting economic benefits will significantly exceed the costs of the dewatering effort. Using historical data provided by HVC, the case history study documented in this dissertation shows how the RCB framework is used to identify the most profitable combination of slope geometry and groundwater control in design sector R3 of HVC's Valley Pit. By considering three possible slope angle and groundwater control options it is shown that by continuing to implement an aggressive dewatering program, HVC can expect to reduce operating costs by as much as nine million dollars in this design sector. / Science, Faculty of / Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Department of / Graduate

Despite a rising interest in studying the effects and the antecedents of teacher efficacy, a review of literature indicated that an important individual variable has been left out of these studies. This is the cognitive component which Bandura (1977) suggests is central to the process of efficacy formulation. Specifically Bandura (1977) argues that for performance to be instructive for efficacy formulation, a type of cognitive appraisal needs to be present. To date, this cognitive appraisal has not been identified in teacher efficacy studies. The purpose of this thesis is to search for a way to represent this cognitive component and to examine its role in teaching performance and efficacy formulation. Two variables are selected as possible representations of this cognitive component. They are wisdom and wisdom in teaching. The two research questions developed for this study are: (1) What is the relative contribution of wisdom, wisdom in teaching, personal teaching efficacy, and general teaching efficacy to teaching performance? And (2) What is the relative contribution of wisdom, wisdom in teaching, and teaching performance to the formulation of personal teaching efficacy and general teaching efficacy? Eighty-nine final year student teachers were asked to respond to three instruments that measured their level of wisdom, wisdom in teaching, and teacher efficacy. These instruments were: (1) Life planning dilemma "Jack" (Smith & Baltes, 1987), (2) Teaching dilemma "Perimeter" (Arlin, 1987), and (3) The teacher efficacy scale (Gibson & Dembo, 1984). The participants were also asked to submit their teaching practicum marks. This mark represents their teaching performance. Teaching performance was best explained by the combined effects of wisdom in teaching and personal teaching efficacy than by either of them alone. Jointly these two variables accounted for 54% of variance in teaching performance. Wisdom in teaching and teaching performance provided a better explanation for the formulation of personal teaching efficacy than each taken in turn. The joint effects of wisdom, wisdom in teaching, and teaching performance accounted for 7% of variance in the formulation of both personal teaching efficacy and general teaching efficacy. An important finding from this study is that wisdom in teaching has the greatest impact on teaching performance. An implication of this finding is that teacher educators should develop and provide programmes which can help facilitate the growth of wisdom in teaching. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

M.Comm.

Recent orders from the executive branch of the United States’ government have encouraged participation from faith-based organizations in providing human services because they are more effective in aiding impoverished citizens. This study examined the effectiveness of faith-based and non faith-based anti-poverty nonprofit organizations to find if one organization type is more effective in providing social services. the data for this study were collected through a survey-questionnaire which was administered to a convenience sample of 82 participants seeking assistance from four different nonprofit organizations (two faith-based and two non faith-based) in Dallas County and Tarrant County. the results from this study indicated that when controlling for demographic and socio-economic variables, recipients from faith-based organizations were less likely to report that they at least received services desired as compared to those who visited a non faith-based organization. Therefore, non faith-based organizations were better at meeting the needs of respondents than faith-based organizations.