Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Today’s business world is characterised by technological advance, globalisation, and concentrated ownership of productive assets. The result is a dysfunctional economy with income being concentrated with capital owners, and related economic insecurity for a majority of the population. Employee ownership offers a more balanced economy with more distributed capital ownership. This is particularly relevant in South Africa, which faces numerous socio-economic challenges. The South African government has specifically identified employee ownership as a means to facilitate broad-based economic empowerment of previously disadvantaged persons. Employee ownership not only offers benefit at societal level, it also offers a vehicle to provide benefit at personal and organisational levels. Given the benefits of employee ownership, the objectives of this research are to identify the success factors of employee ownership implementation, and assess whether such success factors have been addressed in implementation of employee ownership in South Africa. The research methodology involved performance of a literature review of success factors of employee ownership implementation and a qualitative study involving a discussion framework and semi-structured interviews regarding implementation of employee ownership in South Africa. Interviewees included management of South African companies that have implemented employee ownership, trade union representatives involved with employee ownership, employee ownership scheme fiduciaries, socio-economic development specialists, and employee ownership advisors. The literature review provided the international context to employee ownership and related success factors, and the interviews provided a South African analysis thereof. The research findings identified success factors which relate to education and training of employees; ensuring the initiative is perceived as being fair; delivering meaningful financial benefit to employee participants; establishing an ownership-oriented culture in the business; instilling a commitment to pursuing key business disciplines; implementing sound employee ownership governance; engaging with unions; and employing specialist advisors. The identified success factors were used to develop a success factor framework, which was used in guiding discussions with interviewees, and which was compared to Employee Share Ownership Scheme requirements as set out in the Codes of Good Practice on Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment. The findings included that implementation in South Africa has predominantly been compliance driven, in an attempt to address transformation – specifically ownership by historically disadvantaged South Africans. Management has typically not been focussed on changing business culture or operations, and no success factors in this regard have been addressed. Employee ownership in South Africa has, in general, been considered a failure as few schemes have delivered meaningful financial benefit to participants. The recommendations for businesses implementing employee ownership are regarding awareness of primary objectives, understanding the potential benefits of employee ownership, understanding related success factors, and managing employee expectations. The recommendations for government organisations that wish to promote employee ownership implementation as well as obtain maximum benefit for employees, businesses, and society as a whole are regarding understanding the potential benefits of employee ownership, understanding related success factors, considering past employee ownership successes and/or failures, and consideration of appropriateness of policies and legislation. Further employee ownership research includes study of best practice structuring; challenges faced by businesses; the employee perspective; South African policies and legislation and assessment against recognised success factors; and study of international tax treatment in order to drive South African implementation.

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

M.Comm. / "While discovery focuses on the new and unique, research is the process of re-examining something we already know a great deal about. The fundamental purpose of research is to confirm what we know and believe is in fact true and to develop a more knowledgeable understanding of its essence." (The Global Logistics Research Team at Michigan State University,1995:1). Organisations need a better way of changing, a way of involving large percentages of their people in making the shift from a "business as usual" scenario to one of real time strategic change. Jacobs (1995:18) clearly states that in a real time strategic change scenario, all members of the organisation are meaningful involved in deciding upon and responsible for delivering the organisation's results. In essence, real time strategic change is about a new way of understanding organisations, how they operate, the role individual people can play in making a difference in their organisational lives, and how they can become aligned with each other as a motivated, empowered, total organisation. To be "World Class" means that a firm has successfully visualised and applied a combination of logistical practices capable of serving selected customers better than competitors. The management, employees, systems, technologies and operations of world class firms are finely tuned and synchronised to efficiently meet and exceed customer expectations. For a firm to perform consistently at a world class level means that its employees possess knowledge of what constitutes best practice and know how to implement that behaviour successfully. With this study it is hoped that some of the findings may be of practical benefit to the Cadbury (Pty) Ltd top management team in making strategic decisions on putting the company on the road to become "World Class".

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Delaware, 2007. / Principal faculty advisor: Robert Eisenberger, Dept. of Psychology. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. P. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

<p>The purpose of this study is to investigate and review literature that examines whether job satisfaction and procedural justice have a positive relationshipwith employees organisational citizenship behaviour in a brick manufacturing industry</p>

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2004. / Field problem. Includes bibliographical references.

This study attempts to examine the extent to which an advice network of housing professionals working for different organizational groups, from both structural and behavioural perspectives, varies with the motivation for public service delivery in different publicness settings. Over the last two decades, public service motivation has attracted considerable research attention with a wide-ranging discussion in the realm of construct, incidence, antecedent, outcome and organizational system. However, there has been far less research on its variations in different settings, and integrations with other disciplines. In the face of the growing complexity of sector blurring heightened by the new public management’s principles, the traditional organization theories are inadequate to give explanations for organizations which are neither public nor private. In this study, the concept of dimensional publicness has been employed to classify organizations into different levels of publicness along a continuum rather than a rigid dichotomous categorization for studying the variations of public service motivation in different publicness settings. Research on networks has been growing apace recently by reason of its importance to knowledge transfer and management. Employees are eager to turn to others and maintain network relationships within and between organizations for advice favourable to work-related benefits. Through network activities, they may seek advice from others and realize afterwards that they may improve the quality of service delivery if they exhibit public service motivation related behaviour. While there is an assumption of a link between networks and public service motivation, it is an unexplored research area and therefore has no empirical evidence to support it. To shed light on the link, this study has examined the effects of networks from both behavioural and structural perspectives on public service motivation when publicness is taken into account. A survey study was used to collect data from all Corporate Members of the Hong Kong Institute of Housing. In total, 357 out of 1,649 questionnaires were returned, fully completed and usable. The findings are summarized as follows: First, publicness has a positive and significant effect on public service motivation. Second, network behaviour is found significantly varying with public service motivation when publicness applies. Third, network structure has a strong and significant effect on public service motivation. No matter which of the perspective of networks is examined, public service motivation always varies positively with the degree of network activities. Last, there is an interaction effect of publicness and network characteristics on public service motivation, but the significance focuses on the structurally equivalent classes, no matter which network behaviour they exhibit, in the low publicness setting. The discussion gives implications of these findings for the study of public service motivation from the perspectives of networks and publicness in the context of Hong Kong. / published_or_final_version / Kadoorie Institute / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Formal controls are essential for well-functioning organizations, but research finds that they can negatively impact controlled individuals’ (agents) behavior. Specifically, controls can reduce agents’ intrinsic motivation to exert effort for employers (principals). In this dissertation, I investigate how agents’ beliefs about the intentionality of control influence their response to it. Further, I examine whether principals anticipate agents’ responses and adjust their risk-taking behavior accordingly. Using three interactive experiments, I examine the effects of control intentionality on agents’ effort and principals’ risk-taking. In the first experiment, I focus on the effects of intentions and control, without permitting principals to transfer resources to agents. In the second and third experiments, principals take risk by entrusting resources to agents. Further, in the third experiment, I investigate the beliefs that influence participants’ actions. In each experiment, I manipulate agents’ beliefs about control intentionality by varying the control source across three conditions. In the first condition, principals endogenously impose control, which can clearly be perceived as a distrusting signal. In the second condition, control is imposed exogenously by a computer and therefore cannot be interpreted negatively. In the third condition, the control source is unclear to the agent, such that it may be imposed by the principal or computer. I find that intentionality influences agents’ response to control. Specifically, in the first experiment, when control is imposed exogenously, agents exert high effort. However, agents’ effort diminishes when control can be interpreted as a negative signal, even if the source is ambiguous. Moreover, when the principal unambiguously imposes control, agents exert less effort than if no control is imposed. The second experiment reveals that this dysfunctional effect of intentional control persists when principals entrust resources to agents. Despite these negative effects, principals prefer to impose control. However, principals appear to accurately predict how control intentionality affects agents and take more risk when they have chosen not to impose control or when it is imposed by an exogenous or ambiguous source than when they have intentionally imposed it. Results from the second and third experiments indicate that principals’ risk-taking is influenced by their beliefs about agent opportunism. / text

<p>The purpose of this study is to investigate and review literature that examines whether job satisfaction and procedural justice have a positive relationshipwith employees organisational citizenship behaviour in a brick manufacturing industry</p>