M.Com. (Industrial Psychology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Suburban employment centres have increasingly become major workplaces for suburban women without consideration of the specific requirements of these workers. This thesis examines the ability of suburban employment centres to respond to the particular needs of women employees by analyzing the relationship between the Greater Vancouver Regional District's (GVRD) objectives for suburban centres and the needs of women office workers. This thesis includes case studies of female workers at suburban firms located in Burnaby and Richmond, British Columbia. The research points to the specific considerations that can contribute to providing women with employment opportunities in a quality working environment. The thesis stresses the necessity for including a gender perspective in urban research, such as the suburbanization of offices and employment. Background information on the GVRD's Livable Region Program and Regional Town Centres strategy is provided, including a description of their objectives, successes and weaknesses, particularly as they pertain to suburban office workers. The growth of suburban offices and employment, and specifically, the development and characteristics of the Burnaby and Richmond town centres are also presented. The empirical research involved interviews of women working in suburban offices in Burnaby and Richmond to establish their actions, perceptions and expectations regarding their office location. The interview responses indicated that there is as much similarity and difference between the women working in Burnaby and Richmond, as there is between those working in town centre and non-town centre locations. Many of the women placed greater emphasis on the type of work than on the location of the office and its relationship to transit, services and amenities. Generally, most women only wanted basic amenities (banking, postal services and a convenience store) and a pleasant, relaxing environment. The findings from the interviews are analyzed in accordance with the objectives of the GVRD's Livable Region Program and Regional Town Centres strategy. Recommendations are made for ensuring that the GVRD's objectives are more cognizant of the requirements of women office workers. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

The occupational wage structure has been a subject of much interest in recent years. The interest, however, has concentrated primarily on the short-run aspects of the problem much to the neglect of the long-run. The recent interest in investment in education has prompted this theoretical and empirical study of the long-run occupational earnings structure from the point of view of investment in education. The paper begins by constructing a theoretical model of occupational earnings in which the earnings of an occupation are related to the investment in formal and informal (on the job training and learning by doing) education associated with that occupation. The relation between various occupational earnings streams is established by equating the present values of the expected earnings streams of all occupations. From the theoretical relationship, it can be predicted that the functional relationship between earnings and education should be non-linear with first and second derivatives positive. Moreover, it can be predicted that the degree of non-linearity will be related to the rate of discount that is applied to investment in education. From this section of the paper arise two important conclusions for studies of long-run changes in the occupational wage structure. Firstly, in studying long-run changes in the occupational earnings structure, attention must be paid to the changing distribution of investment in education among the occupations. Secondly, a change in the shape of the functional relation between earnings and education could be related to long-run changes in the appropriate discount rate. The empirical section of the paper tests the predicted relation between earnings and education by means of regression analysis. The prediction that the relationship should be nonlinear (first and second derivatives positive) is borne out by these tests. Moreover, the degree of non-linearity in the empirical relation appears to be approximately the same as predicted from the theoretical model. Finally, using only simple measures of schooling, over 80% of the occupational earnings structure could be explained in the regression analysis. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

This study had as a major objective the development and validation of a new behaviour-oriented appraisal instrument with increased information content and improved rating characteristics as compared to Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales. The study was conducted in a sequential manner, beginning with a review of the literature on the problems of performance appraisal and training evaluation and the nature and characteristics of different performance evaluation methods, followed by several developmental phases relating to the development of critical incidents and the creation of the instruments. The research concluded with field studies for the purpose of establishing the construct validity of the instruments and determining their rating characteristics when applied in an organizational environment. The literature reviews revealed two major issues in the areas of performance appraisal and training evaluation: criterion and methodology. The methodology problem is open to much controversy, but on the criterion issue the tendency is to favour multiple and behaviour-oriented criteria. After determining a focal job for which an appraisal instrument had to be developed, workshops with five supporting organizations were organized. Each workshop was attended by five job incumbents, five superiors and five subordinates. The purpose of these meetings was to develop critical incidents, or samples of effective or ineffective job behaviour as observed by peers, superiors and subordinates, thus including every aspect of the job. The collected items were edited to conform to proper English and to avoid redundancies. The items were then listed in random order and submitted to judges (expert job incumbents) who made decisions on the validity of the items and the job dimension or category to which each item belonged. Only items on which 80% of the judges agreed were retained. Since the remaining item pool was still too large to be submitted to an inter-organizational body of judges, a panel of experts made up of training managers of the participating organizations selected 159 items according to agreed-upon criteria (lowest standard deviation and 100% agreement among judges) to ensure that only the best items were chosen. A list of these items was submitted to 200 judges of each participating organization. The judges were asked to decide whether each item was a valid sample of a job incumbent's job behaviour, and to rate it on a 1 to 7 scale as to the degree of effectiveness of the job behaviour it described. Items were retained when 80% of all judges and 60% of the judges of individual organizations agreed on their validity and their standard deviation did not exceed 1.5. One hundred and twenty items (or 75%) were retained. Two types of instruments were developed from the item pool, a seven-point behaviourally anchored rating scale (BARS), and a twenty-item behaviour description index with Yes/No/Uncertain responses (BDI). A third instrument, a seven-point graphic rating scale (GRS) was based on the official performance appraisal forms of the participating organizations. To assess the validity of the respective instruments, two field studies were undertaken. Two groups of superiors (N₁ =31,N₂ = 42) rated their subordinates using all three instruments. The construct validity of the instruments was assessed through the Campbel1-Fiske [1959] multi-trait-multi-method matrix, an analysis of variance, and correlations with (relatively) independent performance criteria. All instruments showed significant convergent validity but only BARS and BDI demonstrated significant discriminant validity. Correlations with the independent criteria of performance were highest for the BDI. A second goal of the field studies was to compare the three instruments on psychometric characteristics such as halo, leniency, central tendency, reliability, information content, and rater preference. The results indicate that in most comparisions the BDI demonstrated superiority. However, it has not been validated as yet for use in industry. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

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