This study explores and attempts to shed light on what motivates teachers and how teacher motivation is affected by a principal's leadership style. The worldviews of pragmatism and critical realism were used as the basis for exploring teacher motivation in a South African school. A primary school in the Eastern Cape of South Africa was chosen for the case study. Three data gathering tools, a leadership questionnaire, teacher survey, and interviews were used to generate data on teacher motivation and the interaction between leadership style and teacher motivation. In regards to teachers, religion, social justice, and self-efficacy were all identified as motivators. The principal was strongly charismatic in her leadership and along with transformational and social justice leadership played a major role in influencing teacher behaviors. Self-determination theory was identified as helping to explain different levels of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and thereby to better understand varying degrees of teacher motivation. There are many difficulties in South African education and around the world in general and this study is premised on the belief that if teacher motivation can be studied and advanced there will be an improvement in education and learning. This thesis was limited in its scope and ability to fully explore the different levels of ontology as outlined by the critical realist and this is identified as a possible future course of action for not only studying teacher motivation but getting to the 'heart of the matter'.

The Council of Australian Therapeutic Advisory Groups (CATAG) (2013) define a Pharmaceutical and Therapeutics Committee (PTC) as a ‘multi-disciplinary team committee with a commitment to the overall governance of the medicines management system in health service organizations to ensure the judicious, appropriate, safe, effective and cost-effective use of medicines’. The multi-disciplinary team includes the health care providers, who are actively participating in the health care systems, such as doctors, pharmacists, nurses, administrators, finance officers, quality improvement managers and other staff members who participate in the medicine use processes according to their knowledge and skills. The major role of this committee is to evaluate and promote rational drug use by health care providers and consumers. In addition, this committee is responsible for developing systems and strategies to prevent adverse medicine reactions and medication errors, enhance rational prescribing and dispensing, provide educational activities and ensure the use of quality and cost-effective medicines. This is a cross-sectional study that was aimed at exploring the structure, activities and functions of public sector institutional Pharmaceutical and Therapeutics Committees (PTC) in the Eastern Cape (EC) Province in South Africa (SA). The primary objectives of the study were to (i) investigate and describe the structure, functions and the activities of the institutional PTCs, and (ii) explore and describe the perception of PTC secretariats on the functionality of the institutional PTCs. A purpose-designed questionnaire including both quantitative and qualitative aspects adapted from other international studies was piloted prior to being used for data collection. The secretariats of the institutional PTCs were requested to complete the questionnaire. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics for the quantitative aspects and thematic analysis for the qualitative component of the questionnaire. Data collection commenced after approval by the relevant ethics committees had been granted. The findings of the study reflected that the majority of the PTCs in the EC province, SA are district/sub-district PTCs which are a cluster of a number of health care institutions in close proximity. The PTC members were appointed by the executive authority as recommended by the literature and other guiding documents. As expected the nurses were dominant as the members of the PTCs in these district/sub-district PTCs. The secretariats were the pharmacists where pharmacists were available and chairperson were doctors. These findings correspond to the recommendations by the National Department of Health PTC policy (2015) and the studies conducted in other countries. A number of PTCs had sub-committees formed e.g. ABC analysis review committee, medicine utilization evaluation (MUE) committee and pharmacovigilance committee to optimise their functionality. Out of 15 PTCs only five PTCs with sub-committees reported functions and interventions, establishment of policies and SOPs. The rest had no outcomes or interventions reported. Poor production of policies and SOPs was observed which differs from other countries’ PTCs. The focus of sub-committees in other countries is the development of formulary and policies related to medicine use. These findings pose a question regarding the functionality and effectiveness of the existing institutional PTCs in the province. In addition, the basic documents that are required to run the PTC were unavailable in a number of PTCs. Barriers to the functionality of PTCs were reported i) Lack of pharmacists and training in PTCs. ii) The rural nature of the EC province and iii) Unavailability of resources including lack of re-imbursement of personal costs. These findings reveal that budget allocation for institutional PTCs is crucial for their functionality. It can be concluded that in the EC province the institutional PTCs which are active and effective are low in number and do not cover all geographical areas. Secondly there is a need for training and educating the PTC members on the role of the PTC members, role of sub-committees, development of policies, SOPs and the basic documents for the functionality of the committee. It is also important that during training the monitoring and evaluation of the effectiveness of the committee is emphasised. Therefore, the choice of the PTC objectives should be measurable as they can assist as indicators of effectiveness. Support by the executive authority has been observed.

The Eastern Cape Department of Education has become like a problem child in the Republic of South Africa. It is a cause for concern to both the provincial and national government. This is a department where service delivery is problematic. Schools are not built or renovated and children are taught in dilapidated structures or sometimes under trees. Hardly a week passes without the department making the headlines in the media for the wrong reasons. It is widely accepted that the department is dysfunctional and education is in a crisis. The department has emerged as the number one culprit of engaging in corrupt activities in the province. Public officials in the department have been identified as being at the helm of these corrupt activities. In the 200/10 financial year, the Auditor General issued a disclaimer to the department and highlighted a lack of direction, accountability and a total breakdown of internal control systems and supply chain management within the department. Numerous fraud risk indicators were identified during the audit and underlined by findings that are indicative of fraud and corruption within the department. This unfortunate state of affairs is contrary to the requirements of section 195(1) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa which provides for the democratic values and principles governing public administration including inter alia, that: A high standard of professional ethics must be promoted and maintained. Efficient, economic and effective use of resources must be promoted. Public administration must be accountable. This raises several questions about the ethical fitness of public officials in the department as the custodians of the public resources and trust. Though several reasons abound for this unfavourable state of affairs in the department, the researcher has singled out unethical conduct by public officials in the department and its impact on service delivery. The approach followed in this research was to analyse the 2009/10 Department of Education Annual Report and the 2009/10 Auditor General’s Report to the Eastern Cape Department of Education. The analysis confirmed the existence and occurrence of multiple cases of unethical conduct in the department. At the end scientific recommendations are proposed to alleviate this ill.