In view of the rapid decrease in the number of students opting to train as teachers and the increasing numbers of teachers leaving the profession; the teaching profession in South Africa is indeed what Duke (1984) termed “imperilled”. While quantitative research identifies remuneration to be the foremost factor attributed to the dissatisfaction of teachers in South Africa as elsewhere; the main purpose of this study was to explore teachers’ perceptions of remuneration. Nine qualified women teachers aged between 25 and 35 years of age, who had been teaching for at least two years and less than ten, volunteered to take part in this study. The sample was drawn from government schools in a suburban part of Johannesburg. This research was based on the information gathered from a short biographical questionnaire followed by in-depth, semi-structured interviews. A process of language sensitive thematic content analysis was employed in order to analyse the data from the interviews. The research indicates that in the decision to enter the teaching profession, notions of the perception that teaching is a vocation predominate. An emphasis on the related intrinsic rewards to be gained from teaching was found to receive greater focus than monetary concerns on entering the profession. The participants expressed that women are more likely to enter the teaching profession while even though men may share the passion to teach, they are seriously deterred by the poor levels of remuneration. The participants explained that as the contexts of their lives changed, so too did their perceptions of remuneration, often resulting in an increasing emphasis on the importance of better remuneration to meet their and their families’ financial needs. Related to this, it was found that as South African teachers were exposed to an almost overwhelming number of challenges, the participants began to experience fewer intrinsic rewards which seemed to impact negatively on their perceptions of remuneration. Thus of the nine participants, only two indicated their long-term commitment to the teaching profession whereas the remaining seven all had plans to leave the profession in search of better remuneration.

The aim of the study was to investigate whether statistically and practically significant positive relationships exist between intrinsic motivation, social support and work engagement of shift workers in a South African Chemical Company. The expected outcome was to find statistically and practically significant positive correlations between these variables for these workers. A cross sectional survey was conducted among a sample of 207 shift workers from a South African Chemical Company. Data was collected by means of existing standardised and validated questionnaires, to measure intrinsic motivation (six-item measure) validated by Kuvaas and Dysvik, 2009, perceived social support (Work Experiences Scale, May, Gilson, & Harter, 2004), and work engagement (Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, Henn & Barkhuizen, 2009; Shimazu & Schaufeli, 2009). The statistical analysis included descriptive statistics, and Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients. The results showed that there were statistically and practically significant positive relationships between these variables for this sample group / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M. Com. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)