Certain job characteristics have been shown to be important for improving employee job fit. In particular, the degree of autonomy and feedback employees are afforded could allow them to more effectively manage job stressors, and acquire and/or uphold the requisite skills to maintain satisfactory work performance. These job characteristics may also lead to greater job satisfaction by supporting employees’ need for continuous growth, desire for social connectedness, and fulfillment of basic psychological needs. Accordingly, a model was proposed wherein the facets of person-job fit (demands-abilities fit and needs-supplies fit) are expected to mediate the relationship between both autonomy and feedback and both employee job satisfaction and task performance. The sample contained 228 individuals who were either working professionals or employed college students. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis was used to test the direct and indirect effects. Results indicated that both autonomy and feedback increase satisfaction, but not effectiveness, by improving job fit. In summary, the findings of this study could be used for developing and implementing organizational strategies to improve or maintain person-job fit.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Thesis (M.Com. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

The present study investigates whether employees¡¦ personality traits and job characteristics influence their job involvement in M company. Using 163 samples, we found that the interaction of employees¡¦ personality traits and job characteristics, influence their job involvement. In addition, employees¡¦ personality traits and job characteristics have no significant influence on job involvement. The factors that affect the job involvement not only the two can separate cover. Enterprises should pay attention to employees¡¦ personality traits and job characteristics fit, making the employees in their suitable job. Employees have a high degree of job involvement will bring more benefits for organization.

In the recent years, the financial tendency in Taiwan towards merging banks into financial holding companies. Traditional banking services, i.e. deposit saving and loan, have been replaced by the most popular consumer financial products such as cash card and credit card. In order to adapt to the rapid changing financial trends, a more flexible and accurate information system will be an imperative for the management levels. The mainframe systems, the most popular system in the banking industry, have been challenged by the open systems of client-server architecture. This research is to explore the critical success factors of the multi-sections collaboration in a system reengineering project. This exploratory study adopts case study method. It takes in-depth interviews with fourteen IT supervisors and executives from the case-study bank. After summarizing and analyzing the related factors, the conclusions are as followed. 1. Set up checkpoints in the project development process, and review the utilization of resources including human resources, cost and programming quality. 2. At least, there is a team member who masters the system to be replaced and the network system in order to fully understand the merit and defect of the replaced system. 3. For IT professionals who are already provided with banking related knowledge and information technology, they need a charismatic project leader. 4. Except for traditional communication of interpersonal behaviors, leaders can adopt new technology such as wide-band conference or distant VOD (voice on demand) to reinforce the communications among members who are located in different places. 5. Avoid conflicts and direct them to cooperation. Discover the events and problems that cause the conflicts and target on problem solving levels. 6. In the internal organizational structure levels, divide and adjust them into well-structured divisions or sections. As for the external levels, project departments should be set up for these specific projects. 7. Leaders should present the project plans and steps to all the involving IT staff before the project initiates, in order to bring all the project members with participation and responsibility.

The advance of technology brings the flourish and vigor in economy to global market. It also changes the way we do business. Every company is struggle to gain the competitive advantage. Peter Drucker (1999), a management master, points out that in the 21st century, the most valuable assets of an organization are knowledge workers and the productivity of knowledge workers. Last ten years, high-tech industries become the main force in Taiwan. However, there are some attributes under this industry that make employees hard to differentiate between work and life, for example, short period of product life cycle, nonstop product line and so on. The researches from Fassel(1990), Schaef & Fassel(1988) indicate that some companies are workaholics itself. Schneider(1987) thought that people will stay in a company suitable to himself/herself longer due to attraction-selection-attrition theory. Many researches pointed out that workaholics are more involved in work than other workers.(Fassel, 1990; Scott et al., 1997; Spence & Robbins, 1992). Therefore, maximizing the efforts from workaholics is an challenge. In this study, workaholism is defined as an independent variable. Other variables like health, work-family conflict and job performance are as independent variables. Besides, personal attributes and job characteristics are defined as antecedents. This study will take 136 engineers in high-tech industry to examine the effect of workaholism on other dependent variables, like health, work-family conflict and job performance. The findings in this study are as follows: 1. After using factor analysis to examine three dimensions of wokaholism from Spence & Robbins(1992), the result points out that job involvement is an unstable factor, but work enjoyment and driveness are applicable to this study. 2. The hypothesis that there is a significant effect of health on work enjoyment and driveness is partly supported. Driveness is a risk factor related to health because it has a negativ effect on general health, social function and mental health. Besides, work enjoyment has a positive effect to general health, vitality, social function and mental health. 3. The hypothesis that there is a significant effect of work-family conflict on work enjoyment and driveness is supported. Work enjoyment has a negative effect on work-family conflict. However, driveness has a positive effect on work-family conflict. 4. The hypothesis that there is a significant effect of job performance on work enjoyment and driveness is partly supported. Work enjoyment has a positive effect on task and contextual performance. However, driveness has a positive effect on contextual performance. 5. The hypothesis that there are significant differences in work enjoyment and driveness among personal attributes is partly supported. No significant difference was found in work enjoyment among personal attributes. In addition, there is a significant difference for marital status in driveness. The married workers experience a higher level of driveness than unmarried workers. 6. The hypothesis that there is a significant effect of job characteristics in work enjoyment and driveness is partly supported. The result indicates that time control is positively related to work enjoyment. Monitoring demand and product responsibility are positively related to driveness. Method control is negatively related to driveness. 7. After using cluster analysis, three types of workaholics are identified in this study. They are enthusiastic workers, disenchanted workers and relaxed workers.¡@Among three types of workaholics, enthusiastic workers have a better health condition, job performance and a lower level in work-family conflict than other two types of workaholics. Furthermore, enthusiastic workers have a higher level in time control and method control than disenchanted workers.

In the present study, organizational commitment&lsquo / s relationship with a number of antecedents and consequences were examined. In more detail, firstly the effects of job characteristics (i.e., job variety, promotional opportunity, organizational fairness, and perceived organizational support) on three dimensions of organizational commitment namely affective, normative, and continuance commitment were examined. Secondly, how these three dimensions of organizational commitment predict two dimensions of performance (i.e., task and contextual performance) and turnover intentions were examined. With these purposes, a pilot study was conducted with the participation of 45 employees and then in the main study questionnaires were administered to a sample of 175 employees working in different public organizations. According to the results of the study, job characteristics significantly and positively predicted both affective and normative commitment in addition to overall commitment but they were not significant predictors of continuance commitment. In more detail, affective commitment was predicted by job variety, promotional opportunity and perceived organizational support while normative commitment was predicted by job variety and perceived organizational support. The results of the mediation analysis revealed that perceived organizational support partially mediated the organizational fairness - affective organizational commitment relationship. Among three dimensions of commitment, affective and normative commitment were found to significantly and negatively predict turnover intentions of employees. On the other hand, none of the three dimensions significantly predicted task performance when self ratings were used but affective and normative commitment significantly influenced self reported contextual performance. However, three dimensions of commitment were not significant predictors of task, contextual or overall performance rated by supervisors. The results of the study, its implications, limitations and directions were future research were discussed in more detail.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to explore the present state of the sense of teacher efficacy in public kindergarten teachers as it relates to their background and subjective perception variables. The aim of this study was (1) to understand the condition of the sense of teacher efficacy in public kindergarten teachers, (2) to investigate the differences in teachers¡¦ sense of efficacy among public kindergarten teachers with diverse background variables (the teachers¡¦ attribute and schools¡¦ attribute variables), (3) to analyze the relationships between the subjective perception variables (the job characteristics perception and the social evaluation perception variables) and the teachers¡¦ efficacy sense, (4) to explore the predictive power of the diverse background variables and subjective perception variables for the teacher efficacy sense, (5) to compare the attitudes toward children, instruction and work between high and low sense of teacher efficacy, (6) based on the results of this study, the researcher proposed several suggestions for improving the sense of teacher efficacy in kindergarten teachers. This study adopted both questionnaire survey and interview methods. The participant¡¦s questionnaire survey included 354 public kindergarten teachers in Taiwan. The instruments employed were The Scale of Kindergarten Teachers¡¦ Efficacy, The Scale of Job Characteristics Perception, and The Scale of Social Evaluation Perception. The quantitative data obtained were analyzed by Descriptive Statistics, t-test, Hotelling¡¦s T2, One-Way MANOVA, Product-moment Correlation, Canonical Correlation Analysis and Stepwise multiple regression analysis. The participants in the interview for understanding the different attitudes toward children, instruction and work between high and low sense of teacher efficacy were 10 high and low efficacy sense teachers. Major findings of this study are summarized as follows: 1. The public kindergarten teachers possessed higher teachers¡¦ efficacy sense. 2. There were significant differences in the teachers¡¦ efficacy sense of the public kindergarten teachers with the diverse teachers¡¦ attribute variables. 3. There were relationships between the subjective perception variables (the job characteristics perception and the social evaluation perception variables) and the teachers¡¦ efficacy sense. 4. There were significant differences in the teachers¡¦ efficacy sense of the public kindergarten teachers with the diverse job characteristics perception and the social evaluation perception variables. 5. Number of working years, diploma and class grade background variables, skill variety, task importance, task autonomy, task feedback of the job characteristic perception variables, and the social evaluation perception variables could predict the sense of teacher efficacy of the kindergarten teachers. 6. There were differences in opinions and attitudes toward children, instruction and work between high and low sense of teacher efficacy. Finally, according to the results and conclusions of this study, the researcher proposed several suggestions to the kindergarten teachers, the kindergartens, the teacher education institutes, the educational administration institutions, and for future study.

The thesis mainly studies, the relevant influential variables of the internal auditors¡¦ concentration on jobs and their efforts for the work, in consideration of the internal auditors¡¦ individual factors, which affect WV and JC; furthermore with an empirical survey and statistical analysis by SPSS program on the working attitude¡¦s influence on the JI and ITQ. The critical findings of the thesis are as follows: (1) Individual characteristics¡Ðsex, age, marrage, years of employment, reason of being an auditor, position, have obvious differentiations respectively on the partial dimensions of the internal auditors¡¦ WV. (2) Individual characteristics¡Ðage, marrage, education, years of being an auditor, reasons for being an auditor, position, certification of accounting/auditing, span of incremental salary, have obvious differentiations respectively on the partial dimensions of the internal auditors¡¦ JC. (3) Individual characteristics¡Ðage, years of employment, reasons for being an auditor, position, span of incremental salary, have obvious differentiations on the internal auditors¡¦ JI. (4) Individual characteristics¡Ðage, sex, years of employment, years of being an auditor, organization¡¦s capital amount, have obvious differentiations on the internal auditors¡¦ ITQ. (5) The whole WV have obviously positive correlation on internal auditor¡¦s JI. In details, the two dimensions of inner value and social status value have obviously positive effect with internal auditor¡¦s JI. (6) The whole JC have obviously positive correlation on internal auditor¡¦s JI. In details, except for task identity, the other four JCs have obviously positive effect with internal auditor¡¦s JI. (7) In order to decrease ITQ of the internal auditors, organization ought to upgrade the JI of internal auditor, especially put much emphasis on the compensation of the internal auditors; and directly expand the task variety and task proactiveness would also obviously decrease the internal auditor¡¦s ITQ. (8) In order to upgrade the internal auditors¡¦ JI or decrease their ITQ, the interaction of the different JC and individual WV would indicate the outcome of facilitation or suppression to main effects with interference.

Universities worldwide are developing a disturbing imbalance with their environments. In recent years, academic working conditions in South African universities have changed dramatically as a result of the country's post-apartheid policies and the accelerating globalisation of knowledge. Academic staff are continually confronted with an overload of job demands without corresponding increases in job resources. These prolonged job stressors that academic staff are subjected to over lengthy periods of time coupled with inadequate job resources can lead to the development of a pathogenically defined construct, namely burnout. The objective of this research was to investigate the relationships between burnout, strain, job characteristics and dispositional optimism in universities in the North-West Province. A cross-sectional design was used. The study population (N = 279) consisted of academic staff of universities in the North-West Province. The Maslach Burnout Inventory - General Survey (MBI-GS), The Life Orientation Test - Revised (LOT-R), Job Characteristics Scale (JCS) and General Health Questionnaire (GHQI9) were used as measuring instruments. Descriptive statistics (e.g. means, standard deviations and kurtosis) were used to analyse the data. Exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were used to confirm the structure of the measuring instruments and to test theoretical models. The results showed that the stressors of overload was associated with high levels of exhaustion and low professional efficacy. Job resources (i.e. social support, task characteristics) were related to low levels of exhaustion and cynicism and higher levels of professional efficacy. Exhaustion and low professional efficacy were significantly related to physical and psychological health problems. Exhaustion and cynicism were negatively related to optimism, whereas professional efficacy were positively related to the latter. Optimism moderated the effects of a lack of resources on exhaustion and the effects of job resources on professional efficacy. / Thesis (M.Com. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.