Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2006.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2005.

Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2006.

During the last decade, dramatic changes have been experienced in workplaces because of technological growth, globalisation, ever increasing competitive markets, changing industrial relation laws and better management skills (Cappelli, 1999). Amidst this change, the biggest issue is for organisations to gain dedication from their employees. Maslach et al (2001) explains that the impact of the changing world of work is perhaps most evident in changes in the psychological contract. Employees are expected to give more in terms of time, effort, skills and flexibility, whereas they receive less in terms of lifetime employment and job security. In security companies, the employer obligations and employee obligations also went through a process of change. Crime has become a very serious concern in South Africa. In Gauteng, crime has increased with 69,2% (SAP Statistics, 2005) from 1994 to 2004. Because of crime, many independent security companies were formed to help prevent crime, working together with the South African Police Force. A lack of research exists regarding employees' work outcomes like job insecurity, organisational commitment and intention to quit associated with the psychological contract within a service company. The objectives of this study are to investigate the relationship between employer obligations, employee obligations, job insecurity, organisational commitment and intention to quit of employees (N=217) in a service (security) company. A cross - sectional design was used. Constructs were measured by means of an employer obligations questionnaire, employee obligations questionnaire, job insecurity questionnaire, organisational commitment questionnaire and intention to quit questionnaire. The research method for each of the two articles consists of a brief literature review and an empirical study. Exploratory factor analysis, as well as Cronbach alpha coefficients are computed to access the reliability and validity of the different measurement instruments. Descriptive statistics are used to analyse data and Pearson product moment correlation coefficients, as well as regression analysis were used to examine the relationship between the constructs employed in this research. Significant differences are found between various biographical groups and the scores of the psychological contract (employer obligations scale and employee obligations scale), the job insecurity scale, the organisational commitment scale and the intention to quit scale. Conclusions are made, limitations of the current research are discussed and recommendations for future research are put forward. / Thesis (M.Com. (Industrial Sociology))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

As global competition becomes more fierce each day, in order for many corporations and organizations to respond to competitive pressures or technological advancements, they are forced to reduce costs or promote efficiency through downsizing, restructuring or merger. These organization changes result in involuntary modification of employee¡¦s jobs, which violates the psychological contracts between organization and the employee, causing employees to loose their sense of security. In recent years, new battleships have joined service in the navy. The Policy of Abridgement together with the policy of national defense procuring from the private sectors are also being enforced. These movements required the logistic capabilities of the defense logistics shipyard unit to implement restructuring and adjustment of human resources so as to meet the new mission requirements. Yet, being part of an organizations undergoing change, lack of job security becomes the atmosphere among employees, which is exacerbated by retirements reaching its peak in the next 3 years. This has been a great impact on the logistics organization of the navy. Therefore, it is imperative that the mechanisms by which job insecurity affects occupational stress, organizational commitment and employee responsive behavior be identified. Moreover, there is need to establish what leadership styles will effectively reduce the negative impacts of job insecurity, occupational stress and promote employee commitments to the organization, so as to lead a positive course of response from employees. Based on the above motivation and research objectives, in this study, maintenance staff of the defense logistics shipyard unit was investigated through a questionnaire survey. 482 questionnaires were returned from the 500 questionnaires distributed, from which 371 responses are valid, representing a 74.2% response rate. The survey data was analyzed by multivariate analysis using SPSS v.10 statistical software. The major results are as follows: 1. Job insecurity, as moderated by occupational stress, reduces the effect of emotions on employee responsive behavior. 2. Leadership styles with high relationship and high task, high relationship and low task, and, low relationship and low task, bear significant interfering effects on the relationship between job insecurity and employee responsive behavior toward problems. 3. Leadership styles with high relationship and high task, and, low relationship and low task, bear significant interfering effects on the relationship between occupational stress and employee responsive behavior toward problems.

Abstract Title: Study of Transformational Leadership, Organizational Justice, Job Insecurity, Turnover Tendency, Organizational Commitment, and Self-Efficacy: Taking C Bank as An Example University: National Sun Yat-sen University, Institute of Human Resource Management Date: 2nd Semester of Year 2006 Graduate student: Ching-Chung Chen Advisors: Drs. Liang-Chih Huang & Cheng-Chen Lin In Year 2000 and 2001, the respective passage of the Financial Institutions Merger Act and Financial Holding Company Act encouraged the merger of financial institutions to reach the effect of scale economy with a view to developing capital efficiency, cost saving, and cross selling, the 0so-called 3C. Along with the rapid change of the external environment, the privatization of state-owned banks is both a trend and the way to increase competition. When the environmental changes, the organizations will be merged or have to transform if the service provided are not competitive anymore or substituted by other service. In order to increase the competition of banking industry, the purpose of the study is to explore the relationships among transformational leadership, organizational justice, job insecurity, turnover tendency, affective commitment, and self-efficacy in the banking industry. Accordingly the subjects of this study were the current employees of C bank in Kaohsiung city, Kaohsiung county, Pingtung area, and Taitung area. Data was collected through the survey with a 447 valid questionnaires. Through the statistical analysis including t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression, the findings were as follows. 1. Job insecurity which employees felt significantly differed from their ages, working years for current company, working years for banking and years of colleague with director. However, it showed that demographic statistics variables didn¡¦t make any difference for transformational leadership and organizational justice. 2. With diverse ages, working years for current company, working years for banking and years of colleague with director, employees would show great difference in turnover tendency and affective commitment. 3. Transformational leadership and organizational justice had no significant effect on job insecurity, but there were strong negative correlation with turnover tendency and significant positive correlation with affective commitment. 4. Self-efficacy did not have a significantly moderating effect on referring transformational leadership and organizational justice to job insecurity, turnover tendency, and affective commitment. Key Words: transformational leadership, organizational justice, job insecurity, turnover tendency, ffective commitment, self-efficacy

Title: Research on middle-age worker¡¦s stressors and withdrawal behaviors Student: Tzu Hui Liao Advisor: Jin Feng Uen By the trend of decreasing baby-bust and early-retirement, the labor force structure has changed. Middle age and older workers will become increasingly prevalent in the work place. The impact of an aging workforce raises the height-light issues facing employees today. During the global economic crisis in 2008, there are many business enterprises chose to lay off employees massively or offer unpaid leaves. And the middle age and older workers are the main target. Thus, this worker issue has become more and more important. Attention is mainly given to the human resource policies which may impact middle age workers such as performance management, selection and training etc. Less research has focused on attitudes toward the elderly held by middle-aged adults themselves. The presence of ageism in our society is of mounting concern with regard to the changing demographic shape of the workforce. Governments and organizations have become interested in the middle-age worker on performance, training, in recent years. Middle-age worker has numerous life and working experiences, so their mental and physical attitudes may vary form the ones held by the freshmen in labor market. Therefore, this research aims to explore on middle-age workers and withdrawal behaviors in depth in order to development the best human resource practices.

There is a trend that the phenomenon of inequality is behaved in the market of medical treatment after the exercise of public health insurance. The large-scale hospitals incrementally enlarge to squeeze the survival condition of small and medium hospitals under the situation that supreme will survive to enhance competitive advantage. The competition is fierce between local hospitals to be based on the inequality of survival condition and unreasonable payment system of public health insurance. The research of Tong-Liang Chiang and Ming-San Huang (2000) indicates following phenomenon: the 77% of manager of local hospitals think that the competition is obviously increased between local hospitals after the exercise of public health insurance. The job insecurity of employees is generated by the expecting psychological condition that is derived from change in the organization under the impact of current environment and pressure of survival. What is the response of work influenced by job insecurity? What is the management lesson of hospital brought in the competition of hospitals? I hope to find the real response of employees under situation that feeling of job insecurity is derived by the expecting psychological condition of change in the organization. What is the relationship by the addition of individual personality? There are main findings in the research through the analysis of evidence: 1. Job insecurity is evident positive relevant to variation on work scenario, variation on structure of human resource, variation on management pattern of organization and variation on opportunity of employment that is belongs to the expecting factor of change in the organization. The higher score of variation on work scenario, variation on structure of human resource, variation on management pattern of organization and variation on opportunity of employment, the much easier generation of job insecurity. 2. For the job insecurity, the deviation of explanation on job insecurity is evidently related with the model of expecting factor of change in the organization. And the variation on work scenario and variation on opportunity of employment are evidently influenced by job security. 3. Job insecurity is partial evidently related with the immediate effect that is derived between the expecting change in organization and organizational commitment, leave attitude, work satisfaction, service attitude. 4. The employees that have personality of self-control are evidently interfered by the job insecurity that is derived from variation on work scenario, variation on opportunity of employment, variation on management pattern of organization and variation on work character. The employees that have personality of extraversion are evidently interfered by the job insecurity that is derived from variation on structure of human resource and variation on work character.

The importance of public hospitals is dwindling, and the National Health Insurance Bureau takes initiatives such as the system of payment retrenchment and the large reduction in official budgets due to the insufficiency of government finance in order to control the enlargement of medical expenditures. For this reason, it is necessary for public hospitals to make a change so as to get used to the change of the environment. The research takes Kaohsiung Municipal United Hospital as an example to explore the correlation and effect of all the variables of employees¡¦ job insecurity during the pre- and post-mergence on job satisfaction, organization commitment, job involvement and the intent to quit. Meanwhile, hopefully the research can be the reference for managers in terms of human resource strategies while public hospitals are going to merge. There are two periods of distributing questionnaires. At first, 700 questionnaires one month before the hospital mergence (the end of November in 2002), the subject includes doctors, nurses, administrative staffs, medical technicians, and there are 390 returned questionnaires, which reaches 55.7% return rate. One year later after the hospital mergence, we perform again with 731 questionnaires , and 397 returned, which reaches 54.2% return rate. Here are the main finding (discoveries) of the research as follows: 1. The insufficiency of the consider before the hospital mergence and of the communication after the hospital mergence. 2. There are some differences of employees¡¦ job insecurity and employees¡¦ job attitudes, and the departmental mergence after the public hospital mergence. 3. Employees¡¦ helplessness has no effect between private enterprise and public hospital merging on their job satisfaction before the hospital mergence; employees¡¦ helplessness has the negative effect on their job satisfaction after the hospital mergence. 4. Employees¡¦ helplessness has no effect on their organization commitment before the hospital mergence; employees¡¦ helplessness has the negative effect on their organization commitment after the hospital mergence. 5. Employees¡¦ helplessness has no effect on their job involvement before the hospital mergence; employees¡¦ helplessness has the negative effect on their job involvement after the hospital mergence. 6. Employees¡¦ helplessness has no effect on their intent to quit before the hospital mergence; employees¡¦ helplessness has the positive effect on their intent to quit after the hospital mergence.

The public hospitals in Taiwan are facing the change of public responsibilities that they used to have and on the other hand encountering the fierce competition caused by National Health Insurance. As a consequence of this, public hospitals need to adjust their managerial model, like mergers for example, in order to coordinate their core competence and lower their cost in administration. However, the changes of organizations will cause the job insecurity of employees and further to affect their working attitudes. In hospitals, nursing staff forms the biggest proportion of employees. In this study, we examined the merger of Kaohsiung Municipal United Hospital in 2003. We investigated the job insecurity and working attitudes of nursing staff by questionnaires in the end of 2002 (before the merger) and in the end of 2003 (one year later of the merger) separately. By analyzing those questionnaires we explored the influences of job insecurity on working attitudes, and we also compared the differences of nursing staff¡¦s working attitudes in two hospitals. The findings are: 1. The more job insecurity that nurses got, the worse their job satisfaction will be. 2. The job insecurity and working attitudes of nursing staff will be different based on their different personal characteristics, including the hospital they belonged to, the ages, marriage status, education, levels of position, and their contract types. 3. The influences of job insecurity on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intention to quit will be different based on different hospitals. 4. The influences of job insecurity on job satisfaction will be different before and after merger.