The world of work is changing at a whirlwind speed with mergers, acquisitions, new markets, products, growth as well as many similar business activities being at the order of the day, all aimed at improving income and profits. Fierce competition, and optimisation of resources by businesses, has led to corporations realising that economic and social sustainability cannot be achieved through technology alone and attention has to be given to human needs. Peoples' capacities we progressively being optimised as a strategic important business element and when this resource is neglected, it can have detrimental effects for businesses. This confirms a growing interest and call for wellness and well-being efforts by employers to find out just how happy people are, and what can be done to improve employees' satisfaction. Since employee satisfaction is recognised as important to the success in the workplace, efforts to improve and maintain high levels of job satisfaction will contribute to the overall success of a business. Limited research that can guide interventions in the chemical factory environment to improve general satisfaction in the workplace exists about the relationship between satisfaction in the workplace and subordinate structures influencing job satisfaction and the effect job satisfaction has on general satisfaction in the workplace. This study aimed at investigating satisfaction or wellness in the workplace by focussing on the different layers of satisfaction and how the satisfaction on a level is affected by the level of satisfaction on subordinate levels. To enhance the results of the study, the two primary questionnaires were also validated for use in the chemical factory environment, and sense of coherence and job satisfaction in the chemical factory were analysed at the same time. The research approach followed in this study focussed on a literature study, followed by an empirical analysis of data collected that was related to the specific area of study. A survey design was used to collect the data, using a questionnaire booklet that was distributed to a crosscut sample of employees working in the chemical factory environment. The sample represented all the demographic groups in the organisation ( N = 583). The questionnaires used were the Orientation to Life Questionnaire, Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire, the Health Questionnaire, Work Locus of Control Scale, and Satisfaction with Life Scale, Affectometer, and a biographical questionnaire. In Article 1 and Article 2, two questionnaires considered primary to the study were tested for use in the chemical factory environment. The Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire's structural equivalence for use in a multilingual population, and the construct validity of the Orientation to Life Questionnaire in an abbreviated 11-item format, were confirmed. The different levels of job satisfaction and sense of coherence for different demographic subgroups were also determined. Job satisfaction was found to differ significantly between the different language groups, certain age groups, as well as for different job levels. Moreover, while intrinsic job satisfaction increased with age and job level, extrinsic job satisfaction decreased with the level of education. Sense of coherence differed also significantly between some demographic groups, namely language, qualification and job level. In Article 3 the relationship between job satisfaction, sense of coherence, affect and locus of control were tested as an indication of the hierarchical structure of subjective well-being. The hierarchical structure of subjective well-being was confirmed, deducted from the correlation between different variables and the percentage of variance in successive levels of satisfaction explained by the level of satisfaction in subordinate levels. Recommendations were made to the host organisation and for future research. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Software systems in the automotive domain are generally safety critical and subject to strict timing requirements. Systems of this character are often constructed utilizing periodically executed tasks, that have a hard deadline. In addition, these systems may have additional deadlines that can be specified on cause-effect chains, or simply task chains. They are defined by existing tasks in the system, hence the chains are not stand alone additions to the system. Each chain provide an end-to-end timing constraint targeting the propagation of data through the chain of tasks. These constraints specify the additional timing requirements that need to be fulfilled, when searching for a valid schedule. In this thesis, an offline non-preemptive scheduling method is presented, designed for single core systems. The scheduling problem is defined and formulated utilizing Constraint Programming. In addition, to ensure that end-to-end timing requirements are met, job-level dependencies are considered during the schedule generation. Utilizing this approach can guarantee that individual task periods along with end-to-end timing requirements are always met, if a schedule exists. The results show a good increase in schedulability ratio when utilizing job-level dependencies compared to the case where job-level dependencies are not specified. When the system utilization increases this improvement is even greater. Depending on the system size and complexity the improvement can vary, but in many cases it is more than double. The scheduling generation is also performed within a reasonable time frame. This would be a good benefit during the development process of a system, since it allows fast verification when changes are made to the system. Further, the thesis provide an overview of the entire process, starting from a system model and ending at a fully functional schedule executing on a hardware platform.

Magister Artium (Psychology) - MA(Psych) / This study investigated how Work-Family Conflict was related to Role Salience and Job level (investigated in terms of the amount of job demand and job control associated with different job levels) among women from a Collectivistic culture. A sample of 65 teachers was used. Although the results of the study showed no correlations between Work-Family Conflict and both role salience and job level, this was attributed to the high data skewness, thereby reducing the chances of detecting correlations. The high positive data skewness was possibly caused by the floor effect, which was the situation that the sample consisted of only female teachers from a Collectivistic culture. The high negative data skewness was possibly caused by the ceiling effect, which is the situation that the women in this sample have a Collectivistic cultural orientation, and are therefore highly likely to consider their home role as more salient. Moreover, correlations between Work Family Conflict and Job demand have been found to be higher in Individualistic cultures compared to Collectivistic cultures. There also seems to be no differences in job control among teachers occupying different job levels, and hence, no correlations were detected. Further analyses depicted that the teachers within this sample considered their home role as more salient. Moreover, despite their commitment to both their home role and occupational role, the data indicated that the sample experienced low levels of Work Family conflict. / South Africa

本論文採用民國六十七年至九十一年人力資源調查五月份的資料，建構人力資源調查合併資料檔案，根據相異指數、以及Tam（2001b）的標準化女性比例，進行職業層次、產業層次、工作層次性別隔離的程度和樣貌的趨勢分析，並以三維立體圖形方法呈現結果。研究結果顯示，職業層次的性別隔離近乎整合且標準化女性比例的百分比座落在60％至70％之職業有逐漸增多的趨勢、產業層次的性別隔離也呈現整合而中性職業增加的趨勢、至於工作層次性別隔離程度則逐漸下降且也呈現出整合的趨勢變化，而工作層次性別隔離程度高過職業層次性別隔離程度。另採用民國六十九年與七十九年台閩地區戶口及住宅普查資料完整母體資料所建構的工作層次資料，以檢驗使用人力運用調查的樣本資料得出之工作層次資料的結果，證明後者的分析具有效度。而採用普查資料進行探究也發現，無論是在更細緻的職業層次（三分位職業代碼）和工作層次（三分位職業代碼與二分位行業代碼的工作代碼組合）、或者是在與人力資源調查相同的職業層次（二分位職業代碼）和工作層次（二分位職業代碼與二分位行業代碼的工作代碼組合）的分析層次下，採用相異指數和標準化女性比例的結果皆是性別隔離程度下降、也呈現出整合的趨勢變化，工作層次性別隔離程度也高過職業層次性別隔離程度，然其僅提供十年間的資訊，實為可惜之處。 / This study uses data from 1978-2002 Manpower Utilization Survey (MUS) for analyzing, ultimately, job-level sex segregation in Taiwanese workplace. Taking into account the limitation of large amount of small-N job cells due to the relatively smaller sample sizes, the method of mid-point of interval estimation and 5-year aggregation is applied with its strength of consecutive data series: pooling data across 1978 to 1982 as estimation for year 1980, and so on, to construct 5-year aggregated MUS data. To view the job-level sex segregation pattern, job-level datasets are established by the “combination of occupation and industry codes”, from which there are units of analysis, job cells. And discarding small-N reliable sampled jobs in MUS is essential to avoid biased results for they contain extreme sex composition after comparing with those from population data of 1980 and 1990 Taiwanese Censuses. Findings indicate that the degree of occupational, industrial, and job-level sex segregation is somewhat increasing by Duncan and Duncan’s Dissimilarity Index, by which it is unable to measure the exact segregation degree because of its margin-dependent trait. However, by using Tam’s margin-free index: Standardized Percent Women, findings indicate that: (1) for occupational-level sex segregation, there is a trend of integration, and those occupations with 60%- 70% SPWOM shows a slight increase; (2) for industrial sex segregation, the trend almost remain the same, just that gender-neutral industries increase a bit, especially in recent years; (3) as for the degree of job-level sex segregation, it is declining, and there is a long-term trend of integration in Taiwanese workplace over the past 25 years. Therefore, job-level analysis does show what the past occupational and industrial analysis cannot present. And the findings from MUS are robust, based on the contrast analysis from population data of 1980 and 1990 Taiwanese Censuses; in addition, research outcomes from Census data also show integrated pattern in occupational and job-level sex segregation in that decade.