This study examined three broad areas which related to plant level productivity in two apparel manufacturing plants. First, external factors, specifically unemployment and seasonal cycles, were examined. Second, internal organizational factors involving the size of the organization over time and the absenteeism rate within the company were studied. Finally, after holding constant the effects of the above factors, this study examined the impact of two types of positive incentive programs on employee productivity. It was hypothesized that there would be a positive relationship between unemployment and plant productivity. Partial support was found in one plant. A relationship between productivity level and seasonal cycles was also hypothesized. Generally, season was related to productivity, although the patterns for these relationships were very plant specific. The hypothesis that there would be a negative relationship between productivity rate and absenteeism rate received support in one plant only. It was further hypothesized that there would be a negative relationship between productivity level and size of the plant over time. The results for both plants were very different; however neither were in support of the hypothesis in the predicted direction. To evaluate the impact of the two productivity improvement programs, mean differences (adjusted for covariates and autocorrelation) were compared for three time periods: before, during, and after program implementation. In the Salem plant the time periods before and during the program had significantly higher productivity rates when compared to the period after the program ended. In the Jefferson plant the productivity level was slightly higher during program implementation when compared to the time period before the program. No other significant differences were found. / M.S.

Eight subjects participated in an assembly task in which they assembled a simulated circuit board. The task required exact placement of three similarly coded resistors, which were chosen from a set of five resistors, followed by adjusting a voltmeter to a specified value. Participants performed the assembly task under various blood alcohol concentrations (Placebo, 0.05%, 0.07%, and 0.09%) to assess the effects of alcohol and workload on quality and productivity. Three levels of paced task conditions and two levels of unpaced task conditions were used for the assembly task conditions. In this study, seven measures of performance were assessed: number of correctly completed units, number of orientation errors, number of position errors, frequency and magnitude of meter adjustment errors, number of improper resistors, and number of incomplete units. A significant alcohol effect (p < 0.0001) was evident for all the dependent variables in the two pacing paradigms with the exception of the magnitude of the meter adjustment errors. Under the paced paradigm, the task condition was significant (p < 0.0001) for the number of completed units, the number of position errors, the number of orientation errors and the number of completed units. Unpaced task condition revealed significance (p < 0.0001) for all the dependent variables with the exception of meter adjustment magnitude. Interactions of alcohol by paced task condition were significant for the number of inaccurate units (p < 0. 00161) and the number of completed units (p < 0. 0001). Unpaced condition revealed interaction effects for the number of completed units (p < 0. 0001), the number of position errors (p < 0. 0001), the number of resistor errors. / Master of Science

This study addresses the empirical question of heterogeneous market efficiency characteristics, specifically as they are attributable to divergent levels of professional securities analyst attention. As a significant group of information intermediaries, analyst institutions conceivably influence, in a profound manner, the efficiency with which security prices respond to new information. Consistent with this notion is the hypothesis that the securities of firms which are neglected in terms of analyst coverage exhibit price inefficiencies relative to their closely followed counterparts. Two market efficiency constructs with respect to annual earnings announcements are examined in this study. Preannouncement information efficiency is guaged by the degree to which security prices appear to lead or anticipate the information content of subsequent public earnings releases. Such price behavior is indicative of the market's ability to acquire and, process interim, signals that are relevant to the determination of proper and timely security valuations. Postannouncement, or semi-strong-form, efficiency is in turn referenced by the relative absence of anomalous "drifting" patterns in postdisclosure returns. The presence of significant drifts is inconsistent with a market that adjusts quickly and unbiasedly to signals that are transmitted publicly. Sample firms taken from the NYSE are ranked into three groups according to their relative following by the professional securities analyst community. Analyst attention is surrogated by the number of investment houses providing annual earnings per share forecasts for companies listed in the Institutional Brokers Estimate System (IBES) computer file. The delineation of the three attention concentration groups' relative efficiency profiles is accomplished by means of two uniquely derived metrics that restate cumulative abnormal returns (CAR's) into an ordered domain of pre- and postannouncement efficiency structures. The CAR's are derived from dailly price data immediately surrounding annual earnings announcement dates for the calendar years ended 1976 through 1982. Owing to the nonnormal distributional properties of the inefficiency metrics, two nonparametric procedures are employed to detect group mean differences. The results overwhelmingly indicate that both pre- and postannouncement efficiency are positively associated with professional analyst attention. Moreover, the detected efficiency differences cannot be attributed to firm size effects or to the extent of the market's forecast error -- two factors that have previously been established in the empirical literature to be associated with event period CAR magnitudes. / Ph. D.

Although scholars may disagree about the effectiveness of using money to motivate workers, few would deny the deleterious effects caused by employee perceptions of underpayment. Yet little is known about the process(es) through which individuals determine whether or not their pay is fair. Indeed, knowledge in this area largely is limited to the awareness that fair pay is a relative concept. That is, individuals judge the equity of pay not from the absolute size of the wage, but rather through comparisons of their wages to those of other people. In addition, pay referents such as the cost of living, also are used to evaluate pay. This use of relevant others is known as the social comparison process. This study investigated the relationship between certain attitudinal and job-related characteristics of 206 individuals, and their reactions to 18 different pay comparisons. It was determined that respondents' attitudes toward the organization's wage distribution rule, level of aspiration, desire for external movement (to other employers), and social interaction were related to the way individuals view these comparisons. A structural variable--job tenure--was not found to have a statistically significant association with the social comparison process. Unlike the six previous studies of this issue, this analysis was framed within the context of a theoretical model. Specifically, Goodman's two-stage model for the selection of pay referents was used to generate the variables of interest, the subsequent research hypotheses, and as a backdrop against which the results of the analysis could be interpreted. Perhaps the most significant result of this study was finding rather marked temporal stability of pay comparisons. Test-retest analyses showed that over a 3-month period only 5 of 54 pay comparisons demonstrated a statistically significant change in terms of the frequency with which they were reportedly made, the importance ascribed to each comparison, or in terms of the satisfaction felt with each comparison. Finding this element of stability suggests that equity theory may have been prematurely abandoned as a research paradigm. / Ph. D. / incomplete_metadata

Intrusions, or interruptions by others, are a common phenomenon in the modern workplace (Grove, 1983; Jett & George, 2003), particularly in the computing and information-technology (CIT) industry, as cross-specialty, and cross-team collaborations become more common (Beck et al., 2001). The present study examines the relationship between day-to-day intrusions (measured Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday) and strain reactions and perceived job performance over the week (measured on Thursday) among 150 CIT employees. Using a number of resource-based theories (i.e., Conservation of Resources, Ego Depletion Model, Cognitive Fatigue Model), I hypothesize that participants experiencing more frequent intrusions on a day-to-day basis will experience greater levels of overall strain reactions (i.e., fatigue, self-regulation failure, and cognitive failure), and lower levels of overall perceived job performance for the week. To test these hypotheses, I applied a micro-macro multi-wave design, such that intrusions were measured at the end of three consecutive workdays (Level-1 Predictors) and strain reactions and performance measured on the fourth day (Level-2 Outcomes). Using Structural Equation Modeling and the technique put forth by Croon and van Veldhoven (2007), I specified four models to test my hypotheses, wherein level-1 variables (i.e., day-to-day intrusions) predicted level-2 outcomes (i.e., week-level fatigue, self-regulation failure, cognitive failure, and perceived performance). I found that day-to-day intrusions were significantly positively associated with fatigue, self-regulation failure, and perceived performance. However, day-to-day intrusions were not significantly associated with cognitive failure. These results suggest that intrusions may consume time and self-regulatory resources but may not consume cognitive resources, and that although intrusions cause impairment from a physical and self-regulatory perspective, they may not inhibit cognitive functioning. Future research should further investigate the relationship between intrusions and cognitive functioning. The present study is one of the first to explicitly study intrusions and recognize it as a stressor that influences both strain and performance variables. This is critical as intrusions become a more prominent fixture in the American workplace. This study also contributes to our understanding of the use of micro-macro approaches to statistical analyses, and provides additional insight into how occupational health psychologists can test long-held assumptions; namely day-to-day stressors contribute to long-term strain.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1984 C56 / Master of Science

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Agricultural Economics / Michael R. Langemeier / This study applies recent advances in nonparametric techniques to investigate growth in labor productivity and convergence in the Kansas farm sector for a panel of 564 farms for the period 1993-2007. The study seeks to answer two questions: First, what are the sources of labor productivity growth in the farm sector and second, is there evidence of convergence or divergence in the growth rate of labor productivity across farms? Following Kumar and Russell (2002), the nonparametric production frontier approach is used to decompose the growth in output per worker into three components: efficiency change, technical change, and capital deepening. Kernel density estimation methods are used to investigate the evolution of the entire distribution of labor productivity and the effects of each of those three growth components on the evolution of the distributions over the sample periods, 1993-07, 1993-02, and 1996-05. Cross-sectional regression methods (ordinary least square, partial linear model, and smooth coefficient model) are later employed to test for convergence in labor productivity growth and the contribution of each of the components to the convergence process. The study yields the following results. First, capital deepening and technical change are the main sources of labor productivity growth. Efficiency change is a source of regress in productivity growth. Second, technical change is not neutral. Third, the distribution of labor productivity in the farm sector has remained unimodal. Capital deepening and technical change are the main factors contributing to labor productivity distributions. Fourth, despite no evidence of technological catching-up, efficiency change and capital deepening contributed to convergence in the growth rate of labor productivity during the entire sample period. Technical change contributes to productivity disparity in the 1993-07 period. The contribution of technical change in the 1993-02 and 1996-05 periods are mixed with evidence of both convergence and disparity. Finally, the results for the 1993-07 period support the existence of a positive relationship between the annual growth in technical change and initial level of capital-labor ratio, suggesting that technology is embodied in capital accumulation.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / Globalisation calls for countries to focus on putting programmes together that seek to improve productivity and competitiveness of enterprises as the only reliable shield against the ever increasing global competition. It is against this background that the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) of South Africa conceived the Workplace Challenge Programme to help meet the challenge of South Africa‟s re-entry into the global market and the need for companies to become more productive and competitive. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Workplace Challenge Programme whose objective is to improve productivity and competitiveness of participating firms. The target population for the study was made up of firms who were within the twenty four months implementation period of the Workplace Challenge Programme during December 2010 when the study was conducted. The entire sample frame was targeted because of the manageable size of the number of companies in Workplace Challenge implementation phase. A response rate of 50 per cent was achieved and considered adequate for the purpose of drawing meaningful inference when compared to other survey results. The data were analysed using Microsoft Excel in conjunction with the productivity model which looked at the relationship between goods and services produced and resources used to produce them. The results clearly endorsed the Workplace Challenge Programme as an effective programme that is achieving its primary mandate of improving productivity and competitiveness of participating firms. The Workplace Challenge Programme deserves to be strengthened and expanded to reach even more firms within the South African economy since literature has shown that improving productivity and competitiveness is at the core of improving citizens‟ quality of lives.

published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Master / Master of Science in Construction Project Management

M.Com. (Economics) / Inflation is the continuous, meaningful increase in the price level of an economic system. A distinction can be drawn between demand-pull factors (where demand exceeds the supply) and cost-push factors (prices are pushed higher by an increase in wages or input prices) as causes of inflation. Cost-push inflation is the result of the exercising of bargaining power by certain groups, e.g. trade unions. Prices can escalate as a result of competition between trade unions and firms for higher wages or competition between trade unions for a bigger portion of the national income. The aim of trade unions is to maintain the standard of living of their members, whose only source of income is the sale of their labour. Trade unions have a number of mechanisms, e.g. strikes and the withdrawal of co-operation, by means of which they can force an employer to meet their demands. Trade unions usually bargain collectively with employers regarding their wage demands. There are great differences of opinion among economists whether trade unions are the cause of inflation or whether they only contribute to inflation. Trade unions grouped themselves in organisations to look after the concerns of their members while employers have also grouped themselves in organisations. The government also plays an important role in the labour market, especially because' of the payment of unemployment benefits. Trade unions can contribute to inflation because wage increases are declared nationally, trade unions refuse to· accept any cuts in wages, contracts between employers and employees make provision for increases in salaries and also include a stipulation regarding cost of living adjustments. Trade unions can increase wage demands by being more militant, the spillover effect and wage imitation. The first white trade unions were established in the second half of the previous century and black trade unions in the early 1900' s. The numbers of especially the black trade unions increased considerably during the seventies and eighties, to such a degree that black trade unions have almost 3 million members and consist of 23,9 percent of the total economically active population. As a result of their great numbers, strikes have also shown an escalating tendency (there were 908 strikes per year during the period 1987 to 1992). The annual average inflation rate in South Africa reached double figures in 1974 and has not moved back to single figures since. If wage demands since 1985 are compared to this, the wage demands from 1987 to 1991 were higher each year than the inflation rate. Trade unions definitely have an influence on wages as the increase in minimum wages of unskilled labourers were mostly higher than. that of skilled workers. The increase in productivity has however, not kept up to date with the increase in wage rates.