In the present organisational climate characterised by intense competition, the success of an organisation is increasingly dependent on its employees' expertise and knowledge (Carrel, Elbert, Hatfield, Grobler, Marx & Van der Schyf, 1997). Employees need to be motivated to contribute to the organisation's goals, for their knowledge and expertise to benefit an organisation (Lawler III, 1994). Organisations need to foster a situation in which employees have a positive attitude towards work and are able to benefit personally through directing their effort towards organisational goals. (Robbins, 2000) This study focuses on an organisation that has managed to link job satisfaction with organisational gain, and explores the link between these two subjects. A case study of a South African mining operation is reported on, and examined in-depth. The mine, a successful operation in terms of productivity, is recognised by its holding company as exemplary and is competing with the best base metal producers in the world. The research was conducted in two stages. The first stage consisted of 20 semi-structured individual interviews. Ten employees were selected from both the lower employee-levels and the higher employee-levels. The individual interviews focused on the experience of working at the mine with particular reference to interpersonal dynamics, job satisfaction, leadership style, and reward systems. During the second stage of the research, focus groups were conducted with two groups of seven employees each, one group from the lower-levels and one from the higher-levels. The focus groups aimed at obtaining a deeper understanding of the issues that emerged from the individual interviews. Grounded theory analysis was used during both the first, and second phase of the study. The results indicated that the mine's employees experience a high level fulfilment of higher-order needs, and that this experience is a reaction to the mine's performance enhancing culture. It is further shown that the same factors that create job satisfaction, when applied in excess, or in certain circumstances may lead to dissatisfaction within the same context.

Organisations face many obstacles in maintaining high quality standards and enhancing their competitive positions. It is not just the external factors, such as market fluctuations, but also internal obstacles, that have an effect on the competitiveness of organisations. Most of the internal factors are the result of poor management practices such as insufficient employee development paths, lack of mentorship programmes or job insecurity which results in the poor performance and commitment levels of employees. However employees are more willing to provide efficient and effective practices if they are committed to the organisation. A committed workforce can be created through many practices. Some of these practices include, creating an environment where employees feel as though they are part of the organisation and that their actions directly influence the success of the organisation (Kingston 2007); building long lasting and fair relationships between staff and supervisors (Manetje 2009:50); providing partial organisational ownership for employees through employee share ownership schemes (Employee share ownership plan guidelines 2007:3); creating an organisation structure which binds employees and groups together and removes bureaucratic practices (Brooks 2009:190) and creating management styles that encourage employee involvement (Manetje 2009:51) Unfavourable conditions within the economy are not making it any easier for organisations to become more competitive. Organisations have had to downsize, restructure and transform in order to cut costs as the demands for goods and services slowed down. However, these practices have resulted in an insecure work environment for employees and have posed complex challenges for management. (Coetzee 2005). Employment contracts have therefore become popular tools for managing economic downturns. Organisations opt for more temporary staff so as to easily reduce headcount when costs need to be lowered. Employment contracts give organisations the advantage of flexibility which is a key area for success in turbulent business environments (Krausz, Bizman & Braslavsky 2001:302). Previous research on temporary contracts has revealed lower commitment levels of staff than other types of contracts such as permanent and fixed-term contracts (Guest 2004:12). Therefore, there needs to be a balance between various employment contracts; a balance which brings out the best in organisational performance. The different types of employment contracts are also important tools to use to enhance commitment within the organisation. For that reason, it is essential to understand the linkage between the types of contracts and organisational commitment and whether certain contracts result in higher levels of organisational commitment. The primary objective of the study is to identify factors which influence organisational commitment as well as to investigate whether organisational commitment and the different types of employment contracts can increase employee motivation and job involvement within the automotive industry environment. Given the primary objective of the study, a quantitative research paradigm was followed in testing the relevant hypotheses. A five-point Likert scale questionnaire was conducted to gather empirical data from the respondents employed within the automotive industry. The target population of the study was the employees within the automotive industry (Volkswagen of South Africa). A convenience sampling technique was used to distribute the questionnaires and the researcher made use of both manual hand-outs and an online system called the Survey Monkey to gather the data. The sample was restricted to 260 respondents. The main findings of this study revealed that the dimensions, workplace culture, job security, career development and personality were statistically significant and had a positive influence on organisational commitment. Workplace culture proved to be the most significant positive influence on organisational commitment. Thus, if an organisation adjusts this dimension to better suit the employees, the result could be an enhanced level of employee commitment. On the other hand, management style and mentoring were found to be the least important in influencing organisational commitment in the automotive industry. Furthermore, the results illustrated a significant positive relationship between organisational commitment and the dependent variables, employee motivation and job involvement. The study also identified the link between employment contracts and organisational commitment, job involvement and employee motivation. However, a statistically significant relationship only existed between employment contracts and job involvement. Thus the different types of contracts have an effect on the level of employee involvement within an organisation. The implications of the findings are that organisations within the automotive industry should focus on areas that have a substantially greater impact on organisational commitment. These areas include workplace culture, job security, personality and career development. Organisations thus need to find methods or processes which facilitate the development of these areas. In order for organisations to move from good to great, a workforce that is committed to the goals and objectives is required.

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The present study empirically examined working behaviors of men and women within a self-managed working environment. Three models of women and work were studied. Results indicated women exhibited higher levels of job meaning and continuance commitment. The more self-managed production team exhibited higher levels of growth need strength, support from co-workers, continuance commitment, task significance and lower levels of role conflicts. Support teams exhibited higher levels of autonomy and satisfaction with pay. Path analysis, testing a model based on Astin's sociopsychological model indicated direct effects from expectancy to general satisfaction, from gender to expectancy, and task significance to gender. An alternative model showed direct effects between general satisfaction and expectancy, satisfaction with pay, task significance and expectancies, and between satisfaction with pay and teams.

Derived from sociotechnical systems theory, autonomous or self-managed work groups are a form of work design in which employees are multi-skilled, take responsibility for the group's tasks, and have discretion over the decisions which impact group performance. Previously collected survey data from 602 employees of a southwestern manufacturing firm were examined via factor analyses and multivariate analysis of variance. Significant differences were found for self-managed work group members versus traditional job holders regarding enhanced organizational involvement and enhanced work responsibility. However, there was no evidence of an age effect nor interaction regarding age. This study provides evidence to other action researchers and organizational decision makers that an "older" work force should not be considered a barrier to implementing this type of work design

The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a relationship between participative management and perceived institutional effectiveness in North Carolina community colleges. Along with determining this relationship, the study endeavored to determine perceptions, in the form of desired items, that employees want to see in their colleges that have a bearing on both participative management and institutional effectiveness. This study gathered usable data from 277 (76.9%) respondents assigned to administrative, faculty, and support staff positions. These respondents were a representative sample of the population. A significant relationship was found between participative management and institutional effectiveness. Seventeen of the 23 desired effectiveness practices and seven of the ten desires participative practices included in this study were found to be practices that employees want to see in their colleges. It was also found that length of service in current position does not significantly influence perceptions relative to institutional effectiveness. Although the management of community colleges cannot be entirely relinquished to employees, institutions whose leaders encourage participative management may experience enhanced institutional effectiveness. The expertise of the faculty and staff should be coupled with the talents of administrators in arriving at the proper blend of what is and what ought to be in community colleges. / Ed. D.

A philosophical and historical review of the evolving and growing definition of democratic education through the writings of John Dewey, Nel Noddings, and Joyce Rothschild was accomplished in a literature review that included commentaries from the works of Jesse Goodman, John Goodlad, Amy Gutmann, Hugh Sockett, Kenneth Strike, and Maxine Greene, and others. The review of literature leads up the to the ethnographic case study of an alternative school that has been in existence for twenty-two years and is a member of the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools. As an ethnographic work, I "write the culture" as I find it at Connectionist School with a special interest in the systemic, organic differences between their democratic organization and traditional bureaucratic public and private schools. The study is a contribution to school reform efforts that are directed toward transformation of schools (Goodlad, 1990; Strike, 1993; Sockett, 1993) and emphasizes the need for a pervasive ethic of care (Noddings, 1984, 1992). / Ed. D.

Self-managing teams (SMTs) are receiving increasing attention from organizations striving for continuous improvement and searching for innovative ways to get their employees involved and empowered. More and more organizations are realizing the significant impact these teams have on quality, productivity, the social circles, worker esteem, and profitability. Consultants and researchers have also paid significant attention to the concept of SMTs, focusing on many aspects of these teams. However, little research has been directed toward the training needs of former supervisors, who, by a plant transitioning to SMTs, have now to take up the role of being coaches of the teams. They invariably are caught in the middle between empowering their teams and satisfying the needs of upper management. The confusion about their new roles may lead to unsuccessful implementation of the teams. This research is an attempt to answer questions related to the training issues of leaders of self-managing teams. The purpose of this study is to help managers and consultants further understand the issues, concern, problems and difficulties faced by the coaches of SMTs. The case study sight for this research was the AT&T plant in Richmond. Some of the outputs of this study are: prioritized lists of the issues and concerns of the coaches at AT&T, a simple cause-effect analysis, important issues and solutions proposed by the coaches, and a list of recommendations based on the overall analysis. / Master of Science

Thesis (D. Tech.) -- Central University of Technology, Free State, 2008 / In the twenty-first century knowledge landscape, companies are compelled to compete in a complex and challenging context, transformed by globalisation, technological development, new applications of knowledge and hyper-competition. This new economic landscape requires organisations to perform differently with their knowledge assets to survive and prosper. It has become crucial for organisations to reinvent themselves through new rubrics of leadership, which essentially requires radical change as post-modern perspectives on the knowledge economy emphasise the fluidity, and immediacy of information exchanges that are leveraged through creativity and innovation as the new future sustainable rent. Postmodernist contestations of modernist economic and organisational rationalities have successfully activated discourse from diverse audiences and immense contributions to contemporary knowledge-intensive organisational diagnoses have been proffered. A current issue, which urgently enquires into new conceptions of organisational leadership, is regarded as the global knowledge economy. This economy seeks new sources of inspiration and revitalisation within the dynamic, mutable domains of future knowledge competency construction and enactment. New forms of human capital are now required to manifest tacit and intellectual capacity through exponential creativity and innovation capabilities, rather than explicit production-driven modalities. Therefore, organisations must access this new talent that engages deeply with creative thinking, as they can no longer reproduce themselves within the old traditions of management and control. The need to conjure new aspects of leadership to harness and then transform novel solutions into action should create an environment enabled to validate creativity and innovation as the major building blocks for knowledge transfer and trading. The purpose of this study is to render solutions for future knowledge-intensive organisations and explore new methodologies where leadership realises the paramount importance to nurture the knowledge worker as the most important source of knowledge creation. This study explores the complex challenges faced by contemporary leadership in grasping future value propositions for advancing knowledge trading and offers suggestions to unlock creativity and innovation for the enhancement of knowledge productivity and the development of supportive managerial effectiveness. It is recommended that leadership requires a profound cultural shift from traditional methods of management that can be best described as control orientated, bureaucratic and autocratic. These former hierarchical management structures originated in the modernist paradigm of industrial capitalism. In contrast, contemporary knowledge management is defined within the post-modern debate, where authority is diffused throughout the organisation and leadership engages in sufficient reflexivity to facilitate a more effective understanding of the contemporary knowledge worker. Within this postmodern context, fluidity of knowledge-leadership could actively promote the immediacy of creative exchanges as foundational to deliver the future into the present. The findings suggest a new role for leadership acting as coach and innovation facilitator, rather than controller. Furthermore the findings indicate that creative leadership should involve knowledge workers in defining the mission, vision and strategic intent and secure participation in the knowledge philosophy to mould their respective knowledge roles within a supportive culture. The findings indicated that collaboration between knowledge workers and leadership is crucial to establish formal communities of practice. These, as opposed to informal exchanges amongst knowledge workers, are pivotal to the process of continuous reinvention and proffer the shifts that are essential to drive future knowledge competencies. The findings furthermore revealed that communities of practice should be formally encouraged by leadership who diffuses the strategic intent to initiate forums where formal learning and the sharing of skills occur and creativity is continually advanced. The result is the creation of repositories of knowledge and innovation networks within knowledge concomitance required to enhance knowledge performance and ultimately drive sustainable competitive advantage. The research findings produced novel suggestions to proffer new knowledge-trading opportunities. The recommendations address contemporary leadership to perpetually challenge communities of practice to seek new creative and innovative horisons. This would yield the competencies and capabilities required for improved knowledge performance, based on individual and collective creative contributions. It is imperative for creative leadership to imbibe a new corporate curriculum to embrace the necessary radical innovative approaches required in today’s hyper-competitive economy. The recommendations suggest that the harnessing of creative and innovative potentials of knowledge workers, through the development of the creativity dimensions, namely fluency and elaboration could yield dominant discourse as a central ingredient for collective learning. This, in turn, would propel exponential levels of knowledge productivity, which is the critical component required to drive economic sustainability. Knowledge-leading organisations need to unearth and exploit the economy of knowledge by tapping into subjective experience, creativity and intuitive reflexivity. This study endeavours to offer a compelling vision of the future and recommends an intelligent organisation of the future that utilises a new corporate curriculum achieved by creative leadership to leverage enhanced managerial effectiveness. Finally, a definition for creative leadership is proposed which promotes innovative awareness, fluency and elaboration through formalised communities of practice to leverage enhanced knowledge productivity by means of knowledge worker empowerment and two-way communication. Creating a high-involvement organisation also involves new choices with respect to organisational design. An effective design would be the entrenchment of an organisational culture where the knowledge worker is accountable for and involved in the future success of the organisation. It is recommended that future leadership can achieve new innovative value propositions by structuring new mental models for increased knowledge productivity. The knowledge concomitance model suggests solutions to manipulate and economise knowledge to produce a transformational fusion of discontinuous innovation, nurturing a new syntagma for future knowledge management practitioners.

Submitted in fulfillment for the requirements of the Masters Degree: Human Resources Management, Durban University of Technology, 2012. / Project Management for many years have been conducted using a traditional model with the focus being on time, cost and quality and its overall success on managing the organizations more effectively. Organisations are moving towards the use of a more modernistic approach where the focus is being extended to include cost, time, quality and linked to the strategic objectives, reward and recognition systems and building teams. The goals of the project must be communicated to all those who are involved in its implementation in order to ensure project success. Project managers who get people to want to do what they want by sharing their purpose, vision, and values also establish emotional and intellectual ties that result in sustained commitment. As the demand for project management increases, so does the use of tools and techniques. Project management offers a very structured approach to managing projects. The success of a project will be determined on the ability of the project manager to plan and develop a project, to implement, monitor and control and evaluate the project progress. DUT is faced with situation where there is an enormous demand by staff to participate in project management training. Many of these staff are directly involved in project management whilst others have requested this training as part of their capacity building drive. This study examines the perception of staff members who have attended the project management training with a view to making recommendations on how to improve project management at DUT. It also demonstrates the evaluation of the facilitator, the course content as well as the project management’s relatedness to the demographic profile of the University sample and presents and presents the perceptions of the respondents to the questionnaire. The method of research was largely quantitative and enabled comparison to be quantified. A self-administered closed-response questionnaire was adapted and used to obtain the information required. The study further investigated the staff members’ perception on project failure in respect of lack of user involvement, long timescales, failure to track the progress of projects, no formal change control, inadequately training project managers, poor leadership, cultural misalignment, poor planning and inadequate tracking and reporting. The dissertation makes recommendations on the project management course programme and the critical role of the project manager and the project team.