Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-86).

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / This study examines the situational and personal characteristics that predict academic cheating. It examines the situational characteristics such as the perceived likelihood of getting caught and punished when cheating, the perception of how much peer cheating takes place and the standards and culture of integrity that exists at the institution. The personal characteristics are the level of intrinsic motivation of the student, gender, grade point average, year of study and the perceived cost or benefit of cheating. A descriptive design was used and a survey administered at three different universities in the Western Cape, South Africa. The results indicated that all of the factors except the year of study and the grade point average of the student influence the frequency of academic dishonesty.

Researchers and practitioners in the personnel selection and assessment field are interested in understanding the characteristics of a good rater. However, few studies have so far examined raters’ personality traits and trait accessibility as predictors of accuracy. The present study investigated the relationship between these individual difference constructs and judgement accuracy for specific traits. Respondents from a field sample (N = 223) of managers and staff employed in financial services completed the survey questionnaire and rated the personalities of five hypothetical interview applicants depicted in vignettes. Our results showed that raters’ personality traits and judgement accuracy for corresponding target traits were unrelated. In other words, raters were not more accurate at judging traits they shared with targets. However, we found that certain personality traits such as agreeableness and openness to experience were related to trait accessibility for the same trait-raters high on these traits also tended to perceive others in terms of them. In addition, accessibility for certain traits such as extroversion and openness to experience predicted judgement accuracy for the same traits. Therefore, these findings enrich our understanding of rater individual differences that may affect judgement accuracy.

The Theory of Planned Behaviour and The Entrepreneurial Event Model were used as models to predict entrepreneurial intention amongst final year students. The sufficiency of this paradigm was compared with the aim of determining which model predicts entrepreneurial intention the most within a South African context. A sample of 186 students was used to determine the sufficiency of the Theory of Planned Behaviour. As part of our methodology, a sub-set (n = 123) of the sample was used to determine the sufficiency of the Entrepreneurial Event Model. The sample consisted of final year commerce and engineering students. The results of the regression analysis indicated that the Theory of Planned Behaviour explained 58% of the variance in entrepreneurial intention. The Entrepreneurial Event Model was found to be less sufficient than the Theory of Planned Behaviour and only explained 38% of the variance in entrepreneurial intention. Therefore, when predicting entrepreneurial intention in a South African context, the Theory of Planned Behaviour can be considered the more sufficient model of prediction. Future research should consider using the Theory of Planned Behaviour, rather than Entrepreneurial Event Model, for entrepreneurial intention prediction among students in South Africa.

Bibliography: pages 149-173. / The unresolved question of whether Fear of Success is a motive or a measure of gender-role stereotypes is at the centre of the confusion about this construct. The purpose of the present study was to re-explore the nature of Fear of Success through the relationship of this construct to other theoretically related variables. The list of variables included Self-Efficacy, Autonomous and Social Achievement Values, Attitudes Towards Women, Positive and Negative Affect and Age. Cronbach and Meehl's (citedin Tresemer, 1976a) statement that the nomological net of propositions in which a construct is embedded must show predicted relationships with that construct, fostered the expectation that at least some of these variables would predict Fear of Success. It was anticipated that establishing a relationship with either the sociological or the personality constructs would clarify the nature of Fear of Success. The sample consisted of 240 white, English-speaking Capetonian women. The sample was restricted to women from the same cultural group so as to avoid the introduction of confounding variables, and to facilitate comparison of the results with the bulk of the research, most of which has been conducted in America. Furthermore, subjects were drawn from the working population· rather than students, as many researchers in this field have done, so that results would be generalizable to the workplace. Each subject was administered a questionnaire containing the following scales: Good and Good's(1973) Fear of Success Scale, The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule which was developed by Watson, Clark and Tellegen (1988), Tipton, Everett and Worthington's(1984) Generalized Self-Efficacy Scale, Spence and Helmreich's (1972) Attitudes Towards Women Scale and the Autonomous and Social Achievement Values Scale which was compiled by Strümpfer (1975).

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 47-48).

Bibliography: leaves 99-105. / Retrenchments have become increasingly prevalent in South Africa affecting those that are retrenched and the survivors of such a process. Despite survivors being the linchpins of future profitability, research on their experiences is limited in this country. This research followed a case study approach and examined survivor experiences in a South African alcoholic beverage organisation. Qualitative data was obtained through fourteen semi-structured interviews with employees who are retrenchment survivors. Following thematic analysis, three key themes emerged: survivor responses throughout the retrenchment process, survivor work attitudes and behaviours throughout the retrenchment process and survivor perceptions on the management of the process.

Prior research shows that accurate interviewers have higher ‘dispositional reasoning’, defined as the ability to understand the relationship between personality, behaviour and situations. Drawing on schema theory, the present study attempted to determine if dispositional reasoning could be developed in students who participated in interview training. We used two different experiments to assess the relative effectiveness of two different training approaches to enhance the subcomponents of dispositional reasoning: trait induction, trait extrapolation and trait contextualisation. Our first experiment used traditional frame-ofreference (FOR) training in an attempt to develop dispositional reasoning. In a second experiment, we developed schema-feedback training, a novel approach to training dispositional reasoning that is based on the use of schema refinement through feedback. We found that neither approach had an effect on the participants’ dispositional reasoning component scores when compared to a ‘no-training’ comparison group. The low statistical power (due to a relatively small sample size) was a limitation in this study. Further research is necessary to determine the malleability of interviewers’ dispositional reasoning.

This research study presents the relative importance of subjective wellbeing (SWB), together with job satisfaction, and affective commitment in the prediction of intention to quit among South African employees (N = 134). In particular this study considered whether SWB contributes to the positive organisational behaviour domain in relation to intention to quit. Both male and female participants of varying age and ethnicity were examined from multiple organisations in South Africa. Data were collected using online surveys whereby participants completed four short Likert-type scales, namely, the orientations to happiness scale, affective commitment scale, job satisfaction scale, and turnover intention scale (or TIS-6). Relative weights analysis (RWA) results indicated that the predictive contribution of job satisfaction was the largest, followed by affective commitment, and then SWB, which did not appear to be a relatively important predictor of intention to quit. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that SWB explained a small amount of additional variance in intention to quit over and above that explained by job satisfaction and affective commitment. Implications and recommendations for future studies are discussed.

Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-85).