Bibliography: leaves 108-129. / In the currently competitive business environment, organisations are placing an everincreasing emphasis on their employees as a source of competitive advantage. It is believed that they possess a level of skills, knowledge, attitudes or behaviours upon which the organisation can draw as it grows and develops. Paradoxically, employees cannot always sustain the competencies that dictate an organisation's success in the contemporary work environment due to the significant levels of change that exist. This research explores sustainability of behaviour in an organisational setting, and develops a conceptual framework for understanding this phenomenon. The research follows an exploratory, qualitative design. Data was collected through in-depth and semi-structured interviews with fourteen employees in a large financial services organisation in the Western Cape. The data was analysed using techniques of analysis provided by grounded theory. Results indicate a multi-dimensional relationship between certain causal conditions, intervening conditions, contextual conditions and action/interaction strategies which all influence whether or not behaviour is sustained in the workplace. These findings have implications for human resource practices in the contemporary organisation.

The present study examined the role of core self-evaluations and parental role modelling on STEM students anticipated work-family conflict. Anticipated work-family conflict is the conflict students anticipate experiencing between their work and family roles in the future. Core self-evaluations is an individuals evaluation of themselves or their abilities. Parental role modelling was examined in three forms: parental employment, parental role sharing responsibilities, and perceptions of parental work-family interference. Parental employment refers to whether participants parents were employed full-time, part-time or unemployed during various stages of their careers. Perceptions of parental work-family interference refer to whether participants perceived their parents work interfering with their family or vice versa. Parental role sharing responsibilities is the distribution of work between mother, father or both. A self-report questionnaire was distributed to students at a tertiary institution in South Africa. The data was then recorded and analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics (Version 26). The correlational analysis showed that parental employment and anticipated work-family role planning did not correlate with AWFC. Thus it was expected that both variables would not be predictors of AWFC. The hierarchical regression analysis showed that perceptions of parental work-family interference and core self-evaluations were significant predictors of anticipated work-family conflict. The ANOVA analysis showed no statistically significant differences in anticipated work-family conflict across the categories of maternal employment, paternal employment and parental role sharing responsibilities among STEM students (N = 388). The implications of these findings are discussed, as well as limitations and recommendations for future research.

Personal income derived from work is an important, although not the only, contributor to wellbeing. According to Sen's capability approach, an individual's capability to achieve valued quality of life (QoL) domains is what determines their wellbeing. However, employment should be remunerated well enough to provide individuals with the capabilities to realise the aspects of their lives which they value, and in that way to achieve a good QoL. This dissertation takes the premise that it is vital to base the degree to which individuals can realise what constitutes a good life for them on their subjective views, instead of economic indicators which do not account for the multidimensionality of wellbeing and differences in the perceptions of important and attainable life domains. Therefore, the aims of the current study were to (1) determine the perceived value of different QoL domains as related to income, (2) determine the perceived attainment of different QoL domains as related to income, (3) determine the nature of the relationship between income and QoL calculated as a capability score, and (4) determine at what income level individuals were able to acquire the capabilities they perceived as relevant to have a good QoL. To achieve the research aims, a quantitative, secondary dataset was analysed. The dataset (N = 953) included survey data collected in the second half of 2019 from individuals residing in different wards within the Cape Town Metropole. After data capturing and cleaning, a sample size of N = 953 was present. To analyse the data, descriptive statistics, Spearman rho correlation analyses, and Fishers r to z transformation were run. The results found that firstly, Housing, Employment, and Information and Knowledge were found as the most important with increasing income. In addition, the QoL domains of Quality of Working Life; Information and Knowledge; Psychological/Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing; Savings, Wealth and Assets; Employment; Leisure and Spare Time Activities; Quality of Neighbourhood; Social Relationships; and Housing were found as more attainable with increasing income. Finally, as income increased, individuals' QoL also increased, with a monthly net pay of R 10,000 as the income level from which individuals, on average, could attain a good QoL. These results provide important implications for research and practice as the specific QoL domains relevant to South Africa have been identified, with the income level at which individuals perceived themselves as having the capability to attain valued QoL domains being highlighted. Thus, providing important guidelines for developing policy to implement a relevant living wage and, ultimately, contribute to national and international agendas in promoting decent work and decreasing poverty.

Background. Globally, executive remuneration or compensation (the terms are used interchangeably) has increasingly come under public scrutiny over the past few years, prompting stricter executive remuneration reporting standards for listed organisations. However, despite fair pay regulations meant to address the large disparity in income between executives and employees lower down in the organisational hierarchy, executives continue to earn many more times than the average employee – as much as 300 times more (BusinessTech, 2020). Aim of the study. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between pay disparity and organisational performance. Method. An exploratory research design was utilised for the purposes of the present study. Using purposive non-probability or judgement sampling, a sample of corporate organisations (n=185) that are listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) were identified. Secondary quantitative data were collected from each of the organisation's publicly available Integrated Financial Statements. To investigate the relationship between pay disparity and selected organisational accounting performance measures (incl. EBITDA, ROI, ROA, EVA and Price/EBITDA), Pearson Product Moment correlation analyses, followed by multiple regression analyses, were conducted. Results. A significant positive relationship was found between pay disparity and organisational performance, as measured by EBITDA. This relationship was investigated within the various sectors of the JSE, and it was found that the telecommunications sector had the strongest significant positive relationship between pay disparity and organisational performance. In several sectors, including healthcare, energy and technology, evidence of a significant relationship between the two variables was not found. Contribution. Scholars are divided on the effects pay disparity (i.e. the difference between executive remuneration and that of the average employee) has on organisation performance. Some authors, most often using tournament theory, argue there is a positive relationship between pay disparity and organisational performance. In support of this notion, several studies have found a significant positive relationship between pay disparity and organisational accounting performance measures. However, several studies have reported a significant negative relationship between pay disparity and organisational accounting performance measures. Authors that hold this view most often use equity theory to substantiate their arguments. The latter relationship is hypothesised to be true in the current study amongst South African organisations listed on the JSE. South Africa has some of the highest rates of inequality in the world, as well as some of the largest pay gap ratios in its organisations. Studies show that employees may foster negative attitudes towards their work when they feel they are not being remunerated fairly compared to their superiors. The findings of the present study hopefully provided new insights on the possible behavioural implications of pay disparity within organisations. Keywords Pay Disparity, Executive Compensation, Pay Gap Ratio

<div>In recent decades women have continued to move towards, and even reach, equality with men in terms of educational and professional representation and success in numerous fields. Yet women consistently are underrepresented in the field of engineering in both settings. The present study sought to develop and test interventions in both academic and employment settings aimed at promoting women’s behavioral intentions to pursue and remain within engineering. Grounded in Social Role Theory and the Theory of Planned Behavior, I proposed that an intervention involving a shift of emphasis in the perceptions of engineering toward the communal and people-oriented aspects of engineering roles – increasing engineering’s alignment to women’s gender identity.</div><div>To empirically test the effectiveness of the intervention, I conducted two studies using two populations of women. The first study involved women who had not yet declared a major and the second study involved women who were presently working as an engineer. The aim was to examine the effectiveness of the intervention to increase women’s intention to pursue an engineering major and women’s intention to remain versus leave an engineering career, in Study One and Study Two, respectively. I predicted that women in the condition emphasizing the communal and people-oriented aspects of engineering would experience more positive outcomes as compared to women in the condition emphasizing the agentic and thing-oriented aspects of engineering.</div><div>Collectively, the results were mixed in terms of supporting the effectiveness of the intervention on the outcomes of interest for the study populations. For Study One, there was substantial support for the intervention’s positive impact on women’s attitudes and behavioral intentions, particularly for women who had not previously considered engineering. However, for Study Two, there was no support for the intervention’s effectiveness. While helping to improve women’s intention to pursue engineering is important, future work must continue to seek theoretically and empirically founded ways to improve women’s state in engineering across all stages of the academic and employment cycle.</div>

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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-95). / How individuals respond to and handle conflict in the workplace is one of the growing areas of interest and concern among scholars and professionals working in a wide range of disciplines. However, prior work situated as an effort to understand how training people on conflict theory can manifest behavioral change in the workplace is rare. Few published works exist on identifying the behaviors associated with developing constructive conflict handling skills in the workplace. South African institutions need a solution to the widespread challenge of developing their employees' conflict handling skills. In South Africa, these are considered 'life skills.' To address the gap in theoretically supported business education curricula, this evaluation study seeks to explore the link between the constructs of self-awareness and cooperative conflict. The primary aim of this study is to gain a sense of learner's current level of self-reported conflict handling skills and then measure whether the Insights into Lifeskills Project curriculum facilitates the transition to more complex levels. These measures are taken through the use of a primary survey instrument. Additionally, through a process of balancing the program curriculum with the South African National Qualifications Framework, this study explores and measures how participants make vital connections between theory and practice. Post results of a six-week utilization-focused intervention construct an argument that individuals oriented to these constructs are better able to regulate conflict in the workplace through exercising self-awareness and cooperative conflict skills. As a result of explicit instruction in self-awareness skills and conflict response styles, during the period of February 2009 to April 2009, findings report that the Volunteer Participants of the workplace targeted intervention showed pronounced gains in their ability to handle conflict constructively. The twenty-seven Volunteer Participants of the targeted teams were identified for their experience in high levels of interpersonal workplace conflict. The participant-managers of these teams all shared a desire to develop their team's conflict handling skills. The study's Volunteer Participants are professionals of both functional and management designations in a large-scale South African retail organization.

Previous research has provided promising evidence for the effectiveness of video interventions to raise awareness of the gender bias that exists in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. However, creating these beneficial video interventions can be costly and its possible that the success of these interventions may be hindered if a certain amount of resources are not invested into their creation (e.g., into high quality actors). Therefore, the current study expands on this research by investigating the use of personal testimonials of women’s experiences with gender bias in STEM as gender bias interventions. More specifically, I examined whether certain characteristics (e.g., genuineness) of the testimonial’s communicator would influence the relevant gender bias outcome (e.g., awareness of bias and sexism). I predicted that watching a woman genuinely talking about her experiences with bias, relative to a scripted re-telling of this story, would lead to better perceptions of the woman (e.g., more positive perceptions and perceptions of genuineness), greater feelings of empathy and connection with the woman, as well as less greater awareness of gender bias and less sexism from participants. To test this possibility, participants in the study were randomly assigned to interact with one of four story formats, a genuine telling of the woman’s experiences with bias, a scripted re-telling of these experiences, a written version of the story, or a unrelated control video. After interacting with the story participants then completed measures related to perceptions of the woman and gender bias. The findings of the study were limited, possibly due to a lack of power, but were encouraging as they were in the expected direction. The implications of the findings as well as future research ideas to expand and improve on these findings are discussed.

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Interviewers are a principal source of error in quantitative surveys. While surveys are often self-administered (e.g. in online surveys), it is often required to administer these face-to- face. This is the case, for example, in census surveys in low-income areas where there is little internet penetration, like that of the quality-of-life surveys presently being conducted in multiple countries through a residential door-to-door approach (Carr et al., 2018). In such situations, the social interaction between the interviewer conducting the survey and the interviewee is likely to introduce bias into the survey data collected. Interviewer effects (IE) can influence both item non-response and answer quality, i.e., participants not providing the true answer (Harling, et al., 2019). In an attempt to gain more representative data, this study conducted an exploratory analysis on the possible antecedents and consequences of interviewer effects using the Living Wage survey presently being conducted in South Africa, as the study context. To this end, I examine the systematic biasing effects associated with deploying the same group interviewers (n = 10), of the same ethnicity, age, and of equal gender distribution across five sampling areas in Cape Town in a quasi-experimental design (n = 282). This study highlighted that each interviewer is associated with a unique set of systematic bias that varies dependent on the survey item type. Sensitive items requiring respondents to disclose personal information were the most prone to bias, followed by interviewer-referencing and attitudinal items sequentially. Furthermore, this study found that gender differences in the interview had a marginal influence on the attitudes respondents are willing to share. I hope to contribute to an understanding and critical consideration of the antecedents and consequences of deploying human interviewers for collecting quantitative surveys, especially in a context where ethnic, gender and political differences are loaded in social interactions and are likely to contribute to respondents obscuring their responses.