Background. Human capital, often referred to as talent, has become a key source of competitive advantage. Due to the scarcity and competition for such talent scholars and practitioners are constantly trying to find new ways to attract, engage and retain highly soughtafter employees. The recent recession and economic slow-down has, however, led to diminished financial resources which has meant that talent management strategies have had to shift with greater focus being placed on non-financially centred offers to attract talent. Such non-financial offers include employer branding (EB) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Research Purpose. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) on employer brand and organisational attractiveness perceptions. To achieve this aim, two research objectives were set. The first objective was to establish whether statistically significant positive causal relationships exist between perceptions of CSR, employer brand and organisational attractiveness (OA). The second objective was to estimate the relative importance of CSR and employer brand amongst other typical financial and non-financial reward elements or factors, i.e. when trade-offs need to be made. Research Design and Methodological approaches. An experimental research design was utilised and primary quantitative data was collected by means of convenience, i.e. nonprobability sampling. A realised sample of n=137 was obtained. To address the objectives stated above, a two method approach was utilised. Firstly, a 22 or 2 (CSR present or not present) x 2 (employer branding present or not present) full-factorial experiment was utilised to investigate the causal relationships with organisational attractiveness (the dependant variable). Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions and perceived level of attractiveness measured after being exposed to one of four fictitious recruitment posters in which the CSR and employer brand were manipulated. The validity and reliability of the organisational attractiveness scale was assessed using Principle Components Analysis (PCA) and calculating Cronbach α coefficients, respectively The data were then analysed using descriptive statistics and a 22 within-subjects Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). To address the second objective, a fractional experiment was used to estimate the relative importance of CSR when randomly manipulating several typical financial and non-financial total reward factors or elements, i.e. those typically offered to prospective employees to attract them, including remuneration, benefits, work-life balance, performance and recognition, and development and career opportunities. This was done by utilising Choice-based modelling (CBM) or choice-based conjoint analysis. The Preference Lab software was used to conduct this experiment and collect the data. Part-utility worths were then calculated to assess the relative importance of each of the six attributes. Finally, the conjoint utilities were then used to identify distinct cohorts of respondents using two-step cluster analysis. Results. The results of the 22 within-subjects or full factorial Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed statistically significant main effects, as well as statistically significant interaction effects. Moreover, the CBM revealed that, in relation to the other four attributes (i.e. renumeration, work-life balance, career development and advancement and, performance management and recognition) CSR and employer branding were ranked as the third and fifth most important attributes, respectively. When identifying distinct cohorts of respondents, using cluster analysis, a 2-cluster and a 3-cluster solution was found. Findings. It was determined that when CSR is present there is an increase in organisational attractiveness and, when a desirable employer brand is present there is an increase in organisational attractiveness. Additionally, renumeration and work-life balance were ranked as relatively more important than CSR and, renumeration, work-life balance, CSR and, career development and advancement were ranked as relatively more important than employer branding. Contribution of the study. The present study hopefully contributes to a better understanding of the role of CSR and employer branding in talent attraction and so adds to the available literature in this field of study, as well as provides further theoretical perspectives on the importance of CSR in the field of reward- and talent-management. Practically, the insights gleaned from the data could be used by organisations to inform talent attraction strategies, practices and policies which may assist in attracting highly sought-after human capital and subsequently positively impact on organisational performance and sustainable organisational success. By better understanding the positive causal effect of CSR on employer brand perceptions and desirable organisational outcomes such as organisational attractiveness, this knowledge can be used to make a compelling business case for CSR. Augmenting the argument that CSR “..is the right thing to do” on the one hand, with evidence that CSR makes good business sense, makes for a compelling win-win argument for organisations to make greater social investments with obvious benefits for communities and society at large.

There is currently little research focusing specifically on the emotional labour and regulation of academic staff in higher education institutions. This study provides insight into the emotional labour regulation strategies that academic staff use within the higher education context. This research both explores and describes the emotional regulatory strategies that lecturers (including senior lecturers, associate professors and professors) use in a research-intensive academic institution in the South African context. Although previous research has shown that emotional labour is relevant in the higher education context for academic staff, little research has been conducted to uncover which regulation strategies academic staff use and why these strategies are employed. This study was conducted using a qualitative method, in which a combination of snowball, convenience and purposive sampling strategies was used to gain access to the intended sample of fifteen participants. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were the source of data collection and thematic analysis was used to analyse the data collected. Emotional labour has been shown to affect the well-being of professionals in their workplace. Therefore, monitoring and controlling emotional labour is of paramount importance for a healthy workforce. In a higher education environment, the well-being of students is directly influenced by the well-being of the staff and the overall effectiveness of service delivery by the organisation (in terms of research outputs as well as teaching and learning). Evidently, the emotional labour and regulation thereof of the individual academic staff member may have far-reaching effects. This study confirmed that emotional labour is experienced by academic staff within the university context. Moreover, the academic work context of academic staff involves a high degree of interaction with people that includes a range of diverse job tasks. The perceived display rules of the university were defined and described in this study. The emotional labour regulation strategies that academic lecturing staff utilise are those of deep, genuine and surface acting. However, the use of these strategies is not straightforward, as academic lecturing staff apply a range of these regulation strategies based on several reasons or rationales. These rationales further determine when an individual will select one or a combination of regulation strategies. / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Human Resource Management / MCom / Unrestricted

<p>With increasing demands in people’s work and life, successful self-regulation of multiple goals/tasks becomes important to one’s well-being and performance. One individual difference in this process is one’s preference for multitasking (i.e., polychronicity), which was found to be important in individuals’ psychological experience and performance. However, in terms of our understanding of the nature of this construct, there are at least two issues: 1) most research has assumed that preference for multitasking and preference for sequential pursuit are opposite ends of one continuum, which has not been directly tested; 2) different scales of polychronicity differ on their definitions of multitasking. To address these gaps, the present research seeks to clarify the relationships among individuals’ multitasking preferences and to develop a new and improved scale of these individual differences for future research in multitasking. To do so, three studies (<em>N</em> = 1367) were conducted to create and validate a scale that measures three potentially distinct preferences: concurrent preference, switching preference, and sequential preference. These studies empirically tested the relationships among the three preferences. The results were replicated in both goal and task contexts and with different response anchors. Findings suggest that it is questionable to assume multitasking preference and sequential preference are antithetical, while concurrent and switching preferences were highly correlated. I conclude with a discussion of the theoretical implications and future directions for multitasking research.</p>

<p>Recent theoretical works and methodological advancements in organizational psychology have highlighted the necessity of a within-person perspective on organizational constructs. Past research suggests that focusing on within-person variation as an outcome can inform us of organizational processes that would not be possible with a static or mean-level approach. As such, the study of performance, on both intra- and inter-individual levels, is incomplete without addressing the nature of intraindividual variations and predictors of their short-term changes (i.e., dynamics). To address this, I first compiled a list of dynamic features from affective, personality, and cognitive dynamics and used it to develop a taxonomy of short-term performance variations (e.g., variability, inertia, stability, diurnal variation) and then conducted a systematic review of empirical works on performance variability to understand its associated theoretical constructs and their predictors. In the second part of my dissertation, I empirically examined the different forms of short-term performance dynamics (mean, maximum, minimum, variability, stability, inertia, week trends, day trends) using two weeks-long experience sampling data from working adults and a) investigated the extent to which they are distinct constructs and whether they have test-retest reliability, and b) tested what situational, time-specific, individual variables are most predictive of each form. I collected ESM data from 237 full-time working participants four times a day for two weeks with a week break in the middle (total observations = 10,315, average response rate = 48.3). I found that there was a high test-retest reliability for specific dynamic features, particularly those of OCB. In addition, I found that there were unique predictors for the same performance domain depending on how their variations were operationalized. </p>

<p>Previous research has established that supervisor’s play an important role in conveying performance management strategies and influencing an employee’s job experience. Notably, there has been a growing area of research of how Implicit Person Theory (IPT) can contribute to supervisors’ coaching and management styles. Research within the more recent years has shown that IPT has indirect effects on the employee experience. The current study expands upon both IPT and performance management literature, by examining how an employee perceives their Supervisor’s IPT, their supervisor’s coaching style of support for developmental opportunities, and the employee’s related job outcomes of: Turnover Intentions, Job Satisfaction, and Satisfaction with Supervisor. Results from 388 men and women in various industries and organizations suggest that Perceived Supervisor IPT is related to developmental opportunities within the workplace. Additionally, we found support for Supervisor IPT being indirectly related to employees’ Turnover Intentions, Job Satisfaction, and Satisfaction with Supervisor via Perceived Developmental Opportunities. When adding Employee IPT to our mediated model, we only found marginally significant support for employees’ Satisfaction with Supervisor. Additionally, we controlled for Leader Member Exchange (LMX) within our moderated mediation model and found non- significant interactions on the indirect path of Perceived Developmental Opportunities on all three employee outcomes and obtained non-significant mediations nested within our greater model. Within our exploratory analyses we found evidence of IPT interaction between an employee and supervisor predicting LMX, Turnover Intentions, and Job Satisfaction. Ultimately, this research contributes to performance management, IPT, and LMX research by providing evidence of how a developmental coaching style of providing opportunities to employees can influence the employees’ job experience and is related to their perceptions of their leader.</p>

<p dir="ltr">Feedback seeking is an essential process for employees to improve performance and clarify expectations (Renn & Fedor, 2001; Ashford & Tsui, 199). Certain factors such as ego and image defense limit feedback seeking in the workplace due to avoidance of negative outcomes (Ashford & Cummings, 1983), however we know less about whether feedback seeking does lead to actual negative outcomes for the employee (Ashford, De Stobbeleir, & Nujella, 2016). The current study examines the existence of actual costs to the seeker for seeking more frequently and adds to the literature by examining whether supervisor individual differences are related to perceptions of seeking behavior, namely implicit person theory and feedback orientation. With a sample of 275 adult supervisors recruited from Mturk, the current study measured participants on these individual differences and assessed perceptions of a fictional employee who either sought feedback with high or low frequency. The employee was rated on a selection of performance potential outcomes related to promotability, expectations of future performance, willingness to mentor, and candidacy for career development opportunities. Findings suggest there is a cost associated with seeking feedback at a higher frequency which manifests as a decrease in perceptions of confidence in the employee. Additionally, this perception of lower confidence from seeking feedback could contribute to more significant downstream outcomes such as expectations of lower quality performance and lower likelihood of being promoted. By understanding more about individuals’ perceptions of feedback seeking behavior, we may train supervisors how to be more receptive of different feedback seeking behavior. This could assist in fostering a performance improvement environment that ultimately improves organizational performance.</p>

<p dir="ltr">Existing conceptualizations and measures of mentoring support have been criticized for conflating mentor behaviors with outcomes, lacking comprehensiveness, and lacking theoretical integration with relationship science. This research presents the development and validation of the Mentor Support Behaviors Inventory (MSBI), a new measure of mentor support grounded in attachment theory. Study 1 used a qualitative analysis of interviews and open-ended responses and identified eight behavioral themes reflecting three higher-order mentor support dimensions: Safe Haven (Counseling, Protecting), Secure Base (Training, Coaching, Promoting), and Close Esteem (Responding, Personalizing, Affirming). These dimensions aligned with the Safe Haven and Secure Base support tenets of attachment theory and integrates the literatures on responsiveness. In Study 2, an initial pool of 128 items was developed based on the qualitative findings. 122 working adults sorted them into mentoring behaviors versus relationship quality, mentoring effectiveness, and mentoring climate constructs. The results provided moderate to strong evidence of content validity, with the MSBI items performing better than existing mentoring measures. The MSBI offers a comprehensive, theory-driven assessment of specific observable mentor behaviors across diverse supportive contexts, addressing calls to elucidate the behavioral mechanisms underlying effective mentoring relationships. Implications for mentoring theory and practice are discussed.</p>

The main purpose of this study was to determine the positive relationship between transformational leadership and organisational culture using a sample of 238 employees of a military organisation. A secondary objective was to determine whether individuals from different race, position and age groups differ significantly in perception regarding transformational leadership and organisational culture. The instruments used in the study were the Leadership Profile Inventory and the Organisational Culture Inventory. The results of the empirical study indicated that there was a significant statistical positive relationship between transformational leadership and the constructive dimension of organisational culture. The findings also indicated that demographic groups differ significantly in perception regarding transformational leadership and organisational culture. It is recommended that interventions aimed at leadership development and organisational culture change take into consideration the relationship between transformational leadership and organisational culture. This study is concluded with recommendations for industrial and organisational psychology practices and further research. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M. Admin. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

This thesis is based on research aimed to develop and test a systematic framework to describe and analyse dysfunctions in underperforming schools in South Africa, the Explanatory Model of School Dysfunctions. The theoretical foundation of the model was created by synthesising the literature from various disciplines and conceptualising dysfunctions in relation to their antecedents, motivations, and consequences. The model was then applied and refined on three different data sets. The three data sets included data from principals, teachers, and learners. The principal data consisted of 80 essays written by principals or their representatives, the teacher data of 40 essays from teachers in the Gauteng area, and the learner data of 1,500 open-ended responses from recent high school graduates in South Africa. Content Configuration Analysis explored how school dysfunctions varied in degree, kind, and interconnectedness. Four groups of dysfunctions were identified: dysfunctions relating to rules and rule breaking, issues of competence, resources, and issues extrinsic to the school context. After application and refinement, the Explanatory Model of School Dysfunctions was found to be a suitable model to account for the problem sets experienced by these three actor groups. The goal of this model is to provide a theory-based approach to analyse dysfunctions within schools and to invite researchers to explore these and other problems within this framework. / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology)

This thesis is devoted to the method of assessment centres and their predictive validity. The theoretical part is focused on the history and development of assessment centres, their design, course, participants, description of the most commonly used techniques, possible uses, advantages and disadvantages of this method. A separate chapter deals with their validity and methods of measuring validity in assessment centres. In addition, this section analyses related topics - adaptation of employees and employee turnover. The empirical part focuses on describing and measuring the degree of predictive validity of an assessment centre, which have been used between years 2010 and 2012 by an unnamed insurance company for employee selection for a position Insurance Consultant. In this part of the thesis, the conducted research is characterized. The results showed that the predictive validity of assessment centres used in the organization was 0.20 - but this result was not found to be statistically significant. At the end there is the discussion about possible factors that might have influenced the research and consideration of the possibilities of increasing this assessment centre's validity.