<p>The study of character strengths is a promising new approach available to positive psychology in its campaign to focus on the positive aspects of people, work and society, and encourage individuals to thrive in all aspects of their lives. Character strengths have been linked to satisfaction with life, but no previous work has investigated <em>how</em> these positive aspects of individuals lead to greater life satisfaction. The current work investigates how different combinations of character strengths, termed strength profiles, predict the use of two emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and emotional suppression. Also investigated was the ability of these strength profiles to predict associative creativity, positive and negative affect, and life satisfaction.</p> <p>A sample of 205 students was used. Participants completed the Virtues in Action survey of character strengths, Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, Satisfaction with Life Scale and Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. An experimental design was employed to investigate the effects of positive and negative emotions on performance on a task requiring associative creativity, the Remote Associates Test. Furthermore, the relationship between character strengths and emotion regulation strategy was investigated.</p> <p>Character strengths predicted cognitive reappraisal as a preferred method of emotion regulation. Character strengths also positively predicted positive affect, negatively predicted negative affect, and were positively associated with satisfaction with life. Additionally, cognitive reappraisal mediated the relationship between a profile designed to up-regulate positive emotions and self-reports of positive emotions.</p> <p>Results were compared for the proposed strength profiles and Peterson and Seligman's (2004) original six virtues. Differences in predictive ability between the strength profiles and virtues are highlighted. Finally, theoretical and practical implications and future research directions are suggested.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>The Stereotype Content Model was used to challenge the untested assertion of the social identity/self-categorization perspective that different others will be seen as untrustworthy. Results from a sample of 29 student teams showed that trustworthiness perceptions were positively related to cognitive and bio-demographic diversity. Member satisfaction was also positively related to cognitive diversity. Trustworthiness perceptions mediated the relationship between team diversity and members’ satisfaction. First round satisfaction predicted second round team performance. The results suggest that outgroup bias is not automatic; teams can be successful if members see each other as trustworthy, regardless of cognitive or bio-demographic diversity.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This paper reports a study of the behavioral changes perceived by managerial and non-managerial personnel in a firm transforming from traditional manufacturing methods to the procedures of Just-In-Time manufacturing (JIT).

Organizations are looking for ways to have higher employee engagement and productive employees. A way that this may be accomplished is through Positive Organizational Behavior (POB) practices. There is a lack of knowledge surrounding the successes and failures of implementing a POB culture by human resource departments (HRDs). The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study design was to explore the influence POB practices have on HRDs. Specifically, the research helped to gain an understanding of how a POB strategy operates and affects HRDs. Items examined in the conceptual framework include a foundation in positive psychology theories and human resource (HR) theories. The elements of HRDs that can affect POB are culture, group dynamics, job design, and policies and procedures. The outputs of the system include employee morale, company profitability, employee productivity, and employee engagement. The research questions centered on discovering how HRDs achieve a POB culture based on their policies, procedures, funding, structure, and internal and external relationships. The research questions explored how a POB culture has affected the HRDs positively and negatively. Thirty-one participants' from13 different companies provided the data. The findings cause social change by providing HR professionals insight into POB practices that increase employees' job satisfaction, team productivity, and organizational profitability. The outcomes create social change by allowing individuals to have increased job and life satisfaction.

Community college student support services are an important aspect of success among community college students. Theoretical and empirical models of organizational politics and withdrawal guided the expectation that community college employees who perceive their organizations as political may withdrawal from their organization, diminishing the services delivered to students at the institution. A multisite cross-sectional survey design was utilized to gather quantitative data via Survey Monkey from national professional organizations. Two-hundred seventeen usable surveys from community college administrators (executive, mid-level managers, and administrators) were gathered. Data were analyzed via correlation and regression models to examine if political skill reduced or moderated the relationship between perception of organizational politics and work withdrawal behaviors. Employee political skill was a partial antidote, reducing the effect of organizational politics on withdrawal behaviors, but there was not a significant interaction moderating effect. Recommendations include political skill training for community college administrators as part of their professional development program, as well as including graduate education components and new employee orientation programs. Such training could lead to positive social change in community college settings by increasing levels of service and job satisfaction and reducing attrition among community college administrators, leading to higher levels of community college student satisfaction and graduation rates.

Master of Science / Department of Psychological Sciences / Clive J. Fullagar / The current study examines how leaders craft conditions of the workplace to make it more conducive for flow to occur in their followers and what beneficial effects this has on employee well-being and performance. Data from 43 employees surveyed daily over two work weeks suggested that transformational leaders and leader-member exchange relationships impact several workplace conditions that in turn impact flow. Also, daily flow experiences were related to daily psychological well-being and daily performance.

This exploratory research addressed the challenge of improving consulting psychologists' ability to add value to their clients in a complex world, in which it is increasingly difficult to differentiate and understand domain phenomena and to promote healthy growth and development in individuals, groups and organisations. To solve this problem, a Gestalt Approach, comprising the String Model and a congruent methodological framework, was developed using analogies and metaphors from the physical sciences. The Gestalt Approach was applied at the individual, group and organisational levels. The String Model promoted excitement and interest in the client systems and desedimented preconceptions and patterns of thinking, facilitating the destruction of existing figures, and the differentiation and exploration of new figures from background phenomena. The methodological framework promoted experimentation and dialogue in an environment conducive to exploration and promoted contact with foreground phenomena. At the individual level, awareness was heightened of the role and development of a historically disadvantaged South African. The individual and the position for which he was being developed were described in terms of the String Model, creating insights which were not in the client system before. A clear, holistic picture of the individual's developmental areas emerged. The approach facilitated contact between the individual and key roleplayers who must create an enabling environment and provide resources conducive to individual development. At the group level, the String Model proved useful in assisting a Board of Directors to clearly differentiate the Board from other groups in the client system. Discussion amongst the participants, who had diverse perspectives, promoted a common understanding of the Board's structure and functioning. Participants were able to differentiate the current dysfunctional status of the Board from the ideal in String Model terms and develop a joint plan to make the Board a healthier entity. At the organisational level, the model according to which a gold mine was structured and managed, was changed due to insights engendered by the Gestalt Approach. The String Model proved to be useful in conceptualising the mine as a whole, with the various sub-systems thereof inextricably related. Changes were made that promote interaction, communication, integration and performance. / Industrial Psychology / D. Comm. (Industrial Psychology)

<p> As a consequence of an aging workforce, electric utilities are at risk of losing their most experienced and knowledgeable electrical engineers. In this research, the problem was a lack of understanding of what electric utilities were doing to capture the tacit knowledge or know-how of these engineers. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore the tacit knowledge capture strategies currently used in the industry by conducting a case study of 7 U.S. electrical utilities that have demonstrated an industry commitment to improving operational standards. The research question addressed the implemented strategies to capture the tacit knowledge of retiring electrical engineers and technical personnel. The research methodology involved a qualitative embedded case study. The theories used in this study included knowledge creation theory, resource-based theory, and organizational learning theory. Data were collected through one time interviews of a senior electrical engineer or technician within each utility and a workforce planning or training professional within 2 of the 7 utilities. The analysis included the use of triangulation and content analysis strategies. Ten tacit knowledge capture strategies were identified: (a) formal and informal on-boarding mentorship and apprenticeship programs, (b) formal and informal off-boarding mentorship programs, (c) formal and informal training programs, (d) using lessons learned during training sessions, (e) communities of practice, (f) technology enabled tools, (g) storytelling, (h) exit interviews, (i) rehiring of retirees as consultants, and (j) knowledge risk assessments. This research contributes to social change by offering strategies to capture the know-how needed to ensure operational continuity in the delivery of safe, reliable, and sustainable power.</p>

Against the background of growing competition in the global marketplace, understanding customers, is a significant aspect of marketing. In the search for competitive advantage, there is a need to measure service quality to better understand its antecedents and consequences, and establish methods for its improvement. In the Libyan economy, the banking sector is one of the most important. Its significance increased after the 2003 lifting of the United Nations sanction. This was followed by entry to the sector of a number of domestic and multinational firms. Despite this increased competition, domestic banks are still widely considered to suffer from low levels of service quality. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the actual level of service quality provided by Libyan public commercial banks as perceived by their customers. A modified SERVQUAL model was developed to measure service quality in Libyan commercial public banks. The resulting instrument is intended to help these banks to measure their service quality and focus on the service quality dimensions of most importance to their customers. It also aimed to gain an understanding of cultural and environmental influences on service quality in the Libyan banking sector, and their effect on banking management practices. It is also expected that this instrument, and its results, will contribute to future research into service quality. The findings of the present study have produced some important results. Firstly, the level of service quality offered by the Libyan public commercial banks as it was perceived by their customers was relatively high. Secondly, the theoretical five-factor structure of the SERVQUAL model was not confirmed in the Libyan banking context, and the service quality structure in the Libyan context appears to be four-dimensional. Furthermore, the study offers suggestions to banking managers to allocate their resources more efficiently to the most important dimensions, i. e. reliability and tangibles, to improve service quality, since the factor analysis indicates that these are the most important dimensions to customers. Finally, reflections on the methods used to modify SERVQUAL to make it more sensitive to a particular cultural context have implications for future researchers in terms of methodology, method and data analysis.

Libya is seen by many investors from across the World as a market of immense potential even though the degree of openness of the Libyan market has until recently remained comparatively limited. There are signs now however, that the government is pursuing a more conciliatory approach towards foreign businesses. The Libyan authorities are now encouraging private-sector involvement and inward investment, but appreciate that a fundamental change in organisational culture will be necessary. Therefore the movement in Libya today, toward improvement in organisations and the Government has introduced liberalisation of the economy, and is creating stronger ties with the Western world, now that sanctions have been lifted. This change is exemplified by the greater scope allowed to private enterprise in the retail trade, small-scale industries and agriculture. There has been previous research carried out, into the ways that the competitive nature of all Libyan organisations can be improved. There is a great need, in order to understand organisation's marketing capabilities and orientations, to investigate their validity in a wide variety of developing countries. However, there are only a few empirical studies which have investigated the development of MO in transitional economies and there is increasing pressure for the MO of organisations in these developing countries, where the process of economic diversification is taking place rather rapidly to be investigated (Anwar, 2008). This is mainly due to the fact that the contemporary research carried out in the West has provided evidence of strong links between MO and performance. There has been very little empirical research to investigate these links in developing countries with transitional economies. The strategy for this research consisted of specific objectives that had been derived from the research questions and it was the nature of these which suggested the use of a non-experimental fixed strategy such as a survey. The survey as a research tool has been widely used by others and is based upon the well-established statistical principles of sampling; additionally a survey offers a relatively simple and straightforward approach to the study of people's attitudes, values and beliefs. The MARKOR questionnaire allowed a tried and tested data collection tool to be used and as the most important aspects of such research are credibility, reliability and validity, the standardisation offered by the questionnaire provided a means to gather consistent answers to consistent questions. A group of these managers were subsequently interviewed at a different time when initial analysis of the quantitative data from the questionnaire prompted a set of follow-up interview questions. From this research it can be concluded that there is evidence of a significant relationship between market orientation and perceived business performance. But there are currently various levels of market orientation being operated within the Libyan manufacturing companies surveyed. Furthermore there are very marked difference in the levels of market orientation present between companies from the different sectors and between companies operating in the private sector compared with those which are under state control.