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As working arrangements become more flexible and many people work remotely, the risk of social isolation rises. Coworking spaces try to prevent this by offering not only a workplace, but also a community. Adopting a person-environment fit perspective, we examined how the congruence between workers’ needs and supplies by coworking spaces relate to job satisfaction and intent to leave. We identified five needs (i.e., community, collaboration, amenities, location, and cost), of which community was expected to be the central need. An online questionnaire was distributed among coworkers in Germany and Austria, resulting in a sample of 181 coworkers. Results showed that needs-supplies fit regarding community was related to job satisfaction and intent to leave in coworking spaces. Findings for the other needs, however, did not show that congruence is associated with outcomes. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of community fit in coworking and offer insights for workers and entrepreneurs in this area.

<p>This thesis compares work orientations in six Western countries (the USA, Great Britain, New Zealand, Germany, Norway, and Sweden), using data from the 1997 International Social Survey Program (ISSP). The main issue examined is whether different ‘production regimes’ correspond to levels and patterns of employment and organizational commitment among the working population.</p><p>It is concluded that the country levels of employment commitment varies depending on the institutional set-ups, with respect to production and welfare regimes, being highest in the Scandinavian countries and lowest in Great Britain and the USA. Organizational commitment varies in a more complex manner, with the strongest commitment being found in the USA and the lowest in Sweden. In all countries, the most important factor determining the level of an individual’s organizational commitment is whether the person finds his or her job interesting. This effect is independent of job satisfaction. Organizational commitment was also found to be positively and strongly correlated with right-wing political values in five of the six countries. When it comes to employment commitment, it was found that women display, often significantly, higher commitment than do men. The results suggest that the most important motivator for employment commitment is the desire for interesting work. The concluding discussion summarises and presents the main findings in schematic figures, and includes interpretative discussions focusing on future research.</p>

This thesis compares work orientations in six Western countries (the USA, Great Britain, New Zealand, Germany, Norway, and Sweden), using data from the 1997 International Social Survey Program (ISSP). The main issue examined is whether different ‘production regimes’ correspond to levels and patterns of employment and organizational commitment among the working population. It is concluded that the country levels of employment commitment varies depending on the institutional set-ups, with respect to production and welfare regimes, being highest in the Scandinavian countries and lowest in Great Britain and the USA. Organizational commitment varies in a more complex manner, with the strongest commitment being found in the USA and the lowest in Sweden. In all countries, the most important factor determining the level of an individual’s organizational commitment is whether the person finds his or her job interesting. This effect is independent of job satisfaction. Organizational commitment was also found to be positively and strongly correlated with right-wing political values in five of the six countries. When it comes to employment commitment, it was found that women display, often significantly, higher commitment than do men. The results suggest that the most important motivator for employment commitment is the desire for interesting work. The concluding discussion summarises and presents the main findings in schematic figures, and includes interpretative discussions focusing on future research.

Participation in Peace Support Operations (PSOs) is one of the most common military duties assigned to present-day Western soldiers. Previous research concerned with the psychological effects of these missions on the individual soldier has focused on issues of mental health and how to ensure military effectiveness. This study takes a different perspective, and examines how PSOs affect the political psychology of the peace soldier, asking: how and to what extent do the sociopolitical psychological orientations of the individual soldier change as a consequence of peace support operations? The study combines theory from clinical, social, and personality psychology to construct a framework for understanding how and why the values and the attitudes toward violence of the soldier may be affected by PSO deployments. It is argued that although combat exposure may cause changes in attitudes and values, these variables will overall remain stable across the deployment. Stability is predicted to be the norm due to the importance of certain attitudes and values to the soldierly identity, and owing to the good person-environment fit that the deployment provides for the soldiers. It is also argued that the individual’s personality traits will predict levels of change and stability. Empirically, two Swedish contingents deployed to northern Afghanistan under the auspices of NATO’s ISAF mission are analyzed. Change and stability are examined by combining statistical analyses of surveys with in-depth interviews carried out at both the pre- and post-deployment stages. As hypothesized, the study finds that both values and attitudes exhibit high levels of stability across the mission. Contrary to expectations the soldiers’ experiences of combat exposure had little to no effect on attitudes and values. Combat exposure was, however, limited during the deployments studied. Finally, the individual’s personality traits are identified as being relatively potent factors for inducing change and stability. By demonstrating that low-exposure PSOs have only minor effects on the sociopolitical psychological orientations of soldiers, the study advances knowledge of the political psychology of the peace soldier and provides additional contributions to the fields of value and personality psychology. Among other things, the study demonstrates the stability of values in a very challenging environment, and how personality traits affect change and stability in values.

Masters of Art / A child friendly city (CFC) is the embodiment of the rights of the child manifested in the policies, programs, and laws of a city. A critical aspect in the creation of a CFC is the consideration of the natural environment (NE). Premised upon a child participatory perspective, this study explored the manner in which adolescents perceive and attach meaning to the NE, as there is limited research concerning this. The primary aim of the study was to investigate children’s perceptions of the NE, and within this process to elucidate the meanings that children attach to environmental issues, and how these meanings contribute toward the creation of CFC’s. This study employed the broad epistemological position of social constructionism, and the theoretical framework of the Person-environment (P-E) fit theory. Methodologically, a qualitative research design was adopted, employing focus group interviews as the method of data collection. The study was conducted in an impoverished community on the Cape Flats in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Four focus group interviews were conducted with two groups of 8 children between the ages of 13 and 14 in grade 9. Thematic Analysis was utilised to analyse and interpret the findings. The findings indicate that the participants perceive the NE through the lens of safety as natural areas in the community are characterised by crime, violence, pollution, and a haven for gangsters. The participants’ worldviews appear to be permeated with this milieu of danger which is pervasive in their community. Although the participants express the need to engage in the NE, their mobility is greatly restricted due to their own, parental, or guardians fears of threat. There is evidently incongruence between the participants’ expectations for the NE, and the reality of the unsafe nature of the NE. The participants thus fall outside the prevailing categories of the social and cultural construction of childhood, as they undergo an immense burden of adversity and suffering which breaches what childhood is supposed to signify.Along with many children in South Africa, the participants are exposed to an escalating level of crime and community violence which has a negative impact upon their sense of wellbeing,their ability to negotiate their mobility and to freely explore NE’s, and engage in childled initiatives to counteract impending safety and security concerns within their communities.It was also found that the participants consider the natural world as crucial in the creation of a CFC. Ultimately, the participants revealed that their community is not child friendly, and thereby suggest the requirement for a child and environmentally friendly city. The participants therefore proposed that environmental education (EE) be incorporated into the school curriculum to instil a greater awareness of environmental issues among their peers.

Significant shifts in social ideology and legislation have brought about considerable changes in work and family dynamics in the Western world, and the male as breadwinner-wife as homemaker model is no longer the norm. However, despite increasingly gender egalitarian ideals, the division of labor among dual-earner couples tends to adopt a "neo traditional" once children are born, where women devote more time to family labor and men spend more time in paid employment Although asymmetrical divisions of labor have clear workplace and societal consequences in terms of women's earnings, organizational advancement, and inequality, the effects on individual well-being are not well understood. The purpose of the present study was to apply the theoretical lens of person-environment fit to examine how misfit between dual-earner couples' pre-child division of labor preferences and post-child actual divisions of labor relate to affective (career, marital, and family satisfaction) and health-related (depression and physical health symptoms) well-being. Additionally, several conditions were posited to temper the strengths of these relationships (domain centrality, gender, voice in division of labor decision making, and satisfaction with the current division of labor). Participants were 126 dual-earner couples with small children, and hypotheses were testing using polynomial regression analyses. The results suggested that congruence between an individual's own pre-child desires for the division of paid labor and the actual post-child division of paid labor relates to his/her own career and marital satisfaction, depression, and physical health symptoms. Congruence in the family domain is also important, as desire-division of family labor fit related to affective sentiments toward family and one's spouse. With the exception of career satisfaction, these relationships were curvilinear, such that deviations in either direction from perfect fit related to poorer well-being. On the other hand, there was little evidence for spousal effects, as dual-earner well-being did not relate the congruence between division of labor abilities and spousal demands. Finally, evidence of moderation was only found in a few cases, and none were consistent with prediction, highlighting the need for future research on the contextual conditions of P-E fit in the dual-earner context.

Regardless of the changes in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa No. 108. of 1996, in terms of the acceptance of individuals irrespective of their sexual orientation and the prohibiting of discrimination against anyone on the grounds of their sexual orientation, the concept of homosexuality in the workplace is still a relatively unexplored phenomenon in South Africa. Limited research studies focus on the perspectives of homosexual individuals regarding their perception and attitudes towards their working environments. Culture can affect the way in which individuals act due to the dominance of certain behaviours, beliefs, and norms that are accepted as the 'standard' way of living. Within companies, the employees are on average expected to be productive and effective, and to present fruitful behaviour to benefit the organisation. Individuals can also at times be tacitly encouraged to portray images according to the general norm in the organisation, whether or not this image is true to the individuals themselves. This type of accepted standard norms and behaviours are therefore wordlessly conveyed to the employees as the cultural accepted standard in the organisation. Heteronormative cultures are described as the instance when the accepted standard of male and female behaviour is viewed in terms of masculine men and feminine women. Individuals who do not fit these specific descriptions may experience either explicit or implicit discrimination. The reactions that employees can have because of organisational culture are referred to as affective reactions and can have adverse costs for the organisation as employees may engage in less productive behaviour. The purpose of this research was to assess the relationship between a heteronormative culture and the affective reactions of homosexual employees working in Johannesburg and Pretoria. Work engagement and job satisfaction of the individuals were assessed in relationship to heteronormativity. Research done for this study includes the various aspects of the academic topics related to the study. Given the limited amount of empirical research on the topic, a mixed method study was conducted. Quantitative questionnaires instigated the research, designed to measure the following concepts:<ul> <li> Organisational culture, in terms of heteronormativity.</li> <li> Two affective reactions of employees - work engagement and job satisfaction.</li></ul> Explanatory qualitative interviews followed the questionnaires with the intention of understanding the results found during the quantitative phase. A purposefully selected sample of one hundred and sixty four homosexual employees working in Johannesburg and Pretoria completed the quantitative questionnaire, and a sample of eight homosexual individuals were selected out of the original sample to participate in the qualitative interview stage. Previously developed instruments were used to measure heteronormativity, work engagement and job satisfaction. The results indicated that homosexual employees within Gauteng do experience the culture of their respective organisations to support the perceptions of heteronormativity. Two hypotheses were tested which indicated a significant but small correlation between perceptions of heteronormativity and work engagement and job satisfaction. The qualitative results provided insight into how homosexual employees experienced heteronormative cultures in the workplace as well as how they react to the cultures encountered. / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Human Resource Management / unrestricted

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