Checkland's soft systems methodology is adapted to investigate and suggest improvements to personnel management in Kuwait libraries. An initial study investigating relevant elements of personnel management in Kuwait, such as motivation, communication, etc., was conducted primarily by interviewing. A model was constructed on this basis to deduce relevant important issues, such as library services and motivation of library staff. These issues were further investigated in a second survey again primarily by interviewing. Because of the Gulf War, a third interview survey then took place to update data and to identify important changes regarding library management. Four activity-based models were then constructed to determine factors relating to the improvement of personnel management in Kuwait libraries and as guides for data analysis, as follows: a system of increasing the supply of competent information workers; a system to enhance communication inside and outside the library; a system which meets users' needs and encourages the use of the library; a system to enhance staff motivation. The conclusion examines possible solutions regarding personnel management problems in Kuwait libraries. In addition, the value of Checkland's soft systems methodology for this kind of analysis is examined.

M.Com. (Industrial Psychology) / The need for efficient managers is ever increasing. If any company wants to make use of its managers' full potential it is important that it should have an effective management development programme. Although many companies do have such programmes, their effectiveness is not always clear. Management development, as applied by the South African Transport Services is presented, followed by a survey of the literature on the evaluation of management development. On the basis of the foregoing. a questionnaire was designed to measure management's perception regarding management development within South African Transport Services. The questionnaire was administered to 444 managers within the organization and the findings suggested that more attention should be given to the selling of management development to all managerial levels and the refinement of current development techniques. Furthermore research should also be directed at the learning-, work behaviour- and output levels of evaluation. as well as at better methods of self-development.

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This study was prompted by a staff-shortage crisis in Social Work. Because it is apparent that this manpower crisis cannot be alleviated by an increase in professional recruitment, methods must be found by which to utilize effectively persons without professional standing. Our assumptions in this study, therefore, are firstly, that tasks presently performed by professionally-trained social workers can be categorized according to specific criteria and secondly, that these tasks can then be assigned to various levels of staff, both professional and non-professional. This study deals with the former assumption, the latter assumption will be left to further research. The agency from which our study was drawn was the Children's Aid Society of Vancouver, B.C. The specific area of study in the agency was Services to Children-in-Care. As criteria for differentiating tasks we chose "worker autonomy" and "task complexity". In essence these are, respectively, the functioning of the worker in relation to his internalized professional standards, and the relative amount of activity inherent in a task. We then devised a list of tasks which we presented to a random sample of line workers, with the major aim of determining whether or not the tasks were actually performed. The list of tasks was revised on suggestions from the respondents and presented a second time. This indicated the representative nature of the tasks. In order to rate each task as to its degree of complexity and the degree of autonomy required by a worker to perform it, we selected twelve judges at random six from Children's Aid Society Staff and six from a list supplied by the British Columbia Association of Social Workers. The judges rated each task on a five-point scale for each of our two criteria. In analyzing the data we were concerned primarily with the degree of agreement among the judges as to their ratings of each task on the two criteria of "worker autonomy" and "task complexity". Our findings showed a high percentage of agreement among judges on both criteria for most tasks. This indicates that the majority of tasks can be differentiated. The findings also showed a high degree of relationship between "worker autonomy" and "task complexity" -- that is, if a task was judged highly autonomous it was usually also judged highly complex. This points to the possible redundancy of the second criterion, "task complexity". In other words, it appears that "worker autonomy" may be the important measuring instrument by which tasks can be differentiated in order to be assigned to personnel of differing competence. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

This study is concerned with the social work man-power problem as it exists in the social assistance sector of the public welfare field. The purpose of the study was to determine if a rational plan for the deployment of social work personnel could be devised that would result in more effective and appropriate utilization of social work staff with varying levels of training and competence. The project is an exploratory study based on Richan's suggestion that a plan for worker deployment can be more effectively developed by first determining the degree of organizational or professional controls present or required in the performance of the various tasks in a public welfare agency. A list of tasks performed in the issuance of social allowance from initial contact through to termination was drawn up by the researchers on the basis of their knowledge and combined twenty-two years experience in this area. This list of one hundred twenty-eight tasks was presented in the form of a questionnaire to seven experienced social workers carrying urban and rural caseloads in three public welfare offices. The workers were asked to determine over a two week period, by noting their daily activities, if the list was accurate, complete and unambiguous. This validated list of tasks was presented to a panel of fourteen judges holding Master of Social Work degrees and at least two years' experience in the public welfare field for rating. The rating procedures were based on a five point scale of autonomy of worker functioning required in the performance of the different tasks. Beck's definition of worker autonomy was accepted as appropriate for the purposes of this study, as it incorporates the explicitness of guides to the workers, the visibility of worker activity and the degree of required organizational support for social work standards. This method of data collection, the use of the questionnaire and the rating scale, was considered the most feasible as they were easy to administer, flexible, allowed for fine definition with a specific frame of reference, inexpensive financially and in terms of worker-judge-researcher time. An analysis of our study findings revealed that only 9 per cent of the listed tasks received 80 per cent of judge rating agreement that was necessary to establish its reliability of the ratings. It was significant, however, that the judges' ratings usually followed a pattern tending to cluster at two adjacent ratings. While it is obvious that the instrument is not yet reliable, the fact that 42 per cent of the tasks received over 60 per cent agreement is encouraging and leads the researchers to conclude that the study is going in the right direction. It was also tentatively concluded that the closeness of the ratings seemed to indicate either that the rating scale of autonomy was not fine enough to allow distinctions between adjacent ratings or that the tasks were not defined with sufficient clarity for the judges to make distinctions regarding the amount of autonomy required in the performance of the task. The judges were queried on the problems they encountered in their ratings and their remarks led the researchers to re-examine the definitions of the tasks, and although they had been validated by the field workers in the initial phase of the study, it became evident that definitions of a great number of tasks could be unclear or confusing when they were rated by the employment of the autonomy criterion. This re-examination led the researchers to revise all tasks receiving less than 80 per cent agreement. It is concluded that there is no indication that the criterion of autonomy should be rejected. Rather, if the revised list of tasks can be given to judges to rate again, it is felt that a much higher degree of reliability can be established. Should the new ratings prove to be reliable, the way will then be clear to develop a task assignment scheme to be employed in a field study. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

M.Phil. (Educational Management) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

"The objective of this study is the establishment of a workable restaurant personnel policy that will one day be set up as the policy in the writer's restaurant. In order to secure a basis, a survey was made of the policies existing in some of the restaurants in this locality. After surveying these conditions the writer made a study of the factors included in personnel policies in general and those pertinent to the restaurant industry"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "March, 1950." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science under Plan II." / Advisor: J. Frank Dame, Professor Directing Study. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-57).

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