This dissertation examines the influence of the psychological contract and leadership styles on the perceived performance of semi-professional rugby teams. Little research has connected the psychological contract and sport, and little research has investigated the effect of specific leader behaviours on the performance of sport teams. It was therefore the objective of this dissertation to analyse the content of the psychological contract of rugby team members, and to determine the correlation between the psychological contract and the perceived performance of rugby team members. This dissertation also set out to analyse the content of the preferred leadership style of the team captain and the own leadership style of team members, and to determine the correlation between leadership styles and perceived performance. A longitudinal research design was chosen, along with a non-probability sampling technique. The sample consisted of rugby team members from a prominent rugby-playing university in South Africa. Questionnaires were used to investigate the content of the psychological contract and preferred leadership style and own leadership style, as well as their relationship to perceived performance. The results indicated no correlation between the psychological contract and perceived performance, nor any correlation between leadership styles and perceived performance. A strong correlation, on the other hand, was found between the preferred leadership style of the team captain and the own leadership style of team members. A strong correlation between institute obligations and player obligations was also established. / Thesis (M.Com. (Industrial Sociology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

The purpose of this study is to examine and compare librarian profession with different professional theories. The intention is to describe how the librarian profession meets the different professional criteria and to what extent the librarian profession can be said to be professional in expertise, service and autonomy. Nolin’s modern theory provides an opportunity to analyze occupational groups based on professionalized basic concepts. The analysis of relevant material showed that the librarian is a service profession with high skills, but does not hold a high degree of autonomy. Librarian profession has been regarded as a semiprofession by previous profession theories, but Nolin’s broadened profession definition invites the librarian to the profession concept.

The Resident-Medical Student Shadowing Program is a novel program in which first-year medical students shadowed a first-year resident during their clinical duties. It was developed to enhance the preparedness of medical students for clinical training. To examine the program’s effectiveness, a randomized control trial was conducted within a concurrent triangulation mixed methods study. Student participants were compared to controls using validated questionnaires. Participants’ experiences were further explored using semi-structured interviews. Results indicate that participation gave students an understanding of the clinical environment and their role within it, and taught them the skills and knowledge needed to perform that role. Students’ learning was enhanced by the relationship developed with their resident, facilitated by the residents’ approachability and relatability and their dedication to teaching. Residents, in turn, gained expertise in teaching and learned about professionalism. Suggestions for implementing this program in the future as well as future directions for research are discussed. / Measurement, Evaluation and Cognition

This thesis proposes a new conception for pre-service teacher education. Current pre-service teacher education programmes are, in the main, one-dimensional, skill-based and performative: one-dimensional, in that programmes focus on preparing teachers to deliver a pre-determined curriculum; skill-based, in that professional judgement and reasoning are ignored; and, performative in the prescribed nature of knowledge and the drive to establish standards and competencies. Rather than focusing on professionalism - which is at the heart of what it means to be an educator - professionalisation, economic-driven policies and political ideologies underpin contemporary pre-service teacher education programmes. The new conception for pre-service teacher education has at its core, teachers as professional educators. This thesis argues that in order for teachers to become professional educators, their preparation ought to be enhanced and broadened to incorporate aspects of professional judgement, professional expertise, and ethical and moral commitment. To enable this to occur, pre-service teachers need to learn what it means to be moral agents through active and authentic engagement within communities of practice and learners. In sum, the professional educator's role is argued to be an agent for, and of, change who promotes and engenders an education system that underpins a socially, culturally and economically just society.

Page 251 is missing from original but content appears complete. / Beginning with the question, "what are the forces and voices influencing the meaning of the concept, and the development of advanced nursing practice in New Zealand in the 1990s”, this thesis uses an historical sociological approach to explore what New Zealand nursing is becoming and what it is ceasing to be. Through the examination of New Zealand nursing history from 1860 through the first years of the 21st century, seven historical understandings of the meaning of 'advanced' nursing practice emerged: nurses with higher education; nurses with more than one type of registration; community nurses; nurse educators and administrators; specialty nursing; a career hierarchy based on further education, experience and clinical focus; and the contemporary Nurse Practitioner. The thesis argues that each of the earlier historical connotations of advanced nursing practice is reflected in the Nurse Practitioner. The analysis of this broad scope of New Zealand nursing history, including a case study of the interpretation and implementation of contemporary advanced nursing practice, reveals essential themes of profession and professionalisation; politics and political sophistication. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from sociology, political science, and nursing, these concepts are further analysed, and developed into a representational framework. This conceptualisation depicts critical factors for nursing to achieve its preferred position in the context of time. Therefore, this study is also an exploration of New Zealand nursing's professional project A professional project is the process through which an occupational group gains control over the education and entry to practice of practitioners; secures legitimacy through the state and the public; achieves self-regulation over its practice; and secures, maintains and extends a market, or jurisdiction for itself. This thesis illustrates that while the course of action of a professional project is not always clear or deliberate for all the members of the profession, it nevertheless has a coherence that may be seen ex post facto. It is argued that what became the drive for the development of New Zealand's Nurse Practitioner and the expansion of nursing's jurisdiction at the turn of the 21st century, began long before the 1990s. The importance of history to understanding the past, the relevance of history to the shape of the present, and the significance of history's influence on the future are affirmed.

Weick (2006) calls for researchers to investigate how employees ‘hold it together’ during periods when organizational routine and order are challenged. This thesis focuses on employee experiences during two types of organizational upheaval: periods of planned, large-scale organizational change and periods of organizational crisis triggered by external events. In both conditions, employees can react negatively. This leads to failure to cope with the current situation and with future situations that pose similar threats and challenges. On the other hand, if employees can make sense of a threatening, challenging situation, the outcomes are more positive for them as individuals and for the organization as a whole. Weick’s (1988) concept of sensemaking is used as a guiding framework for investigating the experiences, attitudes, and actions reported by employees in times of organizational change and crisis. The general assertion of the thesis is that the espoused and enacted values of an organization provide sensemaking cues to employees in difficult times. More specifically, the role of stated organizational values is examined. Organizational values are often stated as a set of principles that provide guidance for employees, particularly as part of a managing-by-values approach. The context for the research program is the healthcare industry, because values are very important for healthcare employees. Moreover, healthcare organizations must continue to function optimally during challenging conditions. Three research studies are reported. Study 1 was conducted in an Australian public hospital that was undergoing large-scale change. Thirty-five employees from a range of occupations were interviewed midway through the five-year period of change. Thematic analysis of their interviews revealed that employees mostly reported negative experiences of the change program. Furthermore, employees made sense of the change program by focusing on specific cues in their situation. One such cue was the organization’s strongly promoted set of ‘core values’. The stated values were seen to be a visible symbol of the hospital’s principles, but there were negative perceptions about how well these principles were enacted. Study 2 was conducted in a public hospital in Singapore exposed to a crisis situation due to the SARS virus in 2003. Thirty-one employees from a range of occupations were interviewed four months after the outbreak had ended. Twenty of these participants returned for a second interview, one week after the first interview. A card sort procedure and thematic analysis of the interview data were used to investigate employees’ experiences of the crisis. Results revealed that employees made sense of the crisis through identification with their profession and their organization. They also perceived that the hospital’s actions during the crisis were consistent with its written set of organizational values. In addition, employees identified a number of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) that they had shown during the crisis. Study 3 was conducted at three hospitals in Singapore. A pilot study involved 24 employees from a public hospital. They engaged in a focus group discussion about professionalism and they refined a set of hospital-specific employee behaviors that could potentially be classified as OCBs. The main study involved survey completion by a stratified sample of employees from another public hospital (n= 214) and from a private hospital (n=184). All respondents were invited to complete a second survey (measuring related variables) three weeks after the first survey. Analysis of 301 usable survey responses revealed findings that contribute to different literatures. Firstly, asking respondents to rate OCBs according to whether they were voluntary, unrewarded, and beneficial to the organization, revealed that many OCB items used in previous research were not perceived as being ‘true OCBs’ by the survey respondents. Furthermore, despite the use of many possible OCB dimensions, the true OCB items were factor analyzed into just two factors. One factor reflected OCBOs, which are behaviors directed towards the organization as a whole, while the other factor reflected OCBIs, which are behaviors directed towards other individuals. A second contribution is the suggestion that employees’ sense of ‘professionalism’ is a single construct. Survey respondents did not distinguish between professional identification and professional commitment in the same way as organizational identification and commitment were differentiated. Professionalism was weakly related to tendency to engage in OCBOs and more strongly related to tendency to engage in OCBIs. Finally, the main contribution to the values literature is the development of the concept of ‘organizational values integrity’ (OVI). This is conceptualized as the perceived alignment between organizational actions and organizational words, especially those words espoused in values statements. Structural equation modeling revealed that OVI influenced organizational identification and organizational commitment, which both mediated the impact of OVI on OCBOs. Furthermore, OVI had a direct impact on OCBOs. Overall, this thesis highlights employee perceptions that the organization acts in ways that are aligned to its stated values as important influences on employee attitudes and OCBs, particularly in difficult times. Implications for managerial practice and further research are discussed.

In December 2004, at the SoDIS® (Software Development Impact Statements) symposium in Auckland, an industry certification as a method of credentialing teachers and analysis of SoDIS was mooted. SoDIS, a process of ethics-based risk assessment and analysis of downstream risk to project and software stakeholders, including the public, is currently in the process of progressing from prototype to commercial product. Certification was proposed to ensure the integrity of the process and the quality of service to stakeholders.Certification sponsored by industry, commercial organisation, or professional association (collectively referred to as industry certification, or certification) has been a form of credentialing for over half a century. Industry certification was adopted by the IT industry when Novell, Inc. began testing and certifying IT industry and IT network professionals in 1986 (Cosgrove, 2004; Novell, 1996). Global certification testing centres were established in 1990 by Drake International (now Thomson Prometric) (Foster, 2005).During the 1990s, industry certification became a veritable juggernaut: a "multi-billion dollar business" (Cosgrove, 2004, p. 486), an industry that has arisen in its own right (Adelman, 2000) and driven by several dynamics (Hitchcock, 2005). In 2000 there were over 300 discrete IT certifications with approximately 1.6 million individuals holding approximately 2.4 million IT certifications (Aldelman, 2000). The total number of available certifications is impossible to quantify (Knapp & Gallery, 2003). Many academic institutions both at tertiary and secondary level are integrating industry certification, especially IT certification, into their curricula.Is industry certification, however, a pedagogically robust form of credentialing? Does it have value to its stakeholders? Is it an appropriate form of credentialing for the SoDIS process? This research, using both Phenomenography and Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) as a joint methodology, focuses on the experiences of actors with the phenomenon of industry certification and extracts both the essence of the understanding and perceptions of the value and validity of industry certification, and the essence of industry certification itself.Due to the vast amount of literature found describing industry actors' perceptions of and experiences within the phenomenon, the research is predominantly literature-based. Further data was collected from interviews with a small, purposive sample of industry certification holders and employers, with the research further informed by my own experiences within the domain which is the focus of the research. The methodology paradigm is interpretive: the research aims to interpret the social construction that is the phenomenon of industry certification.While this research does not attempt to single out specific industry certifications to determine their value or pedagogical robustness, the findings suggest that, in general, well designed and well administered certifications with integrity and rigour of assessment processes, are indeed pedagogically sound, with significant value. The research identifies both benefit and criticism elements of typical certifications, along with elements of the various certification programmes categorised into standard (typical), and more rigorous (less typical) certification programmes.The research develops and presents a paradigm for building an appropriate vendor specific or vendor neutral certification programme that is pedagogically sound with value for its stakeholders. The contrasts and complementary aspects of industry certification and academic qualifications are highlighted. It is therefore concluded, and supported by data from the interviews, that such a credential is indeed appropriate for teachers and analysts of SoDIS.

The exercise of autonomy and self-regulation is seen in the literature as one of the basic criteria of professionalism. Since in modern states Medicine has generally been the occupational grouping which has most completely attained that status, it is seen as the model or archetype of professionalism. This study focuses on just one aspect of medical autonomy, that relating to the right of medical professionals to be accountable only to their fellow professionals as far as the maintenance of practice standards are concerned. In this thesis, the theory underlying this system of "peer review" is examined and then its application during the course of the 20th century is traced in one particular jurisdiction, that of the State of New South Wales in Australia. The reason for the focus on NSW is that in this jurisdiction, medical autonomy existed and was exercised in a particularly pure and powerful form after it was instituted in 1900. However, it was also in NSW that for the first time anywhere in the world, an institutional challenge to medical disciplinary autonomy emerged with the establishment in 1984 of the "Complaints Unit" of the Department for Health. The thesis of this study is that as a result of this development, which within a comparatively short space of time led to the emergence of a system of "co-regulation" of medical discipline, medical disciplinary autonomy and peer review had within a decade, been so severely challenged as to be almost extinct in this State. In the light of theoretical frameworks provided by Weber, Habermas and the American scholar Robert Alford, the study examines the long drawn out struggle to institute medical autonomy in NSW in the 19th century, its entrenchment by subsequent legislation over the next eight decades and the "counter-attack" staged by the emergent forces of consumerism, supported by the forces of the ideology of "Public Interest Law" in the last two decades of the century. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications for definitions of professionalism which might result from the loss by Medicine in NSW, of its right to exclusive control of medical discipline and the consequent disappearance of medical peer review.

Diss. Linköping : Univ.

Thèse (M. Ed.) -- Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, 2005. / Bibliogr.: f. [88]-96. Document électronique également accessible en format PDF. CaQCU