This is a conceptual dissertation which addresses itself to the criticism that the social systems framework is highly abstract and theoretical, and as such relevant only to academics and specialists. The primary purpose of this paper is to operationalise the social system framework, to illustrate its application and to highlight its unique potential. It represents an attempt to enlarge, even redefine, the frameworks used for studying and transforming organisations. In order to best highlight the differences between the social systems framework and other models implicit in traditional approaches, a specific component of organisation reality is focused on, namely the performance appraisal. After discussing and illustrating the models behind most research on the topic, an alternative holistic framework for performance appraisal is sketched. Following this, an actual performance improvement intervention is described in a case study. This provides a practical illustration of the points made in the paper. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M. Com. (Industrial Psychology)

The objective of the study was to examine the effect of cognitive moral development on ethical attitudes, in the presence of reward consequences, under conditions of moral ambiguity. The study is based on business stakeholders under conditions of strategic business competition. The intention of the study is to explore and understand the predictors of ethical behaviour. The participants of the experimental study were 2012/13 GIBS MBA business students with real managerial experience. They were randomly assigned to different stakeholder roles in a controlled business simulation game called the Execugame, with varying treatments of reward consequences and a strategic competitor bluff. The study sought to determine whether Reward Consequences (RC) will be a stronger predictor of Attitude towards the Ethicality of Competitor Bluffing (ATECB) amongst Stakeholder Role Players (SRPs) than their Level Cognitive Moral Development as a predictor of Attitude towards the Ethicality of Competitor Bluffing (ATECB). Overall the results didn’t find evidence to support the research hypotheses. Hence the research failed to prove a relationship and did not find evidence to support a relationship. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / lmgibs2014 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

This research study was completed to determine whether a relationship exists between executive and senior manager personality styles and the tendency to apply hyperbolic discounting in their strategic decision making. Experiments were designed to test for hyperbolic discounting when comparing monetary value over time periods, as well as real-life scenarios. An online questionnaire was disseminated to executive and senior management respondents who formed the sample population from the FMCG industry that purported a monetary value experiment, which was based on a previous study done by Chark, Chew, and Zhong (2012), followed by four scenarios with high levels risk and uncertainty. The MBTI scores and organisational level (executives and senior managers) were supplied by the respondents and this was used to compare the MBTI Intuition and Judging personality styles with the respondents answers as per the questionnaires. The results revealed that when using monetary value comparisons over time the respondents were prone to apply hyperbolic discounting. However, when the scenario questions were analysed there was a diminishing behaviour in the tendency to apply hyperbolic discounting. There was also no significant relationship between the use of MBTI Intuition or Judging between the two organisational levels in strategic decision making. No significance was found in the MBTI personality style and hyperbolic discounting. Recommendations were made based on the results and what impact it could have for business as well as suggestions on further research. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / pagibs2014 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Psychology / Patrick A. Knight / Corporations spend tens of millions of dollars each year to conduct organizational surveys and report the results. It is imperative that survey results provide clear, actionable results to organizational leaders for an employee survey program to be effective. To the extent that survey results are impacted by response style biases, organizations cannot be certain their actions address real issues. The following research examines the impact of managers' national culture on the response styles of their employees. Power distance is a construct that reflects how different cultures address inequality. In this study, power distance scores for managers are hypothesized to be predictive of employee response style behavior such that power distance is positively associated with greater extreme responding and lower acquiescence. Additionally, individualism/collectivism scores for managers are hypothesized to be predictive of employee response style behavior such that individualism is positively associated with greater extreme responding and negatively associated with acquiescence. Overall, results did not support the key hypotheses of the study. While employees from high power distance countries did display higher levels of extreme responding than employees from low power distance countries (Hypothesis 1), none of the other three hypotheses were supported. Despite this lack of significant results, this single result supports Johnson, et al.'s (2005) results from a sample of over eighteen-thousand employees in nineteen countries suggesting it is a consistent, real difference between high and low power distance countries. There were several limitations to be considered in evaluating this research. First, the study was based on archival data limiting the flexibility of the design and analysis. Another key limitation that should be addressed in future research is the use of abstracted cultural trait scores. Despite the lack of significant results and the limitations of this study, the fact remains that differences in response behaviors do exist across different cultures and geographic locations. Further research is needed to more clearly understand the influence that geographic culture, organizational culture and individual level demographics may have on employee response styles to help facilitate how organizations understand survey results.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Psychology / Clive J. A. Fullagar / Research on occupational well-being, commonly conceptualized as job satisfaction or the opposite of burnout, is criticized for its lack of theoretical basis. Danna and Griffin (1999) point out the need to refine this construct as well as develop measures to assess well-being in the workplace. This study proposed a scale of occupational well-being based on the work of Ryff (1989). Ryff's (1989) model of psychological well-being was designed to address similar concerns plaguing research on general well-being. The scales derived from Ryff's (1989) research are theoretically based on a variety of converging theories of optimal well-being that had previously been ignored. Unfortunately, the support for the psychometric properties of the psychological well-being scale is mixed. Researchers have either been able to produce longer, more reliable scales with a poor factor structure or shorter, less reliable scales with strong factorial validity. The results of this study are consistent with general research on well-being. Of the multiple first order models (with six independent factors) produced, the only acceptable fit was from a scale with 4 item sub-scales. Though acceptable by some, the reliability of these subscales was not as strong as it was for longer versions. The fit of the first order model was then compared to that of a second order model (where the 6 dimensions loaded onto occupational well-being). While both models had an acceptable fit to the data, preference was given to the second order model. While they had similar REMSA values, the PGFI was higher for the second order model; researchers have suggested that PGFI be used to help interpret the REMSA value. In addition, the second order model was cross validated, producing results similar to the original findings. This model was then used to assess the relationship between occupational well-being and the context of work; previously, this has been ignored. Partial support was found for a mediated relationship between psychological climate and occupational well-being. Composite psychological climate scores influenced job satisfaction; this in turn, affected occupational wellbeing. The limitations, contributions, and meaning of the study are then discussed.

In this multiple-case study of 6 mid-level leaders working in biotech R&D--an archetype of a complex, uncertain, turbulent, and, multidisciplinary 21st-Century workplace--I explore the importance and interaction of mental complexity (MC), an aspect of adult development, and emotional intelligence (EI) for leadership effectiveness (LE). MC concerns the sophistication of the mindsets we use to construct stories for ourselves about the meaning of things. EI refers to one’s ability to manage one’s own emotions, appraise those of others, and engage emotional matters intelligently. I investigate how MC and EI contribute, separately or together, to LE. To select 6 case-study subjects I administered two psychometric tests: MSCEIT (an EI test) and LDMA (a test of MC) to 11 R&D leaders working at the same biotech company. I selected 2 contrasting groups: 2 people who scored high on MC and moderate on EI and 4 people who scored moderately high on MC and moderate on EI. I then conducted semi-structured 360-degree interviews with case-subjects, 2 of their superiors, and 2 of their subordinates. Interview data analysis included scoring a measure of LE created for this research. Interviewee responses suggested that MC and EI tend to work jointly to enhance LE and that insufficiency of MC and EI are associated with one or more of 7 fault lines of leadership, patterns of behavior that diminish LE. I call these 7 LE-diminishing behavioral patterns 7 Leadership Blind Spots. Each subject exhibited at least one LE blind spot, with significant variability between domains (technical, interpersonal, and organizational), context (team, cross-functional team, and organization), and situation. Using the acronym BLINDSPOT as a mnemonic device, the patterns of behavior in which LE tends to be diminished are: Being too Forceful, Lacking Visibility, Insecure Authority, Need to be Political, Distance and Decenter, Stop Enabling, and Problems On Teams. These results are hypotheses to be explored in future research. Leadership education implications include interventions to help leaders become aware of and begin to address their own blind spots as well as interventions to help leaders improve their MC and EI abilities. / Culture, Communities, and Education

Over 100 years of research have shown that social loafing is a real and material psychological phenomenon that reduces performance among humans in groups. It is known that increasing evaluation potential, decreasing deindividuation, and cohesion all lead to reduced social loafing in physical environments. What has not yet been well researched is whether or not the findings associated with many of these variables also apply to virtualized working environments. In the present study, 200 individuals were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (an online work community) and were split into experimental and control groups. While both sets of participants engaged in identical alphabetization tasks and were informed that they were the final member of a five-person team, only the experimental subjects were asked to read the short biographies of their teammates and write a short biography of themselves for their teammates to read. By having experimental participants engage in self-disclosure it was expected they would experience reduced deindividuation (which is common with virtual teams), increased perceived evaluation potential, and increased feelings of cohesion. Differences in quantity and quality of performance, and differences in morale (although not cohesion itself), were all in the expected direction, though none achieved levels of statistical significance driven largely by material performance variances within the datasets. Experimental subjects produced, on average, 1.9% additional correct alphabetization groupings (averaging 16.64 of 50 among experimental participants and 16.33 of 50 among control participants) compared to control subjects who were only aware they were a member of a team (F(1, 164) = .04, p >.05). Furthermore, in addition to attempting to alphabetize more groups, the experimental subjects’ answers were, on average, 0.38% more likely to be alphabetized correctly (F (1, 164) = .03, p > .05). The Perceived Cohesion Scale (PCS) (Bollen & Hoyle, 1990) was included in 160 of the participants’ tasks and experimental subjects scored 2.3% higher (F(1, 122) = .209, p > .05) in feelings of “being enthusiastic about working online”, 3.0% higher (F(1, 122) = .49, p > .05) on being “happy to be working on Amazon Mechanical Turk”, 1.4% higher (F(1, 122) = .04, p > .05) on believing that Amazon Mechanical Turk was “one of the best working communities in the world”, and 2.3% higher (F(1, 122) = .22, p > .05) on the entire category of “Feelings of Morale”. As an example of the level of variance within the data, the standard deviation (SD) for number of groupings that the experimental participants attempted to alphabetize (out of 50) was 11.57 on an average of 19.84 attempts. For control participants the standard deviation (SD) for number of attempted groupings (out of 50) was 11.31 out of 19.39 average completed attempts. The sample size required to achieve statistical significance at those levels of SD paired with the level of differences in sample mean performance would measure in the thousands. Furthermore, while some heteroskedasticity was discovered among pilot PCS-statement category data while testing for homogeneity (and were subsequently analyzed using additional robust Welch and Forsythe equality of means testing), the performance data overall passed Levene’s test. Once the heteroskedastic pilot data was tested to accommodate for the heteroskedasticity within, one PCS statement category (HTB, where experimental participants expressed a happiness to be working on AMT) approached the .05 alpha of statistical significance (p = .08). Despite the lack of statistical significance, this work should be considered valuable as a reference point. Finding any difference at all, in the expected direction, is within itself notable given how tiny the actual cohesion-inducing treatment was (i.e., a self-statement of only a few lines) and how short-term the perceived association with their teammates was (i.e., less than half an hour).

The aim of this study was to determine whether a relationship exists between organisational commitment (OC) and employer branding (EB). The purpose was to Identifying whether employer branding effects organisational commitment (affective, normative and continuance commitment) and how significant that effect may be. Questionnaires were personally distributed by the researcher directly to employees under study. Non-probability sampling was used in the form of judgement sampling. The sample consisted of 124 employees from various retail outlets throughout Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape. Five hypotheses were set for evaluation. A practically significant relationship was established between organisational commitment (OC) and employer branding (EB). A small practically significant relationship was found between gender and normative commitment. A medium practically significant relationship was found between gender and training and development as well as between gender and work/life balance. Statistically significant relationships were discovered with regards to age and leadership and also between age and rewards and recognition. A statistically significant difference was established between age and overall employer branding (EB). These findings suggest that a more positive employer brand will lead to improved organisational commitment (OC). More so, retail organisations aiming to improve on organisational commitment should incorporate those employer branding (EB) factors which employees’ place greater emphasis on, within their employer brand, which in turn will lead to greater organisational commitment.

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of Human Resource Management (HRM) practices on the psychological contracts of employees who have been negatively impacted by the widespread psychological recession. The psychological contract that exists between employees and organisations is brittle due to the psychological recession, which is defined as an emotional state in which employees feel extremely vulnerable to economic hardship. This contributes to a negative and cynical view of the present and an even bleaker view of the future. Breach of the psychological contract has severe negative consequences for employees and organisations. These include reduced employee well-being, trust levels, various organisational citizenship behaviours, increased cynical attitudes toward the organisation, and stronger intention to quit. The target population for the present study consisted of all permanent support staff working at an organisation that has recently went through a large-scale retrenchment exercise (n=52). A self-administered questionnaire was distributed amongst employees. The findings suggest that when the harsh effects of the psychological recession increase, employees are more likely to engage in various destructive behaviours at work due to breach and violation of their psychological contracts. Furthermore, the results indicated that an increase in the number of progressive HRM practices correlated with a decrease in breach and violation of the psychological contract. It was further revealed that the widespread psychological recession may make the employment relationship brittle and prone to breach and violation. The findings suggest that through the effective development and application of many explicit HRM practices, employees’ psychological contracts may become less fragile to breach and violation during a psychological recession.

Abstract not available.