<p> Over the last three decades, collaboration has come to the fore as a way to address natural resource management problems that are often complex and contentious. As such, a new way of doing business has emerged for the United State Forest Service (USFS) as it engages community members in collaborative governance arrangements created to address forest management issues. USFS field-level personnel and the community stakeholders involved in collaborative governance arrangements expend valuable and limited resources to obtain collaborative outcomes. Field observations suggest that in order for collaborative outcomes to be durable and maintain longevity, changes must occur at the organizational level. However, few existing studies that document organizational changes made by natural resource land management agencies as a result of the agency&rsquo;s engagement in collaborative governance arrangements with community stakeholders. This dissertation provides theoretical and practical insights into the organizational changes occurring at three USFS field offices.</p><p> This exploratory, qualitative study employs a case study approach and semi-structured interviews were conducted with agency personnel and non-agency stakeholders. Document analysis of meeting minutes and personal observation data were also conducted. The data yielded the richest results when interpreted through three overarching theoretical lenses: organizational change, public administration, and collaborative governance. The results revealed that organizational changes are occurring at the field-level as a result of the actions of individual actors as they cross organizational boundaries. The outcomes of these changes can be beneficial to the agency, but a cautionary tale is presented suggesting that collaborative processes may impede, if not derailed, by power imbalances. The role of trust, or more accurately, the lack thereof, and its ability to change organizational boundaries and create power imbalances in the shared decision-making arena emerged as finding of importance to land managers and collaborative governance theory.</p><p> This dissertation advances the scholarly and practical knowledge of organizational change by presenting empirical evidence of the impact of community collaboration on federal natural resource agencies. It is necessary for the leadership of the USFS to understand their role in the collaborative process and to understand how and why these changes are taking place if they are to be sensitive to the added pressures and tensions that collaboration brings to their individual staff members. Managers in the USFS will need to be cognizant of the attributes of trust and should encourage their staff to build trust with stakeholders if they wish to maintain equitable power positions in the shared decision-making process. Future research that provides evidence of the linkage between organizational change, trust, and power would be useful in further understanding how the collaborative process and the collaborative behavior of individuals in natural resource management links to the outcomes of collaboration. </p>

<p> Tallgrass prairie once extended from Manitoba south to Texas and southeast to Indiana covering 100 million hectares prior to European settlement. Today less than 0.1% remains in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Tallgrass prairie is a diverse ecosystem with small remnants (1&ndash;2 ha) containing a large number of plant species (> 100). With most of the ecosystem lost, active efforts to replant tallgrass prairie began in the 1930s. Unfortunately, even the oldest restorations do not have plant communities similar to native prairies. My research attempts to understand the factors limiting successful restoration of native plant diversity by focusing on intensive surveys of three native and two restored prairies in Iowa. In each prairie, I sampled seven 0.5 m² plots using a frame with 49 grid points 10 cm apart and resurveyed these plots across successive years. I also collected soil cores and biomass and litter measurements in each plot. I analyzed plant community composition with a nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination and fine-scale community structure with point richness and similarity metrics. Native prairies differed from restorations in plant community composition and had higher total carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous, while restorations had higher plant available phosphorous. Native prairies also had higher richness from plot to point scales and lower similarity of neighboring plants at distances of centimeters. Restorations differ from native prairies at coarse and fine scales, and there was no indication that these restorations became more similar to native prairies over time. My work is the first to document fine-scale structure of plant diversity in native and restored prairies. By identifying that contemporary restoration practices do not result in plant communities that develop toward native prairies in composition, my work highlights our current limited understanding of the elements structuring plant communities and our ability to recreate this structure.</p><p>

The thesis examines the evolution of the approach to staff management in colleges of further education, and the implications of current pressures upon them for the further development of this management function. It recognizes that the traditional approach to the management of staff is based upon the presumption that staff have only to be recruited and selected to ensure that effective management occurs. This approach underplays the importance of personnel management in a labour intensive industry. It seeks to establish the likely directions of future development of the staff management function in F.E. colleges, in the context of governmental and market-induced pressures upon them. It uses the models of personnel management and human resource management, as developed in the literature (itself based largely on experience in industro-commercial organisations), to guide this part of the analysis, taking into account the similarities and differences in the nature of the the two types of organisation. The thesis concludes that colleges are likely to find it increasingly imperative to develop more deliberate personnel policies and practices and to integrate them more closely with objectives and strategies. To this extent, and in this context, the model of strategic human resource management is considered to offer more guidance to F.E. college managements on how they might proceed in the emergent environment.

Thesis (DTech (Human Resources Management))--Cape Technikon, Cape Town, 2001 / The Job Characteristics Model is widely accepted as a conceptual tool for addressing problems related to employee demotivation, dissatisfaction and marginal performance. The validity of the Job Characteristics Model (Hackman & Oldham, 1980) was assessed by reviewing relevant studies of the model. The review and evaluation are based on studies testing the variables and the relationships between the variables as contained in the model. The reviewed evidence confirmed that the dimensionality of the job characteristics is best represented by the five-factor solution as proposed by the model. The subjective self-report measures of the five job characteristics as formulated by the theory and measured by the revised Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) were also supported. No evidence was found for the multiplicative Motivating Potential Score (MPS), and as a result the use of a simple additive index of job complexity is recommended as the predictor of personal and work outcomes. Strong empirical support emerged for the relationships between the job characteristics and the personal outcomes. Much weaker relationships between the job characteristics and the work outcomes, however, materialized. Results failed to support the mediating effect of psychological states on the job characteristics/outcomes relationships as specified by the model. The postulated relationships between job characteristics and psychological states were also not confirmed by empirical evidence. The role of growth-need strength, knowledge and skill, and work environment characteristics, as moderators of the relationships between job characteristics and psychological states, as well as of the relationships between psychological states and personal and work outcomes, was seriously questioned.

<p> Land managers and researchers are currently concerned with expanding populations of invasive species across North America. Invasive species are non-native species, introduced intentionally or unintentionally to an environment, which have the potential to cause economic or ecological damage through modifications of biodiversity and structure of the resident community that it invades. While a great deal of attention has been given to the negative effects of non-natives, research regarding the community-level effects in native Illinois natural areas is limited at best. We address the issue of invasive species at the plant community level by assessing the impact that Eurasian native <i> Alliaria petiolata</i> (M. Bieb) Cavara and Grande (Brassicaceae) has on pine plantation understory communities at Sand Ridge State Forest (Mason County, IL). <i>Alliaria petiolata</i> is a biennial species possessing a multitude of characteristics that promote its success as an invasive plant across much of the United States. To properly evaluate the community-level response of Sand Ridge State Forest to invasion by garlic mustard, we experimentally invaded 72 plots with <i>A. petiolata</i> seeds or rosette transplants and subjected plots to different mineral nutrient amendments and management techniques. <i>Alliaria petiolata</i> population density was monitored over a 5-year period to evaluate the susceptibility of Sand Ridge State Forest to invasion, and a vegetative census was conducted to assess the effects of <i>A. petiolata</i> invasions on native understory plant communities using species richness (S), equitability (J), and the Shannon diversity index (H&rsquo;) as indicators. We present evidence that <i>A. petiolata</i> densities significantly increased over time, and that altering nutrient availability or management practices do not differentially affect the success of invasive <i>A. petiolata</i> at Sand Ridge State Forest. Additionally, we found that <i>A. petiolata </i> invasions do result in reduced diversity in this system, however nitrogen availability and management practices can modulate diversity losses. </p><p>

<p> Over the past century in the western United States, warming has produced larger and more severe wildfires than previously recorded. General circulation models and their ensembles project continued increases in temperature and the proportion of precipitation falling as rain. Warmer and wetter conditions may change forest successional trajectories by modifying rates of vegetation establishment, competition, growth, reproduction, and mortality. Many questions remain regarding how these changes will occur across landscapes and how disturbances, such as wildfire, may interact with changes to climate and vegetation. Forest management is used to proactively modify forest structure and composition to improve fire resilience. Yet, research is needed to assess how to best utilize mechanical fuel reduction and prescribed fire at the landscape scale. Human communities also exist within these landscapes, and decisions regarding how to manage forests must carefully consider how management will affect such communities. </p><p> In this work, I analyzed three aspects of forest management at large spatiotemporal scales: (1) climate effects on forest composition and wildfire activity; (2) efficacy of fuel management strategies toward reducing wildfire spread and severity; and, (3) local resident perspectives on forest management. Using a forest landscape model, simulations of forest dynamics were used to investigate relationships among climate, wildfire, and topography with long-term changes in biomass for a fire-prone dry-conifer landscape in eastern Oregon, United States. I compared the effectiveness of fuel treatment strategies for reducing wildfire under both contemporary and extreme weather. Fuel treatment scenarios included &ldquo;business as usual&rdquo; and strategies that increased the area treated with harvest and prescribed fire, and all strategies were compared by distributing them across the landscape and by concentrating them in areas at the greatest risk for high-severity wildfire. To investigate local community preferences for forest management, I used focus groups, interviews, and questionnaires. Through open-ended questions and a public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) mapping exercise, local residents expressed their views on fuels reduction treatments by commercial and non-commercial harvest and prescribed fire. Emergent themes were used to inform alternative management scenarios to explore the usefulness of using PPGIS to generate modeling inputs. Scenarios ranged from restoration-only treatments to short-rotation commercial harvest. </p><p> Under climate change, wildfire was more frequent, more expansive, and more severe, and ponderosa pine expanded its range into existing shrublands and high-elevation zones. There was a near-complete loss of native high-elevation tree species, such as Engelmann spruce and whitebark pine. Loss of these species were most strongly linked to burn frequency; this effect was greatest at high elevations and on steep slopes. </p><p> Fuel reduction was effective at reducing wildfire spread and severity compared to unmanaged landscapes. Spatially optimizing mechanical removal of trees in areas at risk for high-severity wildfire was equally effective as distributing tree removal across the landscape. Tripling the annual area of prescribed burns was needed to affect landscape-level wildfire spread and severity, and distributing prescribed burns across the study area was more effective than concentrating fires in high-risk areas. </p><p> Focus group participants generally approved of all types of forest management and agreed that all areas should be managed with the &ldquo;appropriate&rdquo; type of treatment for each forest stand, and that decisions about management should be made by &ldquo;experts.&rdquo; However, there was disagreement related to who the &ldquo;experts&rdquo; are and how much public input should be included in the decision making process. Degree of trust in land management agencies contributed to polarized views about who the primary decision makers and what the focus of management should be. While most participants agreed that prescribed fire was a useful tool for preventing wildfire spread and severity, many expressed reservations about its use. </p><p> I conclude that forest management can be used to reduce wildfire activity in dry-mixed conifer forests and that spatially optimizing mechanical treatments in high-risk areas can be a useful tool for reducing the cost and ecological impact associated with harvest operations. While reducing the severity and spread of wildfire may slow some long-term species shifts, high sub-alpine tree mortality occurred under all climate and fuel treatment scenarios. Thus, while forest management may prolong the existence of sub-alpine forests, shifts in temperature, precipitation, and wildfire may overtake management within this century. The use of PPGIS was useful for delineating the range of forest management preferences within the local community, for identifying areas of agreement among residents who have otherwise polarized views, and for generating modeling inputs that reflect views that may not be obtained through extant official channels for public participation. Because the local community has concerns about the use of prescribed fire, more education and outreach is needed. This may increase public acceptance of the amounts of prescribed fire needed to modify wildfire trajectories under future climate conditions.</p><p>

This research explores the link between human resource development (HRD) interventions and leadership competencies in retail supermarkets in Nigeria and the UK, in order to understand better how Nigerian supermarkets can improve their leadership competencies by adopting the appropriate HRD interventions learnt from their UK counterparts. The retail supermarket literature in Africa recognises the inability of indigenous retail supermarkets in the continent to outcompete some foreign entrants in their own local market. The thesis, therefore, starts by reviewing the challenges facing these indigenous retail supermarkets in Nigeria, including the specific competencies they may be lacking in comparison with their foreign rivals. With this established in chapter one, the literature review chapters then explore issues of competency creation, including the theories of learning and HRD, since competency is learnt, and the HRD construct is in the forefront of learning in the organisation. The methodology adopted was a constructivist ontological stance coupled with an interpretivist epistemology. 40 qualitative interviews were conducted and the data analysis method adopted was a thematic analysis, particularly the deductive-inductive strategy, while the method of data reduction was via categorisation, unitisation, and detecting a relationship between the empirical and secondary data collected. A set of core competencies were identified, and of these the key difference in the responses (gathered from the two countries) was ‘reflective action taking’, and which was a major competence identified in the responses from the UK supermarkets, especially, Tesco. The thesis, therefore, matched the Tesco options programme (which is a leadership development programme in Tesco) with David Kolb’s experiential learning theory (ELT), and, both correspond neatly well. The thesis, thus, recommends that the ELT should form a fundamental part of our curriculum design, pedagogy and delivery of HRD related modules in schools, but also should be adopted in leadership development programmes, especially, in developing countries. However, by building on the current debate on the link between HRD, leadership competencies and organisational transformation, this study helps to address the lack of empirical data on HRD in retail supermarkets in developing countries, and suggests ways of improving the competencies of retail supermarket leaders in Nigerian.

<p> Natural mortality, <i>M</i>, has historically been a difficult parameter to estimate in conjunction with other stock assessment parameters. Time-varying <i>M</i>, while likely to be experienced by a population, is a particularly difficult process to estimate with the data and methods currently available to most stock assessments. Although auxiliary information in the form of a covariate to <i>M</i> has been shown to improve model fit for some stocks, such data are rarely available. Meanwhile, hierarchical models continue to be utilized in capturing processes that vary in time and space. I tested both the covariate and hierarchical methods in their ability to estimate time-varying <i>M</i>. I attempted to fit hierarchical models by two different methods: penalized likelihood and the integrated likelihood approach associated with mixed effects models. Mixed effects models performed poorly in comparison to penalized likelihood. Including a covariate to natural mortality aided the estimability of time-varying <i>M</i>, regardless of the observation error associated with the covariate. Estimating a constant value of <i>M</i> resulted in biased estimates when <i>M</i> was time-varying in the simulated population. I showed that the Akaike information criterion (AIC) is a useful metric for comparing models although it does not necessarily align with the accuracy of estimates that are of most interest to managers, such as terminal year spawning stock biomass. In addition to showing empirically that incorporating a covariate is a robust approach to estimating time-varying <i>M</i>, I conclude that this approach is also advantageous to stock assessment on theoretical grounds, as it is more amenable than hierarchical models to making predictions.</p><p>

This research paper undertakes to outline factors of Information Management that organisations should consider when attempting a restructuring process. Conversely, valuable information and knowledge are often mislaid, overlooked or discarded to the eventual detriment of an organisation during the processes of downsizing, rightsizing, restructuring, reorganisation, reengineering, transformation or change. In the global economy organisations are always striving to keep ahead of competition and ultimately to improve their net profit. Information is at the very core of any organisation, its ads value, structure and power to an organisation. Information Management assists with the locating, storing and use of corporate information. A means of controlling and structuring corporate information is via the use of the Information Management elements. A case study using an organisation that is in the process of change and transformation was performed. Potential loss of knowledge and information was identified and examined. The organisation’s implementation of an information portal was highlighted as an effective way to minimise the loss of knowledge and information during the period of change. / Professor A.S.A. du Toit

Magister Commercii - MCom / The purpose of this study is to investigate and review literature that examines whether job satisfaction and procedural justice have a positive relationshipwith employees organisational citizenship behaviour in a brick manufacturing industry. / South Africa