Municipalities are faced with the major task of providing water services to their local residents. Dissatisfaction regarding water services in South Africa has been manifested in protests staged by communities. However, service delivery is still reflecting a backlog. This study aims to describe the current situation and challenges facing Greater Tubatse Local Municipality and the roles of the major players regarding water services. The study indicated that the residents of Praktiseer have no sustainable potable water. The critical part of this inquiry is to establish whether the local municipality has strategies in place to deal with the identified problems. Access to clean water and sanitation is essential to health. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa mandates the local governments to ensure the provision of water services to their communities in a sustainable manner. This study also defined the roles of the local municipality within the context of the existing legislative framework. / Thesis (M. Development and Management)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

The benefits of customer co-creation of value in the service delivery process have been well established through recent literatures. However, despite the fact that there has been an increase in the awareness of the importance of customer behaviors in the service delivery process, little research has been done to investigate the role of customers and their influence in co-creating the service climate within organizations. This study captures the impact and effects of customer behaviors on the perceptions of employees towards the service climate of their respective restaurant firms.The overall objective of this thesis is to deepen the understanding of the role of customers in co-creating the service climates inside restaurant firms where co-creation of services occurs. For conducting this study, I have used the semi-structured interviews for data collection from six respondents (three customers and three employees) from three different restaurants within the city. Results indicate that customers’ participative and citizenship behaviors such as giving feedbacks, employees’ job appreciation and praise during direct interactions, advocacy through word of mouth, and sharing of knowledge and seeking of information that could benefit the firm influenced employees’ perception of their work climate. The results also showed that employees transfer these positive attitudes to their fellow employees through affective group tone through which the overall working climate within restaurants is improved.I believe that this study will be helpful to future scholars and researchers who wish to conduct further research on this particular topic as the findings from this study have increased the understanding of the role of customers in the co-creation service climates within restaurant organizations. The paper also discusses the theoretical and practical implications of the findings from this research at the end of the paper.

Public health nurses (PHNs) are ideally situated to reduce health inequities and based on documents articulating their role, should be working upstream to promote equity, prevent chronic diseases, and improve population health outcomes. In reality however, numerous barriers contribute to lack of role clarity for PHNs, and this goal has not been attainable in practice. A common vision for PHN practice based on discipline specific competencies and full scope of practice has been identified as a priority by Canadian experts. The intention of this study was to develop a model to support PHN practice in an urban Canadian city. This study used a participatory action research approach, grounded in local experience and context. The action was the development of a professional practice model. Data were gathered using semi-structured interview guides during audio-recorded research working group (RWG) meetings from November 2012 to July 2013. A researcher reflexive journal and field notes were kept. The data were analyzed using qualitative methods. A significant feature was full participant involvement throughout the course of the study. A professional practice model was a key organizational tool that provided the framework to develop an autonomous PHN role and the structures necessary to support PHN practice within the health system. The professional practice model fostered full scope of practice and role clarity, with a focus on population health and equity, so that a consistent and evidence-based practice was attainable. The result was that RWG participants reported a shift in their practice, with greater awareness of theory. Participatory action research was essential in developing the framework and common language, and is a research methodology that should continue to be explored with nurses in Canada.

ABSTRACT DEVELOPING A PEER HELPING PROGRAM AND TESTING ITS EFFECTIVENESS Aladag, Mine Ph. D., Educational Sciences Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Esin Tezer 2005, 290 pages The main purpose of this three-phase study was to develop a peer helping program. The purpose of the first phase was to plan a peer helping program with its goal and content. The purpose of the second phase was to develop a peer helping training program and to investigate its effectiveness on improving the helping skills and self-growth of the peer helpers. The purpose of the third phase was to understand the peer helpers&rsquo / and helpees&rsquo / evaluations of the peer helping program. In the first phase of the study, a need assessment study was carried out with a sample of 316 (168 females, 148 males) students from Faculty of Education of Ege University. Results indicated that students preferred peer helpers among other helping agents / they preferred both non-directive helping styles (empathic responses) and directive helping styles (instrumental responses) / they seemed to believe the helpfulness of the program / they tended to apply to the program / and they wanted the program to concentrate on their career, academic, and interpersonal relationships concerns. In the second phase of the study, in order to investigate the effect of peer helping training program on improving peer helpers&rsquo / helping skills and the self-growth, a pre-test post-test control group experimental design study was carried out with a sample of 31 participants (15 experimental group and 16 control group). The participants were also administered six-month follow-up test. The data were gathered by administering five instruments: Communication Skills Evaluation Scale (CSES), Empathic Skill Scale-B Form (ESS-B), Reflection Skills Evaluation Form (RSEF), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSS) and Self-Acceptance Inventory (SAI). After testing the equivalence of the pre-test scores of CSES, ESS-B, RSS, and SAI of the experimental and the control group participants, a series of 2 (experimental-control groups) X 3 (pre-post-follow up tests) repeated measure of analysis of variance (ANOVA) was employed to the CSES, ESS-B, RSS, and SAI scores of the participants. An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) using pre-test as covariate was employed to the post-test and follow-up test scores of the RSEF of the participants. The results indicated that a peer helping training program was more effective on improving both the empathic and the reflection skills of the experimental group participants as compared to the control group participants. The results also indicated that there was a significant increase in the experimental group participants&rsquo / self-esteem scores from the pre-test to the follow-up test and also a significant increase in the experimental group participants&rsquo / self-acceptance scores from the pretest to the posttest. In the third phase of the research, a study, mainly based on qualitative data, was carried out with 15 peer helpers and 33 volunteered students/peer helpees (17 females, 16 males) who received peer helping services. All peer helpees were administered Peer Helping Service Evaluation Form and 15 peer helpers were also administered Peer Helping Program Evaluation Form. The analysis of the qualitative data indicated that most of the above mentioned areas were positively evaluated by both peer helpers and peer helpees.

No description available.

The automotive domain is changing. On the way to more convenient, safe, and efficient vehicles, the role of electronic controllers and particularly software has increased significantly for many years, and vehicles have become software-intensive systems. Furthermore, vehicles are connected to the Internet to enable Advanced Driver Assistance Systems and enhanced In-Vehicle Infotainment functionalities. This widens the automotive software and system landscape beyond the physical vehicle boundaries to presently include as well external backend servers in the cloud. Moreover, the connectivity facilitates new kinds of distributed functionalities, making the vehicle a part of an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) and thus an important example for a future Internet of Things (IoT). Manufacturers, however, are confronted with the challenging task of integrating these ever-increasing range of functionalities with heterogeneous or even contradictory requirements into a homogenous overall system. This requires new software platforms and architectural approaches. In this regard, the connectivity to fixed side backend systems not only introduces additional challenges, but also enables new approaches for addressing them. The vehicle-to-backend approaches currently emerging are dominated by proprietary solutions, which is in clear contradiction to the requirements of ITS scenarios which call for interoperability within the broad scope of vehicles and manufacturers. Therefore, this research aims at the development and propagation of a new concept of a universal distributed Automotive Service Delivery Platform (ASDP), as enabler for future automotive functionalities, not limited to ITS applications. Since Machine-to-Machine communication (M2M) is considered as a primary building block for the IoT, emergent standards such as the oneM2M service platform are selected as the initial architectural hypothesis for the realisation of an ASDP. Accordingly, this project describes a oneM2M-based ASDP as a reference configuration of the oneM2M service platform for automotive environments. In the research, the general applicability of the oneM2M service platform for the proposed ASDP is shown. However, the research also identifies shortcomings of the current oneM2M platform with respect to the capabilities needed for efficient communication and data exchange policies. It is pointed out that, for example, distributed traffic efficiency or vehicle maintenance functionalities are not efficiently treated by the standard. This may also have negative privacy impacts. Following this analysis, this research proposes novel enhancements to the oneM2M service platform, such as application-data-dependent criteria for data exchange and policy aggregation. The feasibility and advancements of the newly proposed approach are evaluated by means of proof-of-concept implementation and experiments with selected automotive scenarios. The results show the benefits of the proposed enhancements for a oneM2M-based ASDP, without neglecting to indicate their advantages for other domains of the oneM2M landscape where they could be applied as well.

Magister Administrationis - Madmin / The Batho Pele principles can be seen as a tool to help transform the South African public sector by making it more responsive to the needs of its citizens. The White Paper on the Transformation of the Public Service strives to enhance service delivery to all South Africans (Taylor,2007).The role of the Batho Pele principles is to improve service delivery within the public sector and to assist with the transformation of a public sector that is more effective and people centred. However, if these principles are ignored, it will lead to a public sector that only caters to the needs of the middle class and higher-income groups, thus leaving the lowerincome citizens with a substandard of service delivery. Batho Pele means to put the people first; however, that can only take place if these principles are implemented correctly and continuously and their successes and challenges monitored and addressed (RSA, 1997b). If the people are not valued, it will lead to a scenario where citizens lose trust in government. This in turn, could lead to a decrease in active public participation. By not engaging and consulting with the people, government will not adhere to the very first of the Batho Pele principles. Service delivery to all citizens and a responsive public sector are yet to be achieved (Taylor, 2007. Matas argues that the South African public sector lacks effectiveness and efficiency and as a result of this, unequal service delivery is experienced by millions of South Africans (Matas, 1994. The main research objective of this study is to examine the implementation process of the Batho Pele principles through the case of the Western Cape Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) and how it influences its interactions with relevant clients/citizens. The reason why this department was selected was due to the fact that this department within the Western Cape was solely responsible for assisting wine farm owners across the country with the necessary submissions of wine samples and scientific laboratory reports. This process facilitates the testing, approval and marketing of the wines produced.

South Africa started the Women’s Budget Initiative in 1995 as part of its commitment to meeting its gender equality objectives and gender mainstreaming. However, in later years, research has found that government Gender Responsive Budgeting or GRB initiatives in South Africa are either dormant or dead. There is a range of reasons for this and some of them are not directly related to gender budgets or even gender. Research has shown that perhaps the greatest weakness is the lack of advocacy. From the review of existing literature, it is clear that there is a need for strong alliances between key stakeholders, which are Parliament, non-governmental organisations, academics, United Nations and the media to sustain the momentum of the gender budget process. Capacity building and training are also important for budget officers, civil society, national and local parliamentarians, given the low level of skilled financial personnel in municipalities. The availability of adequate sex-disaggregated data is an important success factor for municipalities so that they can deliver services equitably to their communities. This research is exploratory in nature and focuses on assessing GRB in one of South Africa’s largest urban municipalities. It also reviewed the 2012/13 Integrated Development Plan through a focus on health, housing infrastructure, safety and security and education. These are some of the wellknown variables to ease the plight of the poor and are good quality of life indicators for men, women, boys and girls. The research method that has been used in this research is both qualitative and quantitative. This study has found that there is no clear co-coordinated plan for the implementation of GRB in this metropolitan municipality. The lack of resources is also seen as the main challenge to GRB in this metropolitan municipality. / Public Administration / M.P.A.

The aim of the dissertation is to indicate that a large number of problems in rural communities are the consequence of ineffective knowledge management, and that the effective management of knowledge could significantly improve the range and quality of services provided to community members. Knowledge is reviewed by examining the process of changing social facts into data, data into information and information into knowledge. Knowledge management is examined by reviewing the history of knowledge management as well as defining the term knowledge management. A generic model for knowledge management is developed that divides knowledge management into five basic processes namely; knowledge identification, knowledge mobilisation, knowledge generation/elaboration, knowledge application and knowledge evaluation. The model further describes the knowledge management ”enablers” that can either facilitate or debilitate the management of knowledge. Various practical suggestions are proposed that will facilitate the implementation of a knowledge management programme in a rural community. / Psychology / MA (PSYCHOLOGY)

This study sought to measure the perceptions of the community on the prevalence of police corruption and its impact on service delivery in the Pretoria Central area. Using a literature review and 25 in-depth unstructured interviews, the study found that the majority of community members regard most police officials as corrupt. A lack of understanding on the part of the police of the negative impact that actual or perceived police corruption has on sound police-community relations was evident. Recruitment without proper vetting of the workforce emerged as one of the causal factors for corruption. The study provides several recommendations for the enhancement of the South African Police Service‟s systems to militate against incidents of corruption and its impact on police service delivery. / Police Practice / M. Tech. (Policing)