Teams have become the strategy of choice when the volume of work or task complexity exceeds the capacity of an individual. Therefore the ability for individuals to work in teams is vital in the modern workplace. Consequently a critical lever in facilitating performance of teams is the selection process used to set up teams or bring on board new team members. Teamwork and employee selection have been separately researched. No studies have examined why selection processes have not adapted to include a more formal approach to selection for teams. The information obtained from the literature served as the basis for construction of an a priori model for this study. This model shows the general approach used when selecting individuals through assessing alignment of skills and values, and it was used as a discussion framework during twenty expert interviews. The evaluation of the primary data allowed for validation and extension, for the creation of a more robust a posteriori model. The strategies and practices highlighted by this evaluation have been integrated into a model which can be used for assessing whether organisation specific selection processes are adequate for constructing teams that assist in building competitive advantage. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Exposure to certain bloodborne pathogens can prematurely end a person’s life. Healthcare workers (HCWs), especially those who are members of surgical teams, are at increased risk of exposure to these pathogens. The proper use of personal protective equipment (PPE) during operative/invasive procedures reduces that risk. Despite this, some HCWs fail to consistently use PPE as required by federal regulation, accrediting agencies, hospital policy, and professional association standards. The purpose of this mixed methods survey study was to (a) examine factors surgical team members perceive influence choices of wearing or not wearing PPE during operative/invasive procedures and (b) determine what would influence consistent use of PPE by surgical team members. Using an ex post facto, non-experimental design, the memberships of five professional associations whose members comprise surgical teams were invited to complete a mixed methods survey study. The primary research question for the study was: What differences (perceptual and demographic) exist between surgical team members that influence their choices of wearing or not wearing PPE during operative/invasive procedures? Four principal differences were found between surgical team members. Functional (i.e., profession or role based) differences exist between the groups. Age and experience (i.e., time in profession) differences exist among members of the groups. Finally, being a nurse anesthetist influences the use of risk assessment to determine the level of PPE to use. Four common themes emerged across all groups informing the two study purposes. Those themes were: availability, education, leadership, and performance. Subsidiary research questions examined the influence of previous accidental exposure to blood or body fluids, federal regulations, hospital policy and procedure, leaders’ attitudes, and patients’ needs on the use of PPE. Each of these was found to strongly influence surgical team members and their use of PPE during operative/invasive procedures. Implications based on the findings affect organizational policy, purchasing and distribution decisions, curriculum design and instruction, leader behavior, and finally partnership with PPE manufacturers. Surgical team members must balance their innate need to care for patients with their need to protect themselves. Results of this study will help team members, leaders, and educators achieve this balance.

The World Health Organization (WHO) states that no region in the world is justified in having a caesarean section rate greater than 10-15 percent, calculated as the number of caesarean deliveries over the total number of live births. There is however, an international increase in the rate of caesarean section deliveries and this is a concern to midwives. The increase is evident in South Africa as well. Currently the rate of caesarean section deliveries in the private sector can be as high as 70 percent per total number of live births per year. As a result, the public often perceives giving birth surgically in South Africa as ‘normal’ and ‘safer’ than vaginal delivery, even for low-risk pregnancies. The lack of involvement of midwives in the care of pregnant women in the private sector is indicated as one of the reasons related to the high caesarean section delivery rates. This motivated the researcher to undertake a study to explore and describe the perceptions of private sector midwives and obstetricians regarding the feasibility of collaboration in maternity care. A literature review to support the study identified research done previously regarding collaborative maternity care. The study followed a qualitative, exploratory, descriptive, contextual design. The research population included midwives and obstetricians in the private sector in the Eastern Cape. Non-probability, purposive sampling was used. The researcher conducted semi-structured one-to-one interviews to collect information rich data. The researcher ensured that the study was conducted in an ethical manner by adhering to ethical principles such as autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence and justice. The interviews were transcribed and Creswell’s’ data analysis spiral was used as a guide for the data analysis. Themes and sub-themes were identified and grouped together to form new categories. An independent coder assisted with the coding process. Data analysis results revealed the following results Participants perceived a collaborative working relationship as being beneficial to maternity care. Participants identified that there might be critical impediments that need to be faced in order to realize collaborative maternity care. The researcher ensured the validity of the study by conforming to Lincoln and Guba’s model of trustworthiness, which consists of the following four criteria namely credibility, transferability, dependability and conformability. The information obtained from this study assisted in developing guidelines to facilitate the implementation of collaborative maternity care between midwives and obstetricians in private practice in South Africa. The objective of the study was thus met.

Co-located group information management (GIM) is a form of groupware with the aim of enabling users to collaboratively find, store, maintain, organise and share personal and/or group information in support of a group activity. Existing systems aimed at partially supporting GIM activities have been implemented on single user devices. These systems make use of asynchronous communication that may hinder collaboration by misinterpretation, information leaks, etc. Few systems exist, with limited functionality, that support co-located GIM. Multi-touch tabletop interaction has given rise to a new approach for supporting Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). Multi-touch tabletops allow multiple users to naturally interact with a computer device using a shared display and gesture interaction. The tabletop environment also enables users to sit in a natural environment and synchronously communicate without bulky desktops or laptops. Multi-touch tabletops provide the hardware necessary to support co-located GIM. Existing multi-touch interaction techniques were analysed and proved insufficient to support the advanced functional requirements of GIM. The goal of this research was therefore to support co-located GIM by designing new multi-touch tabletop interaction techniques. An architecture was proposed to support co-located GIM with new multi-touch interaction techniques. A software prototype was developed based on the proposed architecture to facilitate the main activities of GIM and to collaboratively compile documents. The prototype was named CollaGIM (Colla – collaborative, GIM – group information management). CollaGIM supports the main activities of GIM using natural gesture interaction on a multi-touch tabletop. An evaluation of the software was conducted by means of a user study where 15 teams of two people participated. High task success rates and user satisfaction results were achieved, which showed that CollaGIM was capable of supporting co-located GIM using the new multi-touch tabletop interaction techniques. CollaGIM also positively supported collaboration between users.

M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / The pressure exerted on schools in South Africa to provide student support is ever increasing. This is directly attributable to the lack of support in the child’s home, often with both parents being absent due to work obligations. As a result, the growing need for classroom support rests solely upon the teacher. Teachers are finding themselves in a very difficult position, firstly to find the time with already full schedules looking after the curriculum and extramural activities, and secondly feeling incompetent to adequately provide the learner with the required support. The need for inter-professional collaboration between the teacher and the educational psychologist is clear. The educational psychologist is adequately trained to provide the necessary learner support, albeit facing a logistical problem of reaching all the learners in the school. To overcome this problem, the help of the teacher is vitally important. The question that arises and which is investigated further in this study, is: What is the nature of this inter-professional collaboration between the teacher and educational psychologist that is required to address the learner’s need for classroom support? To fully grasp and understand this concept of collaboration, the analysis has been applied within the framework of the existing interaction model which classifies it into two dimensions, one being relationship interaction and the other the interaction with the organisational milieu. The research methodology used in this study can be described as a qualitative study. The study took place within an interpretative paradigm with participants being chosen using a goal-orientated sample. The participants were selected from a single school within the Gauteng educational system, to ensure the study remains focused. The data were collected from research journals, semi-structured individual interviews and uncompleted questionnaires. Finally, the data was analysed by making use of a qualitative content analysis method.

The use of virtual teams has increased during recent years due to technological development, and the current Covid-19 pandemic has driven the pace of this growing phenomenon to the next level. This study has looked in-depth at a single company within the Swedish insurance industry, how managerial practices differ between a virtual environment and a co-located environment regarding motivating employees. It has been identified that the managers have adjusted their way of working and employed several new practices to motivate their employees. Motivation is a complex topic, and many potential practices could influence motivation. The managers have carefully taken actions that enables the employees to execute their work tasks. Further, the findings show that the managers, in this case, have employed a lower degree of virtuality, and actively employed solutions that facilitate interactions and structure. Additionally, the employees have been empowered and given the authority to engage in decisions to a greater extent than when they were working co-located. While most employed practices aim to motivate the employees, other practices aim to fulfill other purposes. Hence, these practices could still influence the employees' motivation.

Previous research has demonstrated that customer orientation has a positive effect on business outcomes. Although scholars have provided different explanations for such a relationship, there is still a lack of clear understanding of what leads to such a relationship. In addition, there are only a few studies discussing the boundary conditions of customer orientation- business performance linkage. Drawing on the organizational information processing theory, I propose that inter-functional coordination mediates the relationship between customer orientation and success in marketing new products. A randomly sample of 97 new product development projects across 6 Sino-overseas joint ventures involving 150 car models in the China automobile industry was used to test my hypotheses. The results support my proposed mediating hypothesis. In addition, I demonstrate that the relationship between customer orientation and inter-functional coordination is further strengthened when a new product development strategy is local-oriented rather than when it is import-oriented because of the level of modification affecting the level of staff participation. Furthermore, compared with longer shared team tenure teams, it was found that teams of shorter tenure inter-functional coordination are more likely to trigger success in marketing new product relationship. On the basis of these findings, I discuss their implications for practice and future research.

To compete in today's global economy, organizations are under pressure to improve their product development processes. The engineering design process is an important component of the overall product development process. This research considers the relationship of both social and technical variables to the engineering design process. The theoretical foundation of this research is sociotechnical systems theory. This theory states that optimum performance is achieved by jointly considering the technical and the social subsystems. The application domain of the theory is called macroergonomics. A technical variable considered by this research was engineering design process methodology. Two methodologies were considered: sequential engineering and concurrent engineering. Another technical construct considered by this research was the use of computer-supported cooperative work technology (CSCW) or groupware. The social variable considered by this research was group size. Two sizes were considered: large groups of six people and small groups of three people. This research sought to determine the optimum combination of technical and social variables that would result in highest performance. There were two phases of this research. In the first phase, a laboratory experiment was conducted using 180 engineering and building construction students as subjects. The experiment required that a system be conceived, designed, manufactured, and tested by student teams. The experimental design was a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial, between subjects design with five teams in each cell. In the second phase, the results of the first phase were provided to recognized industry and academic experts for their critique. This two-phased approach facilitated the identification of causal relationships among social and technical variables with higher external validity. In the laboratory experiment, there was no significant difference in performance between concurrent engineering groups and sequential engineering processes. Small groups significantly outperformed large groups in all conditions. CSCW did not significantly improve the performance of large or small groups. Participants in the experiment were equally satisfied with all conditions. The external survey strongly endorsed the superiority of concurrent engineering as compared to sequential engineering. There was no statistically significant optimal combination of variables that resulted in the highest design performance. / Ph. D.

This dissertation identifies and theorizes a new form by which leaders exert their influence over subordinates: hierarchical-decentralization. To further investigate hierarchical-decentralization and its effects on team outcomes, we develop two research themes which include three independent studies. The first research theme focuses on how hierarchical-decentralization influences team processes and team performance. We conduct an experimental study (Study 1-1) and a field study (Study 1-2) on this research theme. In Study 1-1 (detailed in Chapter 2), we conceptualize hierarchical-decentralization, examine the relationship between hierarchical-decentralization and team performance, and test whether and why hierarchical-decentralization produces higher team performance than either centralization or decentralization. Through an experimental study, we found that hierarchical-decentralization was positively related to team performance, and that hierarchical-decentralization outperformed either centralization or decentralization in steering team performance. Following Study 1-1, we conduct Study 1-2 (described in Chapter 3), which aims to further explore the underlying mechanism that produces the positive effect of hierarchical-decentralization on team performance, and to identify the conditions under which the benefit of hierarchical-decentralization tends to become more noticeable. Through a field study, we found that team coordination mediated the relationship between hierarchical-decentralization and team performance. We further found that inter-team competitive intensity strengthened the positive relationship between hierarchical-decentralization and team coordination, as well as the positive indirect relationship between hierarchical-decentralization and team performance via team coordination. The second research theme focuses on the application of influence structure of hierarchical-decentralization to the research on leader-member exchange (LMX) differentiation. We conduct a field study (Study 2) on this research theme. Specifically, in Study 2 (detailed in Chapter 4), we investigate whether and why the vertical chain of influence among team members (we follow the research conducted by Burderson et al (2016) and refer it to acyclicity) would offset the detrimental effect of LMX differentiation on social relations among team members and ultimately on team performance. Through a field study covering 89 diverse working teams, we found that LMX differentiation became to be not significantly related to status conflict when a team had a high level of acyclicity and meanwhile when its team members' LMX statuses were in line with their influence levels within acyclicity. Although this relationship is not statistically significant, the negative relationship between LMX differentiation and status conflict somewhat suggests that acyclicity, when all of the most influential members within it are of the highest relationship qualities with leaders, might have the potential to turn the detrimental effect of LMX differentiation on social interactions among team members into a beneficial effect (i.e., one that reduces status conflict among team members). We further found that status conflict was negatively related to team performance, and that it mediated the relationship between LMX differentiation and team performance. The theoretical and practical implications of the two research themes are then discussed.

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Community Psychology in the Department of Psychology, University of Zululand, 2001. / Health institutions are faced with a major task of promoting health, preventing and treating different kinds of illnesses in complex contexts. The large numbers of patients demand a high degree of team building and teamwork if these institutions are to be effective and efficient in service delivery. The present study seeks to develop a team building program which will assist in promoting teamwork. An hypothesis was formulated to investigate if a team building program would make any significant change with regard to health service delivery in a psychiatric context as perceived by staff and patients. A total number of 185 participants took part in the study. The population comprised 97 females and 88 males. There were 59 English, 7 Afrikaans and 119 Zulu speakers. Both staff and patients were offered questions relating to team functioning. The staff participants were further given questions relating to the manner in which teams are built. The team building program was informed by the ideas obtained from the responses as well as from literature. The team building program was then offered to the staff members. A statistical analysis of the results was undertaken and the results showed that the program was significantly effective in promoting teamwork as evaluated by staff and patients. / Human Sciences Research Council