Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Masters in Business Administration, Business Studies Unit, Durban University of Technology, 2008. / Telkom SA, over the last decade and a half, has undergone major change in terms of the manner in which it does business. From being a state-owned company to becoming a para-statal, to being run by foreigners and, finally, being run by local leaders within the company, Telkom SA has transformed as a company. The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of change implementation on staff turnover in Telkom SA by reviewing the following key issues: The implementation of change within Telkom SA, benchmarked against international best practices; the communication of change/re-structuring initiatives by management in Telkom SA; the effect of change implementation on staff turnover; and the effect of change implementation on employee morale and retention. The rationale of this study is to allow Telkom SA management to review their current implementation strategy of change management initiatives in Telkom SA. Thereafter, it will provide guidelines for improvements in change implementation for the management of Telkom SA. Staff turnover and employee morale can negatively impact service delivery and financial performance of a company, so these recommendations are aimed at improving service delivery and financial performance. The study was descriptive, cross sectional and quantitative, involving the application of a questionnaire, via e-mail and personal interviews, with a sample of staff from the core planning section in the Network Infrastructure Provisioning division, where a high staff turnover rate existed. The questionnaire focused on assessing the impact of the implementation of change management processes on staff turnover at Telkom SA and was developed from the literature review. Data was analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), Version 15 for both descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings show that a significant percentage of respondents were v vi dissatisfied with the way management had handled issues related to change implementation, communication, turnover, morale and retention. With this in mind, recommendations on ways to reduce the impact of the key issues on the organisation were made. These included the recommendation of lean methodology in order to deal with the first three key issues, namely, implementation, communication, and turnover. Thereafter the ‘four cores of credibility’ model was recommended to improve employee morale. Finally recommendations were made on ways to improve employee retention. The overarching issue that has come to light is that although management is, to a degree, communicating change implementation, there is a noticeable lack of engagement with employees. The onus, therefore, lies with leadership to lift the levels of engagement with employees, thereby reducing the impact of change implementation on the organisation by increasing the level of transparency in the organisation. Improving communication would lead to improved trust, which would then result in improved employee morale, ultimately leading to a reduction in the staff turnover rate.

Job satisfaction has effects that touch both the employee and employer, these effects include career success, work-family facilitation, turnover intentions, engagement, absenteeism, and quality of work. Having work flexibility measures in the work place can lead to improved job satisfaction. In this dissertation, we study the relationship between work flexibility and job satisfaction through investigating the mediating role of employee empowerment. Building on extant theories, a partial least square structural model is developed to study the relationships between work flexibility, empowerment, and job satisfaction. Perceptions of pay and turnover intentions are included in the model as dependent constructs. The model shows strong links between work flexibility and job satisfaction. Also, it is concluded that empowerment plays an important role in mediating the relationship between work flexibility and job satisfaction. It is observed that empowerment leads to improved perceptions of pay and that improved perceptions of pay together with job satisfaction lead to lower turnover intentions.

The bone remodelling process, performed by the Bone Multicellular Unit (BMU) is a key multi-hierarchically regulated process, which provides and supports various functionality of bone tissue. It is also plays a critical role in bone disorders, as well as bone tissue healing following damage. Improved modelling of bone turnover processes could play a significant role in helping to understand the underlying cause of bone disorders and thus develop more effective treatment methods. Moreover, despite extensive research in the field of bone tissue engineering, bonescaffold development is still very empirical. The development of improved methods of modelling the bone remodelling process should help to develop new implant designs which encourage rapid osteointegration. There are a number of limitations with respect to previous research in the field of mathematical modelling of the bone remodelling process, including the absence of an osteocyte loop of regulation. It is within this context that this research presented in this thesis utilises a range of modelling methods to develop a framework for bone remodelling which can be used to improve treatment methods for bone disorders. The study concentrated on dynamic and steady state variables that in perspective can be used as constraints for optimisation problem considering bone remodelling or tissue remodelling with the help of the grafts/scaffolds.The cellular and combined allosteric-regulation approaches to modelling of bone turnover, based on the osteocyte loop of regulation, have been studied. Both approaches have been studied different within wide range of rate parameters. The approach to the model validation has been considered, including a statistical approach and parameter reduction approach. From a validation perspective the cellular class of modes is preferable since it has fewer parameters to validate. The optimal control framework for regulation of remodelling has been studied. Future work in to improve the models and their application to bone scaffold design applications have been considered. The study illustrates the complexity of formalisation of the metabolic processes and the relations between hierarchical subsystems in hard tissue where a relatively small number of cells are active. Different types/modes of behaviour have been found in the study: relaxational, periodical and chaotic modes. All of these types of behaviour can be found, in bone tissue. However, a chaotic or periodic modes are ones of the hardest to verify although a number of periodical phenomena have been observed empirically in bone and skeletal development. Implementation of the allosteric loop into cellular model damps other types of behaviour/modes. In this sense it improves the robustness, predictability and control of the system. The developed models represent a first step in a hierarchical model of bone tissue (system versus local effects). The limited autonomy of any organ or tissue implies differentiation on a regulatory level as well as physiological functions and metabolic differences. Implementation into the cellular phenomenological model of allosteric-like loop of regulation has been performed. The results show that the robustness of regulation can be inherited from the phenomenological model. An attempt to correlate the main bone disorders with different modes of behaviour has been undertaken using Paget’s disorder in bone, osteoporosis and some more general skeleton disorders which lead to periodical changes in bone mass, reported by some authors. However, additional studies are needed to make this hypothesis significant. The study has revealed a few interesting techniques. When studying a multidimensional phenomenon, as a bone tissue is, the visualisation and data reduction is important for analysis and interpretation of results. In the study two novel technical methods have been proposed. The first is the graphical matrix method to visualise/project the multidimensional phase space of variables into diagonal matrix of regular combination of two-dimensional graphs. This significantly simplifies the analysis and, in principle, makes it possible to visualise the phase space higher than three-dimensional. The second important technical development is the application of the Monte-Carlo method in combination with the regression method to study the character and stability of the equilibrium points of a dynamic system. The advantage of this method is that it enables the most influential parameters that affect the character and stability of the equilibrium point to be identified from a large number of the rate parameters/constants of the dynamic system. This makes the interpretation of parameters and conceptual verification of the model much easier.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

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The nursing shortage in China is more serious than in most developed countries, but the loss of nurses through their voluntarily leaving nursing practice has not attracted much attention in Chinese society. The aim of this study is to add to the understanding of nurses leaving nursing practice in China by exploring the process from recruitment to final exit. The qualitative research method draws on a grounded theory approach, especially the constant comparative method of analysis. The indepth interviews were conducted with 19 nurses who have left clinical care. The selection of the study participants was guided by the principle of theoretical sampling. Two core conceptual categories emerged from leavers’ account of their leaving: “Mismatching Expectations: Individual vs. Organizational” and “Individual Perception of Power”. By illuminating the interrelationship between these two core categories, four nursing behaviour patterns are identified: (1) Voluntary leaving (2) Active staying (3) Adaptive staying (4) Passive staying. These behaviour patterns provide an explanation about why and how nursing wastage occurs. The analysis suggests: (1) the higher the degree of mismatch that the nurses recognised between individual and organizational expectations of nursing and the greater the extent of imbalance of power the individual nurses perceived, the more likely it is that the nurses intend to leave the powerless status of being a clinical nurse within the organization; (2) the more difficult it becomes for the nurses to achieve their individual expectations by exercising nursing autonomy in their nursing career, the more likely it is that they actually empower themselves to leave nursing practice. The study suggests that nursing wastage could be avoided if the individual and organizational expectations of nursing were more aligned, and the individual nurses were able to exercise nursing autonomy in their professional practice and career. Although the findings are limited in studying the current nursing workforce situation in China, the theoretical perspective may contribute to the international debate on nursing employment towards effective nursing workforce management and retention strategies.

This thesis uses personnel records from a large UK based financial sector employer to aid investigation into questions relating to both wage determination and employee turnover.  The thesis begins by turning to the origins of the human capital earnings function (Mincer, 1974).  The emphasis of the discussion is that other specifications can also accommodate estimates that are consistent with the basic components of Mincer’s analysis.  Motivated by these theoretical considerations as well as existing empirical evidence, I model the earnings function as a semi-parametric partial linear model.  The estimation results reveal that conventional parametric specifications result in biased estimates of the growth in wages with within-firm experience.  In addition, conventional specifications do not adequately serve as control variables when the effects of other covariates on wages are of interest. Interpreting the relationship between tenure and wages forms the focus of the remainder of the thesis.  Several theoretical models predict a causal relationship between these variables and estimates of the causal effect of tenure on wages have ranged from negligible to substantial (Garen, 1988).  I begin the investigation by assessing the employee exit decision.  Utilising information on the exact states reason for each employee’s departure and available data on supervisor performance ratings, I also form and estimate models of employment duration.  Estimation results are consistent with the job matching model presented by Jovanovic (1979).  Results also show augmenting hazard models to incorporate reasons for departure is important for understanding gender differences in turnover.  Utilising the econometric methods developed by Altonji and Shakotko (1987) and Topel (1991), as well as evidence from the turnover investigation, I find notable effects of tenure on wages.  Interestingly, both estimators deliver similar estimates and there are small gender differences in wage – tenure profile.  Arguments are presented in order to explain these findings.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the causes of teachers' turnover intentions in selected Swedish schools. Research methodology – This research took the form of a qualitative research. Semi-structured interviews were used to explore the causes of teachers' turnover intentions within the schools selected for this study. The sample was composed by 9 teachers that work in Säter. In order to provide a different yet meaningful perspective, a further interview with the Säter school department has been conducted. Results – Several of the results were coherent with the literature: elements such as motivations to teach, administrative support, workload, class size and collaboration were found to be related to teachers’ turnover intentions and therefore confirmed the previous studies. However, factors like salary, mentoring, autonomy, physical conditions and orderly environment were not found to have a connection with the respondents’ turnover intentions, hence constituting a result that did not confirm the literature. Originality – This thesis extended the previous research related to the causes of teachers’ turnover intentions by focusing on Sweden, which had not been investigated yet to that matter. The Swedish context appears particularly worth researching because of both the particularity of its decentralized educational system and the widespread turnover intentions of teachers.

Abstract Problem Formal Volunteers in volunteer based organizations drop out at a fast pace due to many reasons like lack of interest what they are doing, conflict among volunteers, lack of motivation, job dissatisfaction due to prolonged volunteering etc.  which is causing to improper functioning of these organizations and reaches a point where these volunteer based organizations find it difficult to function properly. The author in this study tries to address this particular issue of this drop out of formal volunteers. Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore the factors which helps in the retention of formal volunteers in a volunteer based organization for a longer period. Method The research in this paper is done in a qualitative way with primary data collected in the form of participant observation and open interview in two voluntary organizations. The collected data is analyzed in content analysis. The secondary data is collected in the form of necessary documents provided by the participating organizations. Results Many factors were found to influence retention of volunteers namely Job satisfaction, Motivation, Public Service Motivation, Organizational Commitment, Mission Attachment, Work load, Relationship with Coworkers, Justice of Organization, Flexible Timing, Training & Orientation.  Conclusions Recommendations to improve retention is mentioned and a future model is also proposed. The result obtained from this research can be generalized to other form of small scale volunteer organizations where the major employees are formal volunteers.