Thesis (MTech (Business Administration))--Peninsula Technikon, 2002. / Word processed copy. Summary in English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-68). Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Purpose The purpose with this research is to explore what management is doing in order to successfully manage the diversity needs in their workplace and to put up a conceptual model of the initiatives needed in order to reach a successful diversity strategy implementation. The questions are aimed at finding the barriers for managers to implement a successful diversity strategy. Our goal is to understand where the real practitioners of workplace diversity stand in the subject and which areas they wish could be taken a closer look by the researchers. We would also like to explore how mature the companies really are regarding the subject of diversity. Method The method for our thesis was to begin with an exploratory approach in order to gain a better knowledge of the subject and to learn where the literature stands today. To this we have added the collection of qualitative data through interviews made in eight different companies with a total of eleven managers in different levels of the organizations. Once all the data was collected and reviewed we ranked each manager and the company they work for to produce a picture of the diversity maturity present in these companies. Conclusions We have come to the following conclusions - Diversity is a strength and value for companies acting on a global market. - Diversity within a team make the team more productive, solutions are better since the input are from various angles. - To successfully maintain a diverse team puts more demands on the manager to realize that everyone is different and not to handle everyone the same. - There is a high level of maturity found in Swedish managers when it comes to diversity, but areas like training and recruitment policies need to be improved. - Swedish managers have a vast knowledge of what diversity means to their organizational process.

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This study was undertaken to investigate the relationships and interdependencies of work-unit technology, structure, leadership style and attitudes of personnel at the middle and lower level of the organizational hierarchy and to determine if a correlation exists between proper alignment of these variables and overall organizational effectiveness. Six variables have been identified by contingency theorists which must be properly aligned if organizations are to operate at peak efficiency and maximum effectiveness. These variables are the firm's outer environment, its objectives and goals, the adaptation of technology to attain these goals, organizational structure to coordinate and confine the technology, and the leadership style and personnel who use the technology within individual work units to satisfy the demands of the outer environment and meet organizational goals and objectives. Previous emphasis in contingency theory has been upon determining what constitutes proper alignment of these variables on a firm by firm or industry by industry basis, neglecting the fact that complex organizations are composed of many interacting work units in which these variables must also be properly aligned if maximum effectiveness is to be achieved. Four U.S. copper mining companies responsible for over 60 percent of domestic production consented to participate in the study. The data suggest that not only is the proper alignment of contingency variables within the firm as a whole important to organizational effectiveness as indicated by prior research, but the proper alignment of these variables within individual work units may be just as important a consideration in determining overall organizational effectiveness. Results further suggest that those mining firms within the industry whose work unit technologies show the closest alignment of routine technologies with mechanistic structures, autocratic leadership styles and personnel willing to conform, and non-routine technologies with organic structures, democratic leadership styles and personnel less willing to conform are more effective than those firms in which these variables were not so closely aligned. Implications of this study are that industrial firms can improve their overall performance and effectiveness by aligning technology, structure, leadership style and personnel within work units. The greater the number or work units in which these contingency variables are properly aligned within a business firm, the greater the success that firm will experience in realizing its primary objectives.

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Upper secondary school contains of several different programs, for some of them workplace training, APU, is a part. The Industry programme is one of those. The education within a programme where workplace training is a part works out differently. The workplace training part of the education is a collaboration between school and different working sites. The aim of this study is to illuminate one kind of education model from different perspectives. The workplace training part of this model starts from term four and takes place two days every week, the other three days of the week used for education in school. The questions at issue for this study are in what meaning can workplace training affect the results of the programme goals? And how is the education interpreted, valued and described by different participants? The study contains of sex interviewees. In the study are six persons from three different categories; cooperative companies, teachers teaching core subjects and pupils. The results from the study show how important the cooperative companies think that communication and the possibility to be able to have influence in the education model are. They look at themselves not only as a company that provides trainee possibilities. They also consider the lifeexperience that the pupils get through the combination of education in school combined with workplaced training affect their efforts of reaching the programme goal positively. The education model is seen with positive eyes both from the cooperative companies and the pupils, while the results from the coresubject teachers interviews not are quit as distinct.

Community workers supporting adults with intellectual disability get a lot of positive impact from their work. However, staff are also required to deal with challenges such as aggressive behaviours which can be associated with burnout. This thesis used a cross-sectional mixed methods design consisting of survey data analysis and qualitative interviews. The study aims were to examine staff report of emotional difficulties related to working with aggressive behaviours and use of available workplace resources. Staff frequently reported experiencing emotional difficulties; however use of workplace resources was low. Findings fit within existing models of general health service utilization with workplace resource use affected by: preventing and coping, severity threshold, enabling factors and cost versus benefit appraisal. Some unique factors included o-worker relationships, finding relief, lacking or inflexible rules and organizational focus on the service recipients. Multi-faceted interventions are likely to be the most successful in improving staff and related organizational outcomes.

Aim: The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the experiences of hospital workplace violence on nursing personnel currently employed in a specific context (an operating theatre) in a private hospital in the Durban Metropolitan Area (DMA). Methodology: The broad paradigm of this research study is located in the qualitative research field. The researcher specifically used an interpretative phenomenological approach (IPA) following the guidelines of Smith, Jarman and Osborne (1999). IPA was used because the researcher was interested in identifying, describing and understanding the subjective experience of individual nurses in respect of their cognitive interpretations and subjective experiences of nursing workplace violence; and because the researcher intended to make sense of the participants' world through a process of interpretative activity. A focus group and two thematically semi-structured interviews were conducted with each subsequent participant by the researcher. A total of eight participants took part in the study, five were interviewed separately and eleven interviews were done. The IPA as suggested by Smith et al. (1999) was used to identify the connections and themes in respect of shared meanings and references and /or in respect of hierarchical relationships in each transcript. Themes that were found to be common were grouped together i.e. clustered by the researcher. The researcher then derived a master list of superordinate themes and sub-themes from the clusters of themes. Findings: The participants' lived experiences of workplace violence in the operating theatre indicated that workplace violence had impacted and was impacting on their everyday work experience. A range of workplace violence experiences as precipitated and perpetuated by doctors, fellow nurses and hospital management was noted. These included verbal abuse, bullying, intimidation, process violence, physical assault and sexual harassment. Differences between the types of workplace violence perpetrated by doctors, nurses and hospital management were found. The participants articulated a range of subjective meanings and explanations for their colleagues' behaviours (intrapersonal, interpersonal and institutional) - all of which were found to have impacted on their psychological wellbeing. A variety of defense mechanisms and coping strategies were identified and discussed. Conclusion: Following McKoy and Smith (2001), the researcher identified a number of factors that made the nursing workplace and/or the healthcare environment more susceptible to the occurrence of workplace violence, e.g. low staffing, a reduction in trained staff, and the profit-motives of private hospitals in the healthcare industry (managed healthcare). These were found to have impacted on each of the participants in this study in respect of their experiences of workplace violence. In sum, the study has provided a clear, department specific picture about the experiences of theatre nurses in respect of workplace violence. A number of interventions to facilitate and retain the services of theatre nurses in the operating theatre have been suggested. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.