This study investigated the individual power of teachers as subordinates in elementary schools. It focused on the informal social structure in "good" elementary schools and the roles played by principals, teachers who held formal governance positions, itinerant teachers, and participants in the district's career ladder pilot program. Roles sampled were (1) providers of moral support, (2) sources of teaching expertise, (3) dispensers of procedural information, and (4) those able to "get things done" in the school. Peer and principal dependency data were also collected. Teachers and principals in five elementary schools in a single school district were sampled twice in a two year period. Findings were: (1) Although "good" principals received high total scores for providing resources to the faculty, there were instances when individual teachers scored as high or higher than the principal. (2) Faculty and principals depended on providers of moral support more than they depended on any of the traditionally power-producing roles. (3) Teachers depended on peers mostly for moral support, less for teaching expertise and "getting things done," and least for information. Teachers depended on the principal for moral support and information, less for "getting things done," and least for teaching expertise. (4) Full-time classroom teachers and specialists were most active in the social structure. Part-time teachers, itinerant teachers, and special services personnel, such as psychologists, speech/language pathologists, etc., were not key participants. Some full-time teachers, such as fine arts, physical education, and self-contained special education teachers were less active. (5) Teachers holding formal governance positions in the school established or gained influence while holding the formal positions, and they apparently did not lose influence the year after leaving the positions. Formal positions were held by full-time classroom teachers and only occasionally by a specialist. (6) Career ladder candidates or participants established or gained influence in the school's social structure during the career ladder process. Itinerant teachers and individuals who teach specialized curricula were more active in the career ladder program than they were in the school governance network.

This dissertation describes the successful implementation of a work group infrastructure to support electronic meetings. An exploratory study was undertaken to observe and document the broad range of activities necessary to implement an infrastructure for work groups in a field setting. Activities falling within the scope of this dissertation include the design of a set of work group software tools, the implementation of that software, the gathering of field data, and the interpretation of those data in reference to the software's impact. The dissertation also reports on the effects of the implementation on work group performance, group characteristics, task characteristics, and the technology itself. The final product of the study is a set of factors critical for the successful implementation of a work group infrastructure, including observations and insights related to facility design, software design, facilitation training, and management involvement.

This dissertation investigated the effects of group size, group member proximity and the interaction of these two variables on the performance of brainstorming groups in a synchronous, computer-mediated environment. A laboratory experiment was employed to manipulate the independent variables group size (4- and 8-member) group member proximity. Group member proximity was manipulated by allowing proximate groups to work in a single meeting room, while members of distributed group worked in separate rooms. The subjects, upper-level, undergraduate business students, were asked to identify and discuss all "people, groups and organizations" that would be affected by a proposed policy to require all undergraduate business students to have individual access to a personal computer. The computer-mediated brainstorming system allowed all group members to enter and share information simultaneously, as all communication was electronic. Group performance was assessed by counting the total number of unique solutions generated and by the sum of expert rated quality scores for each unique solution. Groups in all conditions contributed approximately the same number of comments and felt equally satisfied. Contrary to an ample body of noncomputer-mediated brainstorming research, large groups were more productive than small groups for both idea quantity and quality. Small groups were, however, more productive than large groups on a per person basis, as increased group size yielded diminishing returns. Remote groups were more productive than proximate groups. Group researchers have found that group interaction produces productivity gains and losses, each of which increase in strength as the group size increases. This research found group productivity losses for computer-mediated brainstorming to be relatively constant, as the technology mitigated productivity inhibitors in conditions where prior noncomputer-mediated research has found these losses to increase (i.e., larger groups).

Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) is a set of constructs, principles, and tools aimed at continually improving organizational processes. While thousands of organizations worldwide have adopted CQI, there are still many gaps in our knowledge of how to get the most out of CQI efforts. This paper addresses several of these gaps, including the limitations of existing CQI theory and the inconsistencies regarding the implementation of CQI at team and departmental levels. After discussing the basic principles of CQI, a framework for understanding and utilizing CQI is offered. Then, the results of 102 interviews, conducted with team leaders and department heads in a large hospital in the Southwestern United States, are presented. These results suggest that CQI team effectiveness is most influenced by goal specificity, team composition, and team leader training in statistical process control (SPC). Other factors, including team leader attitude toward CQI and team CQI skills, were also related to CQI team effectiveness. Departmental results were less clear. Only department head attitude toward CQI was significantly correlated with departmental CQI implementation. Potential meanings and implications of these findings are discussed, suggestions for implementing CQI in teams and departments are offered, and directions for future research are provided.

Organizations are increasingly devoting interest towards understanding the causes of workplace deviance behaviors, which include interpersonal aggression, theft, violence, vandalism and sabotage. These behaviors are particularly relevant to organizations, in that the yearly losses due to theft are estimated at over 40 billion dollars for U.S. businesses (Coffin, 2003), and acts of workplace deviance could cost as much as 200 billion dollars annually (Murphy, 1993).In this research, I integrated theoretical perspectives from psychology and organizational behavior with neurocognitive evidence in order to examine the effects of sleep deprivation on workplace deviance behavior. In particular, I argue that cognitive resource theories offer explanatory power for the proposed linkage between sleep loss and deviant behaviors. Specifically, sleep deprivation was expected to reduce cognitive capacity and self-regulatory ability, and as a result decrease individuals' self-control, increase hostility, and impair moral decisions, which would in turn increase workplace deviance. Finally, proposed methods are presented for two studies. The first study utilized a field sample of shiftworkers with irregular sleep schedules (i.e., nurses). The second study utilized a lab sample of university students who were subjected to sleep deprivation conditions in a controlled environment.Results largely supported the model in both samples, with the exception of moral reasoning, which was unrelated to sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation affected self-control and hostility, which were in turn related to deviance, with the exception of self-control and interpersonal deviance in Study 2.

Threats and violence, or the risk of being subjected to threats and violence in the workplace, is a major health and safety problems that exists in many professions. To be exposed to threats and violence can have serious consequences for the employee's health but also for the organization in question. The aims of this study was to investigate the prevalence of threats and violence at the Swedish Migration Board detention, and to examine whether there were health problems among employees who may be exposed to threats and violence. A web-based questionnaire was answered by 29 employees (response rate = 51 percent). The results showed that more employees had been exposed to verbal threats (66 percent), compared to physical violence (10 percent), and they showed a greater tendency to report physical violence, as opposed to verbal threats. The participants indicated that factors such as working alone, convey rejection decisions and escape attempts increased the risk of threats and violence. However, the majority of the participants reported that the preventive work, including, alarms, training and available equipment, worked fine. Further everyone reported that they received good support from colleagues when they were subjected to a threat or violent situation. Generally the employees reported that their health was good, which might partly be related to an experience that the preventions worked well at this workplace. Future research should investigate such a relationship.

People are without a doubt our most important asset. It is imperative that companies develop their people to unleash their full potential, which will in turn be a benefit to the company. The future of successful, competitive companies will depend on the work force of that company. The context that organisations operate within has undergone a change from a hierarchical structure to one of building of human capital. This means that organisations need leadership as a vehicle to ensure successful empowerment. It is essential that leaders utilise and develop the potential of their people. This study conceptualises empowerment from a psychological and organizational perspective. Empowerment is defined and divided into the categories of leadership empowering behaviour, motivational empowerment (psychological empowerment) and structural empowerment. The psychological perspective measures the four cognitions (meaning, competence, self-determination and impact) that provide employees with a sense of empowerment. The objective of this study is to determine the levels of psychological empowerment, leader-empowering behaviour, organisational commitment and job satisfaction. Data were gathered from 90 employees of the financial division within a recruitment company. The research results of the empirical study were reported and discussed according to the empirical objectives. The descriptive statistics and the internal consistency of the measuring instruments of the total population were highlighted. Thereafter reliability and validity of the measuring instruments were discussed. A correlation design was applied to determine the relationship between the constructs. The Cronbach Alpha coefficient and factor analysis was determined for the measuring instrument and the Pearson correlation was computed. A regression analysis has been conducted to determine to what extent psychological empowerment and leader empowering behaviour predicts job satisfaction and organisational commitment. Results of the empirical study indicated that differences exist between organizational levels, tenure, age and gender groups in terms of psychological empowerment, leader empowering behaviour, job satisfaction and organisational commitment experienced. Employees reflected a positive experience with regard to psychological empowerment, job satisfaction and organisational commitment whereas leader empowering behaviour is not experienced at a positive level. Recommendations are based on the research results. The implications of psychologically empowered employees for organisations were discussed. The recommendations focus on management and leader development, career development, career counselling, creating a motivational climate, performance and team development. / Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2004.

The Machinery Question during the early Nineteenth Century was the question of the impact of technical progress on the total economy and society. The question was central to everyday relations between, master and workman, but it was also of major theoretical and ideological interest. The very technology at the basis of economy and society was a fundamental platform of challenge and struggle. In the early Nineteenth Century, it was political economy, the 'natural science' of economy and society which took up the theoretical debate on the introduction, diffusion, and social impact of the radically new techniques of production associated with the era. The machine question also came to infuse not only the theoretical realm of political economy, but also the wider culture and consciousness of the bourgeoisie and the working classes. The machine question reflected the close connections of the relations of production to the concerns and conflicts pervading theory, culture and politics. This thesis has analyzed only one part of this many sided issue. It has focused on the attempt of the middle classes to use the new science of political economy to depict technical progress as a natural and evolutionary phenomenon. However, the thesis also shows that the great variety of theoretical traditions in political economy, combined with significant theoretical and working class dissent with the so called doctrine of political economy prevented the unqualified success of this attempt. The depth of the controversy evoked over the machinery issue indicated the still marked uncertainty of the experience of industrialization. By the 1820's and 1830's the factory, urban agglomerations and the coal heaps of mining counties had transformed some parts of the industrial landscape. But the permanence of this change still seemed questionable. Such change was still confined to a very small number of regions, affected small sections of the population, and contributed minimally to national income. The experience of technical change was of great novelty and excitement for those who contemplated the prospects of wealth and power it might bring. On the other hand, for the first generation of factory labour and cast off artisans and domestic workers, it still seemed possible to stop the 'unnatural' progress of technology. Working men and women felt keenly the unprecedented demands for mobility, both geographical and occupational. For them the machine meant, or at least threatened, unemployment, an unemployment which at best was transitional between and within sectors of the economy, and at worst affected the economy as a whole at times of scarce capital. For them the machine was accompanied by a change in the pattern of skills, and involved all too often the introduction of cheap and unskilled labour. In the period before the 1840's, when labour's great onslaught was against the machine itself, the machine question also featured in middle class doctrine. The times were still uncertain enough to demand that the 'cult of improvement' take on the shape of a cultural offensive rather than mere complacency. Thus the 'cult of improvement' during this era sought its -reatest scientific context in political economy. Most of the secondary literature on this period depicts the views of the middle classes and especially of political economy as ones of great pessimism. This thesis shows, to the contrary, that optimism and great faith in the new industrial technology was fundamental to the vision of political economy and to that of its middle class adherents. Ricardo's work was an intellectual and doctrinal tour de force which gripped the whole period, but which, in addition, just as significantly generated a great array of criticism. Curiously, the great historical problem of Ricardo's work was the lack of understanding it met, and the serious distortion it suffered at the hands of his popularizers. The great range of Ricardo criticism in the decades after his death was based often on misconceptions of his work. His own Principles which exuded so much interest in and hope for technical progress generated a wealth of dissident literature which also focused on improvement, skill and technical change. Though the political economy of these years was very diverse, and policy debates were hotly conducted, there is no doubt that the self-defined profession of political economy accepted certain assumptions and outlooks. There were several themes and conceptions which shaped the overall nature of this critique of Ricardo. These themes allow for the demarcation of two epochs of political economy between the 1820's and the 1830's. Political economists of the 1820's placed great emphasis on labour productivity and the skills of the artisan in their attempt to contradict the so called Ricardic predictions of overpopulation and the stationary state. By the 1830's economists still found in 'improvement,' technical change, and increasing returns, the great empirical and theoretical rebuttal to the 'Ricardian' predictions. However, 'improvement' was now discussed as the evolution of capital, and even more crucial to this change was the tendency to see capital as a material embodiment, as fixed capital and machinery. This shift of concepts was accompanied by a new methodological thrust. The political economy of the 1830's reflected a polemically inductivist mood. Unprecedented energy was devoted to debates over abstraction and induction. The political economy which resulted was more empirical, comparative and historical. New interest was given over to visiting factory districts, drawing on government reports, and in using and participating in social surveys. Political economists devoted more time to comparing the course of economic development in Britain to that of other Western economies, that of primitive societies, and that of previous historical epochs. The conceptual shift in political economy over these years seems to parallel certain tendencies and changes in the economy itself. The political economy of the 1820's appears to reflect the concerns underlying the economic-phase defined by Marx as the phase of 'manufactures'. The shift that takes place in theory in the 1830's approximates to the shift in the economy to the phase of 'modern industry.' But the conceptual changes in political economy over the period are also very closely connected to class struggle. This shows in the very seriousness attached by political economists to the 1826 anti-machinery riots in Lancashire and to the 1830 agricultural riots. Discussion of these two disturbances infused the very heights of economic theory. The establishment of political economy reflected the alarm of the middle classes and provided the 'scientific' answers to the working man's critique of machinery. Moreover, in debate with their critics, they helped to generate a new theory of technical change based on the machine and on the evolution and security of capital and the capitalist. The overall effect of these riotc on the middle clashes was a celebration of the cult of technical improvement. The force of this 'scientific' optimism in political economy was given a deep cultural basis in middle class improvement societiesandmdash;the Mechanics Institute Movement of the 1820's and the scientific and statistical societies of the 1830's. These movements were attempts to involve both the working classes and the middle classes in a concerted energetic programme to promote technical advance. They also acted to forge new cultural connections between the provinces and the metropolis. A scientific movement which, in its rhetoric at least, focused on the practical, economic and technological connections of science, created a new nexus simultaneously economic and cultural between province and metropolis. This scientific culture was material and empirical.

The contextual evaluation framework (CEF) is a requirements engineering technique that incorporates a particular sociological orientation, Ethnomethodology, in the development of a rigorous and systematic approach for requirements elicitation. This qualitative approach examines how well a system may be aligned with the endogenous organisation of work within a community of practice. Assessing how well a system supports the knowledge, skills and practices that already exist within a community is equally as important as developing solutions that will eventually reconfigure those practices, create new ones and extend modes of collaboration. The aim of this thesis is to address the absence of a systematic approach to quasi-naturalistic prototype evaluation which may be useful to a broader community such as requirements engineers, computer scientists and others not familiar with the details of sociological approaches. Such an aim is in line with the ways in which prototype evaluation approaches, particularly in HCI, have successfully been disseminated throughout the computer science research community - with the provision of guidelines. Likewise, the CEF is conceived of to be implemented in a similar manner. Its focus is on the analysis of a prototype’s relevance as a tool that is in some manner familiar to those who might use it. Specifically, professionals within a discipline share complex skills and knowledge where they learn to use similar tools, instruments and processes necessary for their work. Implicit in these social practices, practitioners gradually acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to become full members of a community of practice. In this way, the processes, objects and artefacts of practice come to possess specific meaning and significance. The CEF examines how this complex architecture of meaning is supported, constrained or transformed when using a prototype and makes possible an assessment of the ways in which participants interpret its usefulness and usability.

Background: Whilst direct-observation, workplace-based (or performance) assessments, sit at the conceptual epitome of assessment within medical education, their overall utility is limited by high-inter-assessor score variability. We conceptualised this issue as one of problematic judgements by assessors. Existing literature and evidence about judgements within performance appraisal and impression formation, as well as the small evolving literature on raters’ cognition within medical education, provided the theoretical context to study assessor’s judgement processes.Methods and Results: In this thesis we present three studies. The first study adopted an exploratory approach to studying assessors’ judgements in direct observation performance assessments, by asking assessors to describe their thoughts whilst assessing standard videoed performances by junior doctors. Comments and follow up interviews were analysed qualitatively using grounded theory principles. Results showed that assessors attributed different levels of salience to different aspects of performances, understood criteria differently (often comparing performance against other trainees) and expressed their judgements in unique narrative language. Consequently assessors’ judgements were comparatively idiosyncratic, or unique.The two subsequent follow up studies used experimental, internet based, experimental designs to further investigate the comparative judgements demonstrated in study 1. In study 2, participants were primed with either good or poor performances prior to watching intermediate (borderline) performances. In study 3 a similar design was employed but participants watched identical performances in either increasing or decreasing levels of proficiency. Collectively, the results of these two studies showed that recent experiences influenced assessors’ judgements, repeatedly showing a contrast effect (performances were scored unduly differently from earlier performances). These effects were greater than participants’ consistent tendency to be either lenient or stringent and occurred at multiple levels of performance. The effect appeared to be robust despite our attempting to reduce participants’ reliance on the immediate context. Moreover, assessors appeared to lack insight into the effect on their judgements.Discussion: Collectively, these results indicate that assessors score variations can be substantially explained by idiosyncrasy in cognitive representations of the judgement task, and susceptibility to contrast effects through comparative judgements. Moreover, assessors appear to be incapable of judging in absolute terms, instead judging normatively. These findings have important implications for theory and practice and suggest numerous further lines of research.