A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in Business Executive Coaching Johannesburg, 2017 / This research focused on the influence that team coaching had on alleviating the challenges that emanate from team conflict. There is little work done to expand on how team coaching may assist in the transition from conflict to performance, within organisations. Organisations employ individuals who share similarities and also differ significantly in education levels, efficacies, personalities and worldviews. They appoint these diverse individuals to achieve their goals and objectives. These employees are organised to form teams that will perform different duties in alignment to organisational goals, and teams are more effective than individuals. Teams encounter challenges, and one challenge is conflict. There are three conflicts they may encounter: a) relationship, b) process, and c) task conflicts. For this qualitative research, constructive-interpretivism was appropriate because it meant that the researcher and the participant were interacting and the interaction surfaced deeper meaning. Phenomenological research design was used to explore participants’ conscious experiences which were then studied and interpreted. Data was collected from team coaches and their coachees, in different organisations, both from public and private sectors, using semi-structured interviews and observation. Key findings are that there is a skills gap in team coaching. Most team coaches interviewed are team coaches by virtue of being line managers. Others are trained coaches, but in different approaches and not in team coaching. The skills applied to resolve conflict are in line with their training as managers/leaders and some aligned to coaching skills. The other finding was that teams undergo some form of conflict and they were able to move from storming to performing, through the interventions by team coaches. The key message is that team coaching does influence team functioning towards the attainment of organisational goals. / MT2017

Thesis (MTech (Business Administration in Project Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2018. / The single most critical factor responsible for the success of any project is the human element as this is the point at which projects succeed. Senior technically qualified managers have recorded high failure rates in areas where they have hard skills relevant to the industry. The levels of technical expertise and technology should have facilitated the project execution process and increased the success rate of project management. Contrary to this, the IT industry for instance, has recorded an average 47% failure rates regardless of the fact that IT specialists manage them. Project management has been defined as a unique undertaking limited by time, quality and budget within a prescribed scope. Depending on the type of the project, there is a need for different expertise to operate in the different stages in the life cycle of the project as well as the elements or WBSs of the project. Where people are involved there is bound to be conflicts, and these conflicts need to be managed. Because of the nature of project management, specialists who together comprise of the project team head WBSs. This team originates from different sources, and in the matrix system is comprised of people seconded to the project but whose loyalty remains with their departments. Such teams are therefore comprised of people who may not share the same culture or work ethics, together with the differences in approaching their duties. It becomes the responsibility of the project leader therefore to enable these “secondments” to be satisfied in their new positions so that they can be productive. This research sought out to identify generic requirements to satisfy a team and get the best out of the team.

The purpose of this current study is to evaluate if there is a relation between Emotional Intelligence, Perceive Stress and Coping Skills in a sample of Mexican employees in a medium size international organization (n =102). The questionnaires used were a compendium of three different instruments; including: 33-item Self-report measure of Emotional Intelligence, four COPE Inventory’ subscales and Perceived Stress Scale (PSS- 14). After analyzing the gathered data, Multiple Regression was applied. Significant correlations in the expected direction were found, indicating that Emotional Intelligence can be useful as a coping skill towards perceive stress.

Tse Ka-Wa. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 44-53). / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

The current study examined the differences in perceptions of three types of microaggressions experienced by African Americans and Latino Americans. Additionally, this study addressed how the coping mechanism of confrontation may be perceived depending on the level of the microaggression. Finally, colorblind attitudes were examined as an individual difference variable in predicting responses to microaggressions. The study used a 2 (target ethnicity: African American and Latino American) x 3 (types of microaggression: microassault, microinsult, and microinvalidation) between subjects design. A sample of 304 White participants was obtained via MTurk. Participants first read a vignette showing an interaction between a White supervisor and a subordinate of color (African American or Latino American). After reading the vignette, participants were asked to complete the Microaggression Perception Scale, a course of action scale to assess their perception of what the target should have done after the microaggressive incident, the Color-Blind Racial Attitude Scale (COBRA), and a demographic survey. The data were analyzed using MANOVA and regression analyses and the results indicated five major findings. First, White participants were found to be able to perceive microaggressions as having occurred as they became more blatant (from microinvalidation to microinsult to microassault). Second, there were no significant differences in their perceptions of the types of microaggression between the African American and Latino American targets. However, they perceived microinvalidation when it occurred for the White target more clearly than they did the microinvalidation for the African American target. Third, color-blind racial attitudes were related to White individuals’ perception of microinsults and microassaults, but not microinvalidation, indicating those who identified more strongly with the colorblind racial attitude were less likely to perceive the microaggression as being biased even when the microaggression was blatant. Fourth, participants also recommended that individuals of color should take more drastic action for microassault and less drastic action for microinvalidation. This suggested that the microassaults were perceived as not acceptable behavior and that these behaviors should be reported in writing to upper administration in the organization. Finally, color-blind racial attitudes moderated the relationship between the perceptions of microinvalidations and microassaults, and the course of action to deal with aggression. Implications of the study are further discussed.

Past research has confirmed that workplace design affects employee productivity. It is known to affect the employees both psychologically and professionally. Past researchers have looked at it from ergonomic, architectural and other perspectives. However, this research is limited to certain professions such as nursing and construction. However, the research indicates that sing workplace design it is possible to improve productivity of employees in other professions as well. This research aims to focus on how workplace designs can improve productivity of teachers. Teaching is an intellectual/ non manual work and hence design considerations for teachers should be more psychological in nature. Little research has been conducted on improving workplaces designs for non manual workers. Also past research has not paid sufficient attention to gender aspects of workplace design. This research looks at how designers’ consideration of culture, gender and profession of the occupants at the time of designing will affect employees’ perception of the psychological, social and functional quality of their workplace and consequently their productivity. This research primarily fills three gaps in existing literature: Firstly, it focuses on gender of occupants and how considering this during workplace design can affect the productivity of employees. Secondly, it looks at impact of workplace design on teachers, who carry out intellectual non manual work. Thirdly, this study is conducted in context of Saudi Arabia with an aim to reduce the scarcity of similar research in context of Saudi Arabia. Data or this research was collected in two stages. Firstly, female academics provided self-observation data in form of comments using a mobile app which was developed specifically for the purpose of this research. This data was quantified using thematic analysis approach and quantified data was analysed using regression analysis. The second aspect of this research included collecting quantitative data using semi-structured interviews with designers who have worked on designing all-female universities in Saudi Arabia. This research finds that by taking cultural, gender and professional factors into consideration it is possible to improve the social, psychological and functional experience of occupants of the workplace and this is likely to improve their ability to achieve organisational and personal objectives. This research, thus concludes that cultural, gender and professional consideration affect the employees; ability to contribute to employees’ and organisational outcomes.

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have been criticised by employers, government and graduates themselves, for not adequately developing required work skills. An example of practice that does develop student skills is a short industrial placement (SIP) where students are expected to solve a real problem in a company, in two weeks, working with one other student. This practice occurs in a one year Masters programme at Cambridge University Engineering Department. This work studies the SIP practice to understand why it is effective and determine lessons that could contribute to solving the wider skills problem. A five year research timeframe, coupled with an annually run programme, enabled a multi-stage study using an Engaged Scholarship methodology. The first-stage was an exploratory study that investigated the initial development of SIP skills, using simulated experiences, in a taught HE based module. Skills development was found to be a complex multi-component process. A theoretical skills development framework was constructed from literature and compared with practice. It was determined that five simulated SIP experiences provided the student with sufficient skills to undertake a SIP in practice and, the most significant problem was that SIP skills were not well defined. The second-stage focussed on defining skills. Skills were found to be context specific and defining skills required both the associated task and its context to be known. With tasks found to be both essential to defining skills and effective in describing what graduates do in practice, a SIP task framework was constructed which was tested on 80 different SIPs in one academic year. The resulting framework comprised twelve problem-solving process-stages, that in total contained 64 different tasks, and five generic task domains. These generic domains were investigated in the third-stage of this research. These were found to be more extensive and complex than anticipated resulting in a reconfiguration of the SIP framework, the generation of SIP specific domain descriptions and partial completion of task frameworks to describe each domain. This research has generated a plausible skills development theory for HEIs, and task frameworks to describe a SIP. Further work has been identified to refine the task frameworks and to continue work on the proposed skills development theory.

Both practitioners and scholars have shown interest in initiatives that reduce bias and promote inclusion. Diversity ideologies—or beliefs and practices regarding how to approach group differences in diverse settings—have been studied as one set of strategies to promote racial equality, and argued to be effective for other intergroup relations, as well; however, little work has examined diversity ideologies in the context of gender, giving a limited understanding of their potential to improve gender relations. The present research compares the influence of two competing and commonly used ideologies—awareness and blindness—on race and gender relations. Awareness approaches recommend acknowledging and celebrating intergroup differences, whereas blindness approaches advocate for reducing and ignoring category membership. In contrast to research suggesting that race awareness is more effective at reducing racial bias than race blindness, I show that the opposite is true for gender. I theorize that awareness and blindness ideologies act upon unique types of race and gender differences in ways that preserve power for the dominant group, either exposing their opportunity-limiting nature (for race) or reifying their biological functionality (for gender). Using system justification theory, I show that diversity ideologies act upon distinct system-justifying rationales, where race awareness exposes differences in opportunities and experience, lessening denial of inequality, and thereby diminishing support for the status quo. In contrast, gender awareness highlights gender roles and their biological underpinnings, legitimizing gender differences in occupational segregation, and increasing support for the status quo (Studies 1–4). Additionally, I show that diversity ideologies have implications for unique forms of opportunity outcomes for women and racial minorities. For race, by increasing recognition of societal inequities, awareness leads Whites to show more support for policies that combat systemic inequality (i.e., affirmative action). For gender, by increasing biological attributions, awareness makes men more likely to stereotype in ways that limit women’s potential for success (Study 4). Finally, supporting my theory about the importance of the types of differences highlighted through awareness, I show that shifting the focus of differences toward external (opportunity, experience) ones leverages the benefits of awareness for both race and gender, providing a practical solution to improving race and gender equality (Studies 5–7). I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for improving intergroup relations.

Corporations have become increasingly global over the past number of years. The rapid development and usage of communication technology has allowed global corporations to more readily form virtual teams to take advantage of the skills of its global workforce. Having skilled workers on teams helps to make them more productive. Productive teams tend to reach their objectives and ultimately drive the success of corporations. Team learning has long been linked with a team’s ability to reach its objectives. The team leader is seen as a key to enabling learning for the team. This qualitative study of 13 virtual teams sought to find ways that the leaders of these virtual teams cultivated team learning in the IT department of a leading global financial services firm. The study was especially focused on applications development project teams that were geographically and temporally dispersed and had an off-shore component as team members. Using the Dechant, Marsick, and Kasl (1993) model of team learning as a foundation, the researcher conducted critical incident interviews with the leaders of the virtual teams followed by administering the Dechant and Marsick (1993) Team Learning Survey to the team members. The study yielded insights that could be valuable to organizations that employ virtual team leaders as well as human resource development professionals who create training programs to enhance the skills of this group. Among the most prevalent skills identified included group facilitation, meeting management, process documentation, artifact creation, practicing learning agility, and soliciting input. The virtual team leader exhibited learning leadership by building relationships within the team and with other constituents; utilizing appropriate technology to enable learning; and conducting productive reflection sessions with the team to evaluate the team’s actions. Where team leaders needed to improve their efforts was around the monitoring and measuring of their learning efforts in order to gauge their full effectiveness.

職場排斥指的是工作場合中未能促進人際關係好發展的為，如忽和排擠他人，並會對個體的情感、認知、和為各方面都產生負面的影響。本文提出一個新的研究模型探讨性别、自我建構、任務依賴性和職場排斥及其後果之間的關係。首先，本文提出關係式的自我建構會減少個體被排斥的機會，但是獨型的自我建構則會增加被排斥的可能性。其次，基於性別角色的一致性理論，本文提出在女性群體中，兩種自我建構與職場排斥的關係都會增強。对于排斥在工作场合中的影响，本文提出職場排斥會減少工作場合中的幫助為，並会增强個體的職傾向。除此之外，任務依賴性可以調節職場排斥對幫助為和職傾向的影響。本研究在中國大收集調查問卷，用SPSS 分析資，並通過回歸分析進假設檢驗。数据分析的結果支援本文的大部分假設：首先，性别和關係的自我構建与職場排斥之間存在顯著的相關；其次，任務依賴性可以抵消排斥與幫助為的負相關，但會增強排斥與職傾向的正相關。 / Workplace ostracism is defined as the omission of promotional interaction behaviors in workplace, which results in some detrimental effects on individuals’ emotion, cognition and behavior. This thesis proposes a model to examine the relationships among self-construal, gender, task interdependence, workplace ostracism and its outcomes. Specifically, I suggest that relational self-construal can reduce an individual’s ostracism experience but independent self-construal leads to more of such experience. Furthermore, based on the theory of gender role congruity, I propose that the linkage between selfconstrual and ostracism experience is stronger for women. I also suggest that workplace ostracism may lead to decrease in helping behavior and stronger turnover intentions for employees. Additionally, task interdependence, a jobrelated characteristic, is expected to moderate the above relationships. I collected the data via a survey in China and used SPSS to analyze the data. The hierarchical regression results support most of the hypotheses. Gender and relational self-construal are significant factors affecting workplace ostracism, and task interdependence moderates the relationships between ostracism and its outcomes. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Ji, Mingshuang. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-103). / Abstracts also in Chinese; appendix 2 in Chinese. / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS --- p.i / ABSTRACT --- p.iii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.v / Chapter I. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Background --- p.1 / Objectives of the Study --- p.5 / Significance of the Study --- p.6 / Organization of the Thesis --- p.8 / Chapter II. --- LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.9 / Ostracism --- p.9 / Self-construal and gender --- p.18 / Social Exchange Theory --- p.23 / Summary of this Chapter --- p.25 / Chapter III. --- IHYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT --- p.26 / Effects of self-construal --- p.29 / Moderating effect of Gender --- p.33 / Outcomes of ostracism in workplace --- p.38 / Moderating Effect of Task Interdependence --- p.42 / Chapter IV. --- DATA AND METHOD --- p.50 / Data Collection --- p.50 / Measures --- p.53 / Analytical Strategy --- p.57 / Chapter V. --- RESULTS --- p.59 / Descriptive Statistics --- p.59 / Factor Analysis --- p.62 / Regression Analyses --- p.62 / Chapter VI. --- DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION --- p.73 / Summary of Findings --- p.73 / Contributions --- p.76 / Limitations --- p.79 / REFERENCES --- p.83