Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2005. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 130-142). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Studiens syfte var att granska organisationers hälsosatsningar och skapa en fördjupad förståelse för vilka motiv som ligger bakom implementeringen av specifika hälsosatsningar samt att beskriva hälsoprojektansvariges upplevelse av hälsosatsningens verkan. Studien har en kvalitativ ansats och har baserats på empiri från sex semistrukturerade telefonintervjuer. Studiens resultat visar att motiven till de olika hälsosatsningarna i stor utsträckning överensstämmer med varandra. De motiv som framkommit är att organisationerna har infört hälsosatsningar i syfte att minska sjuktalen, främja fysisk och psykisk hälsa, skapa balans mellan fritid och arbetstid, förändra beteenden och skapa trivsel på arbetsplatsen samt att bli en attraktivare arbetsgivare och minska personalomsättningen. Hälsosatsningarna har även visat sig i större utsträckning mer handla om individinriktade insatser än organisationsinriktade satsningar trots att forskning rekommenderar en kombination av dessa. Resultatet av studien har även visat att samtliga informanter delar upplevelsen av att hälsosatsningen väckt positiva känslor hos dem anställda samt att hälsosatsningarna i stor utsträckning har motsvarat deras förväntningar. Samtliga informanter uttrycker dock svårigheter med att mäta insatsernas verkan. Studien har genererat kunskap om vilka motiv som har legat bakom hälsosatsningarna, hur organisationerna arbetat med hälsosatsningarna samt hur de upplevt hälsosatsningens verkan. Denna kunskap hoppas vi kan bidra med en djupare förståelse för ämnet.

Studiens syfte var att granska organisationers hälsosatsningar och skapa en fördjupad förståelse för vilka motiv som ligger bakom implementeringen av specifika hälsosatsningar samt att beskriva hälsoprojektansvariges upplevelse av hälsosatsningens verkan. Studien har en kvalitativ ansats och har baserats på empiri från sex semistrukturerade telefonintervjuer. Studiens resultat visar att motiven till de olika hälsosatsningarna i stor utsträckning överensstämmer med varandra. De motiv som framkommit är att organisationerna har infört hälsosatsningar i syfte att minska sjuktalen, främja fysisk och psykisk hälsa, skapa balans mellan fritid och arbetstid, förändra beteenden och skapa trivsel på arbetsplatsen samt att bli en attraktivare arbetsgivare och minska personalomsättningen. Hälsosatsningarna har även visat sig i större utsträckning mer handla om individinriktade insatser än organisationsinriktade satsningar trots att forskning rekommenderar en kombination av dessa. Resultatet av studien har även visat att samtliga informanter delar upplevelsen av att hälsosatsningen väckt positiva känslor hos dem anställda samt att hälsosatsningarna i stor utsträckning har motsvarat deras förväntningar. Samtliga informanter uttrycker dock svårigheter med att mäta insatsernas verkan. Studien har genererat kunskap om vilka motiv som har legat bakom hälsosatsningarna, hur organisationerna arbetat med hälsosatsningarna samt hur de upplevt hälsosatsningens verkan. Denna kunskap hoppas vi kan bidra med en djupare förståelse för ämnet.

Workplace violence is reported to be on the increase, and within the South African Police Service, the inherently stressful nature of policing leads to high rates of suicide and violent behaviour. Contemporary investigations of workplace violence reveal epistemological, methodological and theoretical biases towards positivistic, rational-empirical approaches resulting in partial understandings and limited scope. This study aimed to qualitatively explore workplace violence as a socially embedded act. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a primary participant and three others directly related to him in order to supplement existing understandings from a social constructionist perspective. Discourse analysis allowed for discovery of socio-historically located discursive networks, while an ethnographic or empathic technique was used to gain insight into the life worlds of participants. Discourses of organisational negligence, betrayal and concurrent discourses of group solidarity and cohesion and organisational culpability reveal a reliance on external locus of control and avoidance coping. Discourses of absolution due to another‟s involvement, retribution, justice, and innocence perverted by a stronger agency relied on strategies of justification, denial, disclaimer, excuse or apology to negotiate positive participant identities. Discourses of masculinity allowed for a corroboration, justification and maintenance of male violence in general, and social discourses of female subjugation and commodification were used as a means to deflect responsibility and as justifications for actions of violence towards women. Inherent in all discourses was a deep socially and historically embedded conception that facilitates violent action as an expression of maleness in all spheres of life. From an ethnographic or empathic perspective, participants‟ world views were polarised around masculinity and femininity, suggesting that an ability to remain unemotional in situations of turmoil is a highly-prized characteristic of maleness, especially in a hypermasculine setting such as the police. The implicit and explicit approbation for the expression of masculine stoicism, as opposed to feminine or „weaker‟ emotions, causes recruits to experience isolation and shame if unable to face traumatic situations with the requisite dispassion, leading to negative coping mechanisms, depression, and suicide or violence. The conclusion can be drawn that prevention of violence relies on extrication of the concept of violence from masculinity at ideological, cultural and social levels within the SAPS, and the concurrent reduction in justificatory discourses reliant on an external locus of control. This has considerable implications, including the radical transformation of the organisation through the development of a clear vision of the future that can be supported by management, members and the community; the empowerment of employees through active participation in decisions and development of skills through training; rigorous modification of the practices that generate inequitable social conditions; and the revolution of cultural practices that venerate and enforce gendered inequalities. / Psychology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Consulting Psychology)

Workplace violence is reported to be on the increase, and within the South African Police Service, the inherently stressful nature of policing leads to high rates of suicide and violent behaviour. Contemporary investigations of workplace violence reveal epistemological, methodological and theoretical biases towards positivistic, rational-empirical approaches resulting in partial understandings and limited scope. This study aimed to qualitatively explore workplace violence as a socially embedded act. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a primary participant and three others directly related to him in order to supplement existing understandings from a social constructionist perspective. Discourse analysis allowed for discovery of socio-historically located discursive networks, while an ethnographic or empathic technique was used to gain insight into the life worlds of participants. Discourses of organisational negligence, betrayal and concurrent discourses of group solidarity and cohesion and organisational culpability reveal a reliance on external locus of control and avoidance coping. Discourses of absolution due to another‟s involvement, retribution, justice, and innocence perverted by a stronger agency relied on strategies of justification, denial, disclaimer, excuse or apology to negotiate positive participant identities. Discourses of masculinity allowed for a corroboration, justification and maintenance of male violence in general, and social discourses of female subjugation and commodification were used as a means to deflect responsibility and as justifications for actions of violence towards women. Inherent in all discourses was a deep socially and historically embedded conception that facilitates violent action as an expression of maleness in all spheres of life. From an ethnographic or empathic perspective, participants‟ world views were polarised around masculinity and femininity, suggesting that an ability to remain unemotional in situations of turmoil is a highly-prized characteristic of maleness, especially in a hypermasculine setting such as the police. The implicit and explicit approbation for the expression of masculine stoicism, as opposed to feminine or „weaker‟ emotions, causes recruits to experience isolation and shame if unable to face traumatic situations with the requisite dispassion, leading to negative coping mechanisms, depression, and suicide or violence. The conclusion can be drawn that prevention of violence relies on extrication of the concept of violence from masculinity at ideological, cultural and social levels within the SAPS, and the concurrent reduction in justificatory discourses reliant on an external locus of control. This has considerable implications, including the radical transformation of the organisation through the development of a clear vision of the future that can be supported by management, members and the community; the empowerment of employees through active participation in decisions and development of skills through training; rigorous modification of the practices that generate inequitable social conditions; and the revolution of cultural practices that venerate and enforce gendered inequalities. / Psychology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Consulting Psychology)

No description available.

This research investigates generational differences in Australian workers. In particular it focuses on changing trends and influences in the workplace and how different generations view and deal with these changes. The study focuses on Baby Boomers (born 1945-1963), Generation X (born 1964-1977) and Generation Y (born 1978 - 1994) across four industry sectors: Corporate, Education, Government and Not for Profit. The Australian workforce currently consists of four generations - all having distinct characteristics, working styles, needs and expectations. These differences pose challenges and opportunities to workforce management. The first step in managing the generations and their differences is to identify where the differences lie and to understand how best to cope with and exploit these differences. This research, in taking a generational cohort perspective towards analysing the modern workplace, seeks to explore how the different generations view the trends and influences that impact their work; and their attitudes towards technology, communication, work/life balance, organisational loyalty, attraction, engagement and retention. The study uses a multi-phase qualitative approach and includes in-depth interviews with a range of Australian industry experts; discussion groups held with Gen Ys, Gen Xers and Baby Boomer employees, in four organisations across four industry sectors; and in-depth interviews with senior executives in the same four organisations. This research will have significance to all organisations especially those that employ workers from across the generations and who are managing a multigenerational workforce. The findings will have practical application to organisational policy development in areas such as, work/life balance, attraction, engagement and retention of employees, reward and recognition systems, technology in the workplace and training and development. The study adds to the body of knowledge in workforce management, and in particular to the emerging body of knowledge on generational cohort analysis of the workplace in the Australian context. The study found significant generational differences that when harnessed and managed effectively, can contribute to the output and performance of the organisation as a whole.

Workplace mistreatment, in the form of both incivility and aggression, can have a major impact on personal and organizational outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine the mental judgments that individuals make before engaging in either uncivil or aggressive behavior. Data was analyzed in terms of both the potential costs and the potential benefits that an instigator could expect from engaging in such behavior, with specific emphasis on gender differences in cost/benefit expectations. There were no significant gender differences in either the perceived costs or the perceived benefits of engaging in incivility. The hypothesis that individuals with a low cost and/or high benefit pattern of responses of incivility were more likely to report instigating uncivil behaviors was also unsupported. The limitation of statistical analyses by a violation of the assumption of equal variances is discussed.

abstract: Industry, academia, and government have spent tremendous amounts of money over several decades trying to improve the mathematical abilities of students. They have hoped that improvements in students' abilities will have an impact on adults' mathematical abilities in an increasingly technology-based workplace. This study was conducted to begin checking for these impacts. It examined how nine adults in their workplace solved problems that purportedly entailed proportional reasoning and supporting rational number concepts (cognates). The research focused on four questions: a) in what ways do workers encounter and utilize the cognates while on the job; b) do workers engage cognate problems they encounter at work differently from similar cognate problems found in a textbook; c) what mathematical difficulties involving the cognates do workers experience while on the job, and; d) what tools, techniques, and social supports do workers use to augment or supplant their own abilities when confronted with difficulties involving the cognates. Noteworthy findings included: a) individual workers encountered cognate problems at a rate of nearly four times per hour; b) all of the workers engaged the cognates primarily via discourse with others and not by written or electronic means; c) generally, workers had difficulty with units and solving problems involving intensive ratios; d) many workers regularly used a novel form of guess & check to produce a loose estimate as an answer; and e) workers relied on the social structure of the store to mitigate the impact and defuse the responsibility for any errors they made. Based on the totality of the evidence, three hypotheses were discussed: a) the binomial aspect of a conjecture that stated employees were hired either with sufficient mathematical skills or with deficient skills was rejected; b) heuristics, tables, and stand-ins were maximally effective only if workers individually developed them after a need was recognized; and c) distributed cognition was rejected as an explanatory framework by arguing that the studied workers and their environment formed a system that was itself a heuristic on a grand scale. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Curriculum and Instruction 2015

Thesis (Ph.D. Commerce (Human Resource Management)) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / Workplace bullying is a complex and widespread phenomenon, which has become a challenge to understand as an organisational phenomenon because of its complexity and numerous labels and terms that are used interchangeably by researchers, media and the public, when describing the behaviour. The potential for bullying in the workplace is always present in situations where people continually interact. Currently, workplace bullying has become a phenomenon that has caused significant problems when ignored. This study endeavoured to explore workplace bullying from African indigenous perspective with no predominantly continuation of the work from Western countries and develop strategies and model of managing workplace bullying from an African perspective. This empirical study was conducted in Limpopo province and grounded theory was used as methodological strategy with twenty-one indigenous research participants selected through the use of snowball sampling. Furthermore, the constructivist worldview formed the basis of the study on workplace bullying accounts, which was generated through semi-structured interviews with the support of interview guide. Interviews were recorded using call phone recorder, transcribed, coded and analysed using Microsoft Excel and interpreted. Thus, six key themes emerged from this study to address shared themes from individual accounts of workplace bullying incidents, causes and consequences from indigenous, contextualised perspective. The findings of the study identified nine accounts of bullying behaviour. These are disrespect, rumours or bad-mouthing, name calling, threats, unfair treatment, yelling to cause public humiliation, infringement of rights, work overload and domineering. Furthermore, contracts of employment and demonstration of power was identified as causes and dynamics of bullying behaviour. The findings also showed that workplace bullying accounts resulted in high turnover rate, compromised employee well-being and performance. Most participants managed workplace bullying by “doing nothing”. The data also showed that age and gender play a significant role in the African contexts, taking into consideration shared cultural believes and customs. The study further provided a practical model for managing workplace bullying from an African perspective. Furthermore, the study proposes a need for workplace bullying legislation to further increase the severity of bullying behaviour. The study also highlights a need to incorporate indigenous knowledge when managing workplace bullying. Keywords: Workplace bullying; Indigenous knowledge; Western knowledge; Consequences; Conceptual framework; Culture