Clinical supervision as a discipline supporting the quality of work in the field of helping professions has lately been introduced in healthcare services. In this context its implementation is being met with specific obstacles coming from both management and the workers tending to the clients or patients. This thesis is focused on the view of nurses working in residential facility tending primarily to children under the age of three. It contains a case study which first assesses the situation prior to starting the supervision process, mainly some aspects of organizational culture and the risks of burnout syndrome, which may reveal both possible obstacles and favourable circumstances during the implementation process. Following is a course description of the supervision meetings lasting throughout one year and the thesis is capped off by another partial research of the situation in this organization after said year focused primarily on the changes and reception of clinical supervision by its participants. Although certain foreseen obstacles such as shift work and hierarchical management have been confirmed, supervision was acknowledged for it's beneficial effect by the nurses. It brought them the opportunity to discuss, reflect on their work, relay information and ameliorate communication between both...

Manufacturing support services, operating as call centres, are one of the fastest growing and preferred means of service delivery in today's ever-changing manufacturing environment. The call centre has a significant potential to provide support to manufacturing organizations with business intelligence captured during contacts with customers. Research has shown that affective commitment is of particular significance in the workplace since this has been found to have the greatest impact on individuals performance, on-work behaviour and ultimately organisational effectiveness (Porter, Steers & Boulian 1974, Sung 2007, Shum 2008, Herscovitch 2002, Gong 2009). Meyer and Allen (1991) define affective commitment as a measure of the employee's emotional attachment to the organisation, the strength of identification with the goals of the organisation and strength of commitment to its success and continuous improvement. However, call centres are mechanistic structure models represented by close monitoring of words, stressful working loads, emotional exhaustion and burnout, and minor empowerment of employees. As a result employees lack affective commitment which detrimentally influences the service quality and has consequences such as high employee turnover and low customer satisfaction. Mechanistic structures are inward oriented structures that must be shielded from the environment but call centres are outward-facing entities. This firmly implies that call centres must be given a certain form of organic structure that will stimulate affective commitment building among employees and improve work conditions. This study aims to identify that by the implementation of an organic structure, through a systems engineering approach, to the design of manufacturing support services, the affective commitment of front-line employees will significantly increase, and due to that significant, but often counter-intuitive, benefits can be created. Conducted on a multiple-case design, three organisations were selected in this research study to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. Results were analysed for each case individually before it was analysed on inter-case basis. This has been done to show differences and similarities in patterns of data across the case studies. Results from the research show that structuring call centres around the principles of systems thinking will produce an organically structured support services department that will improve employees working conditions, and will formally institute the integration of call centre with other business units in the manufacturing organisation. The cross-case comparison revealed significant improvement in employees affective commitment level using organic structure when contrasted with employees working under mechanistic structure designs. It was revealed that by leveraging employee s affective commitment that significant benefits can be created at different levels in the organisation; an employee s level, managerial level, customer level, and the overall business level. A novel methodology for organic structures implementation, as a value creating model, was formulated. The emerged methodology consists of six major tasks and a decision making criteria. Results from this research indicate that there is a need for manufacturing organisations to structure their support services departments following organic structures that could provide a rewarding working experience for their employees while achieving organisational goals. The study makes an explicit practical contribution for manufacturing organisations in the selection of proper support service design and contribute substantially to the theory about manufacturing support services structures and management.

<div>This dissertation presents a two-phase multiple case study conducted to investigate the faculty</div><div>beliefs regarding the integration of labs into engineering and engineering technology education</div><div>and the relationship between such beliefs and the teaching practices adopted in the labs. In the first</div><div>phase, an exploratory study grounded on a framework of beliefs was conducted to elicit the beliefs</div><div>espoused by the participants. Interviews were used to elicit the participants’ beliefs. The</div><div>transcribed interviews were analyzed through the constant comparative method. Thirteen faculty</div><div>members from the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology participated. In the second</div><div>phase, a triangulation approach was used to investigate the relationships between the participants’</div><div>beliefs and their corresponding teaching practices. The findings from phase one were triangulated</div><div>with the data from interviews, questionnaires, and documents to elicit the relationships between</div><div>beliefs and practices.</div>