Thesis (D.Psych.Ed.) - University of Queensland, 2005. / Includes bibliography.

M.Comm. / Change is an ongoing process right around the globe. South Africa is even more subject to change as a result of socio-economic and political transformation. This community tendency affects the South African organisation intensely, and a need exists for comprehensive guidelines for the handling of this transformation process. There are few publications which are relevant to the field of organisation development in South Africa. In this literature study attention was firstly given to the theoretical description of the term organisation development, the works of a number of theorists were examined. In the second place the historical development of the study field of organisation development was researched and the progress over time was reflected. Five approaches to organisation development were identified as they developed chronologically, viz. (a) laboratory training, (b) survey research and feedback, (c) action research (d) quality of working life, and (e) strategic change as the most recent contribution. The conclusion was reached that all five approaches still have merit, and that not one can be summarily eliminated for current usage. In the third place the organisation development process was examined in detail. Theories and models addressing the nature of planned change were examined with a view to establishing a generic model of change. This model comprises four phases which are each discussed in reasonable depth, viz. (a) initialising and contracting, (b) diagnosing, (c) planning and implementation, and (d) evaluation and institutionalisation. In the fourth place the organisational development practitioner was closely examined and an attempt was made to identify the skills, knowledge and qualifications which distinguish successful practitioners from those who achieve less success. The broad South African socio-economic and political environment, with its differing community trends, was investigated in order to draw up a scenario within which the South African organisation development practitioner must function at present. A skills profile as well as basic guidelines for the successful practitioners were finally established. The conclusion was reached that the organisation development practitioner within the South African environment must possess expertise, additional to the identified skills profile of the international practitioner, in order to be effective.

This study is designed to examine churches in transitional areas of urban centers and how they adapt to social change. The research questions are: What modes of adaptation do churches select in response to social change? Why do churches when faced with social change select different modes of adaptation?

M.Ed. / Organisation development as a tool for sustainable school improvement is at the core of this study and a qualitative case study research method was deployed. Organisation development in itself is a process, which applies behavioural science knowledge and systems theory to plan and implement change in schools. The goal is more effective schools and an educational environment supportive of human needs and developments and where the participation of all stakeholders forms a crucial determinant in the change process. The researcher's field experience as an organisation development consultant combined with an international literature survey brought to light evidence to the effect that there is a definite need for a more school-based model of organisation development. The importance of a comprehensive capacity building exercise for principals and school management teams on the knowledge, skills and attitudes required for organisation development are identified as an absolute necessity in this research. The aim of the research is therefore to describe the nature of organisation development within a school context, determine the perceptions of educators concerning organisation development, investigate aspects that could be enhanced and develop guidelines that could be used by educational managers to improve their schools and to facilitate the management of change. A detailed literature study embedded within a theoretical framework of organisation development emphasises the importance of the individual nature of schools with reference to school improvement interventions.

In the context of distinctive international business phenomena of global environmental concern i.e., climate change, this dissertation addresses two research questions. Does multinational enterprise (MNE) orientation (global- or regional-orientation) have an influence on the carbon performance of the multinational? Is there any significant home country effect that drives carbon performance? Stakeholders are increasingly watching the green performance of the firms and investors are looking for information of how firms deal with externalities such as carbon emission. Environmental capabilities are increasingly becoming the core competence of a multinational enterprise. This also enables the MNE to be an active entity and play a key role in global environmental governance. Defining carbon performance as the capability of firms to integrate climate change strategy into the overall strategy, this dissertation used resource-based view and institutional theory as the theoretical framework along with the concept of regionalization of firms. We argue that differences in integrating strategy to reduce carbon emission (carbon performance) are related to MNE orientation and home country effect. Using a sample of 324 firm-years drawn from the carbon disclosure project reports 2011, 2012, and 2013, we analyzed the data running a logistic regression. We found that global-oriented MNEs had better carbon performance compared with regional-oriented MNEs (p This result was against the hypothesized relationship. One of the reasons for this result could be projected good image by the firms in environmentally non-sensitive industries because of cost advantage. Lower environmental institutional distance between home and host country of a firm increased the likelihood of its carbon performance regardless of its orientation as global or regional (p

Taking a positive psychology approach, this research looked at a little-studied subset of working women and men - those who experienced changes affecting their work and self-reported as handling them well. The primary purpose was to explore what strategies they employed that helped them handle change well, what hindered doing well, and whether there were things that would have been helpful but were unavailable. There were two secondary purposes: (1) to gain insight into the nature of the changes they had faced, the impacts of those changes, whether they had always handled change well, and if not, when that changed and why; and (2) to explore whether the research interview itself had an impact on participants. This was primarily a qualitative, exploratory study that used the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) (Flanagan, 1954) to elicit helping and hindering critical incidents and wish list items; and open-ended interview questions (Cozby, 1997; Palys, 1997) to gather information about participants' experiences of change. A quantitative component was embedded in the form of a pre- and post-interview scaling question (Palys, 1997) to determine if the interview had an impact. Data from the CIT portion of the study elicited ten helping, hindering and wish list categories: (1) Personal Attitudes/Traits/Emotional Set; (2) Support from Friends and Family; (3) Internal Framework and Boundaries; (4) Taking Action; (5) Self-care; (6) Support from Professionals; (7) Management Style and Work Environment; (8) Skill/Role Competence; (9) Support from Work Colleagues; and (10) Personal Life Changes/Issues, suggesting strategies can be employed that facilitate handling change well. Data from the quantitative portion resulted in a borderline large effect size, suggesting the interview had an impact on participants. Surprisingly, results from participants' stories of change and its impacts strongly paralleled results of studies in the unemployment, transition, burnout, and posttraumatic growth literature, suggesting this sample of workers was dealing with chaotic environments in many domains of their lives and even though they self-reported as doing well with the changes they were facing, there was a cost involved. Implications for workers, counsellors, vocational psychologists, career counsellors, human resource professionals, organizations, and future research and theory are discussed. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

The effects of multiple interventions in organizational development change were studied in a comprehensive meta-analytic review. Thirteen organizational interventions were assessed on five outcome variables based upon previous research of six major meta-analytic reviews. Findings based on 138 studies indicated that there were no significant effects of multiple interventions on positive organizational change as opposed to individually implemented interventions. The findings are not congruent with previous findings of organizational development change, and possible issues surrounding these differences are discussed.

In a world that is increasingly urbanised, cities are recognised as critical sites for tackling problems of climate change, both by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and addressing the impacts of changing climate conditions. Unlike climate change mitigation, adaptation does not have one clear, commonly agreed collective goal. Governing and making decisions on climate adaptation in cities entails contestation over knowledge, values and preferences. Currently, the two dominant conceptualisations of adaptation are as cycles or pathways. Do these models adequately theorise what can be empirically observed in cities as to how climate adaptation is undertaken? Most research on urban climate adaptation emanates from the Global North, where political, scientific, economic and administrative systems are well established and well resourced. There is a dearth of empirical research from cities of the Global South contributing to the development of urban climate adaptation theory. This thesis contributes to addressing this gap in two ways. Firstly, by drawing on both conceptual and methodological resources from the field of organisational studies, notably the streams and rounds models of decision making, organisational ethnography and processual case research. Secondly, by conducting empirical case study research on three processes of city scale climate adaptation in Cape Town, South Africa, a growing city facing many development challenges where the local government began addressing climate adaptation over ten years ago. The three adaptation processes studied are: the preparation and adoption of city-wide sectoral climate adaptation plans; the creation of a City Development Strategy with climate resilience as a core goal; and the inclusion of climate change projections into stormwater masterplans. Data were gathered through interviews, participant observation, focus groups and document review, through embedded research within a formal knowledge co-production partnership between the University of Cape Town and the City of Cape Town government. Processual analysis and applied thematic analysis were used to test models of adaptation and decision making against data from the three case studies. The findings suggest that both the cycles and pathways models of climate adaptation inadequately represent the contested and contingent nature of decision making that prevail within the governance systems of cities such as Cape Town. Based on ethnographic knowledge of how Cape Town's local government undertakes climate adaptation, it is argued that the rounds model of decision making provides conceptual tools to better understand and represent how the process of climate adaptation in cities is undertaken; tools that can be used to enhance the pathways model. The study concludes that progress in adapting cities to a changing climate is currently constrained by both the problems and potential solutions or interventions being too technical for most politicians to deal with and prioritize and too political for most technical and administrative officials to design and implement. It calls for urban climate adaptation to be understood as distributed across a multitude of actors pursuing concurrent, discontinuous processes, and thereby focus needs to be on fostering collaboration and coordination, rather than fixating on single actors, policies, plans or projects.

This study is a retrospective examination of elements that influenced one elementary school staff to initiate and implement a school-wide innovation in their reading program in 1990-91. This school served 315 preschool children through grade three in small town set in the rural countryside. Case study methodology was used to discover how the change was initiated; why the particular program elements were chosen; the role of the staff, the principal, and the parents played in initiating the innovation; and what lessons this school's experience may have for school reform. As the school community planned for the initiation of their new reading program, the "whole language" approach to reading was gaining momentum. The notion of "early intervention" was popularly used to describe a variety of methods educators were using to deal with evidence of reading failure in young children. Their stories describe the challenges this school staff felt as they attempted a year-long initiative to merge phonics and whole language into a holistic approach to reading for grades one through three. Findings were reported around seven central themes emerging from the data collection, including: 1) empowerment, 2) academic improvement, 3) shared vision/beliefs, 4) collaboration, 5) focus on children's needs, 6) site-based decision making, 7) participatory leadership. / Ed. D.

Software developers must produce software that can be changed without the risk of degrading the software architecture. One way to address software changes is to classify their causes and effects. A software change classification mechanism allows engineers to develop a common approach for handling changes. This information can be used to show the potential impact of the change. The goal of this research is to develop a change classification scheme that can be used to address causes of architectural degradation. This scheme can be used to model the effects of changes to software architecture. This research also presents a study of the initial architecture change classification scheme. The results of the study indicated that the classification scheme was easy to use and provided some benefit to developers. In addition, the results provided some evidence that changes of different types (in this classification scheme) required different amounts of effort to implement.