Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a conceptual model to examine the effects of work-family conflict, family-work conflict, and emotional exhaustion on job performance and turnover intentions. The paper also aims to investigate the role of gender as a moderator of the posited relationships. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of frontline hotel employees in Turkey serves as the study setting. Data were collected via self-administered questionnaires. A total of 723 usable responses were obtained. Findings – The results show that employees facing conflicts originating from their work (family) and family (work) roles become emotionally exhausted. These two forms of interrole conflicts are also significant predictors of frontline employees' turnover intentions. Gender moderates several of the relationships proposed in this paper. Practical implications – Turkish hotels will benefit from establishing a family-supportive work environment to lessen the detrimental impact of conflicts in the work-family interface on frontline employees' emotional exhaustion and job outcomes. A dual (i.e. gender-specific) approach appears to hold promise in managing frontline employees. Originality/value – When these results are compared to the results of studies conducted in western countries, a number of similarities become evident. These similarities broadly suggest that research findings derived from western countries are generalizable into a culturally different setting, and support the premise that as traditional gender roles continue to expand and change, a convergence of findings in work-family research takes place cross-culturally.

No description available.

Background- South Africa, the most southern country at the African continent as the name depicts, is a country where Apartheid has prevailed the historical and contemporary landscape of the nation.  The era of Apartheid, being a system of discrimination and segregation, produced racial imbalances within the South African society and polices of affirmative action was enforced as an attempt to redress the racial inequalities. Purpose- By studying a distinctive type of affirmative action in a historically ethnically distressed context (organizations in South Africa), the purpose of this thesis was to receive insight on what impact affirmative action has on employees’ attitudes towards equality. The purpose was divided into two research questions to get an understanding of the implications that shape employees’ attitudes. The first research area aimed to identify and investigate which key factors are influencing employees’ attitudes towards affirmative action. The second research area considered the underlying cause of affirmative action and thereby investigated what impact affirmative action has on individuals’ as well as groups’ attitudes towards equality. Method- In order to fulfill the purpose of this thesis we used a qualitative method approach.  The approach adopted for the qualitative study was a constructivist grounded theory approach and the research has been performed with both an inductive and a deductive approach. The empirical material has been gathered through in-depth semi-structured interviews with eight employees at four different multinational companies operating in South Africa, by informal interviews with individuals in South Africa and through parallel observations.  Results and Conclusion- We provide five key factors that influence employees’ attitudes towards affirmative action; organizational culture, top management support, incentive for teams versus individual performance, prior experience of diversity and cultural artifacts. Furthermore, we present a three-step model on how intergroup contact can impact employees’ attitudes towards equality. We found that increased exposure towards diversity, through group interactions, can decrease employees’ negative prejudices, evaluations of other groups and thus enable an understanding that can help create a more positive attitude towards equality. Practical Implications- The key influencing factors identified in this study will help increase the knowledge of how to manage affirmative action within organizations. The findings can help managers and business leaders dealing with the implementation and management of affirmative action, both for their own understanding as well as in terms of guiding their employees on their approach toward affirmative action programs.

This research examines the structure of safety climate in the manufacturing sector. It does so by examining and comparing attitudes to, and perceptions of, safety issues in two manufacturing organisations and one organisation involved in the supply of construction materials. The concept of safety climate, and the associated concept of safety culture, have been the subject of much research and theory building in recent years and this thesis builds on previous work. The research framework used here employed a mainly quantitative methodology in order to investigate the architecture of safety climate using structural modelling. Statistical modelling has been applied in other safety studies, often involving safety climate as one variable in a global description of safety systems. However it has rarely been used to model and describe the structure of safety climate as an indicator of safety culture, as in this research. The structure of safety climate described in this research is characterised by the interaction of organisational, group interaction, work environment and individual variables, which provide indicators of influences on individual levels of safety activity. Structural models of the data from all three participating organisations fitted the broad pattern of organisational variables influencing group and work environment variables, which, in turn influence individual variables. A more detailed comparison of organisational structures, however, highlighted slight differences between the two manufacturing organisations and more pronounced differences between these and the construction material supply organisation, suggesting that most elements in the structure of attitudes to safety described here are industry specific. These results are explained in terms of working environments. Differences in structure, consistent with job roles, were also apparent between occupational levels. The research, in line with previous work in the field, has highlighted the importance of management commitment to, and actions for, safety, as well as the role of individual responsibility in the promotion of safety activity. The work reported here has emphasised their importance in developing and maintaining an organisational culture for safety.

Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2006.

Magister Commercii (Industrial Psychology) - MCom(IPS) / Even though attitudes have been studied for many years, attitudes toward individuals with disabilities still remain an important issue, today (Geskie & Salasek, 1988; Popovich, Scherbaum, Scherbaum & Polinko, 2003). With the relationship between numerous demographic factors and attitudes toward those with disabilities being inconsistent across existing research and the absence of research conducted in the South African context this research study investigated whether variables such as gender, age, education level, exposure to a person with a disability or having a friend or family member with a disability had an effect on attitude towards disability. The population of this study constituted students from the Economic and Management Sciences (EMS) Faculty and Support Staff in a Higher Education Institution in the Western Cape. A non-probability convenience sample method was utilised of which 140 respondents completed two questionnaires. Namely, a Biographical questionnaire and the Affective Reactions Subscale of the Disability Questionnaire (Popovich et al. (2003). Statistical analyses included both descriptive and inferential statistics (the t-Test and ANOVA). According to the findings of this research study, significant relationships do not exist between variables such as gender, age, educational level, amount of contact and exposure to or having a friend or family member with disability and staff and student attitudes toward those with disabilities in a Higher Education Institution in the Western Cape. A few limitations related to the study were recognized and it is recommended that a combination of quantitative and qualitative research approaches be implored as well as other faculties and Institutions in the Western Cape be used to contribute to greater representativeness and generalisability for future research. Also, to establish organisations or institutions as employers and institutions of choice among those with disabilities, organisations and institutions are to better market disability facilities and accommodations. It is also proposed that students and staff with disabilities should be encouraged to fully participate in the design and event management of disability awareness campaigns.

While managers increasingly see the importance of corporate social responsibility, incorporating it in the business often fails (Keys et al., 2009). Organizational sustainability performance can improve if employees have positive attitudes towards sustainability (Wang et al., 2011). This thesis aims to explore how different leadership behaviours in case company Cybercom have influenced the attitudes of its employees. New analytical tools are developed for analysing the data collected through interviews with employees at Cybercom. The findings indicate several connections between the leadership behaviours studied, and the attitudinal components. One main finding was that all four leadership behaviours in Cybercom had, to a certain extent, led to the affective outcome of feeling that sustainability was more important, the cognitive outcome of learning about the business perspective of sustainability, and the behavioural outcome of communicating more or differently about sustainability. It is concluded that Cybercom has helped shape its employees’ attitudes through various factors such as employee training, leaders acting as role models and motivators, written materials and workshops.The theoretical contributions of this paper consist of new knowledge in the field of leadership shaping employee attitudes, as well as new analytical tools. The practical contributions of this paper are managerial implications for Cybercom.

No description available.

Recent meta-analytic treatments of the Strategic Human Resource Management literature suggest a relationship between the adoption of "high-commitment" HR practices and organization level performance outcomes (Combs, Lui, Hall & Ketchen, 2006). However, there is considerable variability in the manner in which the HR system construct is conceptualized and measured (Arthur & Boyles, 2007; Delaney & Huselid, 1996). Further, relative little attention has been given to how these systems of HR practices operate to influence organizational outcomes (Ostroff & Bowen, 2000). Drawing on the extant SHRM literature, the present study attempts to lend clarity to these issues by specifying and assessing a number of unique measures of the HR system. Several attitudinal, motivation and behavioral employee outcomes are also identified and assessed as possible mediators between the HR system measures and organizational outcomes. An integrated model proposing relationships both among these measures and their effects on various organizational outcomes is offered and tested. Data obtained from 202 hotel locations provided mixed support for the proposed model of relationships. However, results generally support the relationships between measures of the HR System and important organizational outcomes. Findings also reinforce the utility of expanding the measurement of the HR system beyond the formally established HR programs, the need to better understand intra-organizational variability in HR systems along functional lines and the challenges and opportunities inherent in multi-respondent designs. Finally, the failure to demonstrate the mediating role of the specified human capital characteristics in HR's relationship with firm performance presents a continued challenge to future research to effectively model this relationship. / Ph. D.

The purpose of the study was to examine how a shift in elements of organizational culture impacted attitudes toward job satisfaction in a medium-sized, consumer-owned electric utility over a period of 13 years. The unit of analysis was a municipal utility distributing electrical energy to approximately 27,000 customers. Data collection included the Science Research Associate Employee Inventory, a review of the organization's documents, and a subjective Job Satisfaction Questionnaire. A one-tailed z-test was performed to test whether or not the proportion of employees answering favorable in one survey was greater than the proportion answering favorable in the other survey. It was also used to analyze certain cultural changes. The elements of job satisfaction assessed were: job demands, working conditions, pay, employee benefits, friendliness and cooperation of fellow employees, supervisor/employee interpersonal relations, confidence in management, technical competence of supervision, effectiveness of administration, adequacy of communication, security of job and work relations, status and recognition, identification with the company, and opportunity for growth and advancement. Elements assessed depicting culture were attendance, safety, United Way participation and turnover. Conclusions of the study emphasized that long-term cultural aspects including attendance, safety and United Way participation may be changed positively while maintaining or improving attitudes toward certain aspects of job satisfaction. Areas of attitude improvement were pay, benefits, and effectiveness of administration. It was also concluded that employees with higher education levels and more behavioral training may have higher expectations of their supervisors.