What is an event? What sort of object are they? How is a given event distinguished from other events and other objects? This thesis on science oriented metaphysics will take Davidson's account of events as its starting point to answer the above questions. It will develop this conception of events into one that is consistent with the special theory of relativity by updating its notions of change, cause and property. The new concept of a proper property, a generalization of the notion of an invariant, is introduced to solve some of these metascientific problems. Other features of the work include an analysis of the Lorentz force equation as it applies to one family of cases of causation, showing that a use of cause and effect to help individuate events cannot be complete until relativistic features are built into it. I propose that the conception of a proper property will also solve this worry over the nature of causation as it affects the issues of events above. In particular, it will attempt to solve a charge of circularity which has been leveled at Davidson's account. This property analysis also has the feature that it makes the account of events which started with Davidsonian inspiration (i.e. causes and effects are intimately connected to events) more like Kim's. Kim's account of events is modified on the grounds it does not do justice to our intuitions about changes and events. / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

M. Comm. / The primary purpose of this study was to consider the components of each pillar of competitive advantage, how leadership influences each pillar and to determine whether this in turn influences customer satisfaction and/or sustainable competitive advantage leading to the survival of the organisation. The literature review was used to accomplish the secondary objectives of discussing strategy, strategic leadership, sustainable competitive advantage and its pillars. The literature review was also used to model the interconnected relationships present in the industry. An overview of the event management industry was provided by means of the research that was conducted.

This thesis addresses some theoretical issues generated by the results of recent analysis of EEG time series proving the brain dynamics are driven by abrupt changes making them depart from the ordinary Poisson condition. These changes are renewal, unpredictable and non-ergodic. We refer to them as crucial events. How is it possible that this form of randomness be compatible with the generation of waves, for instance alpha waves, whose observation seems to suggest the opposite view the brain is characterized by surprisingly extended coherence? To shed light into this apparently irretrievable contradiction we propose a model based on a generalized form of Langevin equation under the influence of a periodic stimulus. We assume that there exist two different forms of time, a subjective form compatible with Poisson statistical physical and an objective form that is accessible to experimental observation. The transition from the former to the latter form is determined by the brain dynamics interpreted as emerging from the cooperative interaction among many units that, in the absence of cooperation would generate Poisson fluctuations. We call natural time the brain internal time and we make the assumption that in the natural time representation the time evolution of the EEG variable y(t) is determined by a Langevin equation perturbed by a periodic process that in this time representation is hardly distinguishable from an erratic process. We show that the representation of this random process in the experimental time scale is characterized by a surprisingly extended coherence. We show that this model generates a sequence of damped oscillations with a time behavior that is remarkably similar to that derived from the analysis of real EEG's. The main result of this research work is that the existence of crucial events is not incompatible with the alpha wave coherence. In addition to this important result, we find another result that may help our group, or any other research group working on the analysis of brain's dynamics, to prove or to disprove the existence of crucial events. We study the diffusion process generated by fluctuations emerging from the same model after filtering out the alpha coherence, and we study the recursion to the origin. We study the survival probability of this process, namely the probability that up to a given time no re-crossing of the origin occurs. We find that this is an inverse power law with a power that depends on whether or not crucial events exist.

Ventilator-associated events (VAEs) are patients' complications of respiratory conditions including ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP). Research shows that VAP is the most common hospital-acquired infection among ventilated patients and a leading source of mortality. With greater risk for complications among ventilated- supported patients, nurses working in the ICU must keep abreast of new knowledge and update expertise to develop technical and clinical skills in daily practice. The purpose of this project was to assess whether an educational intervention would increase the ICU nurses' level of knowledge of the evidence-based intervention. Knowles' adult learning theory was chosen for this project. A paired-samples t-test was conducted to examine nurses' knowledge of VAE/VAP using a questionnaire measuring knowledge of VAP; 58 ICU nurses participated an educational intervention. Findings showed that nurses had an increase in knowledge following the education (M = 11.43, SD = .775) compared to nurses prior to education (M = 9.55, SD = .976), t(57) = -26.884, p < .001. Results of this project may guide the use of an evidence-based practice educational intervention to improve the quality and safety of ventilated patients. The implications for positive social change include preventing VAEs/VAP among patients, thus decreasing the length of hospital stay, cost, and deaths related to ventilator infections.

Magister Psychologiae - MPsych / It is commonly known that South African society is characterised by high rates of exposure to violence and traumatic events. However, there is a convincing body of knowledge that indicates that a significant proportion of young adults exposed to traumatic events do not develop negative, trauma-related symptoms, but rather adapt in a positive manner

Job satisfaction is a topic that garners quite a lot of attention in the literature as researchers and practitioners alike seek to understand, predict and improve employees’ contentment with their jobs. Similarly, in the decade and a half since its introduction, affective events theory (AET, Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) is also gaining attention as it is recognized as a theoretically rigorous framework (Humphrey, 2006) and the prominent theory relating to workplace affect (Ashton-James & Ashkanasy, 2005). AET supplies a framework for investigating the relationship between work events, emotions and the resulting attitudes and behaviors – a structure which several investigations have empirically tested. The current paper reviews research conducted on job satisfaction within the AET framework and identifies areas in need of additional investigation.

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Today, commercial industry spends huge amount of resources in advertisement campaigns, new marketing strategies, and promotional deals to introduce their product to public and attract a large number of customers. These massive investments by a company are worthwhile because marketing tactics greatly influence the consumer behavior. Alternatively, these advertising campaigns have a discernible impact on recommendation systems which tend to promote popular items by ranking them at the top, resulting in biased and unfair decision making and loss of customers’ trust. The biasing impact of popularity of items on recommendations, however, is not fixed, and varies with time. Therefore, it is important to build a bias-aware recommendation system that can rank or predict items based on their true merit at given time frame. This thesis proposes a framework that can model the temporal bias of individual items defined by their characteristic contents, and provides a simple process for bias correction. Bias correction is done either by cleaning the bias from historical training data that is used for building predictive model, or by ignoring the estimated bias from the predictions of a standard predictor. Evaluated on two real world datasets, NetFlix and MovieLens, our framework is shown to be able to estimate and remove the bias as a result of adopted marketing techniques from the predicted popularity of items at a given time.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was three-fold. Firstly, it examined whether there was a positive relationship between the two burnout dimensions of emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation, for career women in particular. Secondly, this relationship was further examined by considering whether stressful life events and racial differences moderated the association between emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation. Thirdly, racial differences in depersonalisation were assessed. Motivation for study: In the fast paced environment of the 21st century, individuals are faced with increased demands which they need to address at an ever-increasing rate. This can translate into burnout, which is quickly becoming an epidemic. Existing theories on burnout postulate that burnout and its dimensions develop in a specific order, in that depersonalisation develops from increased levels of emotional exhaustion. Although several studies have tested this theory, limited research exists on how the relationship between emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation may be influenced by negative factors outside of the work environment (i.e., stressful life events). In addition, the relationship between the burnout dimensions has not been assessed in relation to racial differences in the unique cultural context of South Africa. Studies have shown that burnout is detrimental both on an individual and collective level, and can result in extensive cost implications for organisations. Therefore, this research could assist organisations, perhaps including South African organisations, to understand which factors may accelerate the occurrence and development of burnout and its dimensions. Subsequently, organisations may be advised to introduce tailored interventions to reduce or prevent burnout from occurring. Research design, approach, and method: A post-positivistic quantitative research strategy was used with a sample of 31 female participants, aged between 25 and 60 years of age. Participants were employed at a higher education institution in South Africa. Data were obtained through the use of an online questionnaire consisting of three measurement scales: the emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation scales from the Maslach Burnout Inventory General survey, and a stressful life events checklist. Data were analysed through the use of hierarchical multiple regression analysis and a one-way ANOVA. Main Findings: The results contradicted previous studies on burnout dimensions as the relationship between emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation was not significant. Furthermore, both stressful life events and race did not have a significant impact on the relationship between emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation. Finally, the different racial groups assessed in this study did not differ significantly in terms of levels of depersonalisation. Practical Implications: Based on the findings of this study, organisations should not gear burnout interventions toward specific groups of women, that is, women experiencing greater stressful life events or women from specific racial groups, as these factors do not appear to have an influence on the occurrence of burnout or its dimensions. In addition, the occurrence of depersonalisation does not seem to be avoided by addressing levels of emotional exhaustion in women. Contribution/value-add: The study makes a knowledge contribution to the existing gap in burnout research regarding the development of emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation, and the impact that stressful life events and race can have on this relationship. Even though the hypotheses were not supported, it adds value by equipping organisations with additional information regarding which factors to include or exclude when designing interventions to address burnout. / Mini Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Human Resource Management / MCom / Unrestricted

The purpose of this study was to explore what affective events influence job satisfaction amongst secondary school teachers of two private schools in Gauteng. The theoretical framework for this study was the Affective Events Theory as proposed by Weiss and Cropanzano. A total of 37 participants completed an open-ended questionnaire presenting an emotion and asking participants to describe an event that could be linked to the emotion experienced in as much detail as possible. Thereafter 6 participants were selected for follow-up interviews, based on age, gender and years' teaching experience to enquire about their perception on the role of leadership behaviour played in creating these events as well as investigating possible turnover intent. The results from this study highlighted that events which resulted in positive affectivity were mostly connected to learners as negative affective events involved leadership behaviour. It also highlighted how leadership behaviour contributed to these events and expressed possible turnover intent as a result of their experiences of these events at school. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Education Management and Policy Studies / MEd / Unrestricted