Thesis (M.M. (Security))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Public and Development Management, 2013. / Performance Management (PM) is one of the most important formal management tools that organisations use in the evaluation of individual job performances and potential. The organisation uses this tool to arrive at human resource decisions that further the goals of the individual and the organisation. The purpose of this descriptive quantitative study was to investigate the effectiveness of the Public Management Systems (PMS) used for middlelevel managers in the SA Military Health Services (SAMHS) Headquarters in Gauteng Province. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. Microsoft Excel statistics functions were used to calculate the totals, produce tables, graphs, and pie charts. The main finding of the study was that “an effective PMS could be implemented fruitfully if the emphasis is on proper implementation”. It was established that although much momentum has been gained with the implementation of the PMS in the SAMHS HQ critical issues such as communication, performance reviews, and performance reward need to be addressed by management.

The management of operations for a customer contact center (CCC) presents significant challenges. Management's direction is to reduce costs through operational efficiency metrics while providing maximum customer satisfaction levels to retain customers and increase profit margins. The purpose of this correlational study was to quantify the significance of various customer service representative (CSR) characteristics including internal service quality, employee satisfaction, and employee productivity, and then to determine their predictive ability on customer satisfaction, as outlined in the service-profit chain model. The research question addressed whether a linear relationship existed between CSR characteristics and the customers' satisfaction with the CSR by applying ordinary least squares regression using archival dyadic data. The data consisted of a random sample of 269 CSRs serving a large Canadian bank. Various subsets of data were analyzed via regression to help generate actionable insights. One particular model involving poor performing CSRs whose customer satisfaction was less than 75% top box proved to be statistically significant (p = .036, R-squared = .321) suggesting that poor performing CSRs contribute to a significant portion of poor customer service while high performing CSRs do not necessarily guarantee good customer service. A key variable used in this research was a CSR's level of education, which was not significant. Such a finding implies that for CCC support, a less-educated labor pool may be maintained, balancing societal benefits of employment for less-educated people at a reasonable service cost to a company. These findings relate to positive social change as hiring less-educated applicants could increase their social and economic status.

Research has shown that more than 45% of American companies are opting to integrate personality tests in their recruitment processes. Given this surge in personality testing, this thesis examines whether personality testing is a valid predictor of job-fit and performance in the context of personnel selection. A large proportion of this paper is focused upon the Big-Five factor model, its limitations, and derivative tests of the model. The impact of technology upon personality testing is also discussed as an emerging field. By tracing and examining the history of personality testing to current day, I have found that personality tests are best administered when they provide incremental validity over other tools and are matched to specific job-criteria.

The Five-Factor (FFM) and job characteristics models provide parsimonious frameworks to explain personal and situational influences on work behavior. However, the two are seldom studied in concert, despite theory and empirical evidence indicating that personality traits are more valid under some job conditions than others. The purpose of my dissertation is to address the lack of systematic knowledge regarding the joint influences of personality and job characteristics by testing and extending the major propositions of the theory of purposeful work behavior (TPWB; Barrick, Mount &Li, 2013). Because the TPWB focuses only on task and social characteristics of jobs, I propose a theoretical extension to the theory whereby I examine the way traits interact with contextual characteristics (e.g., physical demands, working conditions) of jobs to influence work outcomes. Further, I extend the TPWB by examining the occupational values from the theory of work adjustment (Dawis &Lofquist, 1975), which are broader and situated at a higher taxonomic level than jobs, moderate the FFM-criterion correlations. Using a meta-analytic design, I tested the extent to which job characteristics and occupational values moderate the relationships between the FFM and job performance, contextual performance, and job satisfaction. The overall results were mixed, with some findings indicating that personality trait validities are substantially higher under conditions of congruent job characteristics, and others indicating no such moderating effects, or moderating effects in contrast to what I proposed in my hypotheses. The mixed results may be due to gravitational processes that take place when individuals select jobs. I also examined the relative importance of the job characteristics and occupational values frameworks, and found that job characteristics were more important moderators of the FFM traits than occupational values across almost all trait-criterion combinations. I discuss significant implications and limitations, along with directions for future research along the lines of furthering the study of the joint influences of person and situation on work outcomes.

Cognitive ability is one of the most frequently investigated individual differences in management and psychology. Countless studies have demonstrated that tests measuring cognitive ability or intelligence predict a number of important real-world outcomes such as academic performance, vocational training performance, and job performance. Although the relationship between intelligence and real-world performance is well established, there is a lack of consensus among scholars with regard to how intelligence should be conceptualized and measured. Of the more traditional theories of intelligence, two perspectives are particularly dominant: the Cattell-Horn model of fluid and crystallized intelligence and the theory of General Cognitive Ability (GCA or g). Fluid ability (Gf) represents novel or abstract problem solving capability and is believed to have a physiological basis. In contrast, crystallized ability (Gc) is associated with learned or acculturated knowledge. Drawing on recent research in neuroscience, as well as research on past performance, the nature of work, and expert performance, I argue that compared to measures of fluid ability, crystallized ability measures should more strongly predict real-world criteria in the classroom as well as the workplace. This idea was meta-analytically examined using a large, diverse set of over 400 primary studies spanning the past 100 years. With regard to academic performance, measures of fluid ability were found to positively predict learning (as measured by grades). However, as hypothesized, crystallized ability measures were found to be superior predictors of academic performance compared to their fluid ability counterparts. This finding was true for both high school and college students. Likewise, similar patterns of results were observed with regard to both training performance and job performance. Again, crystallized ability measures were found to be better predictors of performance than fluid measures. This finding was consistent at the overall level of analysis as well as for medium complexity jobs. These findings have important implications for both intelligence theory and selection practice. Contemporary intelligence theory has placed great emphasis on the role of fluid ability, and some researchers have argued that Gf and g are essentially the same construct. However, the results of this study, which are based on criterion-related validities rather than factor-analytic evidence, demonstrate that Gc measures are superior predictors in comparison to Gf measures. This is contrary to what one would expect if Gf and g were indeed the same construct. Rather, the findings of this study are more consistent with General Cognitive Ability theory, which predicts that Gc indicators will be the best predictors of future learning and performance. Given that Gc measures demonstrate higher criterion-related validities than Gf measures, Gc measures are likely to be preferred for selection purposes. Further, Gf scores are known to decline with age while Gc scores remain relatively stable over the lifespan. Thus, when used for selection purposes, Gf tests may underpredict the performance of older workers. In contrast, research has shown that Gc measures are predictively unbiased. Additional implications for theory and practice are discussed, along with study limitations and opportunities for future research.

In the hectic world of an IT helpdesk with an ever increasing number of applications and tasks on the go, managing the intricacies of how to navigate these is a cause of frustration for helpdesk workers. I had noticed while working on a helpdesk that the workspace area - particularly the monitor setups that IT helpdesk workers have to use - makes doing their job difficult. The number of applications open, the number of tasks on the go at once and the added pressure of customer contact, all call for applications and data to be accessed quickly - but the set up of the users workspace generally does not allow for this. The main objective of this research is to compare the difference between the use of a single screen, a dual screen and the new Multi-Layer Display (MLD) and the complications of having multiple applications and multiple monitors operating at one time for IT Helpdesk Workers. This research looked at how the users' monitor setup influenced the performance, efficiency, satisfaction, ergonomics and learning of the participants.The research showed that there was a clear dislike of the current set up of single screens; all participants felt that the single screen setup limited what they could do at once and it rated the least favourite of all. The dual and MLD screens showed positive outcomes for increasing multi-tasking abilities and raising users' perceived performance and satisfaction levels. The added screen real estate of both the dual and MLD over the single screen meant that users consistently had more information available to them 7which enabled them to complete tasks quicker, monitor other applications for incoming jobs, easily transfer data from one application to another and multi-task more effectively. While there were some minor ergonomic concerns and learning difficulties with the unique features and utilities of the both the dual and MLD monitors, participants still preferred to use these setups over the single screen.

<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p><strong>Purpose</strong></p><p>The purpose of this paper is to find out which personal-related factors are influencing on the task performance and the contextual performance of expatriate managers.</p><p><strong>Design/Methodology/Approach</strong></p><p>This research adopts a qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews with key-information from the managers taking international assignments.</p><p><strong>Findings</strong></p><p>The findings indicate that there is a series of significant associations between personal-related factors (personality traits, competences/skills, self-willingness and previous experience) and the performance of expatriates’ assignments.</p><p><strong>Research limitations/implications</strong></p><p>One suggestion for further research is to explore deeper and more comprehensive on other less important factors or the important factors which we are overlooking; it also could be more comprehensive on the factors that relate to the performance of expatriates.</p><p><strong>Practical implications</strong></p><p>We present a table of the relationship between personality traits, competences/skills, self-willingness, previous experience and the job performance of expatriates’ assignments. Thus, HR departments can follow this guidance when selecting expatriates to manage overseas assignments. Furthermore, individuals can take this model as a reference when making decisions for their career lives.</p><p><strong>Keywords</strong></p><p>Expatriate assignments, personality traits, self-willingness, competences/skills, previous experience, job performance, task performance, contexture performance</p><p><strong>Paper type</strong></p><p>Master Thesis</p>

Leadership style builds up the organizational culture while the organizational culture develops the leader ship style. The great organizational culture and fit leadership style for business environment and future development can improve employee job efficiency and encourage employees put efforts to achieve the organization goal. In this study, we would like to understand the relationship between leadership style, organizational culture, personal characteristics and performance to provide some suggestions for organization on consideration of employee performance improvement. The analysis result of this study states as follows: 1.Manager leadership has positive influence to organizational culture. The result implies that the transformational leadership has strongest influence on organizational culture development while transactional leadership is associated with hierarchy culture and market culture. 2.Organizational culture has positive influence to employee job performance. The result indicates the adhocracy culture has the strongest influence on contextual performance while hierarchy culture has the strongest influence on task performance. 3.The manager leadership style has positive influence to employee job performance. The result suggests that the transformational leadership has stronger influence on contextual performance then transactional leadership. 4.Organizational culture has mediating effect on the relationship between the manager leadership style and job performance. The result states that the adhocracy and hierarchy culture have absolute mediating effect on the relationship between transformational leadership and job performance. 5Personal characteristics have positive influence to job performance. The result indicates that employees with the internal locus of control have higher job performance. 6.Personal characteristics have no moderating effect on the relationship between manager leadership style and job performance. 7.The analysis result of respondents¡¦ background variables shows that the employees¡¦ position influences the job performance and the managers¡¦ tenure influences the transformational leadership which indicates the longer the managers stay in the organization, the stronger influence shows on the association with transformation leadership. 8.The industrial analyses implies that employees who work under transformational leadership with hierarchy culture in digital industries , under transformational leadership with adhocracy culture in other industries and under transactional leadership with adhocracy culture in other industries have higher job performance.

Work motivation has most often been defined operationally as job satisfaction, but this dimension has shown to be unrelated to job performance. Therefore, a new measure of work motivation defined as willingness to work was developed. Two main questions were investigated in this thesis. Three work groups were included in the studies. The first purpose was to explore willingness to work and related variables for two groups, people employed in pre-schools (Study1) and employees of an insurance company (Study 2). The variance in willingness to work was explained to 59% for the pre-school employees, and to 69% for the employees in an insurance company. Work interest, affective organizational commitment, perceived competence and risk burden were predictors of willingness to work in both of the groups. Other factors related to willingness to work in this study were, for the employees in pre-schools, positive evaluation of the job, normative organizational commitment, general intrinsic motivation and accepted risks. Additional factors that contributed to the explanation of the variance in willingness to work for the employees in an insurance company were job satisfaction, spontaneous creativity, work environment and opinions about one’s job. A second purpose was to investigate the construct validity of willingness to work dimension by examining its relationships with absenteeism, number of hours worked, intention to quit, and job performance. In Study 1 and Study 2, the relationship between absenteeism, number of hours worked, intention to quit and willingness to work was examined. The result showed that willingness to work was strongly related to intention to quit and number of hours worked in both of the studies. The relationship between willingness to work and job performance (subjective and objective) was also investigated. Participants in this study were insurance sales people. The correlation of willingness to work and objective as well as subjective job performance was quite high (r=.41 and .57, respectively). According to the results, the work motivation measure could be considered as being a quite valid assessment of work motivation. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk., 2001

Abstract Purpose The purpose of this paper is to find out which personal-related factors are influencing on the task performance and the contextual performance of expatriate managers. Design/Methodology/Approach This research adopts a qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews with key-information from the managers taking international assignments. Findings The findings indicate that there is a series of significant associations between personal-related factors (personality traits, competences/skills, self-willingness and previous experience) and the performance of expatriates’ assignments. Research limitations/implications One suggestion for further research is to explore deeper and more comprehensive on other less important factors or the important factors which we are overlooking; it also could be more comprehensive on the factors that relate to the performance of expatriates. Practical implications We present a table of the relationship between personality traits, competences/skills, self-willingness, previous experience and the job performance of expatriates’ assignments. Thus, HR departments can follow this guidance when selecting expatriates to manage overseas assignments. Furthermore, individuals can take this model as a reference when making decisions for their career lives. Keywords Expatriate assignments, personality traits, self-willingness, competences/skills, previous experience, job performance, task performance, contexture performance Paper type Master Thesis