Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 37-40). / This study compares the similarities and differences in the attitudes of managers and students towards work-family issues such as the locus of responsibility for managing this interface, the perceived impact that children have on a working mother's career and traditional sex role stereotypes regarding women at work. Participants were 103 final year finance university students and 56 managers from three of the top accounting organisations in the Western Cape. There were strong significant attitudinal differences across gender, but few differences between managers and students. The most important contribution of this study is the understanding gained about the work-family attitudes of both male and female managers and future managers (current students) within the financial industry.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-94). / Many learners from disadvantaged schools struggle to obtain entrance into tertiary institutions. A Bridging Year Programme (BYP) designed by the South African Education and Environment Project (SAEP) seeks to address this problem by offering intensive tuition to post-high school learners who have failed to gain sufficient points for entry into a tertiary institution. The BYP prepares those learners to re-write core National Senior Certificate (NSC) subjects and assists them in applying for entrance into a university or college. A formative evaluation was conducted to assess whether the programme is designed and implemented as intended and whether programme design and delivery takes into account evidence based practices, established in the literature for programmes of this nature. A review of programme records was undertaken, interviews were conducted with the programme manager and programme coordinator, and selfreport questionnaires were administered to course tutors and programme beneficiaries. The results of the evaluation indicate that while the programme has the necessary potential to set high standards of participation for beneficiaries and provide them with personalised attention, and while learners are generally positive about their experience, a number of limitations are evident. These include in particular: the need for better monitoring of learner compliance with their contractual obligation, improved quality assurance with regard to the teaching and learning programme, and tutor preparation and training. Recommendations for improved programme implementation, as well as monitoring of programme standards, learner participation and performance, and tutor quality are provided.

In the past decade, human resource practitioners have focused their attention on employee retention. They have tried various practices in order to keep their employees in the organisation for longer. The research gap identified is in the graduate employees' intention to stay context. There has been even less research in this field within South Africa. This study aims to examine the extent to which career advancement opportunities and supervisor involvement contribute to graduate employees' intention to stay. In addition, this study focused on four factors namely, career progression, continuous learning, performance management and recognition in analysing the extent to which these four factors have contributed to graduate employees' intention to stay. Job satisfaction and affective commitment were also examined for their mediational effects on the relationship between career advancement opportunities, supervisor involvement and graduate employees' intention to stay. Graduate employees working in South African organisations participated in a self-report, quantitative survey (N = 357). Whilst the exploratory factor analysis of the intention to stay revealed a unidimensional factor, it was interesting to note that career progression and continuous learning loaded onto one distinct factor, labelled as career advancement opportunities. The multiple regression analysis indicated that career advancement opportunities and supervisor involvement were statistically significant predictors of intention to stay. Process mediation was used to test whether job satisfaction and affective commitment were mediators between career advancement opportunities, supervisor involvement and intention to stay. It was found that both job satisfaction and affective commitment were significant partial mediators in the abovementioned relationship. The study discusses suggestions for future research and the implications, both theoretical and practical, associated with the study.

South Africa's private security sector has become amongst the largest in the world. Research has shown that for the largest category of private security employees - security guards – employment tends to be insecure, wages low, working hours long and few have access to social benefits, such as pay for sick leave, unemployment, retirement, housing, education or family circumstances. This study aimed to investigate if job characteristics should be considered as an aspect relevant for creating decent work for security guards, thus allowing security guards to have a considerable degree of well-being through their work. Specifically, this study asked: Does adding meaningfulness created through a job's content as an indicator of decent work strengthen the relationship among decent work and well-being compared to current decent work indicators? Security guards around South Africa were asked to respond to a questionnaire which assessed job characteristics, decent work, and well-being levels. Analysis of the 98 response sets demonstrated that the job characteristics of security guards appear to have no influence on their perception of decent work nor their well-being, except for task identity which predicted well-being. Managers of private security companies may increase task identity by involving security guards in more aspects of work by enabling them take part in the planning, reporting, and evaluation of projects. This could be including the security guards in meetings with community forums so that they understand crime trends. Future research in the private security sector in South Africa is needed to create awareness of the unfavourable working conditions that many low-level security guards experience and how these can be ameliorated. This would allow private security companies to incorporate socially responsible practices regarding their employees' working conditions which are likely to increase security guards' job productivity at the same time.

Bibliography: leaves 82-99. / The study of organisational culture change is an important field of inquiry within the study of organisational behaviour and organisational culture. This study examined the effects of organisational culture change initiatives on employees, and how it impacted on their experiences as professionals in an academic healthcare environment. A qualitative case study methodology grounded in the phenomenological paradigm was operationalised. Twelve, open-ended, in depth interviews were conducted with health professionals of a university medical faculty. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed. Open-coding word based techniques were used to identify themes from the qualitative text. Qualitative analytical methods were employed to ensure internal consistency and validity. The thematic results are reported, discussed and integrated with previous literature.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-84).

Organisational leadership is regarded as one of the most important aspects of the workplace as it has been linked to productivity and efficiency and significantly influences employee health and well-being. The outbreak of COVID-19 and the shift to virtual work has shifted job demands and often increased stress. Hence, effective leadership is required to foster work conditions that are focused on promoting the health of employees. The importance of the role of leadership in creating healthy workplaces has been well established. Health-promoting leadership is a positive leadership approach thought to be instrumental in influencing employee well-being and health outcomes indirectly by focusing on changing the working conditions of employees. The main objective of this study was to identify if health-promoting leadership is related to health and well-being (work-related well-being and emotional exhaustion) in an environment in which a rapid shift to virtual working had taken place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study employed a descriptive, cross-sectional and quantitative research design. Convenience sampling using a snowball approach was employed. In total, 104 employees completed an online survey. The results showed that, as expected, the seven individual dimensions of health-promoting leadership were predictors of work-related well-being but not predictors of emotional exhaustion and health complaints. Therefore, the study contributes to the literature on health-promoting leadership and showed that leaders need to particularly focus on enhancing a sense of community for virtually working employees. This is through weekly online meetings as they provide employees with a space where they can interact with each other, and also share ideas with each other.

The research for this dissertation was conducted at the Western Cape site of a national manufacturing organisation in the food and beverages industry. The study set out to attain two primary goals. The first was to examine the effectiveness of relationship mapping (a method for graphically depicting mental models) as a tool for exploring the participants' experience of, and evaluation of 'planned organisational change'. The second goal was to investigate the possible impact of relationship mapping on those using the method. Research results for both of these goals were examined through three 'lenses' or frames of analysis, 'empowerment', 'communication', and 'understanding the change'. These frames of analysis were derived from reviewed literature and interaction with the organisation. Incorporated into the design was an analysis of group processes, as an additional check on the impact of the relationship mapping procedure. The study assessed the above goals across four, hierarchically-divided organisational levels, with a total of 56 participants. A classical control group design was used, incorporating qualitative and quantitative methods. Control group participants underwent in-depth interviews, semi-structured focus group discussions and a group process scale (assessing group interaction). In addition to these, the experimental groups underwent relationship mapping, use of the group process scale, and a post relationship mapping questionnaire. Thematic and statistical analyses were used for the examination of qualitative and quantitative results, respectively. Although causality cannot be inferred with certainty, results indicate that these experimental groups paid increased attention to inter-relationships, questioning and problem solving, and the production of new information. Participants recognised that relationship mapping impacted on their sense of 'empowerment' by allowing for participation, facilitating thinking, and provoking personal realisations. Relationship mapping was seen as altering participant perception of communication and improving their understanding of the change.

Theories within organisation and management studies have offered several concepts and models which indicate that organisational values are important factor for organisational success, including reputation building. Nevertheless, existing theory is still inadequate to explain the link between organisational values and organisation’s reputation because it does not account for the enabling factors that underlies the two concepts. This study argues that the implementation of organisational values is an important organisational action for acquiring positives perceptions of organisational values which influences employee behaviour and shapes organisational reputation. It specifically shows and elucidates the enabling mechanisms that reinforce organisational values to impact on employee perceptions and behaviour. This is important because when employees share and exemplify the values in their work, they are likely to behave in ways that support the organisation’s strategy which impacts on external perceptions and build reputation. This study employed a qualitative approach through a single in-depth case study. It reflects that the understanding of ‘what is going on’ within organisation is most appropriately achieved by building concepts and constructs from empirical studies. By using semi-structured interviews, focus groups and non-participant observations, the data develops and evolves through the responses and behaviours of participants. Employees were selected through purposive sampling and the snow-balling technique was used to reach customers. The data were structured and coded using thematic analysis. The findings revealed that the process of aligning organisational values and employee values is significant for understanding how organisational values influence employee behaviours, which in turn enable the organisation to build its reputation. The data suggest that four remediation phases: aware, articulate, accept and act, are important for explaining how a gap between organisational values and employee values can be reduced. This remediation process enabled the senior management team and employees to understand how their perceptions and reactions towards the implementation of organisational values impact upon attitudes and behaviours. The findings suggest that organisational values can be reinforced through various social influences. Social interactions can occur in different forms including the involvement of leaders of the management team in creating, exampling and communicating values as well as through expanding the employee’s role in enacting values through empowerment and trust building. However, the findings emphasise that the process of cascading and instilling values through a top-down or hierarchical is no feasible. Instead, it is a hybrid approach that requires employee buy-in and involvement especially in communicating and enacting organisational values. This is an important insight because employees regularly interact with each other which provide a valuable platform to persuade and influence other colleagues to embrace organisational values. Additionally, the findings also build on the reputation literature by demonstrating the role of reciprocity and mimicking in behaviour as the consequences of social interactions within the organisation. The opportunity to regularly interact with colleagues enables employees to want to reciprocate in return for what they have received in the workplace. This tacit understanding of reciprocity for mutual benefit and the tendency to imitate other’s behaviour improves employee perceptions of organisations which in turn contribute towards reputation building. The study advances current understandings in the organisational reputation literature by providing a unique theoretical and empirical insight into how organisational values can impact on reputation building. It also highlights the important role of internal mechanisms for shaping both internal perceptions and behaviour as well as external perceptions of organisations.

In the past few years we have witnessed the exposure of organisations that have exhibited unethical practices and individuals displaying far-reaching unethical behaviour that contributed to the recent economic meltdown. Seemingly paradigms that in the past served and governed organisational ethics have proven themselves inadequate for regulating organisational ethics. As a society witnessing these reprehensible actions we try to understand the logic of these actions and to find out whom we should blame. We also ask ourselves if there are no other approaches or perspectives that can change the contemporary logic governing organisations and ethics. Even new approaches presented seem to offer only a slightly remedying effect regarding the scandalous actions executed by organisational leader-founder(s) in the name of their organisations. Giacalone (2004:415) states that we are deluded as a society if we think that these scandalous actions will go away because organisations and organisational members are becoming more ethics friendly. This is because the root cause of these reprehensible actions has not been adequately dealt with in literature. Also, an alternative change agent that will provide a holistic framework for organisational ethics and will enhance intrinsic ethicality within organisations and individuals has not been sufficiently pursued within research. The purpose of this dissertation is to present organisational spirituality as an emerging construct and recognised phenomenon within organisational theory and ethics. More specifically the purpose of this study is to posit that (a) organisational spirituality is a better-suited construct and phenomenon to provide a holistic framework for governing organisational ethics and (b) applied organisational spirituality has the potential to enhance intrinsic ethicality in organisations and individuals. In order to present organisational spirituality as a transforming agent for organisational ethics, a literature review is conducted on organisational culture and organisational ethical constructs that have until recently been significant in serving and governing organisational ethics. Both organisational culture and organisational ethical constructs are problematised with regards to their relationship with unethical behaviours and organisational ethics. This is done in order to highlight the insufficiencies of current frameworks of organisational ethics and also to point out that organisational culture has proven itself to be inadequate in facilitating and maintaining good organisational ethics amongst individuals and organisations. The construct organisational spirituality is a holistic construct and phenomenon that is applicable to all organisational activities and aspects. Applied organisational spirituality accommodates the physical, emotional, rational and spiritual aspects of the individual. To improve the current organisational ethical situation facing organisations, organisational members, and the discipline of organisational ethics, conceptual ideas such as inner life, meaning at work, community, and higher order personal and organisational ethics that underlie the construct organisational spirituality are used to develop a conceptual framework that could significantly influence organisational ethics. The new framework is used to develop spiritual ethical values that can motivate intrinsic ethicality within the organisation and organisational individuals. The ramification of integrating organisational spirituality within organisational ethics is that through implementing conceptual ideas such as inner life, self-awareness, a sense of community, organisations and individuals have a sense of ethical transcendence that is motivated by awareness of self within a community of others. This dissertation also explores the construct spiritual leadership as a relevant leadership construct to facilitate and maintain organisational spirituality. The construct spiritual leadership embodies many value characteristics that are linked to effective leadership within the organisation. Since spiritual leader-founder(s) are also moral leaders spiritual leader-founder(s) play a significant role in promoting good organisational ethics through spiritual ethical values. Finally this thesis reviews case studies of organisations that have been successful through spiritual leadership. Case studies are reviewed to highlight and augment that organisational spirituality managed through spiritual leadership is a better-suited construct to accommodate the ‘whole’ person at work. Furthermore the case studies reviewed provide evidence that applied spirituality increases organisational and individual organisational potential such as organisational profitability, individual productivity, and that through self-awareness the organisation and individuals realise a higher order of organisational and personal ethics. / Dissertation (MTh)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Dogmatics and Christian Ethics / unrestricted