M.A. (Counselling Psychology) / The process of retirement is perceived by many as the 'end of' rather than the 'beginning of ' an important part of their life. As Michelan (in Osgood, 1982, p.29) says, " the major dilemma facing the retired elderly is essentially how to substitute a new set of personal values and new kinds of activities for the life long job of earning a living, raising a family, and overcoming the day-to-day obstacles which effect income, status and career." One is immediately led to ask whether retirement does indeed entail unstructured free time, new activities and role characteristics or whether the aging persons in question are not being ascribed a preconceived, stereotyped role in society - distantly removed from the real experience of this relatively newly created developmental phase in human life. For example, Achenbaum (in Graebner, 1980, p.11) feels that in the pas t, American elderly people were valued for their insight into the sources of longevity, for their wisdom in creating a new world order for the United States, for the moral guidance they could bring to youth, for their knowledge of farming, and for their performance of domestic duties. However, these categories of 'usefulness' conceal a peculiar softness - the aged being valued for little more than their knowledge, advice and guidance.

This research explores a different view of the picky or fussy eater. Although occupational therapists and speech therapists are aware that children with sensory defensiveness and specific tactile defensiveness have different eating habits, this has not been described before.

M.A. (Leadership, Performance and Change) / In order to become leaders, we need to develop ourselves from within. Often the inner dimension of leadership is undervalued as a ‘soft’ skill and ignored by organisations intent on bottom line results. Nevertheless, a profound understanding of the need for personal leadership is evolving in the 21st century ‒ an understanding which acknowledges that, in order to be a powerful leader, one needs to win, firstly and most importantly, the battle over one’s own mind. In this study the two extremes, the worrier and the warrior, are introduced as a metaphor in terms of which to explore the contrast between a dysfunctional and a highly functional mindset. In order to gain both traction and credibility in the leadership field, the worrier and the warrior ways of thinking are explained and analysed through the dual lens of the relevant literature on leadership and the field of neuroscience with the latter offering a brain based perspective of personal development. The study was designed as a means of exploring the beliefs, thoughts, emotions, behaviours and strategies that underpin a mastery level of leadership. I chose a qualitative methodological approach, specifically reflecting the interdisciplinary and positivist postmodernistic nature of this research type. My ontology is mirrored in the narratives that the warriors shared ‒ subjective truths that are unique ‒ while acknowledging the constructionist view that we evolve continually within a social context, in other words, I believe that social reality does not exist outside people, but that it is created by individuals. I engage an interpretivist epistemological position where the researcher interprets these narratives from the warrior’s viewpoint as well as adding his or her own interpretations of their experiences and views in a social-science perspective . I also used elements of the intrinsic, as well as the instrumental, case study with the aim of gaining an insight into and knowledge of the warrior mindset. The data was described and analysed until key themes emerged which were then integrated meaningfully with the relevant literature on both leadership and neuroleadership. Drawing from this, the key themes that emerged through the process are described as the five swords of the warrior mind. These include consciousness, connection, confidence, control and choice. A further common thread that connected the warriors’ voices was the concepts of mindfulness and emotional regulation. Together with the five swords these concepts of mindfulness and emotional regulation provide the ‘what’ of the warrior experience. This provides the basis for developing a potential future intervention, which may address the ‘how’ of warrior functioning. A strong implication of what leadership mastery means, may be found in the mindset and not in the actions of the leader. In view of what is required for a master’s degree, the mini dissertation is of limited scope while its implications and applications are, at best, modest. Nevertheless, the mini dissertation did provide an opportunity to explore the principles of both neuroleadership and Personal and Professional Leadership (PPL) in order to establish whether they could be used as a means for understanding the transformation potential from worrier pathology to warrior empowerment. It appears that transformation is possible and this research may provide a framework to facilitate such transformation. In addition, it is hoped that the study has enhanced the understanding of warrior thinking through the linking of the neurological and human sciences in explaining this development. I endeavoured to enhance the principles of credibility, dependability and transferability through rigorous auditing, peer debriefing with my supervisors, intermittent reflexivity through engagement with the relevant literature and triangulation. This was further enhanced by my close relationship with the warriors and also by being able to present quite extensive realist tales. However, on reflection, I would have benefitted from an even richer understanding of the warriors’ worlds, as well as a deeper engagement with my supervisors. I believe that this study has made a modest contribution to existing scholarly knowledge and also that it provides a useful framework in terms of which to begin the conversations about the rich and open topic of leadership mastery.

The role of culture in consumer behaviour and the importance of service quality delivery as a differential factor among businesses have received much interest in recent times, especially within the retail environment. With similar products being offered, service quality is seen as a critical tool to ensure customer loyalty. This implies that building customer loyalty requires understanding the cultural dimension of the consumer. On the other hand, literature reviewed shows the danger in stereotyping individuals into a national culture since sub-cultures exist especially in the case of a multicultural society as South Africa. Thus, this study aims at examining the individual cultural value orientation of retail patrons and to investigate its influence on their perception of retail service quality. To achieve the research objective a structured questionnaire was administered to retail patrons in a mall intercept. The questionnaire was structured around attitudinal questions and the Retail Service Quaity Scale. The results showed a relationship between the individual cultural value orientation and the importance of the retail service quality dimension. Although some of the findings were not what was expected; the study provides a framework by which retailers can segment their market and allocate resources. It also contributes to the knowledge base and provides a platform for further research.Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Leadership is a richly researched ana widely covered topic, attracting the attention of virtually every discipline within the human sciences. Research which focuses on leadership within an educational context is, however, a relatively recent development. Most of the leadership research conducted in this century has been driven by the needs of industry. Consequently, leadership theories have tended to emphasise the instrumentality, measurability and effectiveness of leadership. Leadership models, intent on being prescriptive and 'learnable', have been inclined to oversimplify the complexity of the leadership phenomenon. Another factor which accounts for these features is the research approach adopted by researchers, which has largely been positivistic. This study is an attempt to investigate the underlying dynamics of educational leadership. It is an in-depth study of five educational leaders' perceptions of themselves as leaders, of the people with whom they interact, and of the organisations within which they work. The study is conducted along the lines suggested by phenomenology, a highly qualitative, anti-positivistic research approach, which encourages the researcher to set aside pre-conceived notions of the phenomenon, and to describe what is found exactly as it presents itself. My findings have highlighted a wide and richly varied range of psychological, emotional and cultural factors which seem to play significant roles in how leaders perceive themselves, others and their environments. Most of these factors have been either entirely ignored or very scantily covered in mainstream leadership literature. Educational leadership emerges as a complex, virtually undefinable phenomenon; new and challenging research approaches and methods have the potential for increasing our understanding of how leaders lead, which in turn will have implications for leadership education and selection.

This study attempts to explore, both theoretically and empirically, death anxiety across the lifespan in Western society. Six elderly women between the ages of 75 and 90 years were interviewed about their current perceptions and attitudes toward their anticipated deaths, and to what extent these perceptions may have altered over the course of the life cycle. It was hypothesized that an acceptance of religion and a belief in an afterlife existence; a sense of having experienced death before, in seeing loved ones die; and a feeling of having lived a meaningful life through the reminiscence of past events would all facilitate an older person's acceptance of anticipated death. An existential phenomenological explication of the protocols revealed that: religion need not necessarily play a major role in this regard; both the life reminiscence process and having experienced death before in seeing loved ones die facilitated acceptance of death; older persons are prepared for death in the sense of experiencing a feeling that their life cycles have been completed; although death may not be feared, many fears of dying are prevalent. It was thus concluded from this study that, although death is not a major preoccupation of the older person, it does still play a significant role in the lives of the elderly in that being aware of impending death allows the older person to regulate her life according to ̕̕̕̕̕ʾtime-left-to-liveʾ

Much is written, especially in psychodynamically oriented literature, about the unduly close dependency relationship male alcoholics have with their mothers. Whilst not disputing this it became apparent to myself when working with them that they also expressed strong attachments to their fathers who were described as absent or punitive. The literature goes on to theorize that a repressed homosexual element is often at work in the male alcoholic. Not much more of substance is said about the father other than he may be absent or punitive - even less is mentioned of the male alcoholic's experience with his father. It appears that this relationship has remained largely unexplored as a result of an uncritical imposition of theory, especially psychodynamic, upon the complex phenomenon of alcoholism. These theories generally posit the mother's influence over all problems in living be they neuroses, psychoses or alcoholism. It is possible that a dialogue exists between mother, father and alcoholic son which is more extensive and complex than that currently described in the literature, with father playing a greater role than previously believed.

Change is inevitable due to organisations operating in a constantly changing environment marked by change and discontinuation. A major challenge for organisations is to obtain buy-in from employees. People generally resist change due to their past experiences of change which are often disjointed, posted with job losses, longer working hours, higher and cumulative stress levels, unethical practices and corporate failures. Perceptions of fairness, trust, and the magnitude to which the change has been conveyed, have been noted as some of the reasons why people resist organisational change. Essentially, people resist change when they think it will cause them to lose something of value to them. It is therefore important for organisations to have well-planned change programmes that make provision for creating buy-in. The purpose of this study was to investigate strategies that organisations can use to foster buy-in. For successful change, it is imperative that change agents find ways to empower employees in the process. Communication, and especially the articulation of the vision, plays a crucial role in creating buy-in. Leadership, the working environment, rewards and recognition interdependently contribute to fostering buy-in behaviours. The empirical study was conducted at the Port Elizabeth plant of Kraftfoods, a confectionery company. In 2010, Kraftfoods acquired Cadbury. This acquisition implied new management, production and process structures and procedures, as well as a restructuring of the employee complement in 2011. The empirical study was both qualitative and quantitative. Interviews were conducted with employees from the shop floor, as well as representatives from the trade union, a representative from human resources and a project manager responsible for transformation, to obtain more organisation-specific information about the transformation and the strategies which were used to create buy-in. For the empirical study, a survey with a questionnaire as the basic data collection tool was used. The survey was administered to 101 employees. The results revealed that the way the vision of the change is articulated and the empowerment of employees are main determinants of buy-in behaviour. It was therefore recommended that management should spend an equal amount of time selling the change as they spend planning the change program. Also management need to allow for more involvement in the design and even implimentation of the change program by change recipients.

Compensation costs are among the most significant expenses incurred by organizations. To date, the theory and research on the effectiveness of financial compensation has been limited and has largely been based on subhuman species and on nonrepresentative subjects acting in simulated environments. There have been few tests of the theory in operating organizations. Management approaches to compensation have not been evaluated in terms of higher need satisfaction, need desire, general satisfaction, feelings of equity, job involvement, nor intrinsic motivation. This exploratory study investigated these relationships and examined the interrelationship of factors proposed by E.E. Lawler in a model of the determinants of pay satisfaction. Data was gathered by questionnaire from 15 junior management and supervisory level employees in one organization. Salary satisfaction was significantly correlated with opportunities for personal growth and development and with self-fulfillment. Satisfaction with salary was not significantly correlated with general satisfaction. The results indicated that if a salary administration program is to be effective, it must be manageable and understandable to the employees. Employees expect to receive feedback and when they do not they are critical of their supervisors. Similarly, employees expect that when they receive praise from their supervisors for performance well done, it will be translated into salary increases. Where this does not occur, employees are dissatisfied. In evaluating the equitability of their salaries, participants considered not only their absolute pay levels, but also the relative levels of input and outcome of comparison persons. The results did not support Lawler's hypothesis that female employees would be more satisfied with their salaries than male employees. Data on general satisfaction contradicted Herzberg's dual-theory constructs. Job involvement factors were found to be highly intercorrelated supporting Lawler's conception of a job involvement factor. The data did not, however, support the existence of an intrinsic motivation factor. Data on need fulfillment and need desire were inconclusive. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

The feature integration theory of object perception (Treisman & Gelade, 1980) suggests that the perception of multidimensional stimuli requires that attention be serially directed to the items in a visual display in order to correctly conjoin features into objects, while the perception of features does not require serial attention. Under conditions in which the serial focusing of attention is disrupted by reducing display duration, available information about conjunctions of two features should not exceed the independent information available about the constituent features. Three experiments using a partial report paradigm employing a location cue were conducted in order to test this prediction. Subjects viewed colored letter displays that varied in cue-display stimulus onset asynchrony. The dependent measure was accuracy of response. Results suggest that a small amount of information from a separate representation of conjunctions of features may be accessible. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate