The present era in South Africa is one that is marked by substantial change due to unparalleled advancement in the field of technology, globalisation and competitive markets. These changes have placed new demands on the education sector in South Africa, especially further education. In 2000/1 South Africa's Further Education and Training (FET) sector has been rejuvenated through a process of transformation when 152 former Technical Colleges and Colleges of Education merged to form 50 multi-campus FET Colleges. The rationale behind this merging process is to curb the serious skills shortage which is threatening economic growth in this country through offering vocational education and training; and to raise quality in the education sector. This re-engineering process in education is founded on principles of equity, human rights, democracy and sustainable development. Change, however, is also about people and their ideas, fears, capacity and ability to stand and work together towards a more prosperous future for all. Transformation or change such as with mergers is dependent on employees' total commitment towards realising the organisation's objectives. High levels of organisational commitment tend to encourage loyalty, higher levels of productiveness and general job satisfaction. For change initiatives to be successful though, communication across all hierarchical levels is of the utmost importance. Management is expected to provide employees with just treatment, provide acceptable working conditions, clearly communicate what is regarded as a fair day's work, and give feedback on how well the employee is doing. Employees, in return, are expected to clearly show a good attitude, follow directions and be loyal towards x the organisation. The psychological contract is utilised to investigate the scope of change in an employment relationship. The psychological contract is a contract setting out mutual expectations between employer and employee - a contract that forms the backbone of any new relationship such as with a merger. The researcher makes use of the psychological contract (by utilising the Tilburgse Psychologisch Contract Vragenlijst (TPC)) to explain employer obligations; violation of employer obligations; employee obligations; relational/transactional contract values; commitment; intention to leave; and change perceptions. Should either employment party not fulfill its contractual terms in any way, the psychological contract will be breached or violated and the employee might attempt to balance the situation by reducing his or her job efforts, badmouthing the organisation, resorting to absenteeism or even petty theft. The worst case scenario in this destructive process is that the employee might leave the organisation. The purpose of this research study is to determine the effect (if any) that the mergers might have had on the psychological- and employment contracts in the four FET Colleges that have remained in the Free State Province. A cross-sectional survey design was used to reach the objective of this research and an English translation of the aforementioned questionnaire (TPC) was randomly distributed amongst the total population of 375 employees at the Free State FET Colleges involved in this study. A response rate of 53% (n = 200) was achieved. Results from other authors who have used the TPC Questionnaire in their research offer support for the validity and reliability of the scales used. The statistical analysis was carried out with the SPSS program (SPSS, 2006), a program that is used to conduct statistical analysis regarding reliability and validity of the measuring instruments, descriptive statistics, t-tests, analysis of variance, correlation coefficients and multiple regression analysis. XI In Article 1 the researcher focused on the effect of mergers with regard to the influence of communication on the psychological contract as a possible factor affecting the intention to qUit. A multiple regression analysis (with intention to quit as dependent variable; and employer obligations, employee obligations, and communication as independent variables) was performed and 22.2% of the variance in intention to quit is predicted by communication and employee obligations (F = 28.07, p< 0.01). A practically significant correlation coefficient (p < 0.01) of a medium effect (r > 0.30) exists between communication and relational/transactional values and between communication and intention to quit. In Article 2 the effect of mergers, workplace changes and the violation of employer obligations on the psychological contract were evaluated, with special reference to job satisfaction and organisational commitment. In the above article a practically significant correlation coefficient (p < 0.01) of a medium effect (r> 0.30) was found between • change and job satisfaction; • job satisfaction and: commitment, employer obligations, employer violations; • commitment and: employer obligations, employer violations; and • employee obligations and: employer obligations, employer violations. A multiple regression analysis (with job satisfaction as dependent variable; and employer violation, organisational commitment, and change as independent variables) was performed and 29.9% of the variance in job satisfaction is predicted by employer violations, change and commitment (F = 27.668, p< 0.01). Recommendations for the organisation as well as for future research were made. / Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Sociology))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2008.

The changes in the political landscape in South Africa have exacerbated major transformation of the society and all other aspects of life, including education. It is in this view that transformation of the education sector resulted in the changes within the employment relationship, as well as the psychological contract between educators and the Department of Education. This is further explained by the changes experienced in both the employer and employee's obligations. Furthermore, these changes have a tremendous influence on the degree of job satisfaction, organisational commitment, as well as an intention to quit among educators. The primary objective of this research is to investigate the employment-and psychological contract of educators in the Sedibeng West District of the Gauteng Department of Education. The measuring instruments, i.e. employer's obligations, employee's obligations, job satisfaction, organisational commitment, as well as intention to quit questionnaires, were used in the empirical study. A cross -sectional survey design was conducted among 298 educators (including school managers) in the Sedibeng West District. A response rate of 75% (224 respondents) was obtained. The results indicate a practically significant correlation coefficient of a medium effect between the employer and the employee's obligations, a negative correlation of medium effect between the employer's obligations and an employee's intention to quit, and no significant relationship between the employee's obligations and an employee's intention to quit. Furthermore, a practically significant correlation coefficient of medium effect was obtained between job satisfaction and an employee's intention to quit, and no significant relationship could be found between job satisfaction and organisational commitment. Lastly, a practically significant negative correlation of a medium effect was obtained between organisational commitment and an intention to quit. A multiple regression analysis indicates that 21% of the variance in the employee's intention to quit was predicted by both the employer and employee's obligations. Organisational commitment and job satisfaction predicted 33% of the total variance. Recommendations for the Department of Education, as well as future research were also made. / Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Sociology))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2008.

For decades, researchers have shown interest in nurses' intention to quit. Studies reveal that 17-54% of all nurses have an intention of leaving their workplace and longitudinal studies have found a significant relation between the intention and quitting. With a global shortage of nurses and an increasing need for care, the situation is critical. Results of meta-analyses show a myriad of underlying factors, loss of joint effort and a missing synthesis of measuring instruments. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a multidimensional instrument that measures nurses' intention to quit. 33 articles were reviewed and used to construct a 50-item questionnaire. Ten areas were found relevant: demographic, career, wages, schedule/working hours, organization, manager, work environment, work climate, health, and intention to quit. Each area became a dimension, a subscale to measure causes behind nurses' intention to quit. A questionnaire survey was conducted at a hospital in central Sweden (n = 114). The results reveal that the constructed scale Nurses’ intention to quit (NITQ) has good internal consistency (.82 - .85). Each subscale correlates well and is significant with the variable intention to quit and a standard multiple regression was statistically significant through the whole model (F (8,105) = 27,10, p &lt; .001), explaining a variance of 67,4% in the dependent variable intention to quit. The results indicate that NITQ fulfills its purpose as a measuring instrument finding nurses’ intention to quit as well as the underlying factors which give rise to the thoughts of quitting.

Research on the glass ceiling shows that women may encounter obstacles in their pursuit of high-level management positions. The purpose of this quantitative study was to test the explanatory style theoretical framework by examining relationships between women's glass ceiling beliefs, career advancement satisfaction, and quit intention and to determine whether satisfaction with career advancement opportunities mediated the relationship between glass ceilings beliefs and quit intention. Data were collected from 179 working women in the public or private sector and women who exited the public or private sector job market within the past 5 years via Web-based surveys. Glass ceiling beliefs were assessed using the Career Pathways Survey (CPS), career advancement satisfaction was assessed using the Career Satisfaction Measure, and quit intention was assessed using the Intention to Quit Scale and data were analyzed using multiple regression and correlational statistical techniques. Findings indicated significant relationships between the principal variables. Results also showed that career advancement satisfaction had a significant mediating effect on denial, resilience, and acceptance glass ceiling beliefs and quit intention. Findings may be used to help women understand how their glass ceiling beliefs and career satisfaction drivers influence their reaction to workplace events and may be used by employers to implement proactive retention strategies.

During the last decade, dramatic changes have been experienced in workplaces because of technological growth, globalisation, ever increasing competitive markets, changing industrial relation laws and better management skills (Cappelli, 1999). Amidst this change, the biggest issue is for organisations to gain dedication from their employees. Maslach et al (2001) explains that the impact of the changing world of work is perhaps most evident in changes in the psychological contract. Employees are expected to give more in terms of time, effort, skills and flexibility, whereas they receive less in terms of lifetime employment and job security. In security companies, the employer obligations and employee obligations also went through a process of change. Crime has become a very serious concern in South Africa. In Gauteng, crime has increased with 69,2% (SAP Statistics, 2005) from 1994 to 2004. Because of crime, many independent security companies were formed to help prevent crime, working together with the South African Police Force. A lack of research exists regarding employees' work outcomes like job insecurity, organisational commitment and intention to quit associated with the psychological contract within a service company. The objectives of this study are to investigate the relationship between employer obligations, employee obligations, job insecurity, organisational commitment and intention to quit of employees (N=217) in a service (security) company. A cross - sectional design was used. Constructs were measured by means of an employer obligations questionnaire, employee obligations questionnaire, job insecurity questionnaire, organisational commitment questionnaire and intention to quit questionnaire. The research method for each of the two articles consists of a brief literature review and an empirical study. Exploratory factor analysis, as well as Cronbach alpha coefficients are computed to access the reliability and validity of the different measurement instruments. Descriptive statistics are used to analyse data and Pearson product moment correlation coefficients, as well as regression analysis were used to examine the relationship between the constructs employed in this research. Significant differences are found between various biographical groups and the scores of the psychological contract (employer obligations scale and employee obligations scale), the job insecurity scale, the organisational commitment scale and the intention to quit scale. Conclusions are made, limitations of the current research are discussed and recommendations for future research are put forward. / Thesis (M.Com. (Industrial Sociology))--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

Idamari Törnberg &amp; Marcus Tillberg (2011). Nu gäller det! Varför slutar då ungdomar spela ishockey? – En kvantitativ enkätstudie om fortsatt eller avslutande ishockeykarriär efter uttagningarna till distriktsförbundslag i Västerbottens län. (Now is the time! Why do teenagers stop playing ice hockey? – A quantitative survey study about continued or ending ice hockey career after tryout to Team Västerbotten) Bachelor Essay in Swedish. Umeå: Umeå University, Department of education. Abstract This Bachelors thesis is a survey study on why talented teenagers in the county of Västerbotten, Sweden dropout of, or proceed the sport ice hockey. The study was made in collaboration with the ice hockey association of Västerbotten to find out how many of the boys born in 1993 and 1995 that has been on tryout for team Västerbotten that quits and continues and the reason for that. A survey was sent out to 138 of the teenagers that had been on these tryouts to examine the reasons and opinions on dropouts and what action that needs to be made to prevent this. The response rate was 57 % and a possible reason for that can be that they who didn’t respond are dropouts. It turned out that most of the respondents is still playing ice hockey, just a few had dropped out and the biggest reason is the fact that ice hockey is fun no matter if they made the team or not. Furthermore the study showed that the there isn’t just one reason to quit or continue, it’ a mix of reasons.

The importance of public hospitals is dwindling, and the National Health Insurance Bureau takes initiatives such as the system of payment retrenchment and the large reduction in official budgets due to the insufficiency of government finance in order to control the enlargement of medical expenditures. For this reason, it is necessary for public hospitals to make a change so as to get used to the change of the environment. The research takes Kaohsiung Municipal United Hospital as an example to explore the correlation and effect of all the variables of employees¡¦ job insecurity during the pre- and post-mergence on job satisfaction, organization commitment, job involvement and the intent to quit. Meanwhile, hopefully the research can be the reference for managers in terms of human resource strategies while public hospitals are going to merge. There are two periods of distributing questionnaires. At first, 700 questionnaires one month before the hospital mergence (the end of November in 2002), the subject includes doctors, nurses, administrative staffs, medical technicians, and there are 390 returned questionnaires, which reaches 55.7% return rate. One year later after the hospital mergence, we perform again with 731 questionnaires , and 397 returned, which reaches 54.2% return rate. Here are the main finding (discoveries) of the research as follows: 1. The insufficiency of the consider before the hospital mergence and of the communication after the hospital mergence. 2. There are some differences of employees¡¦ job insecurity and employees¡¦ job attitudes, and the departmental mergence after the public hospital mergence. 3. Employees¡¦ helplessness has no effect between private enterprise and public hospital merging on their job satisfaction before the hospital mergence; employees¡¦ helplessness has the negative effect on their job satisfaction after the hospital mergence. 4. Employees¡¦ helplessness has no effect on their organization commitment before the hospital mergence; employees¡¦ helplessness has the negative effect on their organization commitment after the hospital mergence. 5. Employees¡¦ helplessness has no effect on their job involvement before the hospital mergence; employees¡¦ helplessness has the negative effect on their job involvement after the hospital mergence. 6. Employees¡¦ helplessness has no effect on their intent to quit before the hospital mergence; employees¡¦ helplessness has the positive effect on their intent to quit after the hospital mergence.

The public hospitals in Taiwan are facing the change of public responsibilities that they used to have and on the other hand encountering the fierce competition caused by National Health Insurance. As a consequence of this, public hospitals need to adjust their managerial model, like mergers for example, in order to coordinate their core competence and lower their cost in administration. However, the changes of organizations will cause the job insecurity of employees and further to affect their working attitudes. In hospitals, nursing staff forms the biggest proportion of employees. In this study, we examined the merger of Kaohsiung Municipal United Hospital in 2003. We investigated the job insecurity and working attitudes of nursing staff by questionnaires in the end of 2002 (before the merger) and in the end of 2003 (one year later of the merger) separately. By analyzing those questionnaires we explored the influences of job insecurity on working attitudes, and we also compared the differences of nursing staff¡¦s working attitudes in two hospitals. The findings are: 1. The more job insecurity that nurses got, the worse their job satisfaction will be. 2. The job insecurity and working attitudes of nursing staff will be different based on their different personal characteristics, including the hospital they belonged to, the ages, marriage status, education, levels of position, and their contract types. 3. The influences of job insecurity on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intention to quit will be different based on different hospitals. 4. The influences of job insecurity on job satisfaction will be different before and after merger.

Abstract Due to the change of the employment, emphasizing on employees¡¦ commitment to the organization is no more the critical determinant of whether the employees will devote themselves to the organization. From 1980s, there were scholars who started to argue that employees will form global beliefs concerning the extent to which the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being, and called this concept perceived organizational support (POS). In contrast to organizational commitment, perceived organizational support emphasizes on employers¡¦ commitment to the employees and has been proved to have strong relations to many of employees¡¦ work attitudes and behaviors. In this study, the writer uses two different kinds of scorings as the indicators to evaluate the extent of employees¡¦ POS. The findings are as followed: 1. POS is positively related to employees¡¦ affective commitment, continuance commitment, job satisfaction and performance, but negatively related to the intention to quit. 2. No matter using which kind of scorings, within all work attitudes and behaviors we are interested, POS is most related to affective commitment and then job satisfaction. 3. POS has the strongest influence on affective commitment and job satisfaction, and the weakest one on work performance. 4. Comparing to other POS factors, leadership and self-achievement have the most global influences on employees¡¦ work attitudes and behaviors. 5. In whole, employees¡¦ evaluations of organizational practices of which they really experience are more related to their work attitudes and behaviors than the discrepancy between what they expect and the actual situations. 6. When combining with individual¡¦s expectation, the influence of some POS factors will become salience, although it may not have such strong influence when concerning the evaluations of organizational practices along. 7. Different ways of discrepancy between individual¡¦s expectations and the actual situations will cause different influences on employees¡¦ work attitudes and behaviors indeed.

The thesis mainly studies, the relevant influential variables of the internal auditors¡¦ concentration on jobs and their efforts for the work, in consideration of the internal auditors¡¦ individual factors, which affect WV and JC; furthermore with an empirical survey and statistical analysis by SPSS program on the working attitude¡¦s influence on the JI and ITQ. The critical findings of the thesis are as follows: (1) Individual characteristics¡Ðsex, age, marrage, years of employment, reason of being an auditor, position, have obvious differentiations respectively on the partial dimensions of the internal auditors¡¦ WV. (2) Individual characteristics¡Ðage, marrage, education, years of being an auditor, reasons for being an auditor, position, certification of accounting/auditing, span of incremental salary, have obvious differentiations respectively on the partial dimensions of the internal auditors¡¦ JC. (3) Individual characteristics¡Ðage, years of employment, reasons for being an auditor, position, span of incremental salary, have obvious differentiations on the internal auditors¡¦ JI. (4) Individual characteristics¡Ðage, sex, years of employment, years of being an auditor, organization¡¦s capital amount, have obvious differentiations on the internal auditors¡¦ ITQ. (5) The whole WV have obviously positive correlation on internal auditor¡¦s JI. In details, the two dimensions of inner value and social status value have obviously positive effect with internal auditor¡¦s JI. (6) The whole JC have obviously positive correlation on internal auditor¡¦s JI. In details, except for task identity, the other four JCs have obviously positive effect with internal auditor¡¦s JI. (7) In order to decrease ITQ of the internal auditors, organization ought to upgrade the JI of internal auditor, especially put much emphasis on the compensation of the internal auditors; and directly expand the task variety and task proactiveness would also obviously decrease the internal auditor¡¦s ITQ. (8) In order to upgrade the internal auditors¡¦ JI or decrease their ITQ, the interaction of the different JC and individual WV would indicate the outcome of facilitation or suppression to main effects with interference.