A research report submitted to the School of Construction Economics and Management Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of Witwatersrand 15 February 2018 / This thesis aims to explore the impact of virtual communication among professionals within the South African construction industry by analysis of responses to a distributed questionnaire and interviews which will highlight trends and hindrances to effective communication. It hopes to answer the key question of key factors affecting virtual communication from a global perspective to that of the current South African state in order to improve future forms of ICT to maintain and enhance global competitiveness. To date, many construction organisations are autocratic and have a hierarchical organisational structure, which is often static and unable to change to current market needs. However, there is a growing trend for organisations to form specialised decentralised teams. These units are dynamic and are more flexible with knowledge transfer allowing their organisation to adapt to the ever changing global market. One particular adaptation in the construction industry is in information communication technology (ICT) which has resulted in organisations becoming more globally competitive. ICT is becoming more widely used in the construction project life cycle. While the development of virtual collaborations has allowed for companies to be globally competitive, there are areas in need of improvement such as communication and information processing. The use of current communication methods and processes are technologically driven and do not consider the individual’s psychological aspects. Social interaction within a workplace is important with a move away from autocratic information dissemination. These aspects have a direct effect on project delivery efficiency; productivity of labour force; as well as quality of the final product. There is a distinct shift in the use of different media for communication and effective those medium has proved to be. The reluctance to change and how quickly individuals adapt to technological advancements also impact on the efficiency of communication. / MT 2018

Transactive memory, the transmission and use of knowledge between two or more people, is an important construct to consider when studying work teams. This thesis reviews the literature on transactive memory systems (TMS) in order to summarize what is currently known about TMS and to identify gaps in the literature in need of further investigation. Past TMS research is reviewed according to the operational definitions, antecedents, team processes, outcomes, team performance, and boundary conditions. TMS is most frequently operationalized using Lewis' (2003) TMS scale. Research has focused on three types of antecedents: Communication, Team Characteristics, and Facilitation of TMS. Two common types of team processes found were coordination and team monitoring & backup behavior. Outcomes frequently focused on were team cognition, and team effectiveness. Team performance was ubiquitous in almost all the literature. Boundary conditions, however, varied considerably

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The aim of the study was to evaluate the leadership team at the Mmabana Arts, Culture and Sport Foundation (MACSF). The study focused on leadership and creating an understanding of their own strengths and developmental areas, in order to understand the role they can play within a leadership team, how other members of a team can compliment them with their strengths and for them to get greater awareness of their impact on their subordinates, the rest of the management team and the organisation as a whole. The aim was also to inform personal development. in so far as the leaders now understand what their development areas are. The overall approach used in the stud) was quantitative in nature and involved survey research using the Occupational Personality Questionnaire (SHL). The target population consisted of identified employees who ere fulfilling leadership role in MACSF. The study was also conducted organisation wide at ever) Mmabana Cultural Center (Mmabatho, Head Office, Lehurutse, Taung and Tlhabane). Non-probability sampling was used; more specifically, availability sampling was utilised in which the researcher made use of all the available subjects due to MACSF's small size. The effective sample size was a small 39. The findings of this study revealed that a comprehensive investigation into the effective leadership and management competencies within the MACSF confirmed the descriptive hypothesis that certain elements within MACSF's leadership structure is underdeveloped and that specific remedial actions would be required to rectify the situation. This descriptive research found that many employees in managerial positions indicated no real concern or preference for leading other employees as they are indeed artists who would like to continue specialising in their specific art form. It was also found that personality preferences needed to be amazing artists, are in stark contrast to what is needed to be an effective administrator/manager. This, coupled with no formal training in financial management or management, leads to ineffective administration/management. It was also found that the past hardships which the Mmabana Foundation has been through, has taken its toll on the employees. Low levels of caring, trusting and optimism, coupled with high levels of stress and an inability to switch off after work, were found. The researcher recommends personal and professional development interventions, focused on business relation skills, which includes amongst others Strategic Planning, General Business Management, Project Management. Communications techniques, Monitoring & Evaluation, Financial Management for non-financial managers and Human Resource Management with the focus on Performance Management Development Systems and Asset Management at the beginning. It is also further proposed that the leadership team does team building activities where MACSF's strategy is defined, action plans are drawn up and a focus towards external competition (rather than departments/units competing against each) is created. Finally, better communication channels between management and staff, as well as between the Head Office and all the centres, should be used , as this can also assist in creating a unified Foundation. / Thesis (MBA) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2010

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Organizations are downsizing, challenging their employees to "do more with less." Projects teams and work groups being formed to accomplish this goal are being supported with a new type of technology called Group Support Systems (GSS). This research was concerned with determining the major factors that affect the diffusion of GSS in organizations. GroupSystems (GS) is the GSS that was researched. A survey methodology was used to collect data. The model for this research was developed from existing models in diffusion research, from prior MIS research on GroupSystems, and from prior MIS implementation research. The following independent variables were analyzed: the role of the internal champion, the role of the facilitator, average size of the work groups and the percentage of work that was handled by each work group, hourly charge for using GS, total amount of money invested in the technology, and the role of communication channels within the organization. The data were analyzed through four different regressions, with the same results being obtained each time. Significant relationships were found for the size of work groups, the hourly charge rate, and the amount spent on the technology; findings for the role of the facilitator were partially significant. The final regression was significant at the p<.001 level and accounted for over 58% of the model.

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Advantages of applying information and communication technologies to support complex team practices in healthcare domain have often been supported in the extant literature. The primary assumption is that before putting any technologies in place to support team functions, the team-based environment should be completely modeled. To date, many frameworks have been proposed for modeling healthcare teams; however, most of the frameworks only focus on single or a few aspects of teamwork and the outcomes usually present overlaps, limitations and inconsistencies. As a result, there is an increasing demand for offering an overarching framework that integrates the multiple dimensions of healthcare teamwork into a synthetic whole and clearly conceptualizes the potentially important relationships and dependencies that exist over those dimensions. In order to properly address the aforementioned challenge, this thesis applies ontological engineering to develop an overarching framework for integrating the multiple dimensions of teamwork concept in healthcare domain. For this purpose, we first illustrate a set of four stage methodological approach to provide explicit details on how to incorporate a theatrical foundation into the ontology. Then, the proposed approach is used to develop a derived ontological framework. Finally, accuracy and completeness of the proposed ontology based framework is validated to show that it is able to accurately represent the domain is it being employed for. The values and capabilities of ontology have already been studied and approved, and this technology is known as the best sources to represent a knowledge domain by means of concepts and accurately define the relationships among them. Our aim in this thesis is to further research how to develop and evaluate a standard ontology based framework to facilitate the healthcare team modeling.

Companies’ new primary source for sustainable revenue growth comes from creating new innovations, rather than from mergers and acquisitions. Companies are finding it difficult to align internal support for the innovative creativity of teams with standard operating procedures. This research aims to discover how innovative teams contribute to forming development strategies that CPG firms use to create new products. Dimensions of the Theory of Team Climate in Innovation (TTCI) offer insight on the dimensions of development strategy. Specifically, by integrating the theories, a proposed model identifies the innovation team’s impact on the firm’s development strategies. Such understanding has the potential to increase firm profits, lower innovation costs, increase innovation speed, and support innovation training. To empirically test this model, employees responsible for product development in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries were surveyed. Structural modeling techniques were used to analyze the data. Findings indicate support for using TTCI to explain the compressed development strategy. Theoretical contributions include: 1) extending TTCI and its associated measures into tangible products industries, 2) refining and adding to TTCI measures, 3) extending the development strategies theory into tangible products industries, and 4) adding to the measures for development strategy. Future research appears fertile for methods and measures used in this study, and managers in CPG will benefit from an enhanced understanding of how to better structure innovation teams in alignment with a firm’s development strategy.

Working in groups is a ubiquitous feature of daily life. For this reason, finding ways to maximise group outputs is of utmost importance. Efforts to enhance group outputs have typically focused on socially relevant interventions, often designed to increase rapport or motivation. Moreover, such interventions are usually implemented and measured at the level of the individual, thereby designating the group to being nothing more than the simple sum of its parts. Although long acknowledged as a key component of group performance, the role of coordination is relatively under-researched. The present thesis focused on understanding whether interpersonal coordination, as viewed through the theoretical lens of coordination dynamics, is able to shed further insight into the relationship between teamwork and productivity. A novel object movement task well-suited for investigating the effects of both social and physical parameters on group productivity was developed and validated. Different extensions of the task were explored across five studies. Shifting the unit of analysis from the individual to the group yielded novel insight into the issue of group productivity. The nature of the dependencies between participants (i.e., positive vs. negative) were seen to change patterns of coordination both within and between teams. Cooperating pairs were also more coordinated and accurate than competing pairs. When interdependence was high, stable modes of coordination enhanced accuracy, but not overall productivity. More broadly speaking, participants spontaneously adopted modes of coordination that were both functionally consistent with the task demands and conformed to the characteristic patterns inherent to self-organised coordination dynamics. The implications of this work are discussed with respect to extant theories of interpersonal coordination and suggestions are made for future research.