Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rhode Island, 2004. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 116-123).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-132).

Since the start of the Industrial Revolution there has been a general improvement in working conditions. As part of this process, light in the work place was recognised as an important environmental factor. In the early years of the 20th century it was also recognised that in providing adequate lighting for a particular working environment, there was a need to avoid the potential negative effects of too much, or inappropriately distributed, light. One of the negative effects of light in the work place was glare. Holladay (Holladay, (1926)) attributed the negative effects of glare to impairment of vision caused by light scatter. Stiles (Stiles, (1929)) refuted Holladay's case by arguing that only a small proportion of the reduction in task visibility could be attributed to light scatter effects (where task visibility is a measure of how far above the visual threshold a task's contrast is). Stiles distinguished disability glare, a light scatter effect, from discomfort glare which was glare that could not be attributed to light scatter. The distinction made by Stiles resulted in the separate development of discomfort and disability glare models. Very few, if any, studies since Stiles have re-evaluated the potential association between subjectively rated discomfort glare, and physically based disability glare. In the study reported here, subjects were asked to set the appearance of a 2° glare source so that it appeared at the Borderline between Comfort and Discomfort, or BCD (Guth, (1963)). Each subject's visual threshold for a 4 cycle per degree spatial grating was measured under BCD and control conditions, and a comparison made to assess if light scatter effects from the glare source influenced threshold contrast, C_th. The results of the study indicate that C_th, can be lower in the presence of the glare source set to BCD. This anomaly may be explained by improvement in image quality caused by the glare source driving the pupil to a smaller diameter. More significantly, there was found to be a strong correlation between subjective BCD settings and age, and also between BCD settings and control condition C_th. Both of these results suggest an influence of light scatter on BCD settings of discomfort glare. This conclusion was further supported by the fitting to the data of the independently reported stray light function of Ijspeert et al (Ijspeert et al, (1990)). Thus the results strongly suggest a correlation between subjective BCD settings of a glare source and light scatter function. A conclusion that substantially weakens Stiles' argument that discomfort glare is not dependent on light scatter effects. Using the results of the study, a new threshold type model for assessing discomfort glare is proposed, which explicitly includes age as a parameter. However, much variance remains to be explained in the glare data. Therefore, a second theme investigated in the dissertation is the possible association between scene visual structure and visual discomfort. The results of this study indicate that there is a small but significant difference in the image structure of natural and man made environments. This difference may contribute to visual discomfort, but will require further investigation.

Employee performance is a constant concern for any manager in a company or organisation. Managers have the unenviable task of balancing the meeting of organisational targets through the resources at their disposal. They must also manage their own responsibilities and personal targets which could be different to targets of the employees. These differences could create divergent priorities and affect the manager-employee relationship. Managers, in an effort to create a healthy work environment, need to show leadership qualities that encourage cooperation from their employees. These qualities must enable employees to form trustworthy relationships with their colleagues and the organisation thereby encouraging employee engagement and improved performance. A specific leadership quality that can create this type of positive and productive environment is authenticity. Authentic leadership can engender employee trust and organisational commitment and improve performance. Authentic leadership encourages improved relationships in the organisational environment by allowing employees and managers to communicate effectively. This encourages understanding of individual and organisational limitations in a non-threatening manner. Cultural intelligence is another quality that can enhance the employee manager relationship and affect the organisational climate. In South Africa’s culturally diverse environment managers from various cultural backgrounds will need to form healthy working relationships with employees and colleagues to encourage cooperation. These challenges and opportunities form the basis for this research study in the hope of informing managers of the relevance of the research topic and encouraging a change of behaviour and further study within the South African work environment.

This study examines Work Family Conflict including Work Interferes with Family (WIF) conflict, Family Interferes with Work (FIW) conflict, role overload, role interference and the impact of children across various life and career stages. Much of the research in this area focuses on the differences in the way the genders experience Work Family Conflict. Research has shown that various life and career stages can have a marked impact on this type of conflict and this study aims to determine how individuals in the various life and career stages experience this conflict. A correlational research design was used for this study. Using a five point likert scale, participants were asked to score their responses to seventeen items. The instrument was based on Duxbury and Mills Measure of Work Family Conflict (1990) (in Handbook of Quality-of-Life Research: An Ethical Perspective by Sirgy, 2001) with the inclusion of two additional items due to their high face validity. The questionnaire was distributed to human resources managers in organisations, friends, family members and colleagues and friends, family members and colleagues of theirs. Most of the responses were scored using a pencil and paper technique and the remainder was distributed using a Surveymonkey application on social media platforms like Facebook and Linkedin. The overall sample size of respondents was 175. The raw data was entered on an excel spreadsheet and analysed using Statistica version 12 and Microsoft Excel applications with VBA macros developed by a consultant for the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University Unit for Statistical Consultation. . Statistics such as means, Cronbach alpha’s, relationships between factors, descriptive statistics, MANOVA and Chi-squared tests were used to analyse the data. The results of this study demonstrate the need for organisations to take heed of the various challenges that individuals face in both the workplace and home environment and the different ways in which these are experienced across various life and career stages. This will enable them to design specific interventions to mitigate the effects of Work Family Conflict and improve employee’s level of performance.

This study investigates the preferences of nurses for professional and nonprofessional work-related outcomes, the professional/nonprofessional distinction arising from a theoretical framework developed by Kleingartner (1973). Using Kleingartner's distinction, various motivation theory concepts, and observations of nursing's professionalizing efforts, it was predicted that nurses would attach greater importance to professional work-related outcomes than to nonprofessional work-related outcomes. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to nurses in four different Lower Mainland hospitals. The results suggest that nurses do attach greater importance to professional than to nonprofessional work-related outcomes that this does not vary with employing hospital, and that individual work-related outcomes are rated in a very consistent and similar manner by nurses in different hospitals. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

This research discloses a gendered and sexualized dynamic in instrumental guanxi through an ethnographic study of white-collar workers in Shenzhen, an urban city just north of the border with Hong Kong. The notion of instrumental guanxi refers to a means of achieving tangible benefits in the workplace through purposively built enduring interpersonal relationships. This study is focused on female white-collar employees born after the onset of China's economic reform, and in particular women who work as marketing executives. The concept of erotic capital is incorporated into the theoretical framework of gendered and sexualized guanxi deployed in this thesis. The discussion of erotic capital in the following chapters is integrated into a resource theory of social exchange. The thesis answers the question concerning how women's guanxi strategy is different from men's. In doing so the thesis examines the male-centred standardized routine of guanxi in part through a detailed analysis of banquets and post-banquet activities that usually involve women as subordinate "erotic gifts". The discussion goes on to identify an additional four ideal-type characterizations of women as equal guanxi participants, navigating instrumental guanxi by deploying different strategies associated with each type. These types are "pseudo-brothers", "rational legal professionals", "the unreachable desired", and "unspoken rules followers". The thesis goes on to discuss the blurred boundaries that distinguish these five types of women's guanxi participation strategies by scrutinizing the power-interactive nature of erotic capital and how the endorsement of erotic capital in the workplace interacts with structural constraints that stem from gender norms and family expectations.

Workplace unfairness has been known as one of the influential elements towards workplace behavior. In the last decade, the rise and popularity of social media may have change people's perception of unfairness as well as their affect which may have an effect on their behavioral outcomes. Although research of unfairness on workplace behavior has been examined, little attention has been paid to the effect of social media exposure. Drawing on construal level theory, this research examined the effects of interactional unfairness on employees' behavioral outcomes through negative affect, as well as moderating effect of social media exposure on interactional unfairness and negative affect. Two studies were conducted in China and the United States respectively to enhance the generalization. In Study 1, a two-wave survey of employees and one-wave survey of supervisors were conducted in China and Hong Kong. Hypotheses were tested in hierarchical linear modelling with 147 matched dyad relationships in the sample. In Study 2, a two-wave survey was conducted in the United States. 262 full time employees from a variety of occupations completed an online questionnaire. The results showed negative correlation on social media exposure and construal level. In addition, age was positively significant to construal level and organizational citizenship behavior, and negatively significant to turnover intention on both studies, and negatively significant to negative affect on Study 2. Additional implications for research and practice will be discussed

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