People effectiveness has become a key differentiator of competitive advantage in the knowledge
economy and the need for a valid and reliable measure of people
effectiveneness has become paramount for success. The research positions the psychological work
immersion scale (PWIS) as a relevant measure of people effectiveness and explores the relationship
between the PWIS variables (psychological attachment and people effectiveness enablers) and
perceptions of business performance. Furthermore the research explores whether higher levels of
psychological work immersion leads to increased business performance over time in an attempt to
position the value of organisational development interventions aimed at increasing psychological
work immersion levels in the work place.
The setting for this research was a not-for-profit organisation in South Africa. The sample for the
study was measured at two defined points in time over a 14-month period and consisted of n = 414
(T1) and n = 551 (T2). The study showed that the PWIS factor structure is a valid measure of the
psychological work immersion construct across time (T1 and T2). The results provided evidence of
convergent, intra-discriminant and external discriminant validity (construct validity) of the PWIS
within (T1 and T2) and over time (T1 vs T2). The results showed that the PWIS has acceptable
internal consistency reliability within and across time (T1 and T2) as well as demonstrating
test-retest reliability across time. The results provided evidence that the people effectiveness
enablers and psychological attachment variables significantly predict perception of business
performance indicators (profit/loss, costs, and cash flow related to operating activities), and
that strong perceptions of people effectiveness enablers relate to strong individual perceptions of
business performance through a high sense of psychological attachment. The mediation results
confirmed the test-retest reliability and validity of the PWIS in predicting perceptions of
business performance within and over time. This finding shows that psychological attachment is an
important factor in terms of
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influencing the individual perceptions of business performance which is related to improvements in
actual business performance. The study also showed evidence of a positive relationship
between psychological work immersion and business performance and demonstrated improvements in
psychological work immersion coincided with year on year improvements in business performance.
The study contributes towards the current literature on organisational development and specifically
on the measurement of people effectiveness within knowledge economy organisations. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / D. Com.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/22768 |
| Date | 04 1900 |
| Creators | Veldsman, Dieter |
| Contributors | Coetzee, M. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (xiii, 234 leaves) : illustrations (some color) |
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