3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Coping strategies used by Leeuwkop prison correctional officers when dealing with occupational stress(2017) Raphadi, Thulisile FaithCorrectional officers face many stressors in their workplace settings such as guarding violent prisoners and ensuring the safety of everyone in the prison setting. The stressors they face may lead to occupational stress for some. The study aimed to understand the coping strategies used by correctional officers when dealing with occupational stress. To investigate the research aim, a qualitative approach and case study design were utilised. Convenience sampling was used to select 25 correctional officers employed at Leeuwkop prison, Medium B and Maximum facility. Semistructured interviews schedules were used where one-on-one interviews were conducted to collect data. Thematic analysis was used to analyse data gathered. The study revealed that correctional officers face many stressors in their work environment such as leadership style, prison violence, uneven ratio between inmates and correctional officers as well as shift work. These stressors have different impact on their professional and personal lives such as; aggression towards their family, psychological effects, society high expectations which prevent them from living their own lives and also some felt that their work isolates them from their families. To cope with occupational stress, the study revealed that correctional officers engage in sporting activities within the prison such as soccer, others make use of employee assistance programmes and some resort to less conventional ways of coping such as absenteeism and alcohol use. Recommendations were provided to curb the challenges experienced by correctional officers which included; the need for more advertisement of employee assistance programmes, hiring more correctional officers to even out the ratio between correctional officers and inmate, the need for more occupational social workers services within the prison and lastly the need for more South African research on correctional officers coping strategies.Item Sex-role identity, workplace stress and thriving in South African employees(2017) Helfer, Kayla MerylThe present study aimed to explore levels of perceived stress and workplace thriving in a sample of 485 South African employees, within the framework of sex-role identity. A number of research to date has begun to explore the influence of sex-role identities on a number of different organisational outcomes; however few have explored both the positive and negative aspects of gendered personality traits and thus this study aimed to contribute to existing research through utilising a differentiated model of sex-role identity. Three self-report questionnaires were completed by participants, namely the EPAQ-R to assess sex-role identity, the Job Related Tension Index developed by Kahn et al. (1964) to establish levels of perceived stress and the thriving scale developed by Porath et al. (2012) was used to measure workplace thriving. The results of the study highlighted a number of statistically significant differences between sex-role identities and perceived stress and thriving respectively. A number of these results were in line with the proposed hypotheses; however, negative masculinity proved to be inconsistent with the proposed hypotheses as these individuals did not differ from the positive identities in terms of workplace stress. Furthermore, negative femininity did not experience statistically significant differences with the positive identities. The findings of the study provide support for a differentiated model of sex-role identity, as well as support for the Androgynous model of psychological well being. Practical and theoretical implications of this research are discussed in the study.Item The stressor - outcome and moderator relationships amongst South African managers(1998) Chanoch, Debra, LynneDespite the potentially devastating effect that stress may have on the performance and productivity of the workforce (Greenblo,1992), few South African companies have thoroughly looked at and studied the various aspects of stress. By doing this, they should then be able to develop and implement effective stress reduction programmes, The aim of the present study, therefore, was to identify some of the causes, outcomes, and moderators of stress, which could then be used as the basis for developing stress reduction programmes. Some stressor-outcome relationships (such as job satisfaction, self-esteem, propensity to leave the organisation, and health) were looked at, after which the possible moderating effect of certain variables (gender, personality, coping style, job pressure, and organisational support) were considered. The study adopted a cross-sectional design and the data was collected using both quantitative and qualitative means. The sample consisted of 290 managers all of whom belong to one of the country's largest financial institutions, and work in one of'the various branches in and around the Gauteng region. Correlations, t-tests, anovas and a content analysis were used to evaluate the stressor-outcome relationships. In addition to these statistical analyses, moderated multiple linear regressions were conducted in order to test for any moderating variables. Overall, most of the stressor-outcome relationships were found to be significant, but the number of actual moderating variables was shown to be rather minimal. Inaddition. the information which was derived from the content analysis served to add some insight into the sometimes contradictory findings, An in-depth look at the findings of the present study can be found in the discussion section, where possible reasons and explanation for the result- are presented. Theoretical and practical implications of the study, together With the limitations, are offered. Following this, some important guidelines and suggestions for future research are considered.