Faculty of Humanities (ETDs)

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Exploring the relationship between job demands, resource, and psychological well-being: A study in the hospitality and tourism industries
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Marks, Joshua Blaine; Donald, Fiona
Identified as a key factor contributing to elevated levels of individual performance and thus organisational performance, ensuring ideal levels of individual psychological well-being has grown increasingly important within organisations, especially following the onset and recession of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the pandemic having receded, its initial impact left lasting effects on various industries, particularly the tourism and hospitality industries as these industries saw a drastic reduction in workforce size and revenue generated. This has prompted the implementation of nationwide recovery efforts; however, these have been found to be primarily aimed at addressing the financial and economic impacts of the pandemic with minimal consideration for addressing the psychological impacts of the pandemic. This study aimed at evaluating the current state of individual psychological well-being of individuals working in the tourism and hospitality industries in South Africa. Given the broad nature of the psychological well-being construct, attempts to evaluate it in the work context have proved difficult. Hence it is for this reason that this study evaluated psychological well-being with reference to the experience of work engagement and burnout, as these constructs have been conceptualised as indicators of psychological well-being. Therefore individual psychological well-being was assessed through the exploration of the potential relationships between various job characteristics and the experience of work engagement and burnout. The sample consisted of 65 participants from organisations within the tourism and hospitality industries in South Africa. Participants were required to complete a questionnaire that comprised of a demographic information section, the Job-Demands Resources Scale (JDRS), the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Health Services Survey (MBI-HSS), and the 9-item Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9). The results generated indicated the presence of significant, weak to moderate relationships between the variables of interest, with few exceptions. Furthermore, the significant regression models generated by the analysis provided insight into the relative contributions of the chosen job characteristics to the experience of work engagement and burnout. The results were discussed within the broader literature on the concepts of job demands and job resources, and the experience of work engagement and burnout.
Experiences of Thabazimbi Resident Mine Employees Regarding the Perceived Effects of Mining Activities within their Community. The case of Amandelbult Mine in Limpopo, South Africa
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-09) Ditshego, Mashiatshiti Johanna; Dube, Nkosiyazi
South Africa’s mining industry has historically been at the heart of the nation’s economy also taking into consideration the country’s high-ranking spot as one of the leading naturally rich resource countries within the world. In reality, the mining industry has played a key part in contributing to the country’s economic growth, and it remains South Africa’s most watched financial segment. However, the mining industry has experienced a major turmoil, since it also brings along socially unintended circumstances within the communities that they operate in, for example an increase of informal settlement, spontaneous mine closures, and the perpetuation of fights inside traditional houses. As much as there are several studies done within the South African mining sector, studies looking into the experiences and perceived effects of mining activities in communities where these mining companies operate are very limited within the South African literature in Occupational Social Work. Therefore, this qualitative study sought to close this gap, as it aims to explore the experiences of Thabazimbi Resident Mine Employees Regarding the Perceived Effects of Mining Activities within their Community. The study was qualitative in nature, with a case study used as the research design. The target population was mine employees residing in Thabazimbi. Purposive sampling was used to recruit (10) mine employees and (2) key informants in the community to be participants for the study, with a semi-structured interview guide employed as a research instrument. Data for the study was collected using face-to-face individual interviews. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the findings. Findings indicate that mining activities had both positive and negative experiences for the resident employees. Thabazimbi resident employees suggested some recommendations that can be implemented to mitigate the negative effects that they raised in the findings. Recommendations are made in relation future research.
Psychological wellbeing, Organisational support, and Job Satisfaction in Aviation professionals in South Africa
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024-05) Mohottalalage, Isira Jayamanna; Donald, Fiona
The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted the aviation industry, introducing new stressors for employees. This study examined relationships between psychological wellbeing, organizational support, and job satisfaction among 38 South African aviation professionals during the post-pandemic recovery period. Quantitative survey data was analysed using correlational and multiple regression techniques. Results revealed positive associations between organizational support, psychological wellbeing, and job satisfaction. In the multiple regression model, organizational support emerged as the strongest predictor, explaining over a quarter of variance in job satisfaction (β = .52, p < .001). This highlights its crucial buffering capacity amid acute pressures. Psychological wellbeing also exhibited a robust positive relationship with job satisfaction (β = .43, p < .01), emphasizing the importance of personal resources and positive appraisals for fulfilling work. Together, organizational support and psychological wellbeing significantly predicted job satisfaction, indicating their joint salience. Findings align with the job demands-resources model, with organizational and personal resources helping mitigate pandemic-related demands to sustain satisfaction and performance. Practical implications point to investing in supportive cultures, mental health provisions, and work-life balance policies to alleviate COVID-related strains as aviation companies rebuild. 4 However, limitations including the small sample size warrant caution in generalizing results. Addressing methodological constraints through expanded samples, longitudinal tracking, qualitative data, controlled experiments, and cross-national comparisons offers critical directions for subsequent research on optimizing occupational wellness in aviation during post pandemic transitions.
YouTube: Video Commercialization, Value Creation and Identity
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2021-12) Dlamini, Gabby Sipho; White, Hylton
Social media has been blamed for promoting unrealistic flashy lifestyles and an increase in influencer brand marketing. The outcome of this is said to put extreme pressure on individuals to maintain a certain lifestyle to the detriment of their self, promoting a performance of life rather than real life experiences, resulting in the breakdown of social bonds. Yet social media platforms such YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and many others are growing at considerable rates, despite all the critiques. The thesis overall questions how YouTube vloggers turn the intangible value of activities in everyday life into monetary income by attracting online audiences to their vlogs. The research is located as part of transformations taking place in late capitalism, that used to characterise the organisation of labour and, therefore, society in nineteenth and twentieth-century iterations of modern capitalist society; and the changing concepts of “private” and “public” that are described as part of the technological development and integration into our everyday lives. This thesis traces the changing structures and relationships between YouTube, YouTubers and viewers as the economy of YouTube has continued to grow. Whilst influencer brand marketing and social media reach are popularly viewed as detrimental to the individual and society, this thesis argues against this general view. Instead, I argue that in the wake of influencer marketing and the financial economies, embedded within YouTube and other social media, new ways of being and belonging are being negotiated. This thesis, using ethnographic data, focuses on these new ways of being and belonging by explaining how ideas of value, suspicion, affect, and digital footprint are factors in creating online community ties and online identities that continue inside and outside of the online space.
The Relationship Between Work Setting and Innovative Behaviour: The Influence of Innovation Climate and Work Orientation
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024-03-15) Matisonn, Bethia S.; Milner, Karen
To understand innovation in hybrid work settings, this study tested a model of innovative behaviour drawn from the dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation. This model explored how work setting, innovation climate and work orientation relate to innovative behaviour. The sample for the study comprised 482 employees in an international financial services institution based in South Africa, known for its innovation. The analysis conducted a one-way ANOVA, performed correlational analyses using Pearson’s correlation coefficient, and tested a series of nested general linear models. The findings show that there was no direct correlation between work setting and innovative behaviour. There was also no direct correlation between work orientation and innovative behaviour, and work orientation did not moderate the relationship between work setting and innovative behaviour. There was an association between fostering a favourable innovation climate and employee innovative behaviour. However, a favourable innovation climate did not influence the relationship between work setting and innovative behaviour. The study therefore demonstrated that cultivating a high innovation climate will enhance innovative behaviour in both ‘bricks and mortar’ 1 and remote work settings.
Depression and Disability in the Workplace
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Barnes, Tracey-Lee Ursula; Futter, Dylan
South African law prohibits unfair discrimination against people with disabilities and the law recognizes mental illness as a form of disability. It follows that it is impermissible to discriminate against people on the basis of mental illness. In this essay, I unpack the philosophical and ethical underpinnings of this claim, specifically in regard to depression. What complicates the question of discrimination on the basis of mental illness is the fact that not all discrimination is unfair, and one can justly remove people from jobs when they cannot perform these jobs to a required level. This seems to imply that it might be fair to discriminate against depressed employees when they cannot do their jobs on account of depression. The duty not to discriminate against people on the basis of disability includes a positive duty to provide reasonable accommodations that will help them to do their jobs. Just as employers are obligated to help those who cannot walk to access their places of work, something similar is true of depression. But what does it mean to accommodate depression? In this research report, I go beyond the status quo and introduce positive suggestions for how reasonable accommodation can work for depressed employees. This will be to offer an account of how the workplace ought to be restructured in order for employers to fulfil their legal and moral duties not to discriminate against people with the disability of depression. In particular, I argue that a person who suffers with depression would be in a better position to fulfil his job role, on the same level as other employees, if employers drove a culture of inclusion and dismantled the stigma that surrounds mental illness.
Exploring the teaching and learning role of agricultural extension workers
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-10) Adrupio, Scovia; Ramsarup, Presha
Agricultural extension has been identified as a key occupation in many African countries. This is because extension workers play a critical role in linking farmers and other actors within the agricultural sector to policy and practice. As a result, teaching and learning are their most important roles. Agricultural extension systems and the work done by agricultural extension workers are faced with a number of challenges, including inadequate funding, a limited number of extension workers, climate change, and general changes in the agricultural system, to name a few. These changes call for extension workers to constantly change and adapt to the changes happening in their world of work in order to best assist farmers in addressing their challenges. Despite a large amount of research being conducted in different areas of agricultural extension, such as the training needs and requirements of extension workers, challenges facing agricultural extension, reforms in extension systems, and gender inequalities in extension, little work has focused on how their teaching and learning roles are changing. This study thus takes an in-depth look at the teaching and learning roles of agricultural extension workers. The study starts by conceptualising the agricultural extension occupation using the five dimensions of an occupation proposed by Shalem and Allais (2018) to unpack the different factors within each occupation and how these can impact the teaching and learning roles of agricultural extension workers. The results of the study provide an understanding of why occupations are social and political activities that are affected by a number of factors and are always undergoing changes. Studying changes in occupations is critical, as it enables us to understand changes in the world of work and how workers in the workplace adapt to work-related changes.
Impact of Green Building Features and Initiatives on Individual Productivity and Organisational Performance in Office Buildings
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06) Nurick, Saul David; Thatcher, Andrew
The uptake of sustainability within the real estate sector has come to the fore in the last twenty years. More specifically this has involved the development and implementation of green certification tools within the commercial property market. There are various green building tools that are applied in the different developed markets to standardise building certification within each market. Some tools are adapted versions of another tool, for example Green Star (Australia) was used as the benchmark for the development Green Star South Africa. One of the categories within every type of green building tool is indoor environmental quality (IEQ). Building occupants tend to be more aware of their indoor environment more than any other building component that may be classified as a green building feature and initiative (GBFI). Specific GBFIs impact the following IEQ factors: ventilation, natural vs artificial light, ambient temperature, humidity levels, noise levels, and office configuration. Green building research has shown that operationally green buildings benefit both owners and tenants, which also has a positive impact on building values. Many green building advocates have stated that green buildings also result in improved individual productivity and organisational performance. There is, however, conjecture amongst academic researchers regarding the accuracy of measuring productivity of knowledge workers within an office environment. Common approaches for measuring productivity include creating a simulated office as an experimental environment and setting tasks for the participant to perform in different environmental conditions. Post occupancy evaluations (POE) and building user surveys are other instruments for gathering productivity data, however these are often in the form of self-assessment, which carries an element of bias. The purpose of this research was to develop and test a theoretical framework that connected the implementation of GBFIs, specifically enhanced IEQ, to individual productivity and organisational performance. The theoretical loop is that enhanced IEQ may positively impact both individual productivity and organisational performance, which could justify the implementation of GBFIs within an office building in an on-going basis. The research comprised four academic articles. The first article was a literature review looking at past research linking green buildings and productivity. This resulted in the proposal of the theoretical model. The second article was a scoping literature review that focused on the main methods that were applied in conducting research between green building and occupant productivity to provide support for the model. Papers three and four comprised empirical research that separately analysed individual productivity and organisational performance. The paper that qualitatively analysed individual productivity indicated that location and amenities, specifically those that focused on safety and reliable building services, positively contributed to individual productivity. The second empirical paper quantitively focused on organisational performance specifically focused on financial services companies (FSCs) and the average green return ratio (AGRRi) within the context green and non-green buildings and IEQ scores. Three funds (low, moderate and high risk) were analysed for each FSC to determine if there was a statistically significant relationship between annualised returns and IEQ, which was only apparent for the South African (SA) equity fund. It was established when comparing the sample of FSCs based in green certified buildings versus conventional (non-green) in terms of group average returns, that the FSCs based in green buildings outperformed the FSCs based in conventional buildings. The differences in annualised returns have been forecasted (compounded monthly and annually), which provides an indication that on average, clients investing in FSCs occupying green buildings will yield great overall wealth over the long-term (thirty years) than clients investing in FSCs located in conventional buildings. It was further established that there was a sweet spot for IEQ scores, which relate to annualised returns for FSCs located in green certified buildings. Based on the qualitative and quantitative findings there is potential for future research to expand the application of the theoretical model to other industries and real estate sectors. Furthermore, this research could be incorporated into environmental, social and governance (ESG) research studies, which could potentially provide justification at the executive level for further insight into unpacking the relationship between individual productivity and organisational performance arising from investing in the quality of the built infrastructure of the office.
South Africa’s Economic Foreign Policy: A Study of Slow Maturation
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-10) Nemalili, Lusani; Gwatiwa, Tshepo
In the international environment, all state relations are guided by a foreign policy that conveys what a state intends to achieve through its relations with other states. Foreign policy is the means used to express a state’s national interests internationally to other states whilst executing on its domestic policy making, strategies and decisions. Therefore, foreign policy is the translation of domestic national interests to an international audience for engagement. However, national interests vary according to what the state aims to fulfil abroad. They could be economic, social, security, political interests. Nevertheless, it remains critical that economic interests have always dominated the international relations arena. Thus, a convergence of foreign policy and domestic economic policy of a state are crucial for its international success that contributes to its economic growth within and beyond its borders. This convergence produces an economic foreign policy. An economic foreign policy then guides the decisions of policymakers and diplomatic practices of the state bureaucracy in achieving the state’s national interests abroad. The presence of an economic foreign policy in a state is important because decisions that different actors (state and non-state) make in the international environment have to be accounted for and guided by a policy in order to understand the reasoning and logic behind them. The absence of an economic foreign policy enables a state to operate on an ad hoc decision-making basis in the international environment and with outcomes whose impact cannot be measured nor monitored by the state itself or other states intending to form economic relations with it. South Africa, with its economic interests, goals and a foreign policy, has not yet produced a coherent, codified and well-expressed economic foreign policy for an international audience. Whilst the country has relevant actors and the right processes to produce an economic foreign policy, it has not brought one into maturity through the consolidation and unification of foreign and economic policies of the state. This is due to several domestic conditions in policy making, decisions and processes that prohibit the realisation of an economic foreign policy. It is in these domestic foreign and economic policy making environments that the enquiry of this study is found to reveal the reasons why South Africa has not had a matured economic foreign policy since the new democratic dispensation of 1994.
Hybrid working and organisational commitment: the role of perceived organisational support
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Tresidder-Angelo, Miguel Richard; Milner, Karen
Covid-19 has brought about many changes that has affected the workforce both positively and negatively. The major change brought about by Covid-19 is the alteration in the way individuals work. For many years remote working was a concept most employees had dreamed of, but through Covid-19 it became accessible to all. Now that the pandemic is at the point of phasing out and the seriousness of it has lessened, organisations are searching for a new way to maintain, motivate and increase their employees’ performance without losing the flexibility and autonomy that is afforded to remote working. This has come in the form of hybrid work which seeks to blend the benefits of remote work and the benefits of in-office work, to meet the expectations and needs of all employees and improve on both ways of work. This new concept could shape the way of work which is under-researched particularly in terms of how it will affect the employee’s attitudinal outcomes such as perceived job stress and organisational commitment. Therefore, this study explored the relationship between these two variables within a hybrid working context employees will be negative. Traditional organisational research also seemed to suggest that perceived organisational support could moderate this relationship. The aim of this study was therefore to examine the effect of job stress on organisational commitment and whether or not perceived organisational support moderates this relationship within a hybrid working context. This was done through acquiring data through purposive non-probability convenience sampling which allowed the study to obtain a sample of 106 individuals within the IT and Data Management sector. Participants were administered a self-report survey which contained three scales - Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Organisational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ), and Perceived Organisational Support scale (POS). A correlation coefficient test was conducted to determine the association between perceived job stress and organisational commitment and a hierarchical moderated regression was run to determine if perceived organisational support moderates this relationship within a hybrid working context. The results of this found a weak statistically negative relationship between perceived job stress and organisational commitment. Perceived organisational support was found to have a statistically non-significant moderation effect on the relationship between perceived job stress and organisational commitment.

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