1,720,956 research outputs found
Racial-based Impression Management, Sense of Belonging and Work Engagement among Black Professionals in South African Organisations
No full textA research project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Organisational Psychology by Coursework and Research Report, in the Faculty of Humanities, School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2020Despite the increasing prevalence of diversity in many organisations in South Africa, the lack of inclusivity is an issue that most of these organisations are still challenged with. This is evidenced by the racial-based impression management (RIM) strategies that are still used by Black professionals to manage aspects of their racial identities and to navigate multiracial dynamics in workplaces in South Africa. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore how RIM strategies (avoidance, affiliation, racial humour, enhancement) relates to work engagement (vigour, dedication, absorption) of Black professionals in organisations in South Africa and, whether this proposed relationship is mediated by the sense of belonging at work. A cross-sectional, correlational design with purposive sampling and snowballing was used. 206 Black professionals in a sample of various organisations in South Africa completed a self- developed demographic questionnaire, Schaufeli et al.’s (2002) Utrecht work engagement scale, Roberts et al.’s (2014) adapted RIM scale and Hagerty and Patusky’s (1995) sense of belonging instrument. The results indicated that racial humour was used least and affiliation most amongst the RIM strategies. There were weak to moderate correlations between the RIM strategies of affiliation, racial humour and enhancement with work engagement, none for avoidance. Similarly, there were weak and moderate correlations between sense of belonging at work and work engagement and RIM strategies of affiliation, racial humour, none for avoidance and enhancement. Sense of belonging acted as a mediator only between RIM (affiliation, racial humour) and work engagement, with an exception of avoidance and enhancement. The results suggest that the use of RIM strategies seems to be successful in so far as they might ‘free’ Black professionals up in organisations in South Africa to engage in their work. The mediating role of sense of belonging at work indicates the importance of allowing employees to feel like valued ‘insiders’ and the need for organisations to prioritise and strive to create working environments that are inclusive for all versus expecting assimilation.MM202
The construction of an authentic work-related identity among young black professionals
Get PDFAbstract: In the competitive world of work, marginalised professionals such as devalued racial and ethnic groups, women, and people with disabilities often struggle to construct a positive work-related identity in corporate organisations. In South Africa, the majority of Black professionals’ identity struggle stems from the conflict between their collective cultural identities and the required advanced, individualistic organisational identities. The concept identity provides an opportunity to understand what it means to be black in the workplace and how Black professionals identify with these organisations. In the present study, the term black includes the Black African, Coloured, and Indian ethnic groups. More specifically, young Black professionals (YBPs) are a critical talent, and are at the centre of the war for talent in South Africa. I chose this critical group as the focus of my study. With respect to this group, my study centred around two key concepts: work-related identity (WRI) and authenticity at work. WRI is a multi-dimensional work self-concept that comprises a combination of personal, role, and social identities that affect a person’s adopted work roles and behaviours in an organisation. In my study, I set out to understand how YBPs configure their WRIs in organisations. Authenticity at work is the fit between a person’s work-related identities (i.e., personal, role, and social identities) and broader vii context. In my study, I set out to understand whether YBPs could operate authentically, and looked at the consequences of this authenticity at work in an organisational context. The unique combination of WRI and authenticity at work is key to understanding the psychological functioning of YBPs in an organisational context. Against the above background, my main research question was: How do young Black professionals construct an authentic work-related identity within an organisational context? Using organisational researchers, Dutton, Roberts, and Bednar's (2010) seminal paper on positive WRI perspectives, I developed the five research objectives (ROs) to investigate the research question in my study. A combination of identity theory and social identity theory provided the theoretical basis for my study. I set out to explore the rich but fragmented identity perspectives in organisations, as espoused in the literature. I developed a definition of WRI which provided insight into identity pathways which individuals may create in the WRI construction to become more authentic. Based on a review of contemporary literature, I developed 13 research propositions (RP1‒13), encompassing personal, professional-role, and social identity pathways. The RPs provided direction to my study in finding structured answers to the research question and meeting the ROs. I adopted a qualitative research design to explore the RPs by hearing directly from participants about their views on the research topic. My research strategy involved a form of ethnography approach, autoethnography, and a single case study research approach. I undertook the case study in the Johannesburg offices of a multi-national company, through in-depth interviews with 15 Black African YBPs (aged 24–34 years), 11 Black people managers, and the HR Director. Thematic data analyses were used to uncover integrated patterns in the data. My broad findings revealed that the participants were most authentic when their WRI consisted of life spheres, virtuous identity attributes, integrated identity construction approaches, identity tactics, and positive identity outcomes. An integration of my findings demonstrated that an authentic WRI did not entirely fit the neat identity pathways postulated in my RPs. Rather, I found that authentic WRI construction was much more complex, systemic, dynamic, and organic than was hinted at in the RPs derived from the current literature. The current functionalist perspective on WRI as the premise of my RPs proved too limiting to build an in-depth understanding of my findings. My pragmatic approach to my study lends itself to combining three theoretical perspectives—social constructionist, complexity/chaos, and critical perspectives—to arrive at a more in-depth and rich understanding of my integrated findings. The three perspectives allowed me to construct and propose an Authentic WRI Conceptual Model. The Model enabled me to make sense of the dynamic, non-linear, and cyclical nature of the construction of an authentic WRI, as reflected in my findings. The building blocks of the Model are made up of the macro context, authentic WRI construction and outcomes, life spheres, and authentic WRI prototypes. I distinguished the three authentic WRI prototypes, based on my proposed Model, namely Authentic, Limited Authentic and Inauthentic WRI Prototypes. The Model confirms the dynamic interaction in the authentic WRI construction between the individual, life spheres, and macro context. The study found the thwarting of this pursuit of an authentic WRI may adversely affect the participants’ psychological well-being and their experiences of the organisational culture and climate...Ph.D. (Industrial Psychology
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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