Executive flow experiences and coaching in South African workplaces

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in Business Executive Coaching Johannesburg, 2017A flow experience is described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the founding thought leader of the experience, as “the holistic sensation present when we act with total involvement” (1975, p.43). Flow experiences have been linked to positive outcomes for individuals and organisations (Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre, 1989; Engeser & Rheinberg, 2008; Privette, 1983; Salanova, Bakker, & Llorens, 2006) suggesting that this is a desirable experience to facilitate in the workplace. Csikszentmihalyi states that there is much that can be done to introduce more flow to the day-to-day experiences of life, including at work (1999), yet, despite the documented role of organisational leaders as “climate engineers” (Linley, Woolston, & Biswas-Diener, 2009, p. 37) there has been no specific consideration of the flow experiences of executives as leaders. The possible relationship between coaching and flow experiences has to date received attention in mainstream literary circles, and superficial attention in academic literature (Britton, 2008; Wesson & Boniwell, 2007). Coaching executives to achieve flow has not been considered in existing literature in the Executive Coaching domain, but since Executive Coaching is still viewed as emerging (Hamlin, Ellinger, & Beattie, 2008), a confirmation that Executive Coaching can be applied to foster flow experiences in the workplace would add to the credibility of this field. The purpose of this study has been to identify how the emerging discipline of Executive Coaching can facilitate the creation of flow experiences in executive workplaces. The answer to this question has been sought through building an understanding of how flow is experienced by executives in the workplace, and then investigating how flow experiences can be facilitated in executive workplaces. The research study adopted a qualitative approach due to the known suitability of this method to consider the life experiences of participants. Face- to-face, semi-structured interviews were used as the core data collection method addressing a sample size of 16 respondents, made up of 13 executives and three executive coaches. This approach has previously been applied to collect rich narrative data on flow experiences. The study found that whilst executive flow experiences show some commonalities with the existing literature on flow and flow experiences at work, several distinct antecedents for and characteristics of executive flow were identifiable. These precursors and features of executive flow were attributed at three levels: a) at the level of the organisation; b) through the type of work, and c) at the individual level. Executive experiences of anti-flow, the opposite of flow, were also identified. These were typically characterised and initiated by opposite factors to those linked to flow experiences. The study outcomes identified the ability of executives to proactively pursue flow experiences, and further showed that self-awareness and an awareness and use of one’s strengths increase the likelihood of flow experiences. The study thus found that there clear focus areas exist which can be manipulated through interventions to increase likelihood of executive flow experiences. The study outcome that the three areas that impact executive flow experiences correlate to Executive Coaching focus areas introduces the possibility that coaching may be a suitable intervention to increase the likelihood of executive flow experiences. This developing hypothesis is subsequently supported by the final research theme that Executive Coaching may be able to support the executive in cultivating the respective individual, organisational and work conditions to increase the likelihood of flow experiences at work.MT201

The influence of protocol choice on network performance

Bibliography: leaves 100-102.Computer communication networks are a vital link in providing many of the services that we use daily, and our reliance on these networks is on the increase. The growing use of networks is driving network design towards greater performance. The greater need for network connectivity and increased performance makes the study of network performance constraints important. Networks consist of both hardware and software components. Currently great advances are being made in network hardware, resulting in advances in the available raw network performance. In this thesis, I will show through measurement that it is difficult to harness all the raw performance and to make it available to carry network services. I will also identify some of the factors limiting the full utilization of a high speed network

Parenting in Babylon – a Minecraft digital backyard in Australia

Michael Dezuanni and Anna Whateley tell us about their own home, technology in family life and the role of Minecraft in teaching digital skills across generations. They both work at Queensland University of Technology, Michael is Deputy Director of the Children and Youth Research Centre, Anna teaches adolescent fiction and the sociology of education

Google has a labor problem, and it’s not just coming from its employees

For decades, technology companies have used temporary and contract workers to lower costs, creating a shadow workforce of thousands of indirect employees. That business model is now under threat. In September 2019, 80 contract workers at Google’s Pittsburgh office voted to unionize with the United Steelworkers, the first time that white-collar tech workers in the U.S. have successfully organized with a union. These contractors are employees of HCL Technologies, an Indian multinational IT and consulting company that partners with Google around the world. Tech and office workers face a different set of workplace issues from blue-collar and factory employees, which has led some to question whether traditional unions are a fit for the sector. Union organizers say issues of job insecurity, a lack of career mobility and poor benefits have made it necessary for today’s white-collar workers to use collective bargaining. A unionized contractor workforce demanding better wages and benefits would threaten one of the sector’s major profit margin generators: the low-cost vendor worker. Link to capstone website: https://danwhateley.com/2019/12/08/capstone/

A Vulnerability Framework for Assessing the Risks to Water Supply Systems Under Climate Uncertainty in the Urban Northeastern United States

The northeastern United States is not commonly considered a drought prone region. Yet there are increasing pressures on water utilities throughout the region that constrain their ability to supply reliable water. These include new constraints on water withdrawals and requirements to release additional water for ecological purposes. Finally, there is the emerging concern associated with climate change. The vulnerability of any particular system, however, is not easily assessed, as it is dependent on a variety of factors that go beyond simple changes in precipitation and temperature. These include the size of the watershed, the volume of storage, required releases, and water demand. This dissertation will develop a pragmatic framework that incorporates these factors to allow rapid assessment and comparative analysis of water utilities’ vulnerability to climate change. The analysis uses a vulnerability-based assessment, based on stress testing, which identifies the problematic scenarios first and then uses climate information to provide context regarding the risk associated with those scenarios. The approach is demonstrated in an analysis of the major cities of the Northeast U.S., New York City, NY, Boston, MA, Springfield, MA, Hartford, CT, and Providence, RI. Next, a generic version of the framework is implemented in a novel online software tool designed for smaller utilities that may lack the ability to conduct a full vulnerability analysis. Lastly, this work explores the impact of various sources of uncertainty (i.e., internal variability, mean climate change, and future emission scenario) on water supply in the northeastern United States. The dissertation shows pragmatic approaches to climate change vulnerability analysis that water utilities can implement and update to assess and manage their climate change risks for both large and small utilities

The Metaphysics of Space: Painting a Body of Light

This investigation explores an invitation to the metaphysical—to the spiritual—through the visual language of painting. As an abstract painter and a person of faith, abstraction affords me a contemporary, non-prescriptive language for my thesis; above all it offers me the potential to explore space and light as both subject and medium in this project. This research builds on the tradition of Western religious painting—where three-dimensional space is interpreted into two-dimensional space for the purposes of inspiring the viewer to imagine and engage with the metaphysical. My encounters with historic sacred paintings and with the liturgical cycle whilst on monastic retreat, directed my investigations to two approaches towards luminosity in paint: materialising light through the materials used and painting the changing natural light experienced. This is a reflection of two identified intentions underpinning historic sacred works of art: the devotional purpose and the narrative didactic objective. These experiences of light and space in the company of religious paintings and in sacred environments gave me the conceptual and methodological framework of affect with which to structure my enquiry. My intention is to create a body of paintings that offers new opportunities of experiencing the metaphysical—based on historic imaginings of the metaphysical—by stimulating the viewer’s intuitive sense of interior and exterior space experienced through the body. This research takes the form of a series of painted investigations into the nature of light and space, in which I use both interactive materials and colour interactions as facilitative devices for exploring the spiritual potential of the two-dimensional image

Value of long-term streamflow forecasts to reservoir operations for water supply in snow-dominated river catchments

We present a forecast-based adaptive management framework for water supply reservoirs and evaluate the contribution of long-term inflow forecasts to reservoir operations. Our framework is developed for snow-dominated river basins that demonstrate large gaps in forecast skill between seasonal and inter-annual time horizons. We quantify and bound the contribution of seasonal and inter-annual forecast components to optimal, adaptive reservoir operation. The framework uses an Ensemble Streamflow Prediction (ESP) approach to generate retrospective, one-year-long streamflow forecasts based on the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrology model. We determine the optimal sequence of daily release decisions using the Model Predictive Control (MPC) optimization scheme. We then assess the forecast value by comparing system performance based on the ESP forecasts with the performances based on climatology and perfect forecasts. We distinguish among the relative contributions of the seasonal component of the forecast versus the inter-annual component by evaluating system performance based on hybrid forecasts, which are designed to isolate the two contributions. As an illustration, we first apply the forecast-based adaptive management framework to a specific case study, i.e., Oroville Reservoir in California, and we then modify the characteristics of the reservoir and the demand to demonstrate the transferability of the findings to other reservoir systems. Results from numerical experiments show that, on average, the overall ESP value in informing reservoir operation is 35% less than the perfect forecast value and the inter-annual component of the ESP forecast contributes 20–60% of the total forecast value.</p

Termites promote resistance of decomposition to spatiotemporal variability in rainfall

The ecological impact of rapid environmental change will depend on the resistance of key ecosystems processes, which may be promoted by species that exert strong control over local environmental conditions. Recent theoretical work suggests that macrodetritivores increase the resistance of African savanna ecosystems to changing climatic conditions, but experimental evidence is lacking. We examined the effect of large fungus-growing termites and other non-fungus-growing macrodetritivores on decomposition rates empirically with strong spatiotemporal variability in rainfall and temperature. Non-fungus-growing larger macrodetritivores (earthworms, woodlice, millipedes) promoted decomposition rates relative to microbes and small soil fauna (+34%) but both groups reduced their activities with decreasing rainfall. However, fungus-growing termites increased decomposition rates strongest (+123%) under the most water-limited conditions, making overall decomposition rates mostly independent from rainfall. We conclude that fungus-growing termites are of special importance in decoupling decomposition rates from spatiotemporal variability in rainfall due to the buffered environment they create within their extended phenotype (mounds), that allows decomposition to continue when abiotic conditions outside are less favorable. This points at a wider class of possibly important ecological processes, where soil-plant-animal interactions decouple ecosystem processes from large-scale climatic gradients. This may strongly alter predictions from current climate change models