The psychological contract and employee performance in post-acquisition integration

The purpose of this research study was to measure and understand if there was a change in the psychological contract post-acquisition and if so, did this change have a positive, negative or no effect on employee performance. Previous research and literature has suggested that identity was a critical measure of post-acquisition success (2011, p. 26; Weber&Drori, 2011, p. 76) leaving employee performance unmeasured. Rouzies (2011) further suggested that a merger or acquisition can lead to a drop in psychological attachment, identification and commitment to the acquired organisation (2011, p. 25). In addition, Chambers (2008) also made mention of personnel and culture integration being underestimated (p. 16). Therefore, this research has measured psychological contract (identity, culture and communication) in terms of employee performance (potential turnover, job satisfaction and productivity) in the context of post-acquisition integration.The results showed that changes in the psychological contract affect employee performance positively. Equally, if not more, important is maintaining the psychological contract in the post-acquisition integration process and thereby avoiding a drop in employee and acquisition performance.Identity and culture are strong influences of employee performance. The data collected suggested that identity positively impacts employee performance. More specifically, there was a slight positive impact on potential turnover and a more positive impact on job satisfaction and productivity. Culture also positively impacted employee performance. When measured against potential turnover, this impact was slightly positive while job satisfaction and productivity were more positively impacted.Communication was found to be important in reducing potential turnover. From data collected, communication does not impact job satisfaction and productivity. However, the data suggests that communication was adequately handled in the post-acquisition integration process.Recommendations were made dealing with principles to be considered preacquisition, on the importance of minimising disruption and maintaining continuity during post-acquisition. Based on the findings in this research, the psychological contract needs to be maintained in terms of identity, culture and communication. This will in turn ensure that employee performance is maintained post-acquisition. This implies that in addition to financial due-diligence being performed prior to a merger or acquisition, organisations need to be aware of employees’ feelings and attitudes towards the impending change.Future research may look at measuring psychological contract and employee performance in post-acquisition integration across different industries and countries or the same variables could also be measured pre-acquisition. Alternatively, additional variables such as extra-role behaviour and affective commitment could be added to the assessment tool to measure employee performance more closely.Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012.Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS)unrestricte

Creating Hegemony: Montreal’s cultural development policies and the rise of cultural actors as entrepreneurial political elites.

Culture-led regeneration and creativity policies appear to have achieved broad societal acceptance in many cities in North America and Europe. This research explores how a discursive articulation of culture with entrepreneurial notions of ―creativity has contributed to a new set of policies, forms of policy coordination, sectoral partnerships and growth coalitions. This is illustrated by the case of Montréal, Canada, a city that places culture and creativity at the heart of its local accumulation strategy, and has secured a soft hegemonic presence. This research largely draws on geographical political economy literature that views urban neoliberalism as a contingent process that requires consent from disparate constituencies, and not as something predeterminedby changes in the economy. The first line of inquiry traces key events and policy documents i.e. ―key moments of conjuncture that have helped to repackage culture as a competitive asset. Supplemented with analysis derived from speeches, media, official documents and online sources, the case demonstrates how the creative cities discourse has fuelled a new policy network that allows for the rapprochement of cultural actors with traditional urban elites. Using the creation of the Quartier des Spectacles as a case study, the second line of inquiry examines how the intertwining of culture, creativity and economic development have come to shape urban planning. Finally, in line with neo-Gramscian perspectives on urban politics, this research concludes by exploring instances of counter hegemony, particularly within the local artistic community

\u27We Are Radical\u27: The Right to the City Alliance and the Future of Community Organizing

This paper seeks to situate current efforts of The Right to the City Alliance and selected member groups in a longitudinal and cross-sectional qualitative study of the limits and potential of contemporary organizing. For three decades politicians, policy makers, advocates, academics, and even activists have promoted community-based efforts as the primary vehicle for contemporary social change. Local organizing has been seen as the best site and strategy for initiatives as diverse as community economic development, public school reform, social service delivery, and challenging the powers that be. In almost all cases these efforts have been constrained and moderated by a global political economy of neoliberalism, which promotes community initiatives at the same time as it foists additional burdens on local communities and community organizations. An overview of the Right to the City Alliance and selected member organizations reveals its relatively unique, alternative model of organizing. Study of the organization and its model enables us to look at some of the limits of this nascent effort, including how well the alliance model accomplishes the need for greater scale and power. It also enables us to compare it to other community organizing efforts and see how it fits with and informs contemporary mobilizations since 2010

R A P I D C O M M U N I C AT I O N Nonclassical hydrodynamic behavior of Sn plasma irradiated with a long duration CO 2 laser pulse

Abstract It was found that the electron density scale length of Sn plasma irradiated with a long duration CO 2 laser pulse is much shorter than that predicted by the classical isothermal model. The experimentally observed small dominant region of in-band (2% bandwidth) 13.5-nm extreme ultraviolet (EUV) emission coincides with this constrained hydrodynamic behavior. The lower hydrodynamic efficiency may come from the strongly inhibited ablation mass and makes a CO 2 -laser-produced Sn plasma suitable as an EUV radiation source. When an intense laser pulse arrives at the surface of a solid material placed in a vacuum, a thin layer of the material is ablated, heated, and expands into vacuum due to the thermal gradient. Such hydrodynamic expansion of a laser-produced plasma has been studied for more than 40 years motivated by a wide range of applications, such as efficient compression of a pellet in laser fusion, X-ray lasers, laser ion acceleration, and short wavelength radiation sources For the application of laser fusion, a lot of effort has been expended to enhance hydrodynamic efficiency in order to achieve efficient compression of the fusion pellet. It has been shown that short wavelength lasers could provide higher hydrodynamic efficiency as compared with long wavelength lasers Experiments are carried out using a home-built master oscillator and power amplifier (MOPA) CO 2 laser system as the pumping laser puls

R A P I D C O M M U N I C AT I O N Nonclassical hydrodynamic behavior of Sn plasma irradiated with a long duration CO 2 laser pulse

Abstract It was found that the electron density scale length of Sn plasma irradiated with a long duration CO 2 laser pulse is much shorter than that predicted by the classical isothermal model. The experimentally observed small dominant region of in-band (2% bandwidth) 13.5-nm extreme ultraviolet (EUV) emission coincides with this constrained hydrodynamic behavior. The lower hydrodynamic efficiency may come from the strongly inhibited ablation mass and makes a CO 2 -laser-produced Sn plasma suitable as an EUV radiation source. When an intense laser pulse arrives at the surface of a solid material placed in a vacuum, a thin layer of the material is ablated, heated, and expands into vacuum due to the thermal gradient. Such hydrodynamic expansion of a laser-produced plasma has been studied for more than 40 years motivated by a wide range of applications, such as efficient compression of a pellet in laser fusion, X-ray lasers, laser ion acceleration, and short wavelength radiation sources For the application of laser fusion, a lot of effort has been expended to enhance hydrodynamic efficiency in order to achieve efficient compression of the fusion pellet. It has been shown that short wavelength lasers could provide higher hydrodynamic efficiency as compared with long wavelength lasers Experiments are carried out using a home-built master oscillator and power amplifier (MOPA) CO 2 laser system as the pumping laser puls

Control judicial previo a las afectaciones del derecho fundamental a la intimidad en el proceso penal colombiano

This thesis was proposed as an objective: To demonstrate the incidences of the implications of judicial control, what is the importance and how it affects or violates the right to privacy in the Colombian criminal process. The foregoing in the understanding that privacy is one of the most important faculties of man, being necessary the existence of legal instruments in order to protect it, for this purpose, based on the experience of comparative law, in which privacy can only be noli affected with prior authorization from the competent judicial authority, this document will demonstrate the non-existence of a contradiction between the constitutional mandate and ordinary legislation, since Law 906 contrary to what is ordered by the constituent, allows the prosecuting body to autonomously limit this human right and fundamental. The present work appealed to a descriptive methodology and a qualitative aproche, based on a documentary review to demonstrate from the doctrine the elements of the problem posed, being the result to which said undertaking pointed, the demonstration of an anomaly in the Colombian legal system, as a consequence of this omission of the legislator, an inalienable and highly important faculty and right of citizenship is being unjustly injured. Thus, this work contributes to the current doctrinal debate about the origin of affectations to privacy without prior judicial control, an important antecedent not only to criminal sciences, but also to the constitutionalization of acts of criminal prosecution.La presente tesis se propuso como objetivo: Demostrar las incidencias de las implicaciones del control judicial, cual es la importancia y en que afecta o vulnera el derecho a la intimidad en el proceso penal colombiano. Lo anterior en el entendido, que la privacidad es una de las mas importantes facultades del hombre, siendo necesaria la existencia de instrumentos jurídicos con miras a protegerla, a tal efecto, partiendo de la experiencia del derecho comparado, en el cual la intimidad solo puede ser afectada previa autorización de autoridad judicial competente, el presente documento demostrara la inexistencia de una contradicción entre el mandato constitucional y la legislación ordinaria, puesto la ley 906 contrario a lo ordenado por el constituyente, permite que el ente acusador limite autónomamente este derecho humano y fundamental. El presente trabajo apelo a una metodología descriptiva y un enfoque cualitativa, para con base en una revisión documental demostrar desde la doctrina los elementos del problema planteado, siendo el resultado al que apunto dicho emprendimiento, la demostración de una anomalía en el ordenamiento jurídico colombiano, puesto como consecuencia de esta omisión del legislador, se esta lesionando injustamente un inalienable y altamente importante facultad y derecho de la ciudadanía. Es así, que el presente trabajo aporta al debate doctrinario vigente en torno a la procedencia de afectaciones a la intimidad sin control judicial previo, un importante antecedente no solo a las ciencias penales, sino también a la constitucionalización de los actos de persecución criminal

Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) for the detection of dementia in clinically unevaluated people aged 65 and over in community and primary care populations

BACKGROUND: The Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) is a cognitive test that is commonly used as part of the evaluation for possible dementia. OBJECTIVES: To determine the diagnostic accuracy of the Mini‐Mental State Examination (MMSE) at various cut points for dementia in people aged 65 years and over in community and primary care settings who had not undergone prior testing for dementia. SEARCH METHODS: We searched the specialised register of the Cochrane Dementia and Cognitive Improvement Group, MEDLINE (OvidSP), EMBASE (OvidSP), PsycINFO (OvidSP), LILACS (BIREME), ALOIS, BIOSIS previews (Thomson Reuters Web of Science), and Web of Science Core Collection, including the Science Citation Index and the Conference Proceedings Citation Index (Thomson Reuters Web of Science). We also searched specialised sources of diagnostic test accuracy studies and reviews: MEDION (Universities of Maastricht and Leuven, www.mediondatabase.nl), DARE (Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, via the Cochrane Library), HTA Database (Health Technology Assessment Database, via the Cochrane Library), and ARIF (University of Birmingham, UK, www.arif.bham.ac.uk). We attempted to locate possibly relevant but unpublished data by contacting researchers in this field. We first performed the searches in November 2012 and then fully updated them in May 2014. We did not apply any language or date restrictions to the electronic searches, and we did not use any methodological filters as a method to restrict the search overall. SELECTION CRITERIA: We included studies that compared the 11‐item (maximum score 30) MMSE test (at any cut point) in people who had not undergone prior testing versus a commonly accepted clinical reference standard for all‐cause dementia and subtypes (Alzheimer disease dementia, Lewy body dementia, vascular dementia, frontotemporal dementia). Clinical diagnosis included all‐cause (unspecified) dementia, as defined by any version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM); International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and the Clinical Dementia Rating. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: At least three authors screened all citations.Two authors handled data extraction and quality assessment. We performed meta‐analysis using the hierarchical summary receiver‐operator curves (HSROC) method and the bivariate method. MAIN RESULTS: We retrieved 24,310 citations after removal of duplicates. We reviewed the full text of 317 full‐text articles and finally included 70 records, referring to 48 studies, in our synthesis. We were able to perform meta‐analysis on 28 studies in the community setting (44 articles) and on 6 studies in primary care (8 articles), but we could not extract usable 2 x 2 data for the remaining 14 community studies, which we did not include in the meta‐analysis. All of the studies in the community were in asymptomatic people, whereas two of the six studies in primary care were conducted in people who had symptoms of possible dementia. We judged two studies to be at high risk of bias in the patient selection domain, three studies to be at high risk of bias in the index test domain and nine studies to be at high risk of bias regarding flow and timing. We assessed most studies as being applicable to the review question though we had concerns about selection of participants in six studies and target condition in one study. The accuracy of the MMSE for diagnosing dementia was reported at 18 cut points in the community (MMSE score 10, 14‐30 inclusive) and 10 cut points in primary care (MMSE score 17‐26 inclusive). The total number of participants in studies included in the meta‐analyses ranged from 37 to 2727, median 314 (interquartile range (IQR) 160 to 647). In the community, the pooled accuracy at a cut point of 24 (15 studies) was sensitivity 0.85 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.74 to 0.92), specificity 0.90 (95% CI 0.82 to 0.95); at a cut point of 25 (10 studies), sensitivity 0.87 (95% CI 0.78 to 0.93), specificity 0.82 (95% CI 0.65 to 0.92); and in seven studies that adjusted accuracy estimates for level of education, sensitivity 0.97 (95% CI 0.83 to 1.00), specificity 0.70 (95% CI 0.50 to 0.85). There was insufficient data to evaluate the accuracy of the MMSE for diagnosing dementia subtypes.We could not estimate summary diagnostic accuracy in primary care due to insufficient data. AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: The MMSE contributes to a diagnosis of dementia in low prevalence settings, but should not be used in isolation to confirm or exclude disease. We recommend that future work evaluates the diagnostic accuracy of tests in the context of the diagnostic pathway experienced by the patient and that investigators report how undergoing the MMSE changes patient‐relevant outcomes

Design and Development of a Power Modulator for Insulation Testing

I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii Variable speed drives allow for more precise speed control of induction motors, are of high power factor, and offer fast response characteristics, compared to older technologies, such as motor-generator sets and eddy current clutches. However, due to the high switching frequencies as well as the high dV/dt in the output increased dielectric stresses are produced in the insulation system of the motor they supply. Due to the use of these solid state drives there have been concerns of premature failure in large, medium and high voltage, motors. To fully understand and deal with these concerns requires studying the degradation mechanisms, in the insulation system, caused by these drives; which, on an actual motor is both extremely costly as well as impractical. Therefore, coil samples which accurately represent the construction of the actual insulation system, must be aged and studied instead. In addition, to ideally replicate the aging process, the same waveform that the motor i

Effect of joint and isolated irregularities of the track on the wear of rails in curves

The purpose of the work is to identifying causes of intensive lateral wear of rails and other track failures in short radius curves using numerical methods. The study has been conducted for the most common type of rolling stock: four-axle freight cars on TsNII-Ch3 bogies, transportation of which makes 75-90% of freight load of the track sections. Thus, it is the effect of these cars which is the main cause of the above disorders. To solve the problem, effect of the following parameters of the track plan on dynamic processes of interaction of the track and rolling stock was investigated in the work: effect of the curves radius, the unbalanced accelerations and the width of the track; effect of local joint and smooth irregularities of the track in plan view. The results of numerical studies. A mathematical model of the spatial dynamic system “vehicle-track” has been used to perform the study, which is based on the design diagrams of the track in the form of long rail beams resting on multiple dissipative elastic supporting sleepers with nonlinear characteristics. This model is implemented in the MathCAD software system

Revisiting the reasons for contact fatigue defects in rails

As it is known rail is one of the most significant elements of the whole railway construction. Operation under alternating loads from wheels of the rolling stock and different ambient temperatures lead to appearance and development of rail defects and damages. A great variety of operational factors (freight traffic density, axial loads, traffic speeds, track layout and profile) as well as special features of manufacturing and thermal treatment of rails create certain difficulties while identifying reasons for defects and damages. The article deals with an attempt to estimate influence of track layout and lateral forces on appearance of defects and damages in rails on the base of long-term observations of rail operation in Kharkiv Metro. On the basis of the vehicle/track mathematical model which considers structural features of both rolling stock and permanent way in underground systems, the level of lateral forces in curves was calculated. The coefficients of correlation between the track curvature, the level of forces and the amount of defected rails removed were later obtained, that made it possible to determine the dominant factor which may lead to appearance and development of contact fatigue defects in rails laid in curves