- Title
- Male nurses’ occupational experiences and meaning ascribed to dirty work in a female-dominated profession: A case of a hospital in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa
- Creator
- Chikungwa-Everson , Tarisai
- Subject
- Quality of work life Occupational prestige
- Date
- 2019
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Doctoral
- Type
- PhD (Industrial Psychology)
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10353/13314
- Identifier
- vital:39633
- Description
- Orientation: Work and individual pursuit for career development have become critical in modern society. Within this, new forms of work and categories of work have emerged. Given these new forms of work and categories of work, there is a need to understand individual sense-making and experiences of transition. Research Purpose: The study explores male nurses’ occupational experiences and meaning ascribed to dirty work in a female-dominated profession. Motivation of the Study: Calls exist within the extant literature to understand modern forms of work and individual transition. One such area is that of dirty work – classified as any form of work with physical, moral or emotional taint. Little research within an Industrial and Organisational Psychology context exists on dirty work. Research Approach, Design/Method: An interpretivist, qualitative research approach using the exploratory research design was utilised to explore male nurse's occupational experiences and meaning ascribed to dirty work in a female-dominated profession. Narrative analysis was used as a basis for analysis using 27 male nurses working within the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Main Findings: Based on the analysis of the 27 participants that took part in the study five main narratives emerged. These included: a) a career in nursing as framed as a recursive discourse; b) the experience of a nurse as oscillating as an agentic prowess and a communal assemblage of continued suspicion; c) striving more agentic domains ahead of communal domains in entering and surviving within dirty work; d) male nurses fulfilling a gendered utility role that female nurses cannot occupy and finally, e) male nurses’ ephemeral intention of being in the nursing profession influenced by the conditions of work. ii Practical/Managerial Implications: Based on the findings of the research, interventions are proposed with ramifications for the individual, organisation and career counselling. Contribution/Value-Add: Based on the findings of the research a theoretical framework of dirty work experiences and meaning of work amongst male nurses is proposed. The framework represents a departure away from traditional career theories espoused in the work of Holland and Super as it illustrates the role of intersectionality and marginality in shaping career development. Further, the proposed framework founded from the findings of the research (though supporting modern career models such as the Systems Theory Framework and the Career Construction Theory) uniquely show drivers towards dirty work, b) the processual work accompanying dirty work involvement and finally, c) the meaning ascribed to dirty work. The study becomes the first within a South African context.
- Format
- 241 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- University of Fort Hare
- Publisher
- Faculty of Management and Commerce
- Language
- English
- Rights
- University of Fort Hare
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UFH Department of Industrial Psychology
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | CHIKUNGWA T 200908999 D COM IPS.pdf | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |