Digital Commons Network^™

Experiential Learning Final Report: Ase Leader And Student Writer-In-Residence, Gray Brogden

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Publications

This report chronicles my two experiential writing credits completed for the School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities between 2021 and 2023. The first experience was as an Academic Support and Engagement Transition Leader (ASE leader) during the summer of 2021, and the second experience is my ongoing tenure as the Western University 2023-24 Student Writer-in-Residence. The former involved facilitating Community Connections days, running events for Smart Start academics, leading programming on Faculty Day, and providing a support system where incoming students could learn more about what their year was going to look like from someone who had …

Transference Music: For Electric Guitar Soloist And Amplified Orchestra, Andrew Noseworthy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Transference Music: for Electric Guitar Soloist and Amplified Orchestra is a concertante work with an approximate duration of 25 minutes. The work is inspired by my experiences as a composer-electric guitarist. Its musical parameters are constructed via the act transferring those experiences between the typically separate designations of ‘performer’ and ‘composer.’ These experiences involve aspects of style and genre, electric guitar-specific performance gestures and various timbral or textural ideas, as well as concepts of electronic sound production. These experiences are then used as the basis for the work’s form, motivic relationships and orchestration. As the electric guitar is somewhat of …

Jeux Et Enjeux Des Formes Poétiques Dans Les Mystères Médiévaux, Patrick Ager

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Late-medieval mystery plays present an exceptionally rich versification. This dissertation aims to shed light on the features of these texts, which I consider to be “dramatic poems”. Scholars have long recognized that the playwrights of this period used many complex strophic forms in their works: this was noted by Henri Chatelain in his Recherches sur le vers français au quinzième siècle (1908). However, studies on the versification of medieval theatre have often been limited to mere lists and catalogues of forms, sometimes accompanied by cursory remarks. Certainly, such an approach provides a glimpse of the technical virtuosity of these poets; …

Finding Teams That Fight Fair: Exploring Trajectories Of Team Conflict Over Time, Natasha E. Ouslis

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Disagreements are a reality for teams. Yet how and when teams experience conflict may impact their chances of success. We know relatively little about how team conflict emerges over time, especially for project-based teams. Disagreements over personal topics, logistics, and contributions have been consistently damaging to team performance (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003; O’Neill, Allen, & Hastings, 2013). The implications of task-based conflict over time, however, are inconsistent and poorly understood. To resolve these questions, I conducted three studies examining how conflict developed over the lifetimes of 272 engineering design project teams. Study 1 explored the measurement and patterns of …

What Does A Pandemic Sound Like? The Emergence Of Covid Verbal Art, Karen E. Pennesi

Anthropology Publications

In times of social upheaval, people create and engage with verbal art for entertainment and a feeling of connection. While millions of people were forced to stay home to reduce the spread of COVID‑19 from March to July 2020, verbal artists posted recorded performances online and viewers had more time than usual to watch and share them. COVID verbal art refers to songs, poems, and comedy skits that mention social and physical distancing, quarantine and isolation, hygiene and cleaning practices, everyday experiences during the pandemic, as well as social and political critiques of policies and practices that explicitly mention COVID‑19 …

Hydrostatic Performance Of Reinforced Concrete Pipe For Infiltration, Lui Sammy Wong

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Groundwater infiltration into underground sewer systems has long been a costly issue for municipalities. With reinforced concrete pipe (RCP) being a primary option for sewer systems, existing hydrostatic testing methods conducted by manufacturers to measure internal pipe pressure, as required by specifications, do not reflect in-situ external hydrostatic conditions. This thesis records the development of a novel testing method to evaluate the RCP joint performance for infiltration. The test is safe and easy to conduct by RCP producers at the factory. The test method mimics field conditions of possible RCP joint gap and joint offset. Over 100 tests were conducted, …

Investment Motives And Non-Traditional Foreign Direct Investment, Jianhua Zhu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the characteristics and performance of non-traditional investment motives, with a secondary focus on small-employment subsidiaries. It also investigates how firms re-evaluate and change their organizational control after an industry-wide consumer confidence crisis.

Essay 1 (Chapter 2) examines the characteristics and performance of subsidiaries according to different investment purposes, with a special emphasis on non-traditional investment motives. The key characteristics examined in Essay 1 include the size of an affiliate, the ownership mode, expatriate control, and performance. It finds that FDI with a support function differs substantially from a typical manufacturing facility. Meanwhile, there is a huge difference …

Strategies For Improving The Organizational Value Of Training In A Corporate Setting, Anthony Meloche

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

Training departments and the products and services they provide are often viewed by organizational leaders as expenses rather than investments. As organizations struggle to remain competitive and viable, the money and effort spent on training comes under increased critical examination. This Organization Improvement Plan (OIP) focuses on a training department, Corporate University (CU), operating within a specific organizational context at the Insurance Institute (II). The OIP examines the organization through various critical lenses including structural, human resource, technological, and symbolic perspectives to assess and propose practical actions the CU can take to demonstrate how the products and services they provide …

The Effect Of Perceived Role Suitability On Prestige, Dominance, Performance, And Communication., Lynden Jensen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The pursuit of social rank is pervasive across societies and cultures. Previous studies have identified two distinct avenues for attaining social rank: prestige and dominance. While prestige (communication of skill/ability) and dominance (communication of superiority) are crucial to interpersonal interactions, it is unclear how people communicate prestige or dominance and how such communication affects team performance. To investigate these ideas, 206 individuals participated in a cooperative dyadic building task. A computer randomly assigned dyad members to one of two roles—builder (who handled and placed model pieces) and instructor (who directed the builder's actions). Additionally, using a false feedback paradigm, a …

Performing Identities, Performing Possibilities: A Music-Centered And Relational Perspective On Performance In Community Music Therapy And Music Education, Elizabeth Mitchell

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

All humans are born with musical capacity, yet many individuals have minimal access to active music-making and its affordances. This integrated-article dissertation explores the impact of participation in musical performance as it pertains to self-identity and relationship for participants who face barriers in accessing artistic engagement. Drawing upon music-centered theory from music therapy, this research celebrates the fundamentally performed and relational nature of musicking and the self and explores implications for music therapy and music education.

The first two articles explore the “Coffee House”, a community music therapy event at an adolescent mental health facility, through the voices of youth …

Media Multitasking In University Students: Relatedness Of Video To Learning Content, Maryum Khan

Brescia Psychology Undergraduate Honours Theses

This study examines the impact of multitasking on memory. Specifically, how the relatedness of a medium affects learning. The media used for the purposes of the current study were documentaries. The study consisted of 36 students recruited from Brescia University College. Participants completed a set of questionnaires which included their demographics, academic information, computer/internet usage, and their perceived ability to multitask. They then completed a reading comprehension task while the documentary was played in the background. Although there was no significant effect, participants scored higher on the first part of the multiple-choice test which suggests that they understood the general …

The Listening Shift: Evaluating A Communication-Strategies Training Program For Telepractice Nurses Experiencing Hearing Challenges, Raphaelle Koerber

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Workers who wish to remain employed should be supported in doing so, even if they are experiencing age-related disabilities, such as hearing loss. I aimed to better understand the strategies from which workers with hearing loss might benefit, and how they can be supported in adopting these strategies. To collect rich data, I recruited telepractice nurses who rely on listening to make critical decisions about triaging and health care recommendations. My first research question was: What strategies exist for making telephone speech more intelligible for health care providers and patients with hearing challenges? I performed a scoping review following the …

Testing A New Model Of Team Interdependence, Natasha E. Ouslis

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Companies rely on teams to combine their different skills and solve multidisciplinary problems (Engestrom, 2008; Schrage, 1995). One crucial characteristic of teams is their interdependent nature (Sundstrom, de Meuse, & Futrell, 1990). However, interdependence as a construct is not well understood and its role in dynamic team processes is not clear. Recent theoretical advances have proposed a new model of interdependence – one that places two forms of interdependence at the beginning of a path that leads through task and social constructs to team effectiveness (Courtright, Thurgood, Stewart, & Pierotti, 2015). This new model was tested in two data sets …

And Where Is The Body?, Tyler Durbano

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In combination with a Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, and where is the body?, this dossier offers the following as accompanying components: an extended artist statement, a transcribed interview with artist Francisco-Fernando Granados, documentation of my artwork and my curriculum vitae. The section containing documented artwork provides a selected overview of my creative research and material exploration made during my time at Western University. These components complement my creative research and expand on ideas of queer identity, performance, vulnerability, assemblage and drag that are explored in my thesis exhibition.

Portfolio Turnover Activity And Mutual Fund Performance, Claudia Champagne, Aymen Karoui, Saurin Patel

Business Publications

We propose a new measure of portfolio activity, the Modified Turnover, which represents the portion of the portfolio that the manager changes from one quarter to the next. Compared with the traditional turnover, our Modified Turnover measure relies on portfolio holdings and takes into account the effects of offsetting trades and fund flows on portfolio turnover. We find evidence that high Modified Turnover predicts lower performance. The comparison between the highest and lowest quintiles sorted based on Modified Turnover reveals a difference of -2.41% in the annual risk-adjusted return. Furthermore, high Modified Turnover predicts lower net flows. We also find …

Rendering Real-Time Dashboards Using A Graphql-Based Ui Architecture, Naresh Eeda

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

With the increase in the complexity of the systems being built and demand in the quality of service by the customers, developing and providing highly efficient real-time systems is one of the biggest challenges today for software enterprises. Bluemix^TM ─ IBM’s cloud offering implemented on Cloud Foundry, an open source “Platform as a Service” (PaaS), is an example of such a system. Currently, there are approx. 26 infrastructural services running in the background from where the data is fetched and is rendered on different dashboards of the system. However, the system suffers from performance issues.

This thesis explores the …

The Impact Of Growth, Governance, And Geography On Franchise Performance, Moeen Naseer Butt

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Growing franchise systems are admired and rewarded favorably by press, seen as “growth engines” in investor stock portfolios, and attract significant interest from potential franchisees. Yet growth brings with it the specter of intra-brand competition, and its attendant ill effect of sharply reducing the motivation of franchisees – the very drivers of such growth. Facing competition from their very own, franchisees indulge in shirking, in turn eliciting franchisor terminations in ever greater numbers as they run afoul of the franchise agreement. These franchisor terminations, in turn, may subsequently affect the financial position of franchise systems in terms of sales and …

The Effects Of Interpersonal Relations In The Workplace On Cognitive Performance: Does Working With Irritating People Decrease Your Performance?, Kristin Skritek

Undergraduate Honours Theses

The present study examined how individuals’ emotions from interpersonal interactions in the workplace influenced their cognitive performance. Fifty-two participants were randomly assigned to either think about a coworker who has made them feel content or a coworker that has made them feel irritated. The findings showed that participants who thought about an irritating coworker not only felt more irritated and less content than their counterparts, but they also ruminated more about the coworker, felt that it would more difficult to work with the coworker, and experienced more negative affect. However, the results showed that there were no differences on cognitive …

That's Not Fair! Examining Individual Differences In Perceptions Of Fairness, Hayden Jerney Randolph Woodley

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Within organizations, fairness is an important concept and has received considerable research attention. Some research, interestingly, suggests that individuals differ in their perceptions of equity. Building on this research, four empirical studies were conducted to develop a measure of a new construct (i.e., equity orientation) and examine its predictive validity. In Study 1 (N = 836) and Study 2 (N = 600), the Equity Orientation Scale (EOS) was created and its relations with two popular personality models – the HEXACO and the Dark Tetrad – were examined across self- and peer-ratings. In Study 3 (N = 433) and Study 4 …

Creative Management: Disciplining The Neoliberal Worker, Trent Cruz

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This integrated article dissertation examines some of the new managerial practices that have emerged to handle cognitive capitalism’s ongoing need for creative, flexible labour power. The three articles included in this dissertation offer a glimpse into the widespread processes employed by management to regulate and discipline a workforce that must also be granted a degree of relative flexibility, creativity, and autonomy in order to be effective under post-Fordist conditions of production. The first chapter looks at the emergence of corporate improvisational training at the turn of the twenty-first century as an attempt to cultivate flexible and innovative workers, a move …

The Acrobatic Body In Ancient Greek Society, Jonathan R. Vickers

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis I collate the textual, artistic, and material evidence for acrobatics in sport and spectacle in Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Greece, and analyze gymnastic performances with regard to their respective socio-cultural contexts. I develop the theoretical perspective that all body movement is socially qualified in order to demonstrate how the extreme manipulations of an acrobatic body carry particular social meaning: in sport, the male acrobatic body approaches superhumanism, and in spectacle the female acrobatic body approaches subhumanism. I argue, on the one hand, that men’s tumbling took place at the early Panathenaia festival in Athens, both in martial …

Human Resource Management Practices And Performance: A General Systems Perspective, Duckjung Shin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis consists of three essays on strategic human resource management (SHRM) based on general systems theory. The first essay introduces a systems perspective on SHRM, the second essay applies the feedback concept, and the third essay considers implementing human resource management (HRM) practices as adaptive systems. The three essays suggest that general systems theory extends the SHRM literature by considering antecedents, processes, and consequences of HRM in modern organizations.

In the first essay, I review the SHRM literature and identify four traditions in SHRM studies (economic, psychological, sociological, and critical perspectives). I propose a systems perspective on SHRM as …

"The Sense Of An Ending": The Destabilizing Effect Of Performance Closure In Shakespeare's Plays, Megan Lynn Selinger

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What makes a good ending? How do we know when something ends? In performance, it is difficult to characterize that nebulous and highly subjective — yet nonetheless theatrically powerful — “sense” of an ending. Previous scholarly work on Shakespearean endings, even when emphasizing performance, has largely focused on understanding endings from a narrative viewpoint, questioning how endings reach textual closure. These works examine the lingering questions or problems at the end of Shakespeare’s texts, and discuss how performance tackles these issues.

This dissertation takes performance as its starting point. It argues that Shakespearean performance endings naturally trouble textual conclusiveness, as …

Endoscopic Targeting Tasks Simulator: An Approach Using Game Engines, Shaun W. Carnegie

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The pervasiveness of simulators used in professions requiring the skilled control of expensive machinery such as is the case in the aviation, mining, construction, and naval industries raises an intriguing question about the relatively poor adoption within the field of medicine. Certain surgical procedures such as neuro-endoscopic and laparoscopic lend themselves well to the application of virtual reality based simulators. This is due to the innate ability to decom- pose these complex macro level procedures into a hierarchy of subtasks that can be modelled in a software simulator to augment existing teaching and training techniques.

The research in this thesis …

A Software Framework For Task Based Performance Evaluation, Justin J. Mackenzie

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

It is difficult to objectively measure performance of complex tasks such as a surgical operation and surgical simulators require the ability to evaluate performance whether to predict surgical outcome, determine competence, provide learning feedback, etc. With no standard software framework for collecting, analyzing and evaluating performance data for complex tasks in simulations, it is investigated whether a solution can be implemented that allows for custom data collection schemes, all while being general enough to be used across many simulation platforms and can be used in a simple simulator.It is also investigated whether the implemented framework can perform its functionality while …

Toward A Postmodern Avant-Garde: Labour, Virtuosity, And Aesthetics In An American New Music Ensemble, John R. Pippen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the aesthetic beliefs and labour practices of the American new music ensemble eighth blackbird (lower-case intentional). Drawing on ethnographic research conducted with the ensemble for the past six years, I show how the ensemble responds to specific cultural pressures endemic to the classical music scene, its new music vanguard, and to the contemporary United States. eighth blackbird, I argue, has created an ensemble identity and performance style designed to satisfy numerous audience positions, from experts well-versed in the intricacies of musical techniques to lay-persons unacquainted with the values and practices of new or classical music. This attempt …

Performance Implications Of Rear Foot Movement In The Swimming Kick Start, Amber C. Hutchinson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The performance implications of changing rear foot joint angles in the kick start were evaluated using a replicated version of the Omega OSB11 starting block. Maximal effort dives were collected for twenty-six competitive swimmers. The block was equipped with two tri-axial force plates to differentiate between forces applied to the rear foot rest and forces applied to the block. Two high-speed video cameras recorded hind-foot eversion and dorsiflexion angles. Competitive swimmers with larger hind-foot eversion movement have larger lateral kick plate forces, longer kick plate times, and larger contributions of the kick plate to total impulse. These swimmers also have …

Music, Cinema And The Representation Of Africa, Natasha Callender

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how music is used in cinema to create representations of Africa. It begins by tracing the early importance of musicality and performance in cinema back to other cultures of visuality and socio-political ideologies that were prevalent at the time of cinema’s birth. The result of this relationship means that cinema has functioned as both a tool for portraying Africa as the “Dark Continent” and for reshaping narratives about the nature of African identities, history, politics and cultures. Music in cinematic portrayals of Africa is, therefore, part of a system of representation in …

Because I Am Not Here, Selected Second Life-Based Art Case Studies. Subjectivity, Autoempathy And Virtual World Aesthetics, Francisco Gerardo Toledo Ramírez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Second Life is a virtual world accessible through the Internet in which users create objects and spaces, and interact socially through 3D avatars. Certain artists use the platform as a medium for art creation, using the aesthetic, spatial, temporal and technological features of SL as raw material. Code and scripts applied to animate and manipulate objects, avatars and spaces are important in this sense. These artists, their avatars and artwork in SL are at the centre of my research questions: what does virtual existence mean and what is its purpose when stemming from aesthetic exchange in SL?

Through a qualitative …

Human Automata, Identity And Creativity In George Du Maurier's Trilby And Raymond Roussel's Locus Solus, Adrienne M. Orr

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

George Du Maurier’s Trilby (1895) and Raymond Roussel’s Locus Solus (1914) feature a unique figure, the human automaton, a human being who has been transformed into a machine. Rather than becoming objectified and dehumanized, thus transformed they produce great music and art defined by the single quality supposedly irreproducible by machines—variability. Drawing multiplicity from the sameness of exact repetition in their art, the human automata’s identities are equally capable of embodying otherness and oppositions in a plural identity that remains uniquely singular. This challenges contemporary attitudes towards automation as a fixative, deterministic and reductive, and ultimately dehumanizing transformation. Linking automatism, …