Digital Commons Network^™

An Examination Of The Impact Of Early Retirement Incentives On School District Financial Health, Michael Jon Dean

Wayne State University Dissertations

The combination of state controlled school funding in Michigan, rising employee costs and shrinking school enrollments have caused school districts to seek a variety of cost control measures. One of the measures frequently supported by both school districts and employee unions is the use of Early Retirement Incentives (ERI) to incentivize teachers to separate from the school district via a cash payment.

The purpose of this study was to analyze how offering or not-offering an ERI impacted on the financial health of a school districts in the State of Michigan. Selected school districts in Michigan were surveyed regarding any ERI's …

The Development And Validation Of A Conditional Reasoning Test Of Withdrawal, Levi Ryan Gust Nieminen

Wayne State University Dissertations

This study developed and evaluated a measure of implicit dispositional tendencies associated with lateness, absenteeism, and permanent withdrawal behaviors. The conditional reasoning framework developed by Lawrence James and colleagues was adopted. Novel cognitive biases or justification mechanisms associated with withdrawal were proposed, drawing on research and theory from the attribution (marginalization of withdrawal), commitment (revocable commitment), and fairness/equity (social injustice bias) domains. As part of the empirical validation design, college students enrolled in an Introductory Psychology course completed the conditional reasoning measure, and corresponding behavioral withdrawal criteria were collected unobtrusively throughout the 16-week course. Results of scale development analyses pointed …

Antecedents And Outcomes Of Workplace Engagement, Ariel Maya Lelchook

Wayne State University Dissertations

There has been a recent interest in positive organizational scholarship. Leadership stemming from a positive framework and employee engagement in the workplace have become of increasing interest to researchers and practitioners. Antecedents and outcomes of employee engagement were examined using a sample of 327 employees from retail organizations in the Midwest United States. The leadership styles of authentic, transformational, and transactional leadership were examined as antecedents of employee job engagement, beyond employees' psychological meaningfulness, safety, and availability. Engagement was examined as a mediator between the leadership constructs and employees' extra-role behaviors and work withdrawal behaviors. The results suggest employee job …

Investigating A Leadership Fix For A Suboptimal Mix: A Transformational Leadership Intervention For Teams With Incompatible Personalities, Marcus Daniel Weller

Wayne State University Dissertations

This study uses experimental methodology to examine transformational leadership as a buffering mechanism for problematic personality combinations. 118 German university students comprising 59 dyadic teams participated in a lab-based investigation to examine matched high levels of extraversion within dyadic teams. The presence of transformational leadership (TL) as opposed to a non-leadership intervention was investigated to examine the effects of TL on group members' task performance on both conjunctive and disjunctive tasks. To assess conjunctive task performance, participants performed an employee selection task, and to assess disjunctive task performance participants performed a NASA survival ranking task. Performance was measured against expert …

Economic Deregulation And Corporate Dividend Policy, Xinghua Gao

Wayne State University Dissertations

I investigate the evolution of corporate dividend policy in response to the changing operating environment induced by economic deregulation from the 1970s-1990s. Specifically, I examine the impact of deregulation on the firm's propensity to pay dividends, dividend payout ratio, the sensitivity of corporate dividend policy to current and past earnings, changes in the information content of dividends, and changes in corporate financing behavior along the deregulation process. Empirical results reveal that economic deregulation per se does not have significant impacts on firms' propensity to pay dividends. However, it seems that firms reduce dividend payout along the deregulation process and adjust …

Decision Support Models For The External Variety Of Configurable Products, Erkan Isikli

Wayne State University Dissertations

The decision of what configurations of a product to offer is a difficult one for marketing and sales departments. In this study, we developed decision support models that can help decision makers when using operational models to manage external variety of configurable products. Our main objective is to reduce the number of product variants offered in a proper way so that inventory and demand models do not suffer from the curse of dimension. Due to its ability and flexibility, our framework can be employed under various marketing actions. We applied our framework to both qualitative and quantitative data.

Consumer Xenocentrism And Consumer Cosmopolitanism: The De-Velopment And Validation Of Scales Of Constructs Influencing Attitudes Towards Foreign Product Consumption, Steven James Lawrence

Wayne State University Dissertations

Like many other attributes, consumers exhibit varying degrees of preference with regard to foreign and domestic products. Some consumers have preferences for domestic products while other, seemingly similar, consumers prefer the foreign counterpart. Product quality differences aside, we aim to investigate the attitudinal constructs behind the varying preferences among consumers as they relate to foreign and domestic products.

The author created two new scales for the measurement of the consumer xenocentrism and consumer cosmopolitanism constructs. The consumer xenocentrism scale is intended to measure consumers' favorable orientations to products from outside their membership group. The consumer cosmopolitanism scale is designed to …

Crossing The Valley Of Death: A Multi-Sited, Multi-Level Ethnographic Study Of Growth Startups And Entrepreneurial Communities In Post-Industrial Detroit, Marlo Rencher

Wayne State University Dissertations

The intention of this research is to reveal the humanity of the startup experience for American growth companies. What is it about the growth entrepreneurship experience that has been hidden from view? Can we begin to articulate a holistic view of entrepreneurship--including those human universals and culture-bound particulars that must be successfully navigated?

This study is an ethnographic account of three Detroit-based entrepreneurial communities and the people within them. This research examines the sociocultural features of entrepreneurship on three levels. The first level of context for growth businesses to be studied is that of their entrepreneurial community. These communities have …

An Investigation Of Performance And Participation In Employee Resource Groups At A Global Technology Company, Glenda Ward

Wayne State University Dissertations

Much literature presents employee resource groups as beneficial to both the organizations and the employees who join these groups. Many large corporations have employee resource groups, and their presence is expanding. As companies continue to invest in employee resource groups, it is important to establish and review the business goals and expectations for the groups An environment where objectives and expectations are established and well understood creates less ambiguity for employees and allows them to focus on achieving the objectives. It is important to evaluate the objectives and expectations to see if the groups are achieving the expectations. Assessing the …

Case Study: Evaluating Performance Outcomes Of A Technology Change Management Initiative In A Health Care Organization, Dion Nathanial Johnson

Wayne State University Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to examine a case study by evaluating performance outcomes of a technology change management initiative in a health care organization. This study was developed with an array of issues surrounding change management programs with technology platforms, the management of complex change and the amount of criticism that became the impetus behind the implementation of the Electronic Health Records Management Systems (EHRMS) across the healthcare industry and its long-term transformative effects. Despite recognition that user response largely determined the success of a technology implementation or change management program and the fact significant resources are spent …