Business Commons^™

Site Visitation: School Leaders' Perceptions Of A Diagnostic Tool For School Improvement, Mary Shannon C. Chiasson

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This case study explored the use of site-visitation as a diagnostic tool for school improvement. Nine charter schools in New Orleans were selected for the study. Based on qualitative research and systems theory, a within- and cross-case analysis of nine semi-structured interviews with school leaders were conducted. The school leaders’ experiences with the state-run site-visitation model and their use of the findings for school improvement was explored. The findings led to the development of a hybrid accountability model that encompasses the components school leaders believe will lead to school improvement. This study aims to assist educators, policy makers, and researchers …

Strengths In Action: Implementing A Learning Organization Model In A Human Service Setting, Barbara Ann Whitbeck

Dissertations and Theses

Although learning organization theory evolved in corporate settings, literature suggests that the theory has much to offer human service organizations. This dissertation examines the implementation of a modified learning organization model in three small field offices of a publicly-funded vocational rehabilitation organization in the Pacific Northwest, at a time when the organization was negotiating financial cutbacks and organizational changes. The model - known as Strengths in Action - was based on Senge's five learning organization disciplines, and informed by organizational culture theory. In each participating office, all staff worked together to set a goal, make a plan, and achieve the …

Cross Cultural Analysis For Training And Facilitating Latin-American Audiences, Jose P. Alcazar

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The purpose of this project is to help Creative Problem Solving (CPS) trainers and facilitators to improve the efficacy when working with Hispanic groups and individuals, either in a personal or in organizational environments. This project will guide the facilitators to use a more appropriate tools that will allow the resource group to feel more comfortable during the idea generation, creating an environment more according to the believes and behavioral habits; and the client to feel more confident to converge and make decisions accordingly to the initial goals. When training people in CPS, the project will align the methodology and …

Understanding Brand Authenticity In Specialized Communities: An Interpretive Qualitative Study Of The Brit Iron Rebels Las Vegas Clan, Sullivan Charles

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Postmodern society is marked by a condition where traditional identity markers have degenerated in value. Without the spatial or temporal connection provided by traditional identity markers, individuals look to brands perceived to be authentic to aide in identity construction. Paradoxically, individualized identities need the interpretive support of other likeminded individuals in specialized communities to give legitimacy to constructed identities. These specialized communities often focus around a lifestyle or a brand. This research employed interpretive qualitative methodology to understand authenticity. Semistructured depth interviews were conducted with members of the Brit Iron Rebels Las Vegas Clan to understand the authenticity of Triumph …

A Movement Tool Kit For The Divergent And Convergent Cps Guidelines: Instruction Cards And Activity Floor Mats, Adela Vangelisti

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

A Movement Tool Kit for the Divergent and Convergent CPS Guidelines:

Instruction Cards and Activity Floor Mats

Movement is as natural to humans as breathing is, and, yet, passivity starts early in schools. We are taught to sit still and in silence for long periods of time. By the time we reach adulthood and enter the workforce, we have almost forgotten our sense of embodiment. This lack of movement is counter-productive, not only to learning but to the development of creativity as well. For this project, I designed a tool to recapture the joy and playfulness of movement. Furthermore, the …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Foundation For An Independent Tomorrow: Treatment Effects Of The Stages Of Employment Job Readiness Program On Program Completion And Employment Outcomes For Ex-Offenders, Michael Hammer, Stephanie Pocchia, Stacy Howell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Foundation for an Independent Tomorrow (FIT) is a local not for profit organization that seeks to assist residents of Southern Nevada by providing workforce development services (e.g., interviewing skills, job searching techniques, resume assistance) to increase a program participant’s opportunities to obtain and maintain employment. FIT is currently being federally funded through the Department of Labor’s Workforce Investment Act (WIA) grant, with a specific goal of serving the re-entry, or ex-offender, population. This population presents with a very unique set of barriers to obtaining employment, and in order to combat these barriers, FIT created the Stages of Employment job readiness …

Attitudes And Perceptions Toward Sex Tourism In Las Vegas, Carolyn Willis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study is to explore attitudes and perceptions as they relate to the consensual and non-consensual aspect of sex and tourism. This practice of engaging in sexual activities, aligned with the tourism industry, is referred to as `sex tourism', `romance tourism', or `prostitution tourism'. This has evolved into a global phenomenon where sex has become a commodity in many tourist destinations. Previous research available from Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, and Central America will be used to demonstrate similar patterns in transnational motivations and practices by looking at concepts, perceptions, legality, and potential exploitation as it relates to …

The Role Of Self-Concept In Consumer Behavior, Marisa Toth

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Understanding the influences underlying consumption has become an increasingly important goal for marketers. This study examined the role of self-concept in consumer behavior, specifically product evaluation. The influences of various dimensions of the self-concept are examined in regard to four product dimensions: public luxury, public necessity, private luxury, and private necessity. Differences due to variations in individual levels of self-monitoring are also measured. Overall, results showed that the more conspicuous a product is (higher on luxury/public dimensions) the greater the relationship between evaluation and ideal self-images (ideal self and ideal social self) for both high and low self-monitors.

Creative Economies: Using Arts To Revitalize Post-Industrial Cities And Towns In Massachusetts, Anna Price

Honors College Theses

During my senior year in the Honors College at UMass Boston, I became involved in the yearlong Creative and Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship program. During this program, I interned alongside other UMass Boston students at a local creative non-profit organization, providing the staff with assistance as they worked towards achieving their goals. This internship was funded by the Creative Economy Fund (CE Fund) from the University of Massachusetts President’s Office. My involvement in this program sparked an interest in pursuing an Honors thesis investigating the CE Fund and how the awarded projects are benefitted by that fund.

After looking through all …

Transnational Companies And Radical Transformation Processes: A Study Of Performance In Comparison To Other Multinational Companies, Jorge Alejandro Palacios

HCBE Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this study was to answer the following question: Do organizations that were defined as having successfully adopted the transnational model, as per Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989), and labeled as transnational companies (TNC), perform significantly better than other multinational companies (MNC) when going through radical transformation processes?

This research question was answered through a mixed method research design. The first part used a quantitative research approach and evaluated the financial performance of TNCs selected from the Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989) research, using secondary data sources from 6 TNCs and 20 MNCs. The second part used a qualitative approach …

The Importance Of Community Resilience: Developing The American Red Cross International Services Department In The New Hampshire Region, Sarah Romac

Capstone Collection

Disaster management and humanitarian aid organizations have had to reevaluate how communities and individuals can better adapt and prepare for future disaster events. One concept organizations are incorporating into their overall framework is strengthening community resilience. Increasing a community’s resilience level increases its ability to cope with the changes that affect it. Creating awareness of the vulnerabilities in an area, addressing these vulnerabilities with preparedness training, disaster risk reduction (DRR), and sustainable changes made over the long-term can develop a community’s adaptive capacity to be more resilient.

For my practicum, I was given the opportunity to be the International Services …

Self-Regulating Teamwork Behaviors In Low-Volume & High-Complexity Production, Aaron W. Powell

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

An environment of ever increasing competition drives manufacturing organizations to continually search for ways to improve the performance of their production operations. Lean manufacturing, born out of the Toyota Production System (TPS), has become the dominant improvement method sought to meet this need. Although well established in high-volume production settings, the application of lean production methods in low-volume and high-complexity (LVHC) manufacturing contexts has not been as successful. A commonly cited reason is a biased focus on the technical aspects of implementing lean methods with little regard for the social system involved in the change. In the LVHC manufacturing context, …

Bureaupathology And Organizational Fraud Prevention: Case Studies Of Fraud Hotlines, Chelsea Ann Binns

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examined the effect of organizational bureaucracy on fraud hotline performance. Fraud hotlines are used to receive anonymous fraud tips from employees in all sectors to prevent and detect fraud. This work contributes to the research on fraud hotlines, which today is very light. This work also examined individual hotline performance against organization theory, which is absent in the literature. The literature also doesn't include studies using social media data to determine organizational climate. This work contributes to that literature by providing a collective case study examination of the fraud hotlines in six organizations. Their hotline performance was examined …

Characteristics Of Successful Minority Female Police Supervisors Within A Large Urban Midwest Police Department, Yasmia G. Dunn

Ed.D. Dissertations

This study explored the leadership characteristics of minority female police supervisors, the actual and perceived barriers to their advancement through the ranks, and the strategies and factors that aided their success and career advancement within the police department participating in the study. Statistical data was gathered regarding the status of high-ranking minority women in the agency, administered participant questionnaires and surveys, and conducted individual semi-structured interviews with the participants. Information obtained from the department's online personnel data system aided in identifying study participants within the agency. The study participants met the criteria of being high-ranking minority female supervisors holding the …

Hot Crime: Economic Analysis And Insight Into The Relationship Between A City's Latitude And Its Rate Of Violence, Erin K. Piepenbrok

Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

Every day in America, a case of violent crime makes headlines across the television, newspapers, websites, and social media. These tragedies deeply affect those directly involved and the communities in which the crimes take place. Not only are individuals physically and mentally affected by violent crime, but communities and cities suffer an economic loss from rising violent crime rates. Reducing the current rates of violent crime (robbery, assaults, rapes, and murders) can reduce costs for cities and taxpayers, while ultimately improving the quality of life for Americans. Research into what affects violent crime rates lead to discoveries that unemployment, gun …

A Model Of Hospitality Employee Engagement, Hee Jung Kang

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study focuses on employee's state-like psychological resources by investigating individual and organizational antecedents to employee engagement and valued human resource outcomes. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a theoretical model that explains the interrelationships among six constructs and to explore the mediating effects of employee engagement. Structural Equation Modeling using AMOS (18.0) statistical software was used to test the full structural model (measurement and structural model) of the hypothesized relationships among the variables with a sample of hospitality employees. The findings supported all hypothesized relationships except the direct relationship between employee engagement and turnover intention. …

Subprime Disaster Capitalism In New Haven, Jacob D. Miller

Senior Theses and Projects

This thesis seeks to employ the fusion New Haven, Connecticut's municipal legacy with current market forces and players to critically analyze the urban condition. I will utilize Naomi Klein's notion of disaster capitalism to explore how development and management corporations in New Haven capitalized on the subprime crisis to further exploit already marginalized communities through vast land grabs and limited real estate maintenance. New Haven’s current urban composition is the result of a legacy of disproportionate municipal support and selective appropriation of socio-cultural value in the city’s low-income neighborhoods. In order to avoid addressing the systemic inequalities created by the …

Psychological Contracts In Information Exchanges, Stanislav Mamonov

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Information assets continue to grow in importance of contribution to economic activity. Many emergent businesses, including Google, Amazon and Facebook, leverage crowd-sourced information assets as essential pillars supporting their business models. The appropriation of rights to information assets is commonly done through legal contracts. In practice this approach often fails to prevent conflicts between the information contributors and the companies claiming information rights. In research presented here I attempt to understand when and why the conflicts arise. I draw on psychological contract theory and I develop the framework of psychological contracts in information exchanges. I propose that intellectual property and …

Improving Professional Skills Through Adversity: A Phenomenological Study Of Mergers And Acquisitions, Randy Anita Rutledge

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

Company mergers and acquisitions often create tremendous conflict for employees because they force them into a spiral of organizational change. In this environment, employees are challenged with redefining themselves within a new organization. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to discover and explain the particular conflict experiences of professional employees who experienced the merger and acquisition of their company. A phenomenological research study was conducted to discover and describe the shared conflict experiences of professional employees during the merger and acquisition of their consulting firm. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 17 self-identified professional employees. It was found through …

Identifying The Factors That Influence Conflict Management Behavior Of Human Resource Professionals In The Workplace: An Analysis Of The Relationship Between Personality And Conflict Management Behavior, Gail Joyce Shapiro

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

Effective conflict management in the workplace can reduce the negative consequences of conflict. These negative outcomes can include low productivity, health-related stress, increased employee turnover, or litigation. A Human Resource (HR) professional can help mitigate these negative outcomes in the workplace when using effective conflict management behavior with employees. However, there is a void in research pertaining to HR professionals’ use of conflict management behavior.

This quantitative, correlational research study examined whether personality has an impact on assertive or cooperative conflict management behavior of HR professionals in the workplace. Statistical testing found a significant relationship between the harmonious, people-person (a …

Follow Me! Followership, Leadership And The Multigenerational Workforce, Ronald M. Johnson

HCBE Theses and Dissertations

This research was designed to develop an understanding of today's multigenerational workforce with respect to a preferred styles or characteristics of followership and leadership. Specifically this research sought to determine if there was a relationship between an individual's generational cohort and the preferred styles of leadership and followership, as measured by implicit theories of leadership and followership. Therefore, this study draws upon generational theory (Mannheim, 1952), implicit theories of leadership (Epitropaki & Martin, 2004) and implicit theories of followership (Sy, 2010). The changes in the composition of the US workforce which have occurred, and which will continue to occur in …

Sex Tourism In St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands: An Exploratory Study, Elizabeth Estes

Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands, is similar to other tourism dependent Caribbean nations where the tourism industry is dependent upon the `4 S's'- sun, sand, sea, and sex. This researcher posited that the phenomenon of sex tourism exists in St. Thomas as it does in other tourist destinations in the Caribbean like Jamaica, Belize, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic and Barbados (Bailey and Ricketts, 2003; de Albuquerque, 1998; Munshi, 2006; Ryan and Kinder, 1996). The lacuna of any U.S. Virgin Islands sex tourism literature prompted this researcher to conduct an exploratory case study in St. Thomas to learn whether or …

A Multivariate Analysis Of Consumers’ Beliefs, Attitudes, And Behaviors Associated With Locally Produced Food And Farmers’ Market Patronage, Sara Williamson

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

While farmers’ market vendors rely on loyal and frequent patrons to purchase their products, it is unclear how the intrinsic differences among farmers’ market shoppers serve as indicators of potential shopping frequency at farmers’ markets. The objectives of this thesis are to identify consumers’ intrinsic values associated with characteristics of local foods, examine how these values are reflected in consumption behaviors among farmers' market shoppers, and explore the relationship between consumption activities and shopping frequency at farmers' markets. Results suggest that the differences between frequent and infrequent farmers’ market shoppers could be explained by the individual’s levels of high and …

A Vision Of Capitalism, As It Was Meant To Be: A Social Purpose Business Plan For Foodshed Productions, August Miller

Capstone Collection

FoodShed Productions, a social enterprise is pursuing a mission: to raise the caring capacity of communities and resilience of our local environments through resident education in organic backyard farming. As a social enterprise, FoodShed Productions, a for-profit, earns its economic viability doing work more often associated with non-profits, measuring its worth by the social, environmental, and economic benefits of its operations. The communities in Boulder County, CO. are served by FoodShed Productions through a social process in which “We Build, We Coach, You Keep Growing,” toward the goal of self-reliance.

The topic of this CLC is a Social Purpose Business …

Segregation And The Adaption Of Community-Based Organizations To Multiethnic Immigration In Newark And Jersey City : 1990-2010, Joseph R. Gibbons

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

As we move into the 21st century, racial and ethnic segregation remains a dominating force in American Cities. Segregated black and Hispanic communities are known to suffer not only from a lack of resources, compared to non-Hispanic white neighborhoods, but also from a distinct sense of parochial isolation. At the same time, nonprofit community-based organizations (CBOs) have gained an increasingly central role in providing basic services to the urban needy. As of yet, there has been no systematic study to explore how segregation impacts the operation of CBOs. This dissertation employs a mixed methods research strategy to examine CBOs in …

Unequal Pay: The Role Of Gender, Kathleen M. Gillespie

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.