Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Investigation Into Full Range Leadership And Leadership Development Methods In Public Parks And Recreation Organizations In California, Heather Vilhauer

Doctoral Dissertations

As current public parks and recreation organizational leaders age and retire, it will become important for qualified professionals to be prepared to fill these positions. A study by Hurd and McLean (2004) examined the perceived competencies of CEOs in public park and recreation organizations. Leadership and management were rated as the most important competencies for CEOs. However, these perceived competencies are not only for the CEOs; all professionals employed in parks and recreation, from administrative leaders to direct service providers, must demonstrate leadership to succeed in their positions (Russell, 2005). Thus, it is crucial for parks and recreation organizations to …

Seeing The Forest For The Trees: Finance And Managerial Control In The Us Forest Products Industry, 1945-2008, Andrew Augustus Gunnoe

Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past three decades a significant change has taken place in the ownership structure of industrial timberlands in the United States. The once widely held belief that significant timberland ownership was a necessary ingredient for success in the forest products industry came to an end as millions of acres of productive land were sold from industrial forest products firms to institutional investment organizations, known as Timberland Investment Management Organizations (TIMOs) or Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). This dissertation examines this large-scale transfer of timberland ownership through a multi-level analysis of financialization and the rise of shareholder value ideology in …

An Empirical Investigation Of A Model Of Environmentally Concerned Consumer Behavior And Its Determinants: The Moderating Role Of Market Mavenship And Product Involvement, Kishwar A. Joonas

Doctoral Dissertations

Extant literature offers incomplete explanations of environmentally concerned consumer behavior (ECCB), based on subsets of determinants. In this study, I have presented an integrated model of ECCB, and examined the main effects of three key psychological determinants (environmentally concerned beliefs and attitudes, personal norm, and perceived consumer effectiveness) and two key socio-cultural determinants (injunctive norm and collectivist orientation), on four dimensions of ECCB, namely purchase behavior, search for information, conserving behavior, and supporting intent. The study also examined the interactional effects of market mavenship and involvement on these direct linkages.

I conducted a national online survey among members of environmental …

An Investigation Of The Association Between Auditor Switching And Negative Information, Michael Morris Grayson

Doctoral Dissertations

This study investigates the premise that certain types of negative information are associated with auditor switches. A data set of 305 auditor switches from 1976 to 1994, extracted from the Compustat data base (limited subscription), was analyzed using tests of proportions and nonparametric sign tests. The data set consists of negative information extracted from the switching companies' income statements (i.e., net losses or extraordinary items) or calculated from the items extracted (i.e., net income adjusted to reverse the effect of extraordinary items).

The initial results, based on tests which assumed random movement of net income, did not support the notion …

A Cross-Sectional Analysis Of The Determinants Of Corporate Share Repurchases, Kenneth M. Washer

Doctoral Dissertations

The objective of this study is to determine which motives play a significant role in determining the extent of a firm's repurchasing activity. For firms repurchasing through the open market, the motives include taking advantage of perceived undervaluation, increasing financial leverage, distributing cash to shareholders, and reducing agency costs. For firms using a tender offer, the motives include taking advantage of perceived undervaluation and having the ability to significantly increase financial leverage. Also, the hypothesis that the perceived undervaluation motive is stronger for smaller firms is tested. Three censored regression models are employed, and each model's explanatory variables represent commonly …