Psychology Commons^™

Measuring Organizational Climate For Diversity, Amy L. Vick

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The Climate for Diversity Index measures three dimensions associated with the ability of organizations or units to create an environment that allows members of all sociocultural backgrounds to participate and fully develop. The climate for diversity impacts individual outcomes such as general job satisfaction, affective commitment, identification with a psychological group/department, organizational citizenship behavior, and the intent to turnover. Several structural models depicting the relationship between the climate for diversity and the individual outcome variables were examined. Significant differences in perceptions of the climate for diversity are predicted by ethnicity, disability, and position. Data were provided by 319 members of …

Cross-Cultural Differences And Intercultural Cooperation In The Context Of Change And Uncertainty: Americans And Finns In The Workplace, Maija Llisa Herweg

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

American and Finnish workers in financial institutions in the United States and in Finland were interviewed in their respective languages to explore cross-cultural differences in response to change and uncertainty in the work place. Changes were explored in the domains of organizational, process, procedure and work content, and technological changes in the work place. As a point of departure for this study, Hofstede's IBM study, as it pertains to Uncertainty Avoidance--a measure he used to evaluate culture-based resistance to change--was used for this study.

Differences in the kinds of change considered difficult to adjust to were found in the cross-cultural …

Extreme Response Style, Irvine Clarke Iii

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

The objective of this research was to understand the effect of culture on Extreme Response Style (ERS) for cross-cultural marketing efforts employing Likert type scales. Growth in quantitative cross-cultural marketing research has brought alternative methodological considerations, like ERS, to the forefront of attention, since, traditional inferential statistics used in group comparisons become confounded by this systematic bias. Marketers comparing groups with differing degrees of response style may incorrectly make claims based on observed differences that are strictly attributable to cultural ERS. Therefore, the specific objective of this dissertation was to relate ERS to culture, Likert response formats and to demonstrate …

Causal Models Of Work-Family Conflict From Family And Organizational Perspectives, Lyse Guttau Wells

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

More women are entering the workforce and the number of dual career couples has increased and will probably continue to do so. As women's tasks and responsibilities outside of the home have increased, those within the home have not diminished resulting in higher work-family conflict (Greenglass, Pantony, & Burke, 1988). This research examined a woman's work-family conflict from both work and family perspectives. Two models were described and tested. One model included individual and family antecedents and consequences of work-family conflict. The antecedents included sex-role attitudes, role salience, and perfectionism in the wife. The consequences were quality of family life …

Toward Understanding Team Leadership: The Empirical Development Of A Team Leadership Classification System, Brian J. Ruggeberg

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to develop a classification system of team leadership through the empirical process of numerical classification. Although the value and importance of leadership have been recognized in the team literature, few empirical studies have been conducted to understand the phenomenon of team leadership. A thorough review of the relevant literature was conducted to identify the various behaviors, functions, traits, and KSAOs associated with team leadership. This information was then used to select and construct data collection instruments for the classification process.

Two separate studies were conducted to achieve the overall goal of developing a team …

Subliminal Advertising: The Commercial Appropriation Of The Unconscious, Brian D. Williams

Presidential Scholars Theses (1990 – 2006)

Subliminal advertising refers to the use of subliminal techniques by mass media and what these media messages are doing to society. A secret technology has existed and been in widespread use for decades which modifies consumer's behavior invisibly, channels basic value systems, and manages to drive much bigger segments of the population into certain pathological behaviors.

Issues Of Power And Centrality In United Methodist Ministers' Occupational Activities: Implications For Professional Education, Richard Bruce Osmann

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The purpose of this interview based qualitative study was to explore the influence that a plurality of social contexts, represented through United Methodist congregations in the Virginia Conference, have on the formation of ministers' occupational activities.;The study used a typology developed by Larry Blazer (1987) to identify the occupational activities practiced by parish ministers. The investigation weighted clergy's professional practice using Judith Hackman's (1985) concepts of power and centrality in her study institutions of higher education's budgeting process. Congregational representatives identified occupational activities that were central and peripheral to their congregation's mission. Clergy identified the occupational activities that received more …

The Tacit Dimension Of Organizational Learning, Thomas Reeder Robinson

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This research was conducted to observe the self-reflections of an organizational participant group to further understand the organizational learning phenomenon. The participant group consisted of the 15 managers, spanning three levels of management, of a large engineering group in the southeastern United States.

The intent of the research was to generate theory, rather than to test theory. To accomplish this objective, a qualitative research methodology in a participatory action framework was modeled from Keating's (1993) Organizational Learning Process (OLP) to co-construct participants' organizational reflections. The methodology included individual interviews designed to elicit spontaneity that co-generated organizational perspectives. These perspectives were …