Psychology Commons^™

Downsizing America In The Twentieth Century: A Sociological And Theoretical Analysis Of The Shrinking Middle Class, Terreea Lynne Adams

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Downsizing is the process by which a firm decreases its number of employees, even during times of a strong economy, with the stated purpose of generating greater efficiency, productivity and of course, profit. The downsizing trend in the United States during the past three decades has resulted in an enormous shift in the structure of our society. Various theorists, sociologists and economists employ differing ways of looking at this downsizing trend and its effects on the largest segment of the population; that is, the middle class.

lndications of a healthy economy are low levels of unemployment and poverty-. Downsizing involves …

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 …

Development Of The Inventory Of Life Span Events, Julie A. Dickison

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The possible relationship between stressful life events and subsequent illness has been studied in the past few decades, resulting in several widely-used questionnaires. However, these measures tend to focus on recent events and attempt to remove subjective rating of a stressful event by the respondent. These two factors may limit these scales clinical utility. An alternative measure, the Inventory of Life Span Events (ILSE) is proposed, to quantify the life-stress burden for childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and across the entire life span. ILSE was compared to other leading measures for life events, hassles and perceived stress, and was more closely related …

An Artificial Life Model Of Engineering Attrition Contemplation: Why Do Federally Employed Civilian Engineers Think Of Quitting?, John William Herweg

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The research objective is, using engineer turnover, to develop an Artificial Life (A-Life) model and simulation methodology useful for studying behavioral variables of individuals in an organization.

One consequence of work stress is burnout, and its extreme expression is quitting or turnover. Various models have been used to explain and predict this behavior. Behavior models are useful tools to explore the ability of organizational policies to reduce stress levels and turnover. Advancing the usefulness of models is a goal which assists all research on human behavior. A-Life offers a new and different methodology for this purpose. It provides an ability …

The Influence Of Time Pressure And Information Load On Rule-Based Decision-Making Performance, Brooke Browne Schaab

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Performance was evaluated under varying levels of time pressure and information load to determine their influence on simple rule-based decision-making. Consistent errors, biases, and heuristics found in human decision-making have been attributed to attempts to reduce attentional demands and to the limitations of working memory. Do these same mistakes occur when little or no demand is placed on working memory and the decision is made by following a set of simple rules? Using a simulation of a radar operator's task, 96 participants monitored a display for 24 min. Time pressure was manipulated by increasing or decreasing the number of aircraft …

Neuropsychological Assessment Of Battered Women, Mona Matheney Tiernan

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study examined the effect of physical battering on the neuropsychological functioning of women. Twenty-five battered women and twenty-five non-battered women were administered a neuropsychological screening battery (11 separate tests, yielding 16 variables) to assess for possible deficits in the areas of attention/concentration, memory, visual-perceptual skills, sensory-motor skills, novel problem solving, and verbal fluency. All participants completed a demographic questionnaire, a post-concussive syndrome checklist, and a questionnaire evaluating for the presence of depressed mood and possible effects of depression. Potential participants with a history of previous head injury (occurring from a source other than battering) or other neurological disorders were …

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 …

Correlates Of The Mmpi-A Immaturity (Imm) Scale In An Adolescent Psychiatric Population, Eric Albert Imhof

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Despite numerous theories of adolescent ego development, there is no objective measure of ego development or maturation targeted for the assessment of adolescents. The Immaturity (IMM) Scale developed for the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory - Adolescent (MMPI-A) was designed to fill this void in adolescent assessment. The present study examined the concurrent validity of the IMM Scale based on sixty-six adolescents (13-18 years old) in an inpatient setting using four prominent measures of maturity, i.e., The Defining Issues Test (DIT), the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WUSCT), the Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status - Second Revision (EOM-EIS-2), and …

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 …

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 …

Animal-Word And Sound Test: An Auditory Cognitive Interference Effect, Jason L. Parker

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study presented a method in which the Stroop Color Word Test can be adapted to an auditory form. This auditory test used a series of animal words, animal sounds and word-sound combinations. This "Animal-Word-and-Sound test" contained three subtests. The test tasks were to repeat a list of words, identify a list of animal sounds, and to identify the sound in a combined animal word-sound pairings (Both the animal's name and sound are presented simultaneously). An alternate form of this audio test was examined. The alternate form followed the same construction except in the final condition, the task was to …

Therapist Orientation And Circularity-Linearity Of Causality, Responsibility, Intentionality, And Blame For Clinical Problems, Helen Alexander Jones

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Differences in circularity of attributions of causality, responsibility, intentionality and blame for clinical problems by therapists of psychodynamic, behavioral and systems orientations, a psychiatrist group, and an attorney control group were investigated using the Circularity-Linearity Attribution Scale (CLAS). Respondents' judgments about the sufficiency of a single cause for the problem, circular conceptualization of the problem, and linear conceptualization of the presented problems were also solicited. Responses were compared for two problems, schizophrenia and domestic violence. It was hypothesized that the systems-oriented therapists' attributions would be more circular than those of other therapist groups on all dependent variables. It was also …

The Destructive Narcissistic Pattern, Nina W. Brown

Counseling & Human Services Faculty Publications

Identifying characteristics of the Destructive Narcissistic Pattern (DNP) in the workplace are presented. The DNP is most easily recognized by the reactions of those who have to work with him/ her. Characteristics are derived from the literature on pathological narcissism which differs only in intensity and degree. Strategies to develop constructive working relationships with the DNP are presented.

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 …