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Leadership Strategies To Sustain Small Fitness Businesses, Jacqueline Renee Robertson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The development and sustainability of small businesses impact the U.S. economy. Owners of small businesses created 65.9% of new jobs between 2000 and 2017. Over 99.9% of known U.S. firms were small businesses. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the leadership strategies small fitness business owners implemented to sustain their businesses for longer than 5 years. The conceptual framework for this study was the servant leadership theory. The population for the study included 5 owners of small fitness businesses in the southeastern region of the U.S. who used leadership strategies to sustain their businesses for longer …

Ua99/6/1 Bowling Green Business University Student Affairs Student Organizations, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by student organizations.

The Aids Volcano : Narratives Of Hiv/Aids In The Iranian Public Sphere, Elham Pourtaher

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Broadly construed, this thesis will examine the transformations in the socio-cultural construction of HIV/AIDS in Iran from the joint perspectives of media and medical sociology. Until recently, official public narratives in Iran primarily regarded AIDS to be a drug-related disease. However, beginning from the early 2010s, a new narrative frame (often called as “the third wave”) introduces a significant “alarming” collective shift in the transmissions modes of the disease toward sexual pathways. Having observed the rather rapid transformation of the public AIDS framing, this research began with an empirical question: considering the fact that the shift implied the prevalence of …

Crossing Borders In Business And Economics Classrooms: Implementing Telecollaboration To Advance Diversity And 21st Century Skills, Marta Fondo, Schiro Withanachchi

Publications and Research

The emerging changes in global societies challenge businesses as teams work across borders. Consequently, higher education promotes student interaction from diverse cultural backgrounds using technological tools without restricting time, cost, motivation or mobility. In this regard, telecollaboration engages students in a learning process that develops 21st century skills with peers from diverse language, socio-cultural, and educational backgrounds. This article presents a telecollaboration project designed and implemented by Queens College, City University of New York, and Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, an online university in Barcelona, in which 196 Economics and Business undergraduate students from the United States and Mexico enhanced intercultural …

Analysis Of Colombian Trade Agreements From 2007 To 2013, Ryan Lee

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

I analyze the firm-level effects on Colombia entering into Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) between 2007 and 2013. The combination of detailed firm-level data and PTAs make this article unique. In particular, I look at two separate potential trade-promotion effects of the agreements. The first result deals with how exporting firms in Colombia respond to the tariff cuts in the agreements. The tariff cuts from the agreements increase the size of exports by Colombian firms (the intensive margin); however, tariff cuts do not increase the number of exporting Colombian firms (the extensive margin). The second result deals with how the signed …

Racial Segregation In Indianapolis, 1990–2010: A Spatial Perspective, Vijay Lulla, Owen Dwyer

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

The index of dissimilarity is the most widely used method for measuring racial segregation. When applied to Indianapolis, this index has returned results showing the city to be among the most segregated in the country. The resulting measure, however, suffers from two shortcomings. First, the index of dissimilarity is sensitive to the census-defined geographic unit chosen for the analysis; thus, this index returns different (though proportionate) results depending on whether the population data are aggregated to larger or smaller enumeration units. Second, the index of dissimilarity cannot account for the influence of spatial proximity; adjacent census blocks interact regardless of …

The Impact Of Perspective In Identifying And Responding To Potential Sexual Misconduct: A Study Of University Students, Nichole Maki Weller, Kathy Parkison, Steven R. Cox, Michael Plummer

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Recent events have demonstrated a divergent understanding of sexual harassment and other forms of sexual misconduct. Although sociocultural standards regarding sexual misconduct have changed over time, including improved social and workplace standards and protections, it is clear that not everyone views these events through the same lens. The lens is even less clear when potential misconduct is viewed from the distinct perspectives of a “victim” and a “perpetrator.” We surveyed 424 undergraduate and graduate students at Indiana University Kokomo to identify the impact of perspective and various sociodemographic characteristics that may influence perceptions of what is, and is not, sexual …

The Ethical (Or Not So Ethical) Story Behind Your Bar Of Chocolate: The Untold Tale Of A Distressed Ghanaian Farmer, Nadia Ayensah

Augustana Center for the Study of Ethics Essay Contest

In a time where the ethics of business dealings have become a key factor in the likelihood of the success of that venture due to globalization, it is important to start considering those ventures that are so popular, but whose inner working are rarely heard of. This paper analyzes the history and process of cocoa production in Ghana. It looks at the status quo with regards to the social and economic standing of Ghanaian Cocoa farmers as opposed to the earnings made by cocoa processing companies. With the statistics derived, the paper then considers who is to take responsibility for …

E-Governance As An Alternative Antecedent To A Lean Public Sector : Theory And Evidence, Kennedy Okong'o, Michael Kyobe

The African Journal of Information Systems

The ever growing size of the public sector has been a contention in theory and practice. In parallel, the public sector use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), otherwise known as Electronic Government has had a transformative potential. Inspired by these competing interests, this paper set out to study the relationship between investments in e-Government and the size of public sector. Informed by Banks-Weingast model of bureaucratic discretion drawn upon political science, the research estimated the linkage. Using a balanced panel data of Kenya’s key ministries for a 10 year period (2004-2014), e-Government expenditure, consumer price indices (CPI) and gross domestic …

Trouble In Paradise: Impacts Of Theme Park Tourism On The Mental Health Of Employees In Orlando, Florida, Lea Harvey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Tourism is a topic that has gained much attention within the realm of anthropology over the past few decades. Anthropological research of the tourism industry has been largely devoted to the study of the tourist gaze and its subsequent sociocultural impacts as well as the benefits that travelers reap from their colonialist excursions. However, the voices of those who form the foundation of this industry, the laborers, remain almost entirely absent from said discourse. Furthermore, there is a lack of anthropological consideration for the relationship between tourism and mental health experiences of employees within the tourism industry. One specific region …

Careers And Romantic Partnerships: Three Essays On Gender Differences In Role Centrality, Wage Gap, And Life Satisfaction In Dual-Career Couples, Quinn M. Coen

2019

The purpose of this dissertation is to improve understanding of the dual-career couple phenomenon by exploring gender differences in levels of role centrality and partner support, life satisfaction, and the gender wage gap. I engage with these areas of inquiry through three research papers.

Paper 1 is motivated by the research question: Are there differences between female and male individuals in dual-career couples in levels of value placed on particular role centrality (i.e. family, career, others such as church/hobbies) or levels of perceived social support in their partnerships? This replication study investigates a series of hypotheses based on past research …

Strategic Intelligence Strategies For Improving Performance In The Nonprofit Sector, Iglika Kirilov

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Nonprofit leaders face competition, rapid changes, increasing complexity in their operating environments, and diminishing financial support, all of which threaten achievement of their organizational missions. The purpose of this single case study was to explore strategies nonprofit leaders used to develop plans for performance improvement based on strategic intelligence. The research sample was composed of 3 leaders of a nonprofit organization located in the midwestern region of the United States who implemented nonprofit strategic initiatives to improve their organization's performance. The conceptual framework used for this study was Maccoby and Scudder's strategic intelligence conceptual system for leading change. Data were …

Veterans Affairs Employees’ Perceptions Of Financial Incentives, Organizational Justice, Satisfaction, And Performance, Kingsley Chigbo Ihekwoaba

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Veterans Affairs (VA) inconsistently distributes financial incentives, which might affect how VA employees perceived organizational justice, affecting employees’ job satisfaction and performance. The purpose of this qualitative transcendental phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of VA employees that informed their perceptions of their workplaces’ levels of organizational justice, their job satisfaction, and their performances due to inconsistent distribution of financial incentives by gathering data through interviews with 13 VA employees from the Southeastern United States. The research question concentrated on the lived experiences of VA employees with respect to the inconsistent distribution of financial incentives, and how these …

Snapchat's Gift: Equity Culture In High-Tech Firms, Amy Deen Westbrook, David A. Westbrook

Journal Articles

Snap, Inc., the company that owns the platform Snapchat, controversially offered nonvoting common shares to the public in 2017. This Article asks what it means to invest in Snap or other (mostly technology-based) companies in which common shareholders collectibely have little or no power to influence corporate policy. In particular, why do such investors expect to be compensated? This Article explores the familiar rationales for equity investing, including stock appreciation and dividends, and the logical shortcomings of those rationales in these circumstances. Adopting Henry Manne's "two systems" approach to corporate affairs through both law and economics, we show that corporation …

Effects Of Cisnormative Beauty Standards On Transgender Women’S Perceptions And Expressions Of Beauty, Delmira Monteiro, Mixalis Poulakis

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

The authors conducted a qualitative study exploring the effects of cisnormative beauty standards on transgender women’s perceptions and expressions of beauty. Twelve self-identified Caucasian transgender women completed a semistructured interview that provided descriptive data related to the women’s perceptions of societal beauty standards. Analysis of the data revealed the following primary themes: Participants viewed the beauty of transgender and cisgender women as diverse or as encompassing a broad range of variability; societal beauty standards were influential on participants’ expressions of beauty; and participants’ viewed out-group transphobia as a factor contributing to discriminatory and prejudicial perceptions of transwomen’s beauty.

Leadership: A New Title, Ethan William Chandler Goffigon

Whittier Scholars Program

Through a method of digital storytelling and a modern day literature review, this project attempts to look at the notion of leadership and the effective versus non-effective personality and behavior traits associated with it. Through this evaluation of leadership, I will be utilizing my own experiences and reflecting on them to add an additional voice to each point addressed. Starting from when I was a child falling in love with superheroes to a young man who continues to learn from his every day life and his time in the past.

Strategies To Identify And Reduce Workplace Bullying To Increase Productivity, Dr. Marvalene King

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Workplace bullying caused business owners to lose about 80 million employees' workdays each year. Workplace bullying can cost an organization up to $300 billion for increased medical claims, lost productivity, and employee turnovers, and up to $23 billion in additional expenses, such as costs for employee absenteeism and legal costs. The purpose of this single case study was to explore successful strategies to address workplace bullying used by 7 human resource (HR) managers and executives in 1, small-to-medium-sized organization in Central Florida. The HR managers and executives had 5 or more years of HR experience. The risk management framework and …

Women's Occupational Health And Safety In The Informal Economy: Maternal Market Traders In Accra, Ghana, Joyceline Amoako

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Improving maternal health and women’s health is necessary, especially in countries with high maternal and child mortality rates. Most research on maternal health focuses on women’s reproductive health and, as a result, very little is known about the impact of occupation on maternal health (World Health Organization, 2006). It is also interesting to know that “Occupational Health Research” has been heavily criticized for the general absence of a gender standpoint, usually resulting in the exclusion of women and their concerns at the workplace (World Health Organization, 2006). In Ghana, an open-air market is an integral place of work for women. …

Influence Of Personality Traits And Moral Values On Employee Well-Being, Resilience And Performance: A Cross-National Study, Vidya S. Athota, Pawan Budhwar, Ashish Malik

Business Papers and Journal Articles

Research examining the relationship at the interface of personality, values, moral foundations and its impact on employees’ subjective well-being, resilience, job performance and satisfaction is almost non-existent. This study addresses this Special Issue’s call focusing on the key antecedents and consequences of resilience on individual and/or organizational level outcomes. It does so by analyzing data from two different, through comparative cross-national studies in Australia and India. Employing a quantitative survey method, we collected data from 195 respondents in Australia and 257 respondents from India. Employing the core theory of moral foundations in association with its relationships with individual personality, values, …

Competency Development And Implementation Among Direct Support Professionals In New York State, Johanna Loporto

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Direct support professionals (DSPs) serve an important function in the daily supervision and care of clients with intellectual and developmental disabilities (ID/DD) through standardization of technical, cognitive, and ethical competencies for all DSPs. It is not clear, however, how these DSPs and managers perceive the implementation process and utility of these competencies or whether implementation results in meeting the desired outcomes for clients. Using Donabedian's quality of care model as the foundation, the purpose of this qualitative case study in New York State to understand how DSPs perceived the implementation of the DSP core competencies under the direction of front-line …

Social Entrepreneurship: Exploring The Bricolage Model In Nigeria, Michael Ogunleye

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Nigerian entrepreneurs face government barriers and lack the skills and awareness needed for successfully creating and scaling public value in resource-constrained environments. The concept of bricolage, which involves doing business by making do with resources at hand, has been addressed in the literature, but not as it occurs among Nigerian entrepreneurs. This study was conducted with the aim of narrowing this gap in knowledge by exploring how Nigerian entrepreneurs have successfully carried out their businesses. The research question addressed how Nigerian entrepreneurs overcame critical situations to successfully address the challenges of scaling and creating public value, and whether the theory …

The World’S Game, But Not America’S: An Analysis Of Soccer’S Disposition In The United States, Catherine Reese Neely

Honors Theses

Globally, soccer is the most prominent sport, drawing devoted fans from nearly every country in the world. The World Cup grosses the highest attendance and viewership rates of any international professional sports tournament. For many countries, the game of soccer is a source of national identity and pride. Despite soccer’s global impression, the sport has failed to fully captivate its American audience. The introduction of the professional men’s league, Major League Soccer (MLS), in 1996 spurred interest. The sport has experienced slight growth in popularity, but its national attendance and viewership ratings are trivial in comparison to America’s elite three …

The Good Bloke In Contemporary Australian Workplaces: Origins, Qualities And Impacts Of A National Cultural Archetype In Small For-Profit Businesses, Christopher George Taylor

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study explored the nature and significance of a common but widely misunderstood phrase encountered in Australia: The Good Bloke. Underlying this enquiry was awareness, based on the researcher’s personal and professional experience, that the idea of a Good Bloke powerfully influences individual perceptions of leaders in Australian small-to-mid sized for-profit firms. The study commenced with an exploration of the origins and history of the phrase, tracing it to the 1788 arrival of a disproportionately male Anglo-Celtic population was composed significantly of transported convicts. The language and mores of this unique settler population evolved for two centuries based on relationships, …

Unclogging The Pipeline: Advancement To Full Professor In Academic Stem, Helga Van Miegroet, Christy Glass, Ronda R. Callister, Kimberly Sullivan

Ecology Center Publications

Purpose: Women remain underrepresented in academic STEM, especially at the highest ranks. While much attention has focused on early-career attrition, mid-career advancement is still largely understudied and undocumented. This paper analyzes gender differences in advancement to full professor within academic STEM at a mid-size public doctoral university in the western US, before and after the NSF-ADVANCE Program (2003-2007).

Methodology: Using faculty demographics and promotion data between 2008 and 2014, combined with faculty responses to two waves of a climate survey, the magnitude and longevity of the impact of ADVANCE on mid-career faculty advancement across gender is evaluated.

Findings: This study …

Situational Judgment Tests As Measures Of 21st Century Skills: Evidence Across Europe And Latin America, Christoph Herde, Filip Lievens, Emily G. Solberg, Harbaugh Jan L., Mark H. Strong, Gary J. Burkholder

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Over the years, various governmental, employment, and academic organizations have identified a list of skills to successfully master the challenges of the 21st century. So far, an adequate assessment of these skills across countries has remained challenging. Limitations inherent in the use of self-reports (e.g., lack of self-insight, socially desirable responding, response style bias, reference group bias, etc.) have spurred on the search for methods that could complement or even substitute self-report inventories. Situational judgment tests (SJTs) have been proposed as one of the complements/alternatives to the traditional self-report inventories. SJTs are low-fidelity simulations that confront participants with multiple domain-relevant …

Career Sponsorship: An Effective Way For Developing Women Leaders, Jovina Ang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Other than an effective career progression strategy, this research, which comprised of an autoethnography and an in-depth qualitative case study research showed that career sponsorship could be an effective strategy for developing women leaders. In the sponsor relationship, sponsors invest considerable time, effort and resources in developing sponsees, thus, preparing them for the top jobs. In addition to developing the skills on the leadership strataplex, career sponsorship has been shown to be an enabler for developing confidence, which is one of the necessary ingredients for developing executive presence. Career sponsorship also fills the gap and addresses the shortcomings that arise …

Revealing The Human Resource Development Discourse: A Mixed Methods Study Of Similarities And Differences In Academic And Practitioner Language, Or Labels-In-Use, Holly D. Jackson

Theses and Dissertations

Woven within the pages of HRD’s historical literature, a variety of scholarly voices can be found drawing attention to the increasing inconsistency in the language of the field. Within the literature, we also find evidence of a long-standing discord and debate regarding the field’s definition and identified boundaries. This is the first study that attempts to elevate the conversation of HRD’s definition to that of an exploration of what is shared, and what makes the discipline’s members unique. Utilizing Li’s (2009) lens of disciplinary identity and elements of Gee’s (1999) theory of Discourse, this study presents a concept of what …

Relationships Between Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions And Tourist Satisfaction: A Cross-Country Cross-Sample Examination, Songshan (Sam) Huang, John Crotts

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Culture has been assumed to influence tourist behavior but due to the difficulty of measuring culture values directly at the individual level, the relationship between national culture and visitor satisfaction remains yet to be empirically attested. This study used two national level inbound tourist samples, i.e., Tourism Research Australia's 2017 International Visitor Survey holiday/pleasure travellers’ sample and the Hong Kong Tourist Satisfaction Index Project 2016 sample, to test the relationships between Hofstede's six cultural dimensions (Power Distance, Individualism/Collectivism, Masculinity/Femininity, Uncertainty Avoidance, Long Term Orientation/Short Term Normative Orientation, and Indulgence/Restraint) and visitor satisfaction. Bivariate correlation with bootstrapping tests show consistent correlations …

Learning At Literary Festivals, Giulia Rossetti, Bernadette Quinn

Books/Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Un(Der)Employed Youth: From Precariousness To Resilience, Alia Weston, Miguel Imas, Jennifer Manning, Paul Donnelly, Kudzayi Ngwerume

Articles

In this paper, we explore the experiences of Irish and Zimbabwean youth who live and work in precarious economic conditions. We study these youths’ experiences in a manner that traverses contexts under the question: How do un(der)employed youth in the Global South and Global North enact resilience and agency while navigating economic precarity? The paper builds on youth literature from both the Global North and Global South, emphasizing socio-economic precarity, youth agency, and resilience. We collected our data from interviews conducted in Ireland and Zimbabwe. Methodologically, the paper follows a postcolonial narrative approach to study these experiences. Our findings show …