Digital Commons Network^™

The Flow Of The Social: Developing A Constructal Systemic Approach To The Study Of Health Inequalities, William A. Anderson

All ETDs from UAB

Society is a dynamic, living system. People, groups, institutions, and cultures are intricately interconnected. Changes in one area of society create changes in other areas. Causes and results may be closely linked or separated by time and space. Sociologists readily acknowledge this dynamic reality. However, our mainstream theories and methods often fail to account for it. Even after decades of research into social inequalities in health, medical sociology still seems far away from being able to offer any definitive ideas about why such inequalities exist and persist despite efforts to alleviate them. Medical sociology (and sociology in general) is centered …

Perceptions Of Participating K-12 Educational Leaders' Experiences And Decisions Regarding The Crisis Caused By The April 27, 2011 Tornadoes In Rural Alabama, William Earl Bishop

All ETDs from UAB

PERCEPTIONS OF PARTICIPATING K-12 EDUCATIONAL LEADERS' EXPERIENCES AND DECISIONS REGARDING THE CRISIS CAUSED BY THE APRIL 27, 2011 TORNADOES IN RURAL ALABAMA WILLIAM E. BISHOP, JR. (BILL) HUMAN STUDIES ABSTRACT April 27, 2011, will be remembered by many as a catastrophic day and event in Alabama, and specifically by K-12 educational leaders. Natural disasters like tornadoes have a significant impact on leaders, on their decision making and, obviously, on the survival of many of their victims. The possibility and threat of a major crisis caused by natural disasters is always going to be present. Organizations, businesses, and leaders at various …

High-Tech Services And Hospital Performance In The United States, Ferhat Devrim Zengul

All ETDs from UAB

This dissertation examined the relationship between high-technology medical services and hospital performance by focusing on financial and quality performance dimensions. An initial systematic review disclosed the paucity of research and mixed findings about the technology-performance relationship. The review indicated the need for further analyses by emphasizing some limitations of existing studies. The resource-based view (RBV) of a firm was used as a conceptual framework in examining the relationship between high-tech medical services and hospital financial performance. It was hypothesized that large breadth (number) of high-tech services and the use of rare high-tech services would be positively associated with hospitals' financial …

Interracial Couple Status In Relation To Birth Outcomes Among Singleton Infants Born To U.S. Resident Mothers, 2004-2008., Su Jin Jeong

All ETDs from UAB

Due to the growing trend in interracial marriages in the United States, the issue of birth outcomes to infants born to such couples deserves more attention and examination. The purpose of this population-based, cross-sectional, observational study is to examine the association between interracial couple status and birth outcomes (i.e. low birth weight, very low birth weight, preterm birth, very preterm birth, small for gestational age) among singleton infants delivered in the United States. Interracial couples are defined as those in a relationship who are not of the same race or ethnic designation. Non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, Hispanic, Asian, Chinese, Filipino, …

Interpretive Theorizing In The Seductive World Of Sexuality And Interpersonal Communication: Getting Guerilla With Studies Of Sexting And Purity Rings, Jimmie Manning

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

The author explains how interpretive studies of sexuality will be of benefit to relationship studies in and out of the communication discipline.

Service Learning And Social Justice: A Qualitative Study Of International Service Learning And Students' Perceptions Of Social Inequality, Sara Boro

Masters Theses

Using qualitative methodology the researcher analyzed the perspectives of students on service trips taken to Haiti by the Newman Catholic Center in (1) educating students about social injustice and (2) cultivating a desire for students to advocate for social change. Overall participants were impacted by their experience in Haiti. Participants articulated a deeper awareness and understanding of social inequality and of their own privilege. Participants also communicated a commitment to continue service, change their career plans and change their lifestyles. Student development occurred in three phases including pre-departure, experience, and re-entry. Engaged preparation, reflection, consequential connection, and human connection were …

Associative Duties And Immigration, Javier S. Hidalgo

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

This paper evaluates an argument for immigration restrictions that appeals to the costs that immigration imposes on the citizens of a recipient state. According to this argument, citizens have associative duties to protect each other’s interests, immigration can damage these interests in certain cases, and the associative duties between compatriots justify immigration restrictions in these cases. Call this: the partiality argument for immigration restrictions. I argue that the partiality argument is unsound. Immigration restrictions violate negative duties to refrain from interfering with people’s liberties and these duties silence compatriots’ associative duties to one another. Furthermore, I argue that compatriots lack …

Queen Elizabeth’S Leadership Abroad: The Netherlands In The 1570s, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

In 1576, after Edmund Grindal, archbishop of Canterbury, presumed to lecture Queen Elizabeth on the importance of preaching and on her duty to listen to such lectures, his influence diminished precipitously, and leadership of the established English church fell to Bishop Aylmer. Grindal’s friends on the queen’s Privy Council, “forward” Calvinists (or ultra-Protestants), were powerless to save him from the consequences of his indiscretion, which damaged the ultras’ other initiatives’ chances of success. This paper concerns one of those initiatives. From the late 1560s, they urged their queen “actively” to intervene in the Dutch wars. They collaborated with Calvinists on …

Faculty Handbook, Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Archives

No abstract provided.

Land Use And Climate Change: Lawyers Negotiating Above Regulation, John R. Nolon

Brooklyn Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Systemic Functional Approach To Automated Authorship Analysis, Shlomo Argamon, Ph.D, Moshe Koppel, Ph.D.

Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Towards An Index Of Idiolectal Similitude (Or Distance) In Forensic Authorship Analysis, M. Teresa Turell, Ph.D., Nuria Gavalda

Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Ideologies Of Literacy, "Academic Literacies," And Composition Studies., Bruce Horner

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

In my contribution to this symposium, I take up the call of this journal in its mission statement for “new interactions between Literacy and Composition Studies.” From the framework of competing ideologies of literacy, I explore points of intersection as well as divergence between strands of what’s known as “composition studies” and what has come to be identified as the “academic literacies” approach to academic literacy. My focus on “academic literacies” rather than the broader area of literacy studies signals at least three of my biases: first, I wish to counter the tendency to allow the cultural norm for academic …

Separating The Whites From The Chaff: Whiteness, Blackness, Racial Exclusion In The Midwest Agrarian Mind, Philip Mohr

Masters Theses

This thesis approaches the construction of race through the vantage of one agrarian magazine, the Prairie Farmer. It analyzes the rhetoric of the people who wrote for this magazine to distinguish changing attitudes toward whiteness and blackness in the rural and agricultural Midwest from the end of the Civil War to the Great Migration. While whiteness was equated with what the Prairie Farmer saw as the active, progressive farmer, blackness was associated with stupidity, laziness, and threat to property. From this, the thesis argues we can build a base of knowledge from which to analyze the roots of racism …

Fantasy's Weight: A Tale Of Zaria Dekarthan, Heather Wohltman

Masters Theses

Kurt Vonnegut says in his novel, Player Piano, "I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center" (84). Laurence Yep, Marie Colleen Cruz, and Kate B. Pollock all argue that fantasy stands as an important vehicle of learning for those who cannot understand reality without taking a step out of it. George Slusser asserts that the "concept of 'reality' [needs] a firm sense of non-reality ( or fantasy) in order to define itself as a distinct entity" (24). …

Engaging The Homeless Through Technology And Information Literacy, Fannie Cox

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The University of Louisville (U of L) Libraries' outreach mission is to encourage the development of information literacy (IL) and critical thinking in individuals. In March 2010, a community engagement partnership began between Ekstrom Library and the Wayside Christian Mission for the libraries to provide a basic computer skills class to its clients (referred to as students), many of whom had never used a computer. Now in its fourth iteration, the class named Wayside 100 provides students an opportunity to develop skills that may assist them with increasing their educational level, succeeding in college, as well as overcoming homelessness.

Narcissistic Intertextuality In The Works Of Bret Easton Ellis, Jennifer Grindstaff

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the works of Bret Easton Ellis, specifically his three latest novels: Glamorama, Lunar Park, and Imperial Bedrooms, and identifies the metafictional and intertextual elements in these texts. For my purposes, I am defining metafiction as fiction that draws attention to itself and makes the reader aware that he or she is reading fiction. Intertextual will be defined as elements in the novels that appear in other works of fiction. In the case of Ellis, he is drawing upon and reusing elements from his own fiction. These elements include characters that reappear in novels other than the text …

The Signal Provision Of Emotion: Using Emotions To Enhance Reliability Via Sensemaking, Joseph A. Allen, Cliff Scott, Sarah Tracy, John Crowe

Psychology Faculty Publications

High reliability organization (HRO) theory suggests that early detection of and swift responses to potentially hazardous and situation changing events in organizational environments is central to the sustainability of reliable operations. Limited research on HRO’s (e.g. military groups and firefighters) considers how normative demands on feeling and emotion help to explain why some events are recognized and responded to while others not. In this article, we propose a model of enactment of anomalous events (i.e., situation changing events) that considers the manner in which emotions are regulated in high reliability contexts and how this influences the extent to which early …

Knowledge Management And The Retirement Workforce In Theme Parks, Carim Castro

Theses and Dissertations

Companies are seeing valuable knowledge leave the organization as older workers eventually retire taking with them all their knowledge gained, however few companies have begun to focus on knowledge transfer from older to younger workers. Due to the economic downturn, many Baby Boomers are remaining in the workforce longer than planned. Therefore, the time is critical for organizations to act now. The purpose of this study was to understand what theme parks can do to leverage the knowledge base of its retirement workforce before they leave the company, which factors prevent or influence this knowledge transfer and the role of …

Photography As A Spiritual Technique, Laura Elizabeth Garza-Meza

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to compare the spiritual benefits of practicing photography to the spiritual benefits of practicing prayer, meditation and yoga. Benefits noted were divided into the 4 dimensions of being human: physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. The study considers Mexican leaders' perceptions of photography as a spiritual practice. A total of 105 Mexican leaders answered surveys. Of the 105 leaders, 14 were professors, 30 were entrepreneurs, 46 were business executives and 15 were students and homemakers (listed as "other") varying in ages from 21 to over 61. The design of this study is descriptive, while the …

Perceptions Of Executives From Seven Selected Companies Of The Use Of Social Media In Marketing Practices, Abir Alameddine

Theses and Dissertations

The problem addressed in this study is that the recency of the social media phenomena created a research gap in terms of understanding how companies exploit various social media platforms for marketing purposes and measure the effectiveness of their social media marketing campaigns. Thus, there is a need for increased understanding of the effectiveness of social media marketing techniques. Social media marketing is defined as the blending of sociology and technology as a means to change marketing efforts from a monologue to a dialogue. The purpose of this study was to determine, based on research participants' perceptions, the reasons that …

Extending Job Demands-Resources Model : The Roles Of Energy Management Strategies And Recovery Experiences In Facing Differentiated Job Demands, Cho Ngan Siu

Lingnan Theses

Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) provides valuable insight in identifying the antecedents and consequences of work stress and engagement. Nevertheless, the roles of personal resources and differentiated job demands (i.e., challenge demands and hindrance demands) have received less attention in the literature. Studies on their interaction effects are even rarer. This thesis reports two studies intending to fill this gap of knowledge.

Study 1 aimed to develop a new scale of energy management strategies (EMS) at work and to demonstrate its reliability. A self-administered questionnaire survey adopting a cross-sectional design was conducted among 323 employees recruited from …

An Empirical Assessment Of Corporate Environmental Crime-Control Stragies, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Sally S. Simpson, Carole Gibbs, Melissa Rorie, Lee Ann Slocum, Mark A. Cohen

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Corporate illegality is often attributed to greed by corporate managers and insufficient legal safeguards. Underlying this argument is an explicit critique of corporate crime regulatory systems. Yet there is little systematic investigation of the relative merits of different types or components of crime-control strategies; research comparing more punitive command-and- control strategies with self-regulatory approaches is particularly lacking. In this Article, we assess these crime prevention-and-control mechanisms in the context of individual and situational risk factors that may increase the likelihood of illegal behavior in the environmental arena. We use data drawn from two groups of business managers who participated in …

He Said, She Said, Let's Hear What The Data Say: Sexual Harassment In The Media, Courts, Eeoc, And Social Science, Joni Hersch, Beverly Moran

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

We examine whether two national newspapers (The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal) provide a realistic representation of sexual harassment in the workplace by comparing media coverage to empirical evidence on sexual harassment drawn from three distinct sources: reports of workplace sexual harassment that emerge from employee self-reporting through a sexual harassment survey of government employees, charges of sexual harassment gathered through Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charge data, and federal district court complaints recorded by the Public Access to Court Electronic Records system. Whether intentional or inadvertent, the national media influences attitudes and subsequent behavior. We find that …

The Emotionally Intelligent Judge, Terry A. Maroney

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Judges, like all of us, have been acculturated to an ideal of dispassion. But judges experience emotion on a regular basis. Judicial emotion must be managed competently. The psychology of emotion regulation can help judges learn to prepare realistically for, and respond thoughtfully to, the emotions they are bound to feel. This short piece, written for a judicial audience, synthesizes research that can help judges accept, analyze, and shape the emotional aspects of their work.

Why They Stop Attending Church: An Exploratory Study Of Religious Participation Decline Among Millennials From Conservative Christian Backgrounds, Jessica Chase

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using a grounded theory approach, this study examines the reasons why Millennials from conservative Christian backgrounds stop attending church. The purpose is to understand why attendance attrition is at an all time high for those in the Millennial generation, ages 18 to 29. Data from 18 semi-structured interviews with former attendees demonstrate that this phenomenon is not due to a simplistic list of reasons but is actually a result of a complex development involving varying interrelated processes. The primary processes at work are cognitive and spiritual disconnection and disengagement for personal wellbeing

Between Law And Markets: Is There A Role For Culture And Ethics In Financial Regulation?, Dan Awrey, William Blair, David Kershaw

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The limits of markets as mechanisms for constraining socially suboptimal behavior are well documented. Simultaneously, conventional approaches toward the law and regulation are often crude and ineffective mechanisms for containing the social costs of market failure. So where do we turn when both law and markets fail to live up to their social promise? Two possible answers are culture and ethics. In theory, both can help constrain socially undesirable behavior in the vacuum between law and markets. In practice, however, both exhibit manifest shortcomings.

To many, this analysis may portend the end of the story. From our perspective, however, it …

Preparing For The Crossfire: Equipping Evangelical Leaders For Service In Public Schools, Gary F. Sehorn Dr.

International Christian Community of Teacher Educators Journal

This article addresses the preparation and support needed by evangelicals who serve as administrators and teacher leaders in public school settings. Educational leadership is lonely, demanding, and draining. This article explores the unique challenges evangelical leaders face because of the ongoing conflict between conservative Christians and public schools. Work-related conflicts that evangelicals experience in the workplace due to faith and the cultural dynamics that fuel this conflict are described. Strategies are proposed for Christian colleges and universities to prepare school leaders for the cultural crossfire.

The Impact Of Social Capital On Bank Risk-Taking, Wenjing Xie

Lingnan Theses

The concept of “social capital” has received considerable attention these years. Yet, few studies have explored the connections between social capital and bank risk-taking. In this study, I discuss the theory of social capital and its relevance to financial market behavior, and then I analyze the relationship between social capital and bank risk-taking across countries. To measure social capital, I follow Knack and Keefer (1997) and use the data of trust and civic norms collected from the World Values Survey. My measure of bank risk-taking is the nature logarithm of Z-score of each bank. Empirical results show that bank risk-taking …

Social Differentiation And Age-Friendly Characteristics : A Case Study In Tuen Mun, Yuen Ling, Elaine Yau

Lingnan Theses

Hong Kong is one of Asia’s more demographically-aged cities, with 14% of population aged 65+ in 2012, projected to be 23% by 2025. Facilities and transport are generally good by world standards although the urban environment may not consistently be particularly ‘age-friendly’. Drawing on a range of urban sub-areas, this research investigated the ‘age-friendliness’ of Tuen Mun, a ‘new town’ of half a million population in Hong Kong. This study was also interested in socio-cultural variables and age-friendly cities (AFC) characteristics in its predominantly Chinese population, and relationships with psychological well-being (PWB).

A total of 503 participants aged 50 years …