Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Employees Expectation From Leaders' Ethics In Decision Making, Shirley Easter

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The presence of unethical behavior continues to plague the global business community, however, and its impact in the finance industry is widely thought to be having an even more devastating impact than ever before. Scholarly literature provides little understanding of what drives ethical decision making, or the processes involved and a little evidence that ethical standards have been developed as part of leadership decision making training in finance. The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore the drivers and processes in the development of training that supports ethical choices that leaders make in their decision-making role within …

Senior Editor In Chief's Note, Kenneth D. Colburn

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Natural Disaster, Crime, And Narratives Of Disorder: The 1861 Mendoza Earthquake And Argentina’S Ruptured Social And Political Faults, Quinn P. Dauer

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Social scientists studying natural disasters have generally found an absence of panic, a decrease in crime, and survivors working together to find basic necessities in the days and weeks after a catastrophe. By contrast, political and military authorities implement measures such as martial law to prevent chaos and lawlessness threatening private property. The media amplifies narratives of disorder, creating the perception of uncontrolled masses wantonly committing crimes in a disaster’s aftermath. Historians study natural disasters to view political, social, economic, and cultural structures stripped of their everyday veneer. The 1861 earthquake that destroyed the provincial capital of Mendoza in western …

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.

“But I Only Wanted Them To Conform”: A Detailed Look Into The Initial Cohort Of Girls At The Indiana Reformatory Institution For Women And Girls Between 1873 And 1884, Molly Whitted, Michelle Williams

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

For the past four years, as part of a group of currently and formerly incarcerated scholars, we have researched the “inmates” and staff at the Indiana Women’s Prison during the institution’s first decade. Then known as the Indiana Reformatory Institution for Women and Girls, the facility was located near downtown Indianapolis on Randolph and Michigan Street. We focused on a key constituent of the Indiana Reformatory for Women and Girls: the girls themselves, heretofore voiceless and uninvestigated.

Our primary sources include the annual reports of the reformatory and the original registries for the girls during the survey period of 1873–1884. …

Citizen Initiative To Improve Local Government Ethics: Northwest Indiana Experience, Calvin Bellamy

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

After more than 50 years of widespread public corruption in Northwest Indiana, a small group of citizens and public officials met over a period of several months and developed a largely voluntary response. The result was the Shared Ethics Advisory Commission, which trains public employees on ethical decision making, provides specialized training for department heads and board and commission members, and hosts an annual ethics summit for the general public. Periodic employee ethics surveys indicate a positive effect of the training. In addition, the commission has developed a Candidate Ethics Action Pledge administered in each local election cycle, and a …

Measures Of Challenging And Excitatory Parenting Behavior As Predictors Of Later Child Self-Regulation, Zachary Havlin

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Challenging and excitatory parenting behaviors play an important role in children’s development, particularly in regard to the development of selfregulation; however, no well-established measures of parent-child interactions exist that record such behaviors. In the current study, I compare two recently developed coding systems that intend to address this issue: the Risky Interaction Support and Challenging (RISC) and Marbach coding systems. A subset of videos from the New Parents Project (NPP) data set at 12 and 18 months was coded using both scales, then a factor analysis was conducted for each scale. Regressions were conducted to look at the predictive power …

Antidiscrimination Ordinances In Northwest Indiana: An Event-History Analysis Of Municipal Policies Since 1992, James Paul Old, Kimberly Palmer Fields

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

In recent years, municipalities throughout Indiana have passed antidiscrimination ordinances that protect the rights of individuals who belong to racial, ethnic, or sexual minorities. Political scientists have proposed competing theories of policy-adoption processes that suggest a number of internal factors (such as socioeconomic characteristics, governmental capacity, or issue salience) or external factors (such as mandates/incentives from higher-level governments or influence from neighboring communities) as predictors of policy adoption; however, most existing studies focus on state-level processes, and those that focus on municipalities consider only large cities in different states. To more clearly distinguish between state-level effects and local effects, this …

An Approach To Determining Customer Satisfaction In Traditional Serbian Restaurants, Florentin Smarandache, Dragisa Stanujkic, Darjan Karabasevic, Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas, F. Cavallaro

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

The aim of this paper is to make a proposal for an easy–to–use approach to the evaluation of customer satisfaction in restaurants. In order to provide a reliable way to collect respondents’ real attitudes, an approach based on the use of smaller number of evaluation criteria and interactive questionnaire created in a spreadsheet file is proposed in this paper, whereby an easy-to-understand and simple-touse procedure is proposed for determining weights of criteria. In addition to the said, the proposed approach applies the simplified SERVQUAL-based approach, for which reason a simplified version of the Weighted Sum Method based on the decision …

To What Extent Do Religious Institutions Provide A Societal Value? Is The Tax-Exempt Status Justified?, Annabel Hou

Scripps Senior Theses

Religious institutions have been tax-exempt from almost all taxes for more than two centuries. The two primary justifications used to protect this ‘status’ is the constitution and the concept that churches provide positive externalities that believers and non-believers all benefit from. This paper examines the relationship between religiosity and five socially important characteristics: high school graduation rate, a divorce rate, incidence of domestic violence, and levels of substance abuse and crime. I run multiple simple and full regressions across 207 counties in Texas. In four of the five analyses, religiosity has a strong statistically significant desirable impact. With the addition …

A Study Of Unemployment And Underemployment In Clinical Music Therapy, Christopher A. Kelley

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Music therapy has been an established health profession for over 60 years serving a diverse population in different settings. Researchers studied the effects of burnout, career longevity, job satisfaction, and workforce analysis of clinical music therapy; however, no studies exist on the prevalence of unemployment and underemployment in clinical music therapy. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of unemployment and underemployment in clinical music therapy.

Participants who completed an anonymous online survey (n = 1,240) were board-certified music therapists who provided information on their current employment status. Results showed that the prevalence of unemployment among …

Entrepreneurial Marketing In Online Home-Based Businesses: Narratives From Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Craig Daniel Smith

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Although the formation of an online home-based business may be a relatively simple and low-cost endeavor, entrepreneurial marketing researchers suggest that immigrant entrepreneurs must access appropriate resources to effectively market an online business for breakout from low-growth, ethnic enclave markets. The purpose of this qualitative narrative inquiry study was to explore the entrepreneurial marketing experiences of immigrant entrepreneurs in the United States operating online home-based businesses, and the implications of these experiences for supporting breakout from traditionally restricted markets. To address this gap, a narrative inquiry method was used to collect data from immigrant entrepreneurs. This study was framed by …

International Music Preferences: An Analysis Of The Determinants Of Song Popularity On Spotify For The U.S., Norway, Taiwan, Ecuador, And Costa Rica, Brendan Joseph Suh

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines data from Spotify’s API for 2017-2018 to determine the effects of song attributes on the success of tracks on Spotify’s Top 200 Chart across five different countries: the U.S., Norway, Taiwan, Ecuador, and Costa Rica. Two dependent variables are used to measure the success of a song – a track’s peak position on the charts and the number of days it survives on a country’s Top 200 Chart. Using ten separate regressions, one for each dependent variable in all five countries, it is concluded that the presence of a featured guest on a track increases a song’s …

Momentum 2019, Stephanie Clarke

Momentum

A journal of undergraduate research

Funding A Feature: Creating A Film Business Plan, Jordan C. Hunt

Senior Honors Theses

Every film, from the smallest indie to the biggest studio blockbuster, must be funded, and all investors who finance a movie expect that the movie will give them a return on their investment. In order to seek funding, many filmmakers create a business plan to present to potential investors. Beginning with the film industry as a whole, this paper will define a specific target audience and distribution plan for one film in order to create a business plan. The film, titled Intertwined, is an independent low budget family drama that will primarily raise funds through equity investors. This is …

Market Value Analysis Of Takashi Murakami's Artwork Under Howard Becker's Theory, Liu Yi-Ding

MA Theses

This paper is an analysis about the artist Takashi Murakami. As a representative of the corporate artist, he is favored by the Art business world while being criticized by many people. This paper adopts American sociologist Howard Becker's art world theory as a research tool to observe that the construction of Murakami and his art market is not the growth of genius, but the result of collective cooperation. Based on two decades of data on the art trade, Murakami has made his unique brand of ultra-flat theory and otaku work. These labels, along with internalization and external marketing, eventually gave …

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 …

Progress On The Economic Empowerment Of Female Entrepreneurs In Kenya's 30% Preferential Public Procurement Policy, Rukaya Mohammed

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In Kenya, a 2013 presidential directive reserved 30% of government procurement opportunities for enterprises owned by women, youth, and persons with disabilities to promote economic empowerment; however, as of 2016, female entrepreneurs continued to be outpaced by their male counterparts. The lack of policy evaluation from the female entrepreneur perspective limits the ability to assess progress and identify obstacles. Through purposeful sampling and semistructured interviews, this qualitative phenomenological study obtained the perceptions of the implementation and impact of Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (AGPO) on economic empowerment from the perspective of 20 female entrepreneurs in Kenya previously awarded procurement contracts. …

Postpartum Celebrity Images: Influence On Self- Thoughts And Appearance Management Behaviours Of Postpartum Women, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis, Kim K. P. Johnson

Publications and Research

Within previous decades, opinions about pregnancy and post-partum behaviour featured in various news articles and within popular literature emphasized issues related to pregnancy and liquor; campaigns against teen pregnancy; pregnancy and weight gain; and pregnancy and dieting behaviour. Attention has shifted from these issues to appearance-related topics including rapid weight loss, exercise regiments and food restriction. For example, photographs of celebrities have provided visual evidence that women can gain weight during pregnancy, give birth and within weeks revert to a thin, pre-pregnant body size. A qualitative method was used to explore to what extent, if any, images of post-partum celebrity …

Aircraft Interior Design And Satisfaction For Different Activities; A New Approach Toward Understanding Passenger Experience, Golnoosh Torkashvand, Lucas Stephane, Peter Vink

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Among airlines and aircraft manufacturers there is much attention for passenger experience. However, there is not much literature on how the activities of passengers can be supported by the aircraft interior. The current study focuses on the need finding and requirements analysis of flight passengers. Twenty-three activities were defined based on retrospective interviews and brainstorming sessions. Respondents were asked to rate their overall perception related to the importance of each of those 23 activities on a Linkert scale, from “not at all important” to “extremely important”. On a separate question they were also asked to rate their overall satisfaction by …

Always Already Imprisoned: The Panoptic Power Of Capitalism In American Literature, 1900-1940, Andrew Spencer

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

ALWAYS ALREADY IMPRISONED: THE PANOPTIC POWER OF CAPITALISM IN AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1900-1940

By Andrew Blair Spencer, Ph.D.

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Virginia Commonwealth University, 2019

Director: Dr. Richard Fine, Professor, Department of English

By applying the theories of control that Michel Foucault outlines in Discipline and Punish to the capitalist system, I argue that capitalism functions in much the same was as Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon in that it perpetually imprisons individuals who live under its purview. As I see it, capitalism works on …

2019 Msu Benefits Guide, Morehead State University. Office Of Human Resources.

Staff Congress Records

2019 Morehead State University Benefits Guide.

The Role Of The Black Church In Addressing Collateral Damage From The U.S. War On Drugs, Donald L. Perryman

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This research is a qualitative examination of African American pastors from urban communities who address the needs of congregants and/or local communities affected directly, or indirectly by mass incarceration. The Black Church, because of its unique sociocultural location and historic role as resource for Black social and economic problems, must help supply the answers to the devastating collateral damage of mass incarceration that primarily affect children and families. The study sets out to understand urban pastors’ perceptions of the role of the Church in the post mass incarceration era. Specifically, the study examines the unique contributions of the African American …

Glocalizing Community Heritage Tourism In Two African American Communities In Miami, Graylyn Swilley-Woods

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine significant elements and aspects of community heritage tourism development activities using a scholar activist approach in two African American communities located in Miami-Dade Florida. Community heritage tourism was investigated to understand its relevance and to assess multiple factors that may influence its direction in relationship to economic sustainability, leadership, and change. This collaborative research included community involvement with key relevant stakeholders. The aim of the study was to achieve better knowledge of heritage tourism and understanding of growth and/or hindrance to the community’s capacity to change and economically sustain itself. The study …

United I Stand: An Investigation Of Power Distance Value And Endorsement Of The Great Man Theory Through American Social Identities, Jeffrey M. Girton

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Four decades of research on power distance have been applied to cross-cultural leadership studies on an inter-national level. A quantitative investigation was conducted to analyze a uniquely American narrative of power distance, which was developed through a post-structural epistemology. Using ANTi-History theory, endorsement of the Great Man Theory was argued to be a leadership ethos that is related to American power distance value. The GLOBE project’s Power Distance Subscale, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner’s Achievement Versus Ascription Scale, and an author-developed scale for self-reported endorsement of the Great Man Theory was deployed to investigate culturally contingent leadership ethos on an intra-national level …

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, …

Servant Leadership Characteristics And Empathic Care: Developing A Culture Of Empathy In The Healthcare Setting, Mark Anthony Martin

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this study was to assess the degree to which servant leadership characteristics are exhibited in medical group practices, and the degree to which servant leadership characteristics correlated with measures of empathic care. This study featured an explanatory mixed methods research design embedded in appreciative inquiry. A total of 189 mid-level practitioners consisting of nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and practice mangers responded to a 32-item scale survey that featured a six-point Likert scale to measure servant leadership items and a 10-point continuous scale to assess measures of empathic care. The servant leadership items were based on the seven …

East Chicago Politics: A Cornucopia Of Corruption, Tina Ebenger, Tracey Mccabe

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Despite the comical title, there is a lot of corruption in East Chicago (IN) politics. One mayoral election had to have a “do-over” because of fraudulent absentee ballots, and a former mayor is doing time in jail for using public monies to remodel his home. This cornucopia of corruption extended to the indictment of six public officials (the so-called Sidewalk Six) in East Chicago for misusing public funds for political gain, specifically vote-buying, in the 1999 mayoral reelection of Robert Pastrick. These officials, ranging from a parks superintendent to a city engineer to several city council members, bought votes by …

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 …

Statement From The Indiana Academy Of The Social Sciences And Board Of Directors, Mssj Staff

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.