Leadership Commons^™

Oct. 2026 - At The Table: How Mda Advocacy Turns Member Concerns Into Action, Timothy Rath

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

The cover story provides an in-depth examination of the Michigan Dental Association’s grassroots advocacy framework, highlighting the successful enactment of Senate Bill 105. SB 105 addresses "virtual credit cards" by requiring dental insurers to offer reimbursement options without transaction fees. The article details how MDA staff, legislative leaders, and Political Action Committee (PAC) donors collaborate to identify member priorities, build legislative relationships, and educate policymakers. Emphasizing the essential role of practicing dentists in state capitol discussions, the story illustrates how grassroots participation turns practice challenges into legislative victories.

Oct. 2026 - Mastery Creates Presence, Anish Gupta D.D.S.

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

Written by oral surgeon Dr. Anish Gupta, this reflective essay explores the connection between clinical mastery and patient-centered hospitality in surgical practice. Defining practice core values as "be the best, do the best" and "unreasonable patient-centeredness," the author illustrates how technical expertise frees clinicians to be fully present and empathetic with anxious patients. The article emphasizes that clinical competence should serve to alleviate patient fear, remove practice friction, and elevate the healthcare experience through mindful, compassionate service.

From Kitchen To Canon: Women And Culinary Recognition Executive Summary, Eulanda A. Sanders, Andra Harris

ICHRIE Research Reports

Despite women comprising a majority of the U.S. restaurant workforce, they remain significantly underrepresented in culinary leadership and elite recognition. Using an exploratory, descriptive design that draws on secondary data from the ACS, NRA, U.S. Census Bureau, and the James Beard Foundation, this study maps gender disparities across the culinary career pipeline. Women represent approximately 54% of the restaurant workforce but only 24.8% of chefs and head cooks, with a substantial gender wage gap persisting across the occupation (NRA, 2026; U.S. Census Bureau, 2024). Of 402 James Beard Award winners analyzed, 71.6% were male and 28.1% female. Disparities intensify at …

J Mich Dent Assoc Sept. 2026

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

Each month, the Journal of the Michigan Dental Association delivers news, information, and features about Michigan dentistry to our state's oral health community and the MDA's 6,200-plus members. It remains the main publication reaching Michigan dentists and is available worldwide through ADA Commons.

The September 2026 (Volume 108, No. 9) issue of the Journal is published in print format to provide updates and insights for Michigan's oral health community and MDA members. Print editions occur every other month beginning with January.

This full compilation of the September 2026 Journal of the Michigan Dental Association features the deans' reports from the …

The Back Page - A New Chapter For The Mda Journal, Timothy Rath

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

Tim Rath, MDA's Content and Editorial Manager, introduces himself as the managing editor of the MDA Journal. He outlines a new strategic chapter focused on aligning the journal's clinical content with the association's broader advocacy, educational, and membership events. Celebrating the legacy of Dave Foe and welcoming new Editor-in-Chief Dr. Romesh Nalliah, Rath emphasizes that the best story ideas originate from practitioners in the field. He invites Michigan dentists to share personal narratives of unique career paths, fascinating hobbies, unique patient cases, and life outside the clinic to foster professional inspiration.

Repairing Workplace Trust: A Process-Based Classroom Exercise For Management Education, Luke A. Langlinais Ph.D.

Posters

Trust is essential in every workplace, but conflicts, mistakes, and broken promises are inevitable. This project develops an experiential classroom exercise in which students diagnose workplace trust violations, examine the perspectives and emotions of both parties, and practice selecting and communicating evidence-based reparative actions. The exercise translates organizational behavior research into a practical learning experience that develops not only managerial competence but also the character, empathy, and relational wisdom needed to build healthy organizations and promote human flourishing.

I gratefully acknowledge peer review feedback on this project, and I am accountable for writing of this product without generative AI and …

The Startup: Critical Perspectives On Technology Entrepreneurship And Digital Labor, Kochav Koren

All Duquesne Faculty Scholarship

Communication and media studies are rapidly reshaped by socio-technological forces within the framework of informational capitalism, where startups emerge as key drivers of the global creative economy. This study critically examines the global startup movement through political economy, classical sociology, and Southern perspectives to assess whether digital entrepreneurship fosters genuine, decentralized innovation or perpetuates speculative financialization and labor precarity. Employing a multi-layered theoretical framework—including Schumpeterian creative destruction, Marxist commodity fetishism, and Weberian charismatic authority—and qualitative fieldwork across North and Latin American tech hubs, the analysis reveals startups as network enterprises that both disrupt markets and reproduce structural inequalities. The findings …

Navigating The Dark Side: Emotional Labor's Impact On Hr Professionals' Wellness, Esmeralda Amelia Rendón

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative descriptive study was designed to document and describe how female-identifying human resource (HR) generalist practitioners serving as sole or primary employee relations practitioners in small- to medium-sized organizations across the United States experience and manage emotional labor in their roles, cope with its demands, and how these experiences impact their wellness and perceptions of organizational support. Despite the centrality of emotional labor (EL) in human resource professionals’ (HRPs) roles, little was known about how HRPs in these underresourced environments cope with these demands. Data were collected through semistructured virtual interviews with eight participants and analyzed using Braun and …

Stop Blaming My Users: Illumination Of The Technocentric Mythos Bias, Ervin H. Frenzel, Richard Lightcap

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

 Abstract -This conceptual essay addresses the need for systemic and systematic transdisciplinary analytical techniques within cybersecurity and technical security. This conceptual essay is contingent upon recognition that cybersecurity is not simply technical in nature, it does not need an adversary, and more importantly it is based upon systems engineering and systems thinking.  The essay contributes a socio-technical attribution chain and field-specific ontology/taxonomy which distinguish user-triggered events from root causes, latent conditions, technical debt, validation failures, governance failures, and attribution bias before assigning responsibility to end users. It systematically defines an ontology inclusive of developer technical debt, organizational debt arising from …

Beyond The Romance Of Leadership: Shackleton, Self-Inflicted Crisis, And The Values Of Recovery, Carl Lee Tolbert

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Two men answered to the name Ernest Shackleton. One belonged to the ice, where he was pioneering, inspirational, and heroic. The other belonged to dry land, where he was restless, indebted, and unfulfilled (Smith, 2014). The 1914 to 1916 Endurance expedition has become the most celebrated leadership case study of the past century, a status the 2022 discovery of the ship's preserved wreck has only hardened. Public and scholarly sentiment runs overwhelmingly positive. This article reads that sentiment as a late expression of what Meindl and colleagues named the Romance of Leadership, the disposition to attribute outcomes to dramatic individual …

The Personality Profile Of Entrepreneur And Business Leader Elon Musk, Amelia Brower, Aubrey Immelman

Psychology Faculty Publications

This paper presents the results of an indirect personality assessment of entrepreneur and business leader Elon Musk, from the conceptual perspective of personologist Theodore Millon.

Psychodiagnostically relevant data relating to Musk were collected from biographical sources and media reports and synthesized into a personality profile using the Millon Inventory of Diagnostic Criteria (MIDC), which yields 34 normal and maladaptive personality classifications congruent with DSM-III-R, DSM-IV, and DSM-5-TR.

The personality profile yielded by the MIDC was analyzed in accordance with interpretive guidelines provided in the MIDC and Millon Index of Personality Styles (MIPS) manuals. Musk’s primary personality patterns …

Balancing Our Capacity To Serve: A Phenomenological Exploration Of Black Women Navigating Personal, Professional, And Community Leadership Roles, Shemeka K. Brathwaite

Student Theses

This phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of Black women community leaders as they navigate a balance between their professional, personal, and community leadership roles. The research design uses the theoretical frameworks of Black Feminist Intersectionality and Role Theory, specifically addressing the cultural burdens imposed by the Strong Black Woman archetype, which adds additional role strain. The study began with a questionnaire completed by 54 Black women community leaders, followed by 20 in-depth, semi-structured interviews selected from this pool. The study’s key findings are illustrated in a Black Women’s Sustainable Community Leadership Framework. Black women community leaders exude high self-efficacy, …

She Believed She Could, So She Did: A Lifecycle Approach To Understanding Leadership And Self-Efficacy Development In Women Astronauts, Savanah Faith Sellars Bray

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how women leaders develop and sustain self-efficacy, and develop as leaders, throughout their lives. Although decades of research document the barriers women face navigating leadership journeys, including the challenges described in the Women’s Leadership Labyrinth of prejudice, discrimination, and childcare issues, existing literature offers limited insight into how women actively build belief in their capacity to lead and accomplish their goals. Further, research consistently shows that women report lower leadership self-efficacy than men, even with comparable experience, yet the developmental processes that shape this gap, beginning in childhood, remain underexplored. Guided by self-efficacy research and its four …

The Role Of Project Managers And Pmp Principles In Improving Operational Efficiency In Healthcare Organizations, Karan Thakkar

Harrisburg University Dissertations and Theses

Healthcare organizations operate in increasingly complex, regulated, and resource-constrained environments while managing a growing volume of projects tied to digital transformation, process improvement, regulatory compliance, and infrastructure development. Despite the project-intensive nature of healthcare operations, many organizations do not formally employ trained project managers or consistently apply Project Management Professional (PMP) principles; project responsibilities are frequently absorbed by clinical or administrative leaders whose primary expertise lies outside formal project management. This qualitative study examined how the project manager role and PMP principles contribute to operational efficiency in healthcare organizations. The study was conducted as a qualitative document analysis and thematic …

Social Innovation In The Peacebuilding Sector, Michelle Helman, Phd, Katherine Ronderos, Mariafernanda Burgos-Ariza

Peace and Conflict Studies

Social innovation is an expanding practice in the peacebuilding sector. In this article, three peace scholar-practitioners reflect on our experiences as peacebuilders and consider the utility, tensions, and possibilities for peace and social innovation in theory and in practice. We draw insights gleaned through a focus group workshop with peacebuilding colleagues and highlight three case study examples from Colombia, the Philippines, and Kenya, each demonstrating the challenges and opportunities of social innovation in the peace sector. In doing so, we offer a reimagining of- and recommended action steps to engage innovation through a collaborative, feminist design approach. This article contributes …

Burning Out: A Narrative Exploration Of The Adaptive Challenge And Scaffolds Built Toward Sustenance Among Immigrant Rights Activists In San Diego County, Anna C. Runion

Dissertations

Activist burnout has been identified as one of the greatest threats to social movement sustainability, and the lived experience of paid immigrant rights activists remains undertheorized. This narrative inquiry explored activist burnout among 10 San Diego County immigrant rights activists, revealing how this community understands burnout, what factors contribute to its production, and how activists sustain themselves within it. Using Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) narrative inquiry methodology, the researcher conducted in-depth individual interviews with ten activists representing a range of intersectional identities and roles. Narrative profiles were analyzed through holistic narrative reading, narrative reporting, structural and emergent coding, and cross-narrative …

Education, Evaluation, And Impact Of A Delegation Learning Session In The Care Pair Model, Tiffany M. Whitney

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects: College of Nursing

The persistent nurse shortage is forcing the health sector to think about the way care is provided, and teams collaborate. One model, the Care Pair Model (CPM), pairs registered nurses (RNs) with nursing assistants (NAs) to distribute responsibility and provide patient care in a timely manner and with the best quality. Even though the model encourages working together effectively, many nurses still find it difficult to delegate to uncertainty, lack of confidence, or communication barriers. Improving these abilities is essential for fostering trust, ensuring a smooth workflow, and providing for patient and provider needs.

This Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) …

Exploring The Transformative Effects Of Executive Coaching On Leaders: A Qualitative Study, Dwayne Norman

Theses & Dissertations

This qualitative dissertation examines the transformative effects of executive coaching on leaders’ development, personal growth, decision-making, and overall effectiveness across varied organizational contexts. Grounded in authentic leadership theory and employing a generic qualitative inquiry design, the study investigated how leaders who completed executive coaching describe changes in their behavior and mindset. Eleven experienced leaders participated in semi-structured interviews selected through purposive sampling. Thematic analysis, guided by the cyclical and inductive coding methods of Saldana (2021), generated 187 initial codes, which were distilled into 72 final codes. These final codes were then further refined into twelve categories and four overarching themes: …

Generations At Work: Examining Differences In The Nonprofit Sector, Cory J. Bergeron

Dissertations

This non-experimental quantitative dissertation examined generational differences among non-management employees in the United States nonprofit sector, where multiple generational cohorts work side by side. The problem addressed is that nonprofit leaders’ limited understanding of how distinct generational experiences shape employees’ work-related attitudes and preferences can contribute to conflict, reduced engagement, and costly turnover in already resource-constrained organizations. Grounded in Mannheim’s generational theory and Becker’s human capital theory, the study conceptualized generational cohorts as groups whose shared formative experiences influence what they value in their work context and how those values translate into human capital that affects organizational outcomes.

Using a …

A Creative Climate Framework For Developing Leaders Who Can Navigate Complexity, Uncertainty, And Change Now And Over Time, Christa M. Heydt-Hernandez

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

As organizational environments grow increasingly volatile and complex, leaders face a widening gap in the skills hardest to cultivate in adults: creative thinking, systems thinking, and human-centered design thinking. Yet leadership development has prioritized culture over climate, overlooking a more direct lever for change. This project argues the gap is fundamentally developmental: the skills most demanded of today's leaders are best introduced across childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood—long before the workplace—through what the author terms the Long Game of Leadership Development. In response, this project introduces the Creativity Steward™ framework, a longitudinal model grounded in developmental psychology, creative climate research, …

A Behavior Analytic Blueprint For Rapport-Building: Investigating The Key Elements For Success, Nelmar Jacinto Cruz

Theses and Dissertations

Rapport can be defined as a positive relationship between people built through specific actions. Building rapport can benefit organizations by improving performance and increasing work satisfaction. Despite these benefits, research on rapport remains scarce. Curry et al. (2019) completed the most recent rapport study and found that rapport-building led to increased productivity and discretionary effort. The present study replicated and extended Curry et al. (2019) and addressed three limitations of their research: the lack of a control group, the large disparity in time spent with the experimenter, and the rigidity of their rapport conversation script. The study was completed in …

What Happens When Leaders Don’T Live Up To The Ideal? How The Leadership Perception Gap Can Undermine Leader Development And Intentions, Julia Macgregor-Peralta

Theses and Dissertations

Despite decades of research on leadership development, we know surprisingly little about why capable, confident people choose not to pursue leadership. This study introduces the Leadership Perception Gap (LPG), a construct that captures discrepancies between ideal leader views and the leaders people actually observe, and tests whether those discrepancies reduce the desirability of leadership roles. LPG was assessed using latent congruence modeling (LCM) to compare ideal leader ratings with vignette-based leader evaluations. The vignettes manipulated leadership style (agentic, communal, balanced) and team composition (all-male, all-female, balanced). Participants were randomly assigned to one condition and evaluated their interest in joining the …

Advancing Sustainability In The Indonesian Oil Field Services Landscape, Firmansyah Arifin, Sudarso Kaderi Wiryono, Sylviana Maya Damayanti, Gatot Yudoko

The Qualitative Report

This study examines sustainability practices in Indonesia's drilling and oil field services (OFS) industry, addressing a critical research gap from a business and management perspective. Using a qualitative case study approach, ten in-depth interviews with industry leaders identified key performance variables and developed a sustainability model specifically designed for the OFS drilling sector. The findings highlight three core dimensions: Internal Variables (e.g., Employee Health and Safety, CSR Initiatives, ESG Performance, Cost Savings, Energy Efficiency, Carbon Footprint Reduction), External Variables (e.g., Green Financing, Stakeholder Engagement, Community Welfare), and Performance. Novel contributions include operationalizing advanced HSE technologies like cyber rigs and tailored …

Supersuit Up Or Get Left Behind: Why A Personal Agentic Os Is Required For Commercial Viability In The New Economy, Gary Sheng, Ron Roberts

Digital Laboratory: Publisher of Internet Journal

In my first article, The Writing on the Wall, we laid out the case: self-improving AI has arrived, the economy is splitting, and every organization faces an existential choice. This paper answers the question we heard most after that piece: “Okay, I believe you. What do I do on Monday morning?” The answer is your Personal Agentic OS. It is the minimum viable infrastructure that turns you from a passive consumer of AI into a sovereign operator of it. And in April 2026, three events converged to make this the most urgent professional skill in the world: Andrej Karpathy’s LLM …

Ethical Decision-Making Frameworks In Ai-Driven Pharmaceutical Research & Development, Dhaval Dinesh Panchal, Osama Mohd Hash Ansari, Sudha Divya Madhuri Kallam

Harrisburg University Dissertations and Theses

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being utilized in pharmaceutical research and development to speed up drug discovery, enhance clinical trial design, and support regulatory decision-making. However, the increasingly rapid adoption of AI in the pharma industry has outpaced the development of consistent ethical governance, raising concerns related to data privacy, transparency, regulatory compliance, and stakeholder trust. This study explored the methods by which project managers could develop and utilize ethical decision-making frameworks to facilitate responsible AI implementation in pharmaceutical research and development. Guided by the Responsible Innovation framework, this research employed a mixed-methods design combining semi-structured interviews and quantitative surveys with …

The Role Of Leadership Style In Team And Individual Performance In Collegiate Athletics, Luke Mulkey

Posters - 2026

• Measuring the effectiveness of leadership is important because strong leaders can bring significant contributions to both organizations and individuals

• Previous studies have said that intrinsic motivation of the individual plays a larger role than the leadership style of a coach

• Studies also show that leadership style has an influence on team success and cohesion

• This study aimed to determine the extent to which transformational leadership played a role in team success, measured in win percentage

• This study went further into the individual perception of their coach’s impact on the athlete’s performance compared to the extent …

State Normal School Lafayette--Dialectical Literary Society Program, State Normal School

Documents

Lafayette--Dialectical Literary Society Program, State Normal School, 1923

Dialectical Society Purchase Receipt-Cherry & Stickle, Cherry & Stickle, Dealers In Staple And Fancy Groceries (H.A. Cherry/J.L. Stickle)

Documents

A purchase receipt for items needed by the Dialectical Society in 1896

State Normal College Joint Anniversary Of The Literary Societies, State Normal College

Documents

1897 Program from the Joint Anniversary of the Literary Societies of State Normal College

Learn And Serve Rotc Spring Quarter Bulletin, Florence Herald

Documents

1951 Florence State Teachers College ROTC Spring Quarter Bulletin