Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Development And Validation Of The Sustainability Climate Survey, David Edward Hall

Dissertations and Theses

Motivated by an assumption of and concern about the unsustainable trajectory of modern human civilization, the purpose of this study was to develop a measurement tool to assist organizations striving to align their operations with principles of sustainability. The relevant context is established with consideration of the dimensions of environment, society and economy, as well as their interconnections, with an eye towards sustainability. Some of the challenges and opportunities presented to organizations by the current unsustainable trajectory are reviewed. The social constructs of culture and climate (organizational and psychological) are discussed as important to understand organizational life. I propose the …

The Friendship Group Motivational System: Naturally-Occurring Resources And Liabilities During The Transition To High School, Carrie Jeanne Furrer

Dissertations and Theses

Peer groups are a powerful part of young people's lives. As the first step in investigating the potential of peers as developmental resources or liabilities during the normatively stressful transition to high school, the purpose of this study was to identify and measure the features of peer relationships that shape healthy development, and the contextual conditions that promote them. The Friendship Group Motivational System (FGMS) is a new conceptualization that includes two individual level concepts (friendship group interactions and self-system processes), and an emergent motivational group-level concept (friendship group engagement and disaffection).

Items were developed to measure the 13 constructs …

The Role Of Trust, Leader-Member Exchange, And Organizational Justice In Employee Attitudes And Behaviors: A Laboratory And Field Investigation, Rudolph Joseph Sanchez

Dissertations and Theses

The study of interpersonal relationships continues to be a major focus of theory and research in a wide array of disciplines. The present research examined one of the most prevalent and significant interpersonal relationships in the workplace context—the dyadic relationship between a supervisor and a subordinate. This research examined the relationships between trust, quality of the leader-member exchange relationship (LMX; a measure of the quality of the dyadic relationship), perceived organizational justice, and several employee attitudes and behaviors that are important to individual workers and the organizations in which they work.

Data were collected in both laboratory and field settings. …

Predictors Of Task And Contextual Performance: Frame-Of-Reference Effects And Applicant Reaction Effects On Selection System Validity, John Hunthausen

Dissertations and Theses

An employment process suprasystem contains human resource-related systems such as training, recruitment, performance appraisal, and personnel selection. Similarly, a personnel selection system consists of interdependent subsystems that work together to manifest its properties (e.g., the acquisition of qualified and high-potential individuals). Finally, each of these complex subsystems (e.g., applicant reactions to selection methods) have interdependent elements (e.g., procedural and distributive justice) that work together to manifest the properties of the subsystem (e.g., applicant fairness perceptions).

This dissertation takes such a systems approach to understanding the complexities of a personnel selection system to explore the interactions among three of its subsystems: …

Multidimensionality Of Power Use In Organizations And Its Correlates, Weizhong Dong

Dissertations and Theses

The present study was conducted to examine power use patterns and general power use strategies in organizations multidimensionally (i.e., downward, upward, and lateral directions of power use), to extend and explain previous findings by Kipnis et al. (1980), with reference to situational effects on multidimensional power use. The samples in this study consist of 230 full-time managers who were from eight local businesses, and a second sample of 140 college students who worked over 15 hours a week at the time of the study. Two exploratory factor analyses resulted in five commonly used power patterns and two general power use …

The Influence Of Work Station Architecture On Work Perceptions And Work Behavior, Connie L. True

Dissertations and Theses

A field study was conducted to find whether open office architecture is related to employees' perceptions of their jobs and their work groups, and to their behavior in and around their work stations. Fifty-two employees in the administrative division of a large manufacturing operation volunteered to participate by answering a questionnaire and allowing their work stations to be analyzed for levels of visual access and visual exposure, the two independent variables. Access and exposure, at first theorized to be independent and interacting functions, were found to be too highly correlated in this open off ice setting to test as originally …

Career Supports And Career Mentors: An Analysis Of Their Prevalence And Their Relation To Career Success And Satisfaction Among A Group Of Women Lawyers, Sandra Lee Riley

Dissertations and Theses

This study investigated three issues problematic to the state of knowledge on mentoring. These issues were: (a) lack of scientifically derived operational definitions in use in research on mentoring; (b) lack of agreement about how common mentoring is; and (c) lack of agreement about whether or not alternate forms of career support are more efficient than mentoring. The information collected to address each of these issues was acquired in two phases: a literature survey followed by a sample survey. The literature survey addressed the first issue. It resulted in the formulation of an operational definition of mentoring which was based …

Psychometric Properties Of The Group Process Questionnaire, Lucia Igou Eakins

Dissertations and Theses

The Group Process Questionnaire (GPQ), a 55-item rating scale, was developed by Richard Wollert in 1981 to assess perceptions of the frequency of processes occurring in self-help groups (SHGs). The GPQ was first employed by Wollert, Eakins, and Dixon (Note 1) as the primary data collection instrument in an ongoing investigation of urban SHGs. This investigation is one of a small number of empirical studies which have attempted to specify the range of SHG activities. Due to the relatively recent emergence of SHGs as topics of research, and the unique obstacles to research presented by the independent character of these …

Attitudes Of Psychiatric Nurses And Aides At An Oregon State Hospital Toward Homosexuality, Don Andersen

Dissertations and Theses

Homosexuality is something which has been a part of almost every society throughout history. In western society this has been a subject of secrecy and taboo. Throughout our history homosexuals have been persecuted and forced to hide their sexual identity. The effects of this on an individual should be something of concern to professionals in the mental health field.

While in the past there has been little knowledge of homosexuality, and no self-expression on the part of homosexuals, there has, in recent years, been growing information and expression. The effect of this change on mental health workers is what this …

The Development Of Attitudes Toward Work Through "Career Education", Lonnie Fred Mcdonough Wheeler

Dissertations and Theses

Attitude measurement problems are discussed within the context of a contemporary movement in the field of education. A restricted definition of the alienation construct is suggested as a theoretical framework within which research in this area could be conducted. Construction and validation data on an instrument designed to measure attitudes toward work are reported. Pre and posttest scores (using the above measure as well as the Rotter I-E Scale) of two high school Career Education programs were compared. Neither program produced significant mean attitude change in terms of these measures. However, change detected by increase in the variance on the …

Personality Characteristics, Work Practices, And Error Rates Among Welfare Assistance Workers At East Multnomah County Public Welfare Branch, Roy Dale Beams, Mike David Gotesmen, Howard Wayne Knytych

Dissertations and Theses

The research project herein contained was an outgrowth of concern associated with performance levels placed upon Welfare Assistance Workers (WAW’s). The Oregon State Public Welfare Division has become increasingly concerned with accuracy rates among branch offices throughout the system. It was the impression of the research group that WAW’s see this increased concern as combined pressure to reduce error rates and demand for a broader diversity of skills.

The primary purpose of this study was to explore ways of clarifying individual characteristics and work habits and their relationship to error rates in the WAW’s in the East Multnomah County Branch …

Differences Between Supervisor And High And Low-Rated Employees' Perceptions Of Job Performance Ratings And Importance Of Job Factors, Harvey Edward Mcgowan

Dissertations and Theses

This study was an attempt to gain insight into differing conceptions of job performance and job performance factors held by supervisors, employees in general, and of employees rated high and low on overall job performance by their supervisors. The discrepancy in the perceptions of job performance is an element in a general pattern of a well-documented discrepancy in the perception of subordinates' wants, needs and desires by superiors.

To assess employees' perceptions about their own job performance, self-ratings were taken, along with estimate ratings of how employees thought their supervisors would rate them. A graphic rating scale was used, Format …

The Behavior Of Coalitions As Interorganizational Structures: An Exploratory Study Using A Grounded Theory Approach, Elaine Marie Rothrock

Dissertations and Theses

This study is one of four exploratory studies concerned with coalitions of organizations that are formed to plan and develop social welfare programs within the local community. Although each study was conducted independently, taken together their major purpose was to develop some insights and knowledge into the behavior of organizations and the ways in which they interact as they work together to develop community programs. They are, then, exploratory studies of inter-organizational behavior.

Each of the studies had a different focus. One study attempted to identify the present areas of agreement and disagreement regarding inter-organization behavior by systematically reviewing the …