Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Role Of Family Endorsement In Venture Creation And Sustainability, Thomas Daniel White

Doctoral Dissertations

Entrepreneurship research has shown that family social support is an important factor in an entrepreneur’s venture creation and sustainability efforts, yet little is known about the nature and impact of family processes that occur prior to venture start, or how early endorsement of a venture impacts the entrepreneur. These processes are important to consider, because they may facilitate or inhibit ongoing family social support and influence the entrepreneur’s venture creation and sustainability decisions. Utilizing a family systems theoretical framework, I draw on theories of self-perception, social support and conservation of resources to address three issues. First, I introduce the construct …

Twenty-­‐First Century Deindustrialization And Uneven Development In Appalachia, Katherine Custis Gerlaugh

Doctoral Dissertations

The causes and consequences of deindustrialization in the United States are myriad and have created a dire situation for millions of working class people as blue-­collar jobs have mostly vanished. This reality has been particularly hard in places like Appalachia, where manufacturing and extraction were the largest, and often only, employers for most of the 20th Century. Especially for rural areas with little appeal for new markets, tourism often appears to be one way to attract people to the area to spend money, but it is unclear whether or not this strategy is helpful to local economies. In this study, …

Capitalist Organizing And Organizations: The Case Of The American Petroleum Institute, Elizabeth Ashley East

Doctoral Dissertations

Sociologists have underestimated the importance and power of organizations established to unify capitalist firms and interests. Existing research on trade associations tends to take one of two approaches, either atheoretical studies developing typologies of trade association activities or cultural sociological approaches overemphasizing the cultural significance of these organizations for business communities. Utilizing Marxian organizational theory, this dissertation conceptualizes trade associations as inherently capitalist organizations created to build and maintain the interests of the capitalist class. This perspective is applied to build an historical sociological case study of the formation and subsequent activities of the American Petroleum Institute (API), the largest …

The Three Dimensions Of Political Action In United States Democracy: Corporations As Political Actors And "Franchise Governments", Steven Alfonso Panageotou

Doctoral Dissertations

A tension has persisted in the United States between the principles of democracy and the capitalist economy. At its core, democracy refers to the ideal that people should govern themselves. Democracy is indeterminate, its future open. But the open-ended principle of democracy collides with the authoritarian nature of corporations that centralize power within bureaucratic institutions designed to rationalize and augment capital accumulation. The purpose of this dissertation is to explain why democratic aspirations to realize a system of ‘rule by the people’ have been confounded by corporate political power. To do so, I delineate how polit ical theorists have envisioned …

Never Forget: The Meaning Of The Global War On Terror In Post-9/11 U.S. Presidential Discourse, Landon Shane Bevier

Doctoral Dissertations

Framed by cultural criminology, this project examines the discursive construction of the U.S. state and the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in 190 public speeches and statements made by U.S. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Whereas cultural criminology's focus on the politics of meaning and transgression in deviant subcultures is often criticized for glorifying deviance and ignoring real harm (O'Brien 2005; Hall and Winlow 2007), this project instead uses the framework to analyze the cultural practices of the state in regard to the waging of war. A key contribution of this work is thus the development of a …

The Impact Of Photography On Tourism: Photography Construction Perspective, Justin Kaewnopparat

Doctoral Dissertations

Photographs are crucial elements that marketers integrate into all their marketing communication tools. As we can see from many brochures, websites, and billboards, many travel destinations portray the beauty of their locations through photographs aiming to attract more travelers to visit their destinations. In the same vein, tourists also use photographs as references for their decisions about where to spend their vacations. Due to this significant impact of photographs on tourism, marketers invest greatly in this visual stimulation tool. However, the impact of elements appearing in each photograph such as objects and color tones are overlooked. This experimental study investigates …

Women’S Help-Seeking Behavior For Intimate Partner Violence In Sub-Saharan Africa, Ahmet Fidan

Doctoral Dissertations

Intimate partner violence (IPV) against women is a social and public health problem worldwide, particularly in developing countries. However, help-seeking for IPV among women is quite low in Sub-Saharan African countries. The present dissertation examines help-seeking behavior reported by women in five Sub-Saharan African countries: Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, to explore factors associated with the issue. Based on Resources (economic dependence), gender/feminist, and survivor perspectives several hypotheses were developed and tested. Findings from analysis indicate that from resource factors household wealth and educational level were negatively, employment status was partially associated with women’s help-seeking behavior. Justification of wife-beating …

"What Does Sexual Harassment Education Have To Do With Sport Management Courses?": An Analysis Of Sexual Harassment And Sexual Assault Education In Sport Management Curriculum, Elizabeth Ann Taylor

Doctoral Dissertations

Sexual harassment and sexual assault have gained a great deal of media attention throughout the past several years. Over 200 colleges and universities across the US have been under federal investigation for Title IX violations. Between 20% and 25% of women attending higher education institutions will be the victim of completed or attempted sexual assault during their college careers (Fisher et al., 2000). Sport has been described as space possessing a permissive rape culture due to its overtly masculine culture (Kidd, 1990). Further demonstrating this belief, research has shown that male athletes were overrepresented in reports of perpetrators of sexual …

Excessive Acquisition: What Is It? What Makes It Happen?, Melanie Doss

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study draws on the philosophical concept of hermeneutics and theories of the self and self-regulation to investigate the underlying meanings expressed and experienced by the self and the other in the behavior of excessive acquisition. In accordance with the methods outlined by the phenomenological and grounded theory traditions, data were collected from 15 persons afflicted with excessive acquisition, defined as the self and 12 persons afflicted by excessive acquisition, defined as the other. The data content collected from in-depth interviews, field notes, observations, and electronic messages formulated the emergent Parent Themes of Emotion, Space, Economics, and Time. …

The Role Of Mentoring For Women In Upper Management In The National Basketball Association (Nba), Manuela Picariello

Doctoral Dissertations

Despite years of progress by women in the workforce, climbing the corporate ladder is still a very daunting task for most women (Eagly & Carli, 2007; Evans, 2010; McKinsey Report, 2013), and occupational segregation still exists (Davidson & Burke, 2011). Research studies have reported that mentoring in general is critical to upward mobility (Allen, Eby, O’Brien, & Lentz, 2008; Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lentz, & Lima, 2004; Eby, Allen, Evans, Ng, & DuBois, 2008). To date there has not been a study with a focus on mentoring and female executives in professional sport. In the 2014 Racial and Gender Report Card …

A Quantitative Analysis Of A Critical Pedagogy In Catholic Secondary School Religious Studies Teachers In The San Francisco Bay Area, Alex Porter Macmillan

Doctoral Dissertations

Scholarship has indicated that Catholic, secondary school religion teachers in the United States are often not adequately prepared pedagogically and theologically (Aldana, 2015; Ramey, 2014; Schroeder, 2013; Cook and Hudson, 2006; Cook, 2001, 2000; Lund 1997). Rossiter (2011, 2010, 2007) and Crawford and Rossiter (2006) described aspects of a pedagogy that can be summarized as “Critical Interpretation and Evaluation of Culture” (Rossiter, 2011), where a number of different criteria and examples are described that can serve as a relevant pedagogy for religious education.

In a researcher designed, online, cross-sectional survey, 18 questions from relevant literature using both binary “yes / …