Organization Development Commons^™

Alliance Activism: Feminist And Videogame Learning Principles In Building An Identity-Based, Personal-Development Roadmap Addressing Subjective Bias And Discrimination, Delivered In A Mass-Briefing Format Using Videogame Terminology, Erik Anker

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

While many white individuals in America are antiracist in their attitudes, many are not. This makes conversations with whites around race a delicate space: addressing an imbalance of privilege with those who benefit from it. Additionally, to not alienate whites from antiracist causes by associating them with a historical identity seeped in racism calls for its own nuance. The project described in this thesis looks to address these concerns by providing whites with a roadmap for personal growth consisting of various identities for addressing bias, discrimination, and oppression in honest and proactive ways. The delivery of these identities could be …

Collaborative Leadership In Action, Maureen Scully, Catherine R. Bates

Center for Collaborative Leadership Publications

The 46 fellows in the 2018 cohort of the UMass Boston Emerging Leaders Program worked with seven community partners on projects of strategic importance to these nonprofit and government organizations. The fellows contribute their professional skills and discover collaborative leadership through practice. The theme of our public symposium is “Collaborative Leadership in Action.” The fellows shared their insights about what collaborative leadership involves – its challenges and benefits – and what they take back to their workplaces.

A Study Of Transformational Leadership Practices To Police Officers' Job Satisfaction And Organizational Commitment, John P. Decker

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This study is based upon Bass and Riggio’s (2006) Augmentation Model on Transactional and Transformational Leadership, in which this quantitative study sought to identify the amount of variance in police officer job satisfaction and organizational commitment that can be explained by police chiefs’ transformational leadership behaviors above and beyond the influence of transactional behaviors. A total of 166 police officers were surveyed in five central New Jersey police departments in relation to their job satisfaction and organizational commitment, as well as the leadership behaviors in which their police chiefs engaged, utilizing Bass and Avolio’s (2004) Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-5X). This …

Military Leaders’ Perceived Importance Of Emotional Intelligence Characteristics When Leading Organizational Change, Wayne Roseberry

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this descriptive, qualitative case study was to identify and describe exemplary military senior leaders’ perceived importance of emotional intelligence (EI) characteristics when leading organizational change. The study explicitly addressed the behavioral characteristics of U.S. Marine leaders associated with the EI framework for emotional competencies using Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee’s (2002) four EI components: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management competencies.

Methodology: A qualitative multiple-case study method was appropriate for this research due to its focus on analyzing the 12 exemplary senior leaders’ perceived importance of EI characteristics to lead change. The qualitative instrument included an …

Tracing The Change Process: Fostering And Sustaining Student Affairs Cultures Of Assessment, Margaret Leary

Dissertations

Student affairs professionals have long been strong contributors to college student learning and development and supporters of the perspective that holistic postsecondary learning is critical for not only the individual but society as well. With more attention focused on the value of this learning, student affairs has taken steps to foster and establish cultures of assessment by creating positions for individuals to coordinate assessment efforts across the division – a student affairs assessment leader. Most of the literature focusing on student affairs is informed by valuable practitioner experience and can be strengthened by empirical study. This explanatory single case study …

The Impacts Of Green Spaces On Crime In New York City, Matthew Edward Iannone Jr.

Student Theses 2015-Present

From the early 1960s through the mid-1990s, crime in New York City ran rampant. With a gradually dwindling police during this time, a high unemployment rate, and an rapidly increasing metropolitan population, crime peaked in the early 1990s, with the murder rate hitting a record-high of 2,245 in 1990. When Mayor Rudy Giuliani took office in 1994 and appoint Bill Bratton as the NYPD police commissioner, these rates immediately plunged. Numerous factors may have contributed to this sudden decline in crime: the police force grew significantly through the 1990s, more criminals were placed and held in prison, and the economic …

A Computational Model Of Team-Based Dynamics In The Workplace: Assessing The Impact Of Incentive-Based Motivation On Productivity, Josef Di Pietrantonio

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Large organizations often divide workers into small teams for the completion of essential tasks. In an effort to maximize the number of tasks completed over time, it is common practice for organizations to hire workers with the highest level of education and experience. However, despite capable workers being hired, the ability of teams to complete tasks may suffer if the workers' individual motivational needs are not satisfied.

To explore the impact of incentive-based motivation on the success of team-based organizations, we developed an agent-based model that stochastically simulates the proficiency of 100 workers with varying abilities and motive profiles to …

A Case Study Of Congregational And Search Committee Desired Leadership Qualities In A Senior Pastor, David Fowler

Human Resource Development Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this case study that utilized an inductive qualitative research approach was to uncover desired leadership qualities in a senior pastor. Membership numbers are dwindling for religious organizations as the landscape of the United States becomes more secular. Studies reveal that negative issues with ineffective leadership within these organizations impact congregational health and membership decline. Within the context of leadership’s futility, studies need to be conducted to identify qualifiers of effective leadership in religious organizations, as a lack of research has been conducted concerning religious organizational leaders. Specifically, churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, a conservative conglomerate of …

Sustaining A Career In Community And Technical College Leadership By Coping With Job Stress Through Emotional Intelligence, Claire Korschinowski

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe and explore the use of emotional intelligence for coping with organizational role stress as perceived by senior-level leaders serving as college presidents, vice presidents and deans in the Washington State community and technical college system. A second purpose of this study was to describe the differences in perceptions amongst senior-level leader’s use of emotional intelligence as a stress coping strategy.

Methodology: For this qualitative phenomenological study, data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews from 15 senior-level leaders. Participants identified a variety of ways emotional intelligence factors into coping with organizational …

A Cross-Cultural Examination Of The Effect Of Employer Support On Employee Productivity, Shawn Tuman, Haley Lipton

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The purpose of this creative, collaborative, capstone project is to conduct a cross-cultural examination of the effect of employer support on employee productivity by compiling, examining, and synthesizing conclusions from existing research. In a world of growing globalization and technological innovation, the speed of productivity is often the cornerstone that differentiates successful businesses from unsuccessful businesses, providing a competitive advantage to the quick while the others fall behind. Often this increased level of efficiency comes at a cost beyond the price of the product and the salary of employees, a deeper, psychological cost. By reviewing research focused in the United …

Examining The Mediating Influence Of Occupational Self-Efficacy And Perceived Organizational Support On The Relationship Between Perceived Managerial Coaching Behaviors And Employee Engagement Among Higher Education Enrollment Management Professionals, William S. Carrell

Human Resource Development Theses and Dissertations

The U.S. higher education environment is characterized by significant governmental/regulatory scrutiny, increasing competition, decreasing State funding, and demands for professionals to do more with less. In this environment, managers are increasingly expected to take on functions typically associated with traditional human resource roles, in particular the training, development, and retention of employees, often with limited or no access to formalized training resources.

This study predicted that a relationship exists between the perceived managerial coaching behaviors enacted by a direct supervisor and employee engagement among manager-level employees in strategic enrollment management divisions within higher education institutions. The hypotheses predicted this relationship …

Mindfulness In The Workplace: Mindful Self-Regulation, Sophia M. Bowers

Organization, Information and Learning Sciences ETDs

Organizations are under pressure to perform and adapt to an ever-changing environment, creating stress on the employees, translating to direct and indirect costs to the organization. Mindfulness is recognized as an effective approach to managing stress, and has benefits on cognition, attention, and well-being, but limited research has investigated how individuals integrate mindfulness into their workplaces, which is the purpose of this study. The primary research question in this study asked how mindfulness workplace practice help individuals to self-regulate a) attention or thoughts, b) emotions, and c) both attention or thoughts and emotions and what the associated benefits are in …

Child-Headed Households In Rural Zimbabwe: Perceptions Of Shona Orphaned Children, Eucharia Gomba

Theses & Dissertations

This qualitative ethnographic case study explored the phenomenon of Child- Headed Households (CHHs) in rural Zimbabwe from the perspectives of a Shona community. My intention was to gain an understanding on how these children access necessities like food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, and cope on a daily basis without parental care, or adult supervision. The perceptions of both the orphaned children and the adults in their community were investigated through the integrative lens of the Shona philosophy of unhu, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and Bronfenbrenner’s ideas of systems. The findings of this study show that children from child-headed …

Service Leadership: The First Year Student Experience, Connor Curtis

Senior Honors Projects

Servant leadership, in the words of Robert Greenleaf from the Greenleaf Center of Servant Leadership, is “a servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.” This has become one of the guiding theories of leadership within the Center for Student Leadership Development’s (CSLD) Leadership Studies minor at the University of Rhode Island. First-year students in the Leadership Studies minor have the opportunity to learn different leadership models and theories and apply them to their own life. My personal experience and the experiences of others who have participated in service projects locally, nationally, …

The Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center Giving Garden At Coogan Farm: A Practitioner Report On Community Gardens For Health And Regional Food Security, Emma Sutphen

Sustainability and Social Justice

The Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center (DPNC) is a community organization that, through its various programming, works to perpetuate a vision of humans as part and parcel of the world. In 2013, when the Nature Center acquired the Coogan Farm property, the organization built a community garden called the Giving Garden to serve surrounding communities, expanding services to the foodservice sector educational programming around sustainable agriculture. DPNC’s partnership with the Robert G. Youngs Family Foundation, United Way of Southeastern Connecticut, and Gemma E. Moran mobile food pantry, forged in 2014, has allowed the garden to minimize area food insecurity through its …

Exploring Churn And Alignment Between Retention And Occupational Culture As Perceived By Professional Truck Drivers, Catherine M. Cole

Dissertations

Despite advances in logistics software and increased driver pay, the trucking industry continues a historic wave of human capital risks in the form of driver turnover and driver shortages. Previous efforts to understand the phenomenon of driver turnover rely heavily on supply chain, transportation, and logistics based disciplines. The current study provides a human capital ontology towards understanding professional truck driver perceptions. Within the interpretive framework of pragmatism, the study applied a simultaneous ethnographic and phenomenological research design to explore the phenomenon of churn and professional truck driver perceptions of environmental alignment between trucking industry retention strategies and the occupational …

The Effects Of Organizational Commitment And Harmonious Passion On Voluntary Turnover Among Social Workers: A Mixed Methods Study, Ashley Scales

Dissertations

The retention of Social Workers (SWs) is a concern that affects government and private organizations and the workforce. Voluntary turnover among SWs is increasing at an alarming rate. Not only is voluntary turnover rising, but organizational commitment and harmonious passion are declining (Wharton University of Pennsylvania, 2012). This study explored and examined the effect organizational commitment and harmonious passion have on voluntary turnover among Child Protective Services (CPS) SWs. The study used a concurrent mixed method design. Data collected during the quantitative phase provided information on the perceptions of SWs regarding organizational commitment, harmonious passion, and their intent to leave. …

Surprisingly Open Or Openly Surprised? That Is The Question; Using Surprise Experiences To Increase Openness To Experience And Tolerance Of Ambiguity, Anneke Veenendaal-De Kort

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Using Surprise Experiences to Increase Openness to Experience and Tolerance of Ambiguity

In the fast-changing world in which we are currently living, we constantly come across situations and problems that we have not encountered before. An open mind and the ability to tolerate ambiguity are important skills in uncertain times. People who embrace the unpredictable can develop their resilience and flexibility. Surprisologists Luna and Renninger (2015) have discovered that a great way of dipping into unpredictability is through surprise. For my Master’s Project, I designed experiences that transform people’s openness and tolerance for ambiguity through surprise. This paper begins with …

Principal Professional Development And Principal Self-Efficacy In An Urban School District., Brian Thomas Garrett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Educator professional development (PD) is a heavily relied upon method for school improvement, and administrator professional development (APD) is a key element to nearly all school reform efforts. District-wide APD in large school districts can carry a heavy cost in financial and human resources. Moreover, PD is frequently too inadequately planned and/or implemented to bring about lasting positive change in educator practice, school reform, and student achievement. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between principal PD focused on culture/climate or instruction and principal self-efficacy in an urban school district. Through hierarchical linear multiple regression (HLMR), this …

Productivity Redesigned, Joergen Oerstroem Moeller

Asian Management Insights

Looking at productivity, not just of the plant, but of society as a whole.