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The purpose of this study was to examine and describe transition services vis a vis the community integration of an adult-age special education student with a developmental disability. An additional goal was to provide the reader with a detailed portrait of the experiences of this student, especially with respect to the relationships and networks that influenced this student's integration into a community setting. Transition, according to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (2004), is a results-oriented process that requires special education program leaders to focus on the specific needs of each student in order to successfully integrate them in communities. This case study was significant in that it contributed to understanding how an individual with disabilities copes in educational programs and in communities. Data collection involved interviews with an adult age student who received special education transition services, her parent, her case manager, document review of the Individualized Education Program of the selected student, and review of relevant transition program and policy documents. Social capital theory was used as the conceptual framework for this study and guided the data analysis. Three distinctive themes were revealed through the analysis of the data: Community Opportunities, Development and Implementation of the IEP, and Employment. The overall findings of this case study revealed that through implementation of the IEP and the transition service in a community based setting, a multitude of social relationships and networks were activated by the student. The IEP specifically generated relationships and networks through opportunities for the student to have a peer mentor, have structured social time with her peers, have access to community venues, and through employment. The following conclusions were drawn: Community opportunities provide access to resources that influence integration: I EP transition services are a mechanism to facilitate community integration; and, e mployment is a primary outcome of transition service and a means to integrate into the community. The overall findings of this case study confirmed that vital social relationships and networks were activated by the student through conscientious implementation of her IEP and particularly as a result of the recommended transition services that afforded her community-based employment. / Ph. D.

This dissertation examined the relationships among adoptive status, social capital, and academic achievement. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) had 609 adopted and 11, 940 non-adopted adolescents. I used OLS regression models to help explain why adopted adolescents have significantly lower grade point averages (GPA) than non-adopted adolescents. Potential mediators were family social capital, closeness to family, mother and father, mothers' and fathers' involvement in their children's education, self-esteem, academic expectations, and in-school behavioral difficulties. Only closeness to fathers and in-school behavioral difficulties differed by adoptive status. Compared to non-adopted adolescents, adopted adolescents were closer to their fathers and had more in-school behavioral difficulties. Adopted adolescents also had lower GPA's, even when all other predictors were in the model. However, were it not for greater closeness to their fathers, adopted adolescents' would have had even more in-school behavioral difficulties and consequently, lower academic achievement. The results have implications for social capital theory and theory and research concerning adoptive families. / Ph. D.

This thesis is concerned with the social impacts of urban design. It responds to the extensive history of race-based and class-based exclusion in American cities and offers a critique of postmodern planning strategies that seek to encourage social diversity but often undermine it. The Braddock Metro Neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia, encompasses the historic community of Uptown, at one time the largest African-American community in Alexandria. Uptown, like most African-American urban neighborhoods in the United States, has been shaped by the forces of racism, segregation, displacement, public housing, white flight, economic disinvestment, crime, historic districting, and - recently - redevelopment and gentrification. The Braddock Metro Neighborhood Plan, a small-area master plan for accommodating transit-oriented redevelopment while affirming neighborhood character and connecting diverse residents, serves as the foundational document for neighborhood redevelopment. Central to the Neighborhood Plan is the replacement of public housing projects with mixed-income communities. These communities, which accommodate an influx of middle-income residents while retaining a percentage of low-income residents, are expressing a new type of residential diversity in the neighborhood, particularly in terms of the spatial proximity of different social groups. Proponents of mixed-income communities cite the potential for the formation of Bridging Social Capital (i.e., benefits, such as improved educational or employment opportunities, shared via casual ties among residents of different social groups). However, researchers have observed self-segregation occurring among residents of mixed-income communities, suggesting that spatial proximity alone does not guarantee the mixture of different social groups. This thesis posits that social mixing in diverse neighborhoods depends upon the presence of carefully designed social spaces, and it offers a set of streetscape interventions intended to support the formation of Bridging Social Capital in the Braddock Metro Neighborhood. The selected site consists of two historic street segments that are not yet fully redeveloped or gentrified. Design decisions are grounded in a careful assessment of site conditions, including existing social conditions, and supported by academic research in history, sociology, urban planning, and social-space design theory. Precise, small-scale interventions engage edges, affirm site character, and encourage residents to linger, sense one another, and tolerate challenging conditions of diversity. Design elements also accommodate the City of Alexandria's guidelines for street safety, mobility, accessibility, stormwater management, and historic preservation. / Master of Landscape Architecture / This thesis is concerned with the social impacts of urban design. It responds to the extensive history of race-based and class-based exclusion in American cities and offers a critique of postmodern planning strategies that seek to encourage social diversity but often undermine it. The Braddock Metro Neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia, encompasses the historic community of Uptown, at one time the largest African-American community in Alexandria. Uptown, like most African-American urban neighborhoods in the United States, has been shaped by the forces of racism, segregation, displacement, public housing, white flight, economic disinvestment, crime, historic districting, and - recently - redevelopment and gentrification. The Braddock Metro Neighborhood Plan, a small-area master plan for accommodating transit-oriented redevelopment while affirming neighborhood character and connecting diverse residents, serves as the foundational document for neighborhood redevelopment. Central to the Neighborhood Plan is the replacement of public housing projects with mixed-income communities. These communities, which accommodate an influx of middle-income residents while retaining a percentage of low-income residents, are expressing a new type of residential diversity in the neighborhood, particularly in terms of the spatial proximity of different social groups. Proponents of mixed-income communities cite the potential for the formation of Bridging Social Capital (i.e., benefits, such as improved educational or employment opportunities, shared via casual ties among residents of different social groups). However, researchers have observed self-segregation occurring among residents of mixed-income communities, suggesting that spatial proximity alone does not guarantee the mixture of different social groups. This thesis posits that social mixing in diverse neighborhoods depends upon the presence of carefully designed social spaces, and it offers a set of streetscape interventions intended to support the formation of Bridging Social Capital in the Braddock Metro Neighborhood. The selected site consists of two historic street segments that are not yet fully redeveloped or gentrified. Design decisions are grounded in a careful assessment of site conditions, including existing social conditions, and supported by academic research in history, sociology, urban planning, and social-space design theory. Precise, small-scale interventions engage edges, affirm site character, and encourage residents to linger, sense one another, and tolerate challenging conditions of diversity. Design elements also accommodate the City of Alexandria's guidelines for street safety, mobility, accessibility, stormwater management, and historic preservation.

Using the perspectives of social capital theory (Coleman, 1988) and life course theory (Elder et al., 2003), this study examined how economic capital and particular dimensions of the parent-adolescent relationship predicted educational outcomes. The economic capital variables were family income, parent education, and parent occupational prestige. Relationship capital variables included: closeness to parents, expectations for schooling, parental values, and parent trust. The three economic capital variables, expectations for schooling, and parent trust all significantly predicted final GPA and educational attainment. However, parent-adolescent closeness and parental values did not predict educational outcomes in the overall model. This study extended research in the field by examining both final GPA and educational attainment as educational outcomes. By using a nationally representative sample and four time points of data collection, this research was able to explore how various forms of capital predict early adulthood educational outcomes. / Master of Science

Yes / We contribute to research on cooperative resilience by examining how their main advantage of social foundations may facilitate the assembly of resilience capabilities. Drawing from the social capital literature, we focus on the strategies and activities of a nationally known rural cooperative in Indonesia to reveal social capital mechanisms, specifically channeling and targeting social capital, that underlie diverse sets of resilience capabilities. By conceptualizing cooperative resilience according to cooperatives’ dual objectives of economic and social viability, we build an empirically grounded framework that encompasses social capital-driven mechanisms that underlie cooperative resilience. Economically, strengthening social capital (channeling) may result in organizational transparency and collaborative work, while widening social networks (targeting) develops velocity and flexibility. Socially, both mechanisms lead to the emergence of individual-level resilience capabilities. Our study informs business research on resilience by conceptualizing it in the context of cooperatives and shedding light on its underlying social capital-driven mechanisms.

This dissertation contains three essays on the political economy and economic development in Iran. In the first paper, I investigate the political resource curse. The comprehensive literature on the relationship between democracy and income counts oil-rich countries in Middle East as outliers: the abundance of funds for the states and the absence of effective tax systems hold back the formation of democracy. But democracy is more than a purely political system. Sustainable democracy requires a set of social norms and intra-citizen relationships that is called social capital. Emphasizing the importance of the formation of social capital on the democratization of a society, I use female labor force participation as a proxy for social capital. Using survival analysis, I show that oil revenue delays the formation of the social capital required for the democracy. In the second paper, I inspect the trend and patterns of group-based inequality in Iran. Inequality among groups can be a source of conflict and instability. Iran is a habitat of ethnic diversity and experiences stable peaceful relationships among its ethnicities, while its neighbors experience many ethnic conflicts. In this study, we compute three measures of group-based inequality for the following outcomes: education, assets, income, and expenditure per capita. The groups are defined based on gender, ethnicity/language (Persian, Azeri, and other ethnic minorities), and region (urban versus rural and capital city versus other places). The data are 23 years of annual Household Expenditure and Income Surveys (HEIS) from 1990 through 2012. Inequality between groups based on religion (Muslim, non-Muslim) and citizenship (Iranian, Non-Iranian) is also studied, using the 2006 census. The analysis of the trend of horizontal inequality reveals substantial reduction in between-group inequalities over the 1990–2012 period. On the other hand, gender based income inequality remains high. The implications and underlying reasons for these results are discussed. The third paper studies one the most serious recent problems facing Iran’s economy: the economic cost of the recent US and UN sanctions. This paper measures the economic cost of the U.N. trade and financial sanctions on Iran’s economy. While there is a substantial literature studying how sanctions impact the economies of target states, the aggregate economic cost of sanctions remains underexplored. This study provides a new measure of the cost of sanctions at the aggregate level, defined as the gap between Iran’s actual GDP and what it would have been without sanctions. Using the synthetic control method of analysis, I replicate Iran’s GDP without sanctions. I demonstrate that, while previous sanctions had a negligible impact, Iran’s GDP fell markedly following the financial sanctions of 2010. / PHD / This dissertation contains three essays on the political economy and economic development. The first paper studies the negative relationship between democracy and oil-income. Formation of democracy requires strong role of citizens in governing the society which is called social capital. I show that oil revenue delays the formation of the social capital, and therefore delays democratization. In the second paper, I inspect the trend and patterns of group-based inequality in Iran. Inequality among groups is counted as a source of conflict and instability. Iran is a habitat of ethnic diversity which experiences stability and almost peaceful relationships among its ethnicities, while its neighbors experience many ethnic conflicts. This study shows substantial reduction in between-group inequalities over the 1990–2012 period. On the other hand, gender based income inequality remains high. The third paper measures the economic cost of the U.N. trade and financial sanctions on Iran’s economy. I estimate the amount by which Iran’s GDP decreased following the financial sanctions of 2010.

This dissertation explores the relationship between scenario planning and the building of new social capital in addressing potential or actually perceived environmental turbulence. In particular, the research explores how, when environments around organizations risk unpredictable and disruptive change, people in those organizations can act to develop new social capital that contributes to their survival. In this research, I present scenario planning as a mechanism for organizations to build this new social capital. Scholars have suggested that certain forms of social capital are more conducive to being directly built than others. My research indicates that scenario planning entails aspects which, in effect, are direct investments in creating the cognitive social capital resources that make new sense of turbulence. These resources are created with the scenario process articulating new conceptual framings and possibilities for the future, thereby re-conceptualizing the situation. The resources enable new shared meanings to be created - directly building the cognitive dimension of new social capital while enabling the more researched structural and relational dimensions to be built as by-products. This dissertation also suggests that social capital can be built more quickly than researchers have previously indicated. By directly investing in the creation of new shared meanings, scenario planning can build new social capital faster than the centuries that Putnam and generations that Emery and Trist suggested were needed. The dissertation’s contribution to the social capital literature is to suggest how new social capital, by foregrounding the cognitive dimension, can be purposefully and more quickly built to address turbulent conditions. The contribution to the scenario planning literature is to propose a scholarly explanation for how scenario planning builds new social capital, suggested in practice but not yet theorized, and in so doing, provide practitioners with a new purpose to strengthen the return on investments these efforts require.

Two contrasting notions have been put forward on how social capital may influence individual effectiveness in organizations. Burt (1992) sets forth the informational and control advantages that are possible by building an open network characterized by large numbers of structural holes. In contrast, Coleman (1990) and Simmel (1950) have suggested that network closure, exemplified by large numbers of Simmelian ties, enables actors to develop trust, cohesiveness, and norms which contribute to effectiveness. Simmelian ties are strong, reciprocal ties shared by three actors. It is proposed that an actor's network cannot be dominated by both structural holes and Simmelian ties. Thus, this study examines whether a moderating variable is at work. It is proposed that the actor's task interdependence in the workplace influences the relationship between network closure and individual effectiveness. Actors in less task interdependent environments will benefit especially from the information and control benefits afforded by a network characterized by structural holes. Conversely, actors in highly interdependent environments will benefit especially from the creation of trust and cooperation that result from large numbers of Simmelian ties. Data was collected on 113 subjects in three organizations. Subjects were asked to rate the strength of their relationship with all organization members and their own level of task interdependence. Contrary to expectations, nearly all subjects reported high levels of task interdependence. Raters in each organization provided individual effectiveness measures for all subjects. Hypotheses were tested using hierarchical set regression and bivariate correlation. The results indicated support for the hypothesized relationship of Simmelian ties with task interdependence. When examining all cases, no support was found for the hypothesized relationship of structural holes and Simmelian ties with individual effectiveness and of structural holes with task interdependence. Nonetheless, additional analyses provided some indication of an association between Simmelian ties and individual effectiveness. Task interdependence did not moderate the relationships between either Simmelian ties or structural holes and individual effectiveness.

Abstract Attracting and developing information technology (IT) professionals is one of the top concerns for companies. Although much research has been conducted about the job behavior and attitudes of IT professionals over the last three decades, findings are inconclusive and contradictory. This suggests that something may be missing in how we examine this phenomenon. Most of this research is drawn from theories of motivation, very little examines the effect of social relationships on IT professionals' behavior and attitude. Yet, social capital theory suggests that job behavior and attitude may be greatly influenced by these relationships. This suggests that IT professionals' social capital warrants empirical examination. The primary research question that this dissertation addresses is how social capital affects IT professionals' work attitude and behavior including job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior, job performance and turnover intention. The research model in this dissertation examines the influence of three aspects of social capital on IT professionals' job attitude and work behavior: tie strength, the number of ties and the structural holes. Data were collected from 129 IT professionals from a range of jobs, organizations and industries. Results indicate that tie strength in the organization of an IT professional is positively related to job satisfaction. The number of ties outside an organization an IT professional has is also positively related to job performance. However, hypotheses about organizational citizenship behavior and turnover intention are not supported. Several implications for organizational executives and managers are offered based on findings.