Recently, researchers in the organizational behavior have continued their research on the related issues in the perception of organizational politics in the hope to promote organizational trust, and thus achieve the competitive advantages of the organization. Therefore, this study is based on the revised model of the perception of organizational politics, proposed by Ferris et al. (2002), to explore the relation between the perception of organizational politics and organizational trust, and to use SPSS 17.0 and the structural equation model as verification. To re-analyze the research information provided by the research team led by Professor Chin-Ming Ho in the perception of organizational politics, there are discoveries as follows: 1. the dimension of "general political behavior" in the perception of organizational politics has a negative impact to the dimension of "trust manager" in the organizational trust. 2. the dimension of "general political behavior" in the perception of organizational politics has a negative impact to the dimension of "trust organization" in the organizational trust. 3. the dimension of "general political behavior" in the perception of organizational politics has a negative impact to the dimension of "trust colleagues" in the organizational trust. 4. the dimensions of "remain silent, waiting for the benefits" and "difference between policies and practices" in the perception of organizational politics has significantly positive impact to each dimension in the perception of organizational trust.

Abstract The escalating fuel price in Taiwan has prompted the transportation industry to explore renewable energy sources for fuels, but what is more urgent at this stage is to improve transportation efficiency to cut transportation costs. The aim of this study is to implement fuel-efficient rewards to modify driving behavior, thereby improving fuel efficiency. The outcome of this strategy is not only about slowing down greenhouse gas production, but also a reduction of fuel costs of transportation companies. Every year highway bus companies consume millions of liters of fuel, and their fuel costs often exceed hundreds of millions of dollars. Therefore, how to conserve on fuel consumption has become an important issue for all of the bus companies. However so far, besides the eventual fuel savings data, there is still a lack of objective methods to evaluate the execution of such conservation programs. the project will use the ¡§Motivation-Opportunity-Ability Method¡¨ ¡]MOA¡^to develop an analysis model; verification of dynamic data analysis will be conducted using Single or Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling (Multilevel SEM). According to the above research results show that Taken together the investigators suggest those public as well as private transportation companies that have not implemented fuel-efficient related policies to start planning fuel-efficient reward programs and implementing the programs as soon as possible. Furthermore, transportation companies should give courses about environmental driving to teach drivers correct environmental-friendly driving as well as award or publicly praise fuel-efficient drivers. These strategies will bring good outcome for drivers, transportation companies, and environmental protection.

The number of longitudinal studies has increased steadily in various social science disciplines over the last decade. Growth Mixture Modeling (GMM) has emerged among the new approaches for analyzing longitudinal data. It can be viewed as a combination of Hierarchical Linear Modeling, Latent Growth Curve Modeling and Finite Mixture Modeling. The combination of both continuous and categorical latent variables makes GMM a flexible analysis procedure. However, when researchers analyze their data using GMM, some may assume that the units are independent of each other even though it may not always be the case. The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the impact of ignoring a higher nesting structure in Multilevel Growth Mixture Modeling on the accuracy of classification of individuals and the accuracy on tests of significance (i.e., Type I error rate and statistical power) of the parameter estimates for the model in each subpopulation. Two simulation studies were conducted. In the first study, the impact of misspecifying the multilevel mixture model is investigated by ignoring a level of nesting structure in cross-sectional data. In the second study, longitudinal clustered data (e.g., repeated measures nested within units and units nested within clusters) are analyzed correctly and with a misspecification ignoring the highest level of the nesting structure. Results indicate that ignoring a higher level nesting structure results in lower classification accuracy, less accurate fixed effect estimates, inflation of lower-level variance estimates, and less accurate standard error estimates, the latter result which in turn affects the accuracy of tests of significance for the fixed effects. The magnitude of the intra-class correlation (ICC) coefficient has a substantial impact when a higher level nesting structure is ignored; the higher the ICC, the more variance at the highest level is ignored, and the worse the performance of the model. The implication for applied researchers is that it is important to model the multilevel data structure in (growth) mixture modeling. In addition, researchers should be cautious in interpreting their results if ignoring a higher level nesting structure is inevitable. Limitations concerning appropriate use of latent class analysis in growth modeling include unknown effects of incorrect estimation of the number of latent classes, non-normal distribution effects, and different growth patterns within-group and between-group.

The Improvement Strategy of Kaohsiung Mayor¡¦s Mailbox via Internal Customer Orientation Abstract Under the circumstances of increasing citizen demands and active participation in civil affairs, to improve citizen satisfaction and service quality is the most important things for the government. Actually, whatever the convenient public services or policy vision, these policies products will have great effects on the real life of the public through government employees¡¦ services. In the process of policy output, government employees¡¦ attitude toward the policy will affect the policy performace, and then, leads to citizen satisfation and loyalty. To let the external customer feel satisfied must gratify the internal customer¡¦s desire first. That is to say, to offer good internal service quality to government employees will generate high loyalty to organization, and naturally, the internal customer will give the excellent service quality to external customer. Mayor¡¦s electronic mailbox is the visualization of ¡§the Electronic Government¡¨ or ¡§the Virtual Government¡¨. In addition to providing policy information, governmental service on line, and enhancing citizen participation in public affairs by network technology, it became the vital policy instrument to implement government commitments, and supplied the grievance solving, information sharing, and policy problems construction. This research will discuss the function of customer orientation and it¡¦s effectiveness to inside customer. It began with the present utilization of Mayor¡¦s mailbox, literature review, in-depth interview, questionnaire, and confirm the positive linkage among internal customer orientation, system management mechanism, e-service quality, and internal customer satisfaction. Data were analysed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation model to test variables and constructs. Finally, this research will put forward a series of proposals, including a short, middle, and long-term improvement strategy for the reference of Kaohsiung city government.

The relationship between budgetary participation, budgetary slack and performance has received a great deal of attention in the literatures of management accounting. However, there is a little consistent conclusion in the relationship between budgetary participation, budgetary slack and performance. Behavior accounting researchers using the Contingent Theory in order to conciliate these inconsistent conclusions also confound contrary results (such as Merchant (1985) and Dunk (1993)). This study suggested that the perceived cause of budgetary participation and the cognitive functions of budgetary participation are important determinants of propensity to create budgetary slack and performance. In addition, this study considered the influence of procedural justice about budgetary decision on budgetary slack and performance. We proposed that there are three actions of participator in the process of participation. The first, subordinate would review the surroundings around themselves like environment uncertainty, task uncertainty, budgetary emphasis, role ambiguity and information asymmetry. The second, subordinates will think the need of functions of participation. The surrounding variables will influence the cognitive functions of participation. Finally, they will decide the subsequent action (in this study we discuss the propensity of budgetary slack and performance). We gathered data from 174 subordinate managers working in the publicly owned companies in Taiwan and used LISREL to test our hypotheses. The results of this study revealed that 1.The cause of budgetary of participation is imperative factor influencing the need of the functions of budgetary participation. The environment uncertainty, task uncertainty, role ambiguity and information asymmetry has positively direct influence on the need of informational effect of budgetary participation respectively. Budgetary emphasis has positively direct influence on the need of affective/motivational effect of budgetary participation. 2.The informational effect of budgetary participation was directive associated with budgetary slack. However, the affective/motivational effect of budgetary participation was indirectly related to budgetary slack through procedural justice. 3. The affective/motivational effect of budgetary participation was directive associated with performance. However, the informational effect of budgetary participation was indirectly related to performance through procedural justice and affective/motivational effect of budgetary participation. We anticipated that the result of this study could offer insight into the relationship between budgetary participation, slack and performance. In addition, we expect to give some suggestions to firms that implement participatory budgeting system to avoid dysfunctional behavior of employees and to encourage performance.

This research investigated the decision process surrounding the self-regulated learning of new uses of existing technology. With firms investing up to 50% of their capital budgets on information technology (in excess of 1 trillion dollars in aggregate), understanding what factors motivate or inhibit more encompassing use of technology is of practical concern (Bowen 1986; Nambisan et al. 1999; Mahmood et a. 2001). I introduced a dynamic element to the technology adoption/acceptance literature by using a framework based upon deferral option theory. This framework allows for the decision to learn a new use of technology to occur over time. I found that potential users chose to defer learning new uses of technology even when usefulness was evident and ease of learning was not prohibitive. Further, an additional benefit to using the deferral option framework was its inclusion of both rewards and penalties; I found that not only do potential users consider what can be gained by learning, but also what can be lost by trying to learn and failing. In addition to using a framework premised on deferral option theory, I investigated the properties of time pressure and subjective norms on the decision to learn new uses of technology. As time pressure offered a possible alternate explanation for why potential users defer learning, I controlled for it experimentally and determined that time pressure did affect deferral choice. Further, as subjective norms have had limited success as a predictor of intent to use technology in prior literature, I investigated the separate pieces of the theoretical construct, referent group perceptions and the motivation to comply with those perceptions. By manipulating environment between work and play settings, different motivational sources were enacted by the potential users. Specifically, I found that when potential users were externally motivated subjective norms did influence deferral, and when internally motivated, subjective norms did not influence a potential user??s decision to defer learning a new use of technology.

While information technology has rapidly changed work in the United States in the past 50 years, some businesses and industries have been slow to adopt new technologies. Healthcare is one industry that has lagged behind in information technology investment for a variety of reasons. Recent federal initiatives to encourage IT adoption in the healthcare industry provide an ideal context to study factors that influence technology acceptance. Data from 261 practicing pediatricians were collected to evaluate an extended Technology Acceptance Model. Results indicated that individual (i.e., perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use), organizational (i.e., subjective norm), and device (i.e., compatibility, reliability) characteristics collectively influence pediatricians' intention to adopt tablet computers in their medical practice. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Future research should examine additional variables that influence information technology adoption in organizations.

The concept of metamemory proposes that supplementary to typically measured memory abilities, memory monitoring and control processes are used to optimise learning. Accurate memory monitoring appears to be underpinned by a range of cognitive, and possibly affective, contributions. In populations with these deficits, metamemory has been shown to be impaired. In Multiple Sclerosis (MS), only a limited metamemory literature exists, surprising given that MS is a leading cause of disability among people of working age, and cognitive and mood disorder is common. Using structural equation modelling, this study of 100 people with MS explored factors contributing to performance on episodic Judgment of Learning, Retrospective Confidence and Feeling of Knowing. Given its negative influence on cognitive domains in MS, the impact of information processing deficits on metamemory was also investigated. Finally, memory self-report, a frequently used clinical indicator of memory functioning, was assessed. Findings suggest that memory complaint is associated with mood, and is unrelated to tested memory. Second, Retrospective Confidence Judgments were predictive of memory performance, even in the presence of memory impairment. Third, an unusual finding of maintained underconfidence at delay was observed in the Judgment of Learning task. Finally, Feeling of Knowing judgments related to executive, but not to memory ability. A novel finding in respect of this judgment was of processing speed relating negatively to accuracy, in the context of executive dysfunction. This suggests that some top-down direction of processing resources may be a factor in supporting accuracy, rather than the speed at which information is processed. Of all the task-based judgments, accuracy in this judgment was the only one with a reliable association with mood. Faster processing speed, executive dysfunction and least depression symptomatology related to low accuracy, perhaps typifying a profile of disinhibition seen in MS, characterised by poorly constrained processing and apparently elevated mood.

In order to fully explicate the role of news media in individuals’ political participation, this dissertation aims at establishing an integrative structural model that specifies relationships among news media use, its antecedents and mediators of its influence on political participation. The proposed model is comprised of key factors of political participation that previous research has identified. The relational structure is based on models and theories relevant to prediction of political behaviors. Specifically, the model integrates (a) communication mediation model, which posits that communication behaviors (i.e., news media use and interpersonal discussion) mediate the effects of socio-demographic variables (i.e., income, education, age, gender, and race) and political dispositions (i.e., political interest, partisanship and ideology) on political outcomes; (b) agenda-setting theory, which posits that frequent exposure to news media increases the salience of news objects in audiences’ minds; (c) cognitive mediation model, which posits that elaborative and collective thinking is a prerequisite to produce political outcomes of news exposure; (d) theory of planned behavior, which posits that human behavior can be best predicted by three proximal variables (i.e., attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control); (e) O-S-R-O-R (orientations-stimulus-reasoning-orientations-response) model of communication effects, which provides a parsimonious framework of effect process. Using the structural equation modeling (SEM) method, this dissertation analyzes the 2008 American National Election Studies data set to test the validity of the proposed structural model. Results indicate that frequent exposure to news media stimulates attentive news use as well as intra- and interpersonal reasoning, which produce a wide range of political outcomes. Two reasoning behaviors (i.e., self-reflection and interpersonal political discussion) are critical mechanisms that linked news media use to various political outcomes including political participation. Personal-psychological mediators, such as strength in affects, personal traits, opinions about political issues, campaign interest, political knowledge, attitude strength, perceived ability of political parties and political efficacy all significantly mediate the influence of news media use on political participation. News media use mediates significant portion of effects that a set of preexisting variables have on political participation as well as various types of political orientations. / text

The process of research is fraught with rote terminology that, when used blindly, can bend our methodological actions away from our theoretical intentions. This investigation is aimed at developing two methods for bringing meaning and interpretability to research when we work with confounds. I argue, with the first method, that granting confounds substantive influence in a network of related variables (rather than viewing confounds as nuisance variables) enhances the conceptual dimension with which phenomena can be explained. I evaluated models differing in how confounds were specified using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Generally, minor alterations to model specifications, such as direction of causal pathways, did not change model parameter estimates; however, the conceptual meaning of how the confounds interacted with other variables in the model changed drastically. Another frequent misconceptualization of confounds, detailed by the second method, occurs when confounds are used as proxy variables to control for variance that is not directly measureable, and no explicit attempt is made to ensure that the proxy variable adequately represents the underlying, intended construct. For this second demonstration, I used SHARE data to estimate models varying in the degree to which proxy variables represent intended variables. Results showed that parameter estimates can differ substantially across different levels of proxy variable representation. When imperfect proxy variables are used, an insufficient amount of variance is removed from the observed spurious relationship between design variables. The findings from this methodological demonstration underscore the importance of precisely imbuing confounds with conceptual meaning and selecting proxy variables that accurately represent the underlying construct for which control is intended.