This project explores the role of Black Baptist churches – both past and present – in educational reform. Transformative civility offers a practical theological leadership model that engages in phronēsis and conscientization for liberation. The study focuses on Northumberland County, Virginia, and draws upon Robert London Smith’s Black Existential Theological Hermeneutic (BETH) method. The BETH method uncovers practical and theological challenges and demonstrates how transformative civility can promote educational reform. In such reform, phronēsis (practical wisdom) and conscientization (critical consciousness) awaken and empower the church and community to take action and provide equal access and justice for all citizens regardless of race.

Leadership style has been studied from various perspectives including transformational leadership and the components of leadership competencies needed to exhibit transformational styles. However, there was a gap in the literature on the influence of leadership style on nursing professional behaviors and overall professionalism. The purpose of this descriptive, phenomenological study was to understand and explore the beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions of staff nurses on leadership style and its influence on professional nursing behaviors working in an inpatient care unit at a tertiary care center. The theory of transformational leadership was the conceptual framework for the study. A phenomenological approach was used for the qualitative interview with data analysis using a descriptive method. A total of 8 nursing participants were interviewed revealing that nurses had similar thoughts on their perceptions of professional characteristics and leadership driving professional socialization. Nurses articulated a practical knowledge of professional activities with little to no connection to a larger sense of professional identity, theory in practice, and ethical obligations to the future of the profession of nursing. There is a noted lack of professionalism seen in the discipline of nursing. Professional registered nurses and heath care leaders in nursing can benefit from this study. Understanding how leadership style can influence nursing not only impacts positive social change and shapes the future of the discipline of nursing, but can also potentially impact patient care outcomes and patient.

The fast food industry is experiencing issues related to employee engagement and retention. Researchers have shown that managers' transformational leadership behaviors impact employee engagement and turnover intent in various work environments; however, no research to date has evaluated its influence on the fast food industry's hourly-wage, nonmanagement workforce. Building on the theoretical research of Burns and Bass, this study was conducted to examine the relationships among managers' 5 transformational leadership behaviors of idealized influence attributes, idealized influence behavior, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration and employee engagement and turnover intent. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire , the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale and Turnover Intention Measure were used to assess (N = 116) hourly-waged, nonmanagement fast food employees' engagement and turnover intent. Stepwise regression analyses were used to determine whether managers' transformational leadership behaviors predicted employee engagement and turnover intent. Results indicated that Intellectual Stimulation was a statistically significant predictor of employee engagement and turnover intention at the .05 alpha level. These findings supported the transformational leadership model in a different work environment, potentially increasing its generalizability. Additionally, findings suggest transformational leadership that encompasses facets of intellectual stimulation would be a better fit for the fast food industry. The study findings might promote positive social change by encouraging the fast food industry to train leaders in behaviors that can result in greater employee engagement and lower turnover intent.

In the South Carolina state government, 43.4% of all full-time equivalent employees will be eligible to retire by the mid- to late-2020s. The potential loss of core organizational knowledge may occur as a result of the retirement of seasoned employees. Grounded by the transformational leadership theory, this qualitative case study explored the successful succession strategies of 8 Certified Public Managers (CPMs) in South Carolina state government organizations. Purposeful sampling led to selecting the 8 CPMs who each had more than 11 years of experience managing employees and each directly influenced the programmatic operations for their respective state government organizations. Data were obtained through individual semi-structured interviews and through state government organizational documents. Analysis included using codes to identify similar words and phrases, then recoding to categorize the codes into themes. Data transcriptions, coding, member checking, and methodological triangulation were used to strengthen the credibility of the findings. Thematic analysis identified 3 emergent themes within the data: succession implementation, succession continuity, and succession hindrances. The implications for positive social change include the potential for state government executive leadership to implement a succession program for all South Carolina state government organizations. The positive social change implications may provide standardization and structure for retaining core knowledge that could contribute to continuity, an increased focus on sustainable workforce capital, customer satisfaction, and social responsibility throughout communities in South Carolina.

As the poverty rate continues to rise, many individuals seek assistance to help meet basic needs. Previous research has indicated that churches provide a social safety net for those in need, yet some churches choose not to become human service providers. The purpose of this multicase study was to explore how pastoral transformational leadership influences a church's decision to become a provider of human services among African American pastors and churches. Transformational leadership provided the theoretical framework for this study. The purposeful sample included bounded systems of 5 pastors and their respective churches. Each case was bound by race, location, and denomination. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire was used as a tool to identify each pastor's leadership style, and interviews were used to determine how the church becomes a human service provider. Interviews were transcribed, inductively coded, and analyzed to identify recurring themes. The results of this research indicated that the transformational pastor is influential in all aspects of the church's human service initiatives. The transformational pastor plays a key role in determining whether the church becomes involved in human service initiatives, and he or she remains involved throughout initiation, implementation, and sustainability. Findings from this study may influence pastoral leadership training and provide a framework for churches and communities who wish to help meet the social needs in their communities. If churches consistently address poverty-related issues, they can address the underlying problems associated with it. This can result in a decrease in the poverty rate over time. This contribution can potentially help decrease the rate of poverty in the community.

Principal leadership is crucial to improving school effectiveness and positively affecting organizational culture in the midst of expectations from education reform mandates. Principals who provide direction and exercise influence can inspire commitment from organizational members to attain shared goals. Rural school principals face unique obstacles and situations as documented in the research and literature. This qualitative research study aimed to provide insight as to the perceived impact of transformational leadership behaviors and characteristics on organizational culture. This study also provided insight as to the transformational leadership behaviors and characteristics perceived to positively affect organizational culture. The protocols, which included interviews, were administered by the researcher to principals and certificated teachers at four rural elementary schools (two elementary schools not in Program Improvement [PI] and two elementary schools in PI) in Fresno County that met specific student demographic criteria. The data from the interviews provided insight regarding increased individual and collective stress in rural elementary schools due to the unprecedented expectations of NCLB. The organizational response to this increased stress was found to be contingent on the behaviors and characteristics by the rural elementary principal. The findings indicated a difference in perceptions between certificated teachers at the rural elementary schools not in PI and in PI. The rural principals in non-PI schools utilized communication to define clear expectation, and a collaborative decision making process to develop a shared vision which cultivated trust among certificated teachers to improve organizational culture and student academic achievement. The rural principals in PI schools were found to have utilized bureaucratic leadership approaches. The bureaucratic leadership approaches led to increased stress and frustration among certificated teachers. Frustration was found to have negatively affected organizational culture and no improvement in student academic achievement. This study validated the need for rural school principals to be aware of effective leadership approaches to positively affect organizational culture.

The purpous of this qualitative study is to spotlight some of the followers/employess technostress concerns associated with future AI implementation in one of the Swedish public centers. The methodology used in this research is a deductive approach and primary data was collected by conducting nine semi-structured interviews with followers /mployess working at a social care center in Växjö Municipality, Sweden. The findings support that transformational leadership style can be utilized to address followers´technostress fears in the understudy social care center through enhancing followers engagement. Conclusively, transformational leadership style interaction with followers enables leader to enhance followers engagement and mitigate technostress factors generated by AI implementation.

No description available.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / It is not a new phenomenon that there is a high turnover rate among social workers. In particular, child welfare has shown the highest rates of staff turnover. To address the issue, turnover and retention of child welfare workers have been studied for decades. The history of research produced a long list of determinants for child welfare worker turnover, more than 20 factors, and showed conflicting findings with the same variables. Moreover, the long list of factors for workers’ decisions to leave has poorly contributed to organizational practices for retaining child welfare workers. Therefore, this study aims to examine organizational factors, particularly leadership, for child welfare worker turnover intention, in order to help child welfare agencies to invent a practice model to prevent qualified worker’s turnover. To do so, it is important to examine the effect of organizational commitment on employees’ turnover intention. Therefore, following is the primary research question: Does the use of transformational leadership style in social work organizations explain child welfare worker turnover intention? A cross-sectional survey research was employed among workers in public child welfare agencies in a Midwest state, United States (N=214). Five models were examined in terms of the direct and indirect effects of transformational leadership on turnover intention of child welfare workers using STATA ver. 15. The study finding showed that transformational leadership styles of local office directors had a direct and negative effect on child welfare workers’ turnover intention. As a result, this study recommends that child welfare provide local office directors with leadership training to reduce preventable turnover of child welfare workers. However, the findings should be cautiously interpreted due to the sampling strategy used in this study.

Effective spiritual care is difficult to define and evaluate objectively. As chaplains and Religious Support Teams endeavor to provide care in the highly mission-focused and objective-driven context of the United States military, this difficulty becomes uniquely problematic. The author demonstrates this reality using an exemplar Air Force Reserve chapel team as a case study. Blending transformational leadership, situational leadership, and John Kotter’s change model, the author constructs a vision for change culminating in a base level Operating Instruction that offers specific objectives, measurable tasks, and qualification metrics. Alongside this instruction, he crafts an Implementation Strategy designed to strategically inspire and motivate teams toward change. In doing so, he provides a path forward to allow chaplains to not only evaluate ministry effectiveness but also enhance communication with leaders at the base level and up into the highest levels of the Department of Defense.