Independent financial advisors face challenges with successful marketing strategies as competition from web-based resources, large U.S. financial services, and wealth advisors' corporations increase. The purpose of this exploratory case study was to understand financial advisors' perceptions, experiences, and marketing strategies to improve their companies' sustainability by targeting a broader population base, including minorities, who need assistance with retirement planning strategies. Consumer culture theory was the conceptual framework for this study. Purposeful sampling was the basis for selecting 7 financial advisors from the mid-Atlantic region of the United States for face-to-face interviews. Semistructured interviews with open-ended questions were used to identify financial advisors' marketing strategies to support financial stability. Secondary sources for data collection included documented client testimonials and reviews of company data. Yin's 5-step process of compiling, disassembling, reassembling, interpreting, and drawing conclusions was used; 6 themes emerged from the data: (a) building a referral system, (b) hosting events, (c) implementing community involvement, (d) knowing minorities' behavioral language, (e) providing financial literacy tools, and (f) maintaining effective marketing strategies. Implications for social change include financial advisors' strategies for marketing retirement planning strategies to the U.S. minority subcultures who are not solicited by financial advisors.

Robo-advisory is a new service in the financial market and is designed to support financial decisions. Previous researches show that attitudes toward robo-advisory are an important aspect of their acceptance, and therefore this study is designed to investigate how the attitudes to robo-advisory is affected by five chosen factors. Previous studies also show a lack of financial literacy in young women leading to poor investment decisions. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to study how the factors influence the attitudes toward robo-advisors from a perspective of a young women in order to see if robo-advisory could be used as a substitute for financial literacy. This qualitative research was conducted on ten young women age​ 20-30. The collected data has then been transcribed, and then analyzed based on a content analysis with categories created for the purpose of the survey. The result shows that without financial literacy or previous use of robo-advisory in their social circle, the perception of risk and trust for robo-advisory is unlikely to change. It also shows that previous bad experience of robot-based systems affect the attitude toward robo-advisory negatively. This research can be useful in the design of robo-advisory and how to shape the service to get this target group to start using it. Because attitudes have a major impact on the use of the service, the results of this survey are a good basis for companies to relate to.

Professional advisors are bearing the burdens of a) helping students make a connection to their institution; b) being largely responsible for the efforts to retain these students; and c) providing a multitude of services to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student body. While a great deal of information is available about students, retention, and services, the literature is void of detailed information on the professional advisor and the advisor's work life. The purpose of this study was to learn more about how advisors experience the elements of work life (job satisfaction, relationships with colleagues, commitment to the organization, performance, variety, and autonomy) and, in doing so, illuminate ways in which institutions can create environments in which advisors are encouraged to maximize their potential. Advisors' perceptions and the way they experience their work lives were collected through eighteen one-on-one personal interviews. The interviews were audio-taped and then professionally transcribed for a verbatim transcript. The transcripts were coded into the categories of work life and then sub-coded by emergent themes. In general, the professional advisors interviewed reported they were satisfied with their jobs as advisors, and most particularly with the support and guidance they receive from their colleagues and supervisors, the amount and level of variety in their work responsibilities, and their level of autonomy. These advisors described a strong degree of commitment to quality advising and notably to their students. Most of the frustrations they reported were related to concerns of 'letting the students down.' As a result of this study, recommendations for further research in the area of academic advising include 1) examining the roles, attitudes, and responsibilities of professional versus faculty advisors, 2) investigating the reasons institutions do or do not employ professional advisors, 3) collecting more detailed, preferably qualitative, information on the advisor/student relationship from the student perspective, and 4) addressing the issue of whether advisors would advocate for academic advising to become a profession.

En alltmer föränderlig värld ställer höga krav på entreprenörskap i form av nya och växande företag för att möta morgondagens utmaningar. För att få kunskap om vad som krävs av en affärsrådgivaren i en inkubator för att bli framgångsrik intervjuades nio affärsrådgivare i tre olika inkubatorer med syftet att kunna bidra till ökad förståelse hur rollen kan behöva utvecklas framöver. Även en VD för en inkubator intervjuades för att förstå den framtida strategiska inriktningen på rollen. Analysen av rollen genomfördes med hjälp av Mintzbergs ledarmodell. Studien visar att affärsrådgivaren har en informell ledarroll där den behöver skapa en tillitsfull relation med entreprenören för att kunna åstadkomma ett resultat, där studien resulterade i en modell för hur man skapar tillit. Ett tranformativt ledarskap med ett coachande förhållningssätt bidrar också till att öka tilliten mellan parterna. Affärsrådgivaren och entreprenören gör en kunskapsresa tillsammans som bidrar till utveckling av både entreprenör och affärsidé. Om affärsidén får genomslag på marknaden skapas nya innovationer. Framtida forskning skulle kunna undersöka hur kommersialiseringsprocessen i inkubatorn även skulle kunna nyttjas i andra delar av samhället. / An increasing changing world puts higher demands on entrepreneurship in the form of newly started and growing companies to meet tomorrow´s challenges. To get knowledge of what is required of a business adviser in an incubator in order to be successful nine business advisers from three different incubators were interviewed with the objective to increase the understanding of how the role could develop in the future. Also, one Managing Director of an incubator was interviewed to understand the future strategic direction of the role. An analysis of the role was conducted with the help of Mintzberg´s leadership model. The study shows that the business adviser has an informal leadership role in which he/she need to establish a trustful relationship with the entrepreneur to be able to achieve a result, where the study resulted in a model on how trust is formed. A transformative leadership with a coaching approach also contributes to establish a trustful relationship between the parties. The business adviser and the entrepreneur make a knowledge journey together that contributes to development of both the entrepreneur and the business idea. If the business idea comes true an innovation is created. Future research could investigate how the commercialisation process in an incubator could be utilised also in other parts of society.

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<p>Graduate students are a critical part of academia and the academic environment. However, literature suggests that graduate students, as a community, are also experiencing concerns with mental well-being.</p> <p>  Increasingly stressful life situations and academic rigor as well as a culture of celebrating overwork and the stress of academia, have been linked as contributors toward mental distress and a general decline in well-being for graduate students.</p> <p>  One of the biggest factors in determining the success and well-being of graduate students is their faculty adviser. </p> <p>  A supportive adviser that is well matched to a student's interests and working style can likely lead to the graduate students being more likely to graduate, to have increased scholarly output, and to find a job after graduation. It stands, then, that faculty advisers may also have an effect on the mental well-being of their students.</p> <p>  However, there is currently a lack of information about how students match with the mentoring and management styles of their advisors as well as how they may find surrogate support systems, such as social media, to persevere during their graduate program or what support gaps they might fill with online communities.</p> <p>  Therefore this study explored the needs of graduate students, how graduate students may turn to online communities as an means of support, and how faculty advisors can be better matched with graduate students to help guide them toward success in graduate school. The resulting knowledge from this study can provide insights for developing enhanced methods for 1) matching students and advisors based on management and mentoring styles, 2) understanding the evolution of graduate students needs over time, and 3) establishing more thoughtful admission metrics/processes for graduate schools. In addition, an investigation into social media platforms can help us better understand how graduate students use social media for support during their studies as well as identify some common graduate student challenges and helpful strategies to mitigate these challenges. Ultimately, establishing this knowledge can be one step toward generating a more supportive and collaborative academic community which can in turn support the well-being of graduate students</p> <p>  </p> <p>According to the results of this study, the data suggests that graduate students are experiencing stress resulting from differences in the styles of management and mentoring between them and their faculty advisors. </p> <p>This stress can be linked to the pressures placed upon them related to scholarly output without clearly defined objectives for them. </p> <p>Student participants also indicated that they doubted the quality of their graduate work and had the feeling they were not moving forward.</p> <p>Some common challenges described by students via social media posts were linked to the limited guidance and/or mentorship received.</p> <p>In regard to turning to social media for support, it seems as though graduate students tend to use social media platforms to either share negative experiences that they faced or milestones achieved within their graduate programs.</p> <p>The findings suggest that the graduate students may use social media without expecting or receiving feedback on how to handle any challenges posted.</p> <p>In addition, graduate student survey participants also indicated that their advisors used primarily a ``coaching" style, indicating a low level of advisor involvement, with a high level of student involvement. </p> <p>While a majority of participants indicated that their advising style on the Student-Advisor Involvement Matrix was a “coaching” model, the managerial style responses were more varied. </p> <p>This may indicate that students do not clearly know how to define their advisors management style, or that their rankings reflect emotional response to their advisor rather than the style itself. </p> <p>That being said, the findings also suggests that there may be an opportunity to better investigate, align, and/or prepare for the management and advising styles between advisors and students.</p> <p> </p> <p>While this study has limitations, the results can provide insight toward to creation of tools for matching prospective graduate students with faculty advisors based on interests as well as management and mentoring styles.</p> <p>In addition the common challenges experienced by graduate student identified via the social media analysis as well as as the shared strategies for addressing these challenges can be used for developing potential interventions for supporting faculty advisor and graduate student relationships. </p> <p>For example, the interventions can include additional management training for faculty advisors, increased mental health services for graduate students, support for understanding how graduate student needs change over time, graduate student planning tools, empathetic mentorship training, or improved graduate student handbooks.</p>

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The purpose of this study was to explore the perspectives of academic advising at a tertiary institution in Jamaica and how it has influenced teacher-efficacy and instructional attentiveness among student teachers. The participants included twelve student teachers and four lecturers who have been intimately involved in academic advising. The student teachers selected have been engaged in academic advising for two to four years while the lecturers have been advising for ten to sixteen years. This qualitative study explored how academic advising is related to teacher efficacy and instructional attentiveness among a set of second to fourth year student teachers at a teacher training college in Jamaica. All participants were actively receiving and giving academic advising in a government-owned teacher training institution. The primary source of data was unstructured interviews with student teachers and lecturers. Data were acquired over a two-month period by means of unstructured interviews and field notes. These tools afforded the opportunity to extend the conversations and generate meaning from the responses thereby providing rich descriptive notes of the phenomenon. Data were prepared using triangulation matrices, data coding and the Constant Comparison Approach to generate categories showing patterns and relationships of meaning. The findings on the perspectives of the study participants indicate academic advising has significantly influenced teacher-efficacy among the student teachers as their level of confidence increased, appreciation of teamwork blossomed, instructional competency broadened and misbehaviors controlled. Additionally, their valuing of self and acceptance of other personalities grew immensely which positively affected their relationship with various tiers of staff in the learning environment. The interview data garnered from student teachers indicate that instructional attentiveness improved through the use of multiple teaching methods which included authentic assessment, field experience and student-centered learning. Other factors that boosted instructional attentiveness were good relationships with advisors who were understanding of their differences and commended simple efforts. As a result of the academic advising received, there are several implications for practice and policy which need to be addressed in order to help student teachers to identify their strengths and weaknesses, remain on task, avoid drop out and maintain equilibrium between academic and social experiences as they navigate their way through college. / Educational Leadership