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Doctor of Philosophy / Department Not Listed / Kenneth F. Hughey / As higher education continues to integrate technology, the counselor education field has evolved and recognized the importance of graduate students’ attitudes towards technology acceptance of a wide array of technology in their training programs (Burt, Gonzalez, Swank, Ascher, & Cunningham, 2011; Kennedy, 2011; Orr, 2011; Sabella, Poynton, & Isaacs, 2010; Tyler & Sabella, 2004). This study examined the attitudes of counselor education graduate students in CACREP-accredited program towards technology acceptance using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as the theoretical framework for the study. In particular, the purpose of this study was to better understand counselor education graduate students’ attitudes towards technology acceptance as it relates to perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, technology self-efficacy, and technology anxiety. Participants in the study were 107 graduate students who were enrolled in Fall 2018 at 10 Midwest CACREP-accredited counselor education programs. Data were gathered by an online survey consisting of a demographic questionnaire and four instruments (Technology Acceptance Model Scales, Media and Technology Usage and Attitudes Scale, Technology Self-efficacy Scale, and Technology Anxiety Scale). The results of the hierarchical regression analysis for each of the research questions revealed several significant findings regarding graduate students’ attitudes towards use of technology. For the first research question, perceived ease of use was predicted by technology self-efficacy and technology anxiety. The results indicated perceived ease of use was influenced positively by technology self-efficacy and negatively by technology anxiety. For the second research question, perceived usefulness was predicted by technology self-efficacy and technology anxiety. The results indicated perceived usefulness was influenced positively by technology self-efficacy and negatively by technology anxiety. For the third research question, counselor education graduate students’ attitudes towards the use of technology was predicted by perceived usefulness. In addition, this study found a strong positive relationship between perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness likely due to multicollinearity. Technology plays an increasing role in counselor education programs. Findings from this study provide important information for counselor education programs to consider regarding graduate students’ attitudes towards the use of technology.

The purpose of this study is to form an understanding for communication managers acceptance of the chatbot. This understanding could be useful if the usage of the chatbot at various companies increases. This study also aims to study the relevance of Davis (1989) Technology Acceptance Model, which is one of the most frequent used theories in acceptance studies.  Hence, this study is based on the following questions: <ul type="disc">How can communication managers' perception of the chatbot be understood? Is the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) a useful model for understanding the acceptance level of the chatbot? If not; how can it be developed to achieve this purpose? The study is based on qualitative interviews of four communication managers from different companies in the Stockholm area. The empirical data collected from the interviews has been analyzed according to thematic analysis, and further understood with support of the TAM-model. Due to the qualitative approach, but also according to the purpose of possibly developing the TAM-model, the study has been characterized by openness and ambition to explore the empirical material and theory. The study showed a unified understanding of the chatbot as helpful in simple types of customer communication areas. The technology was also considered to have a future usefulness in this area. The study also came to clarify that the respondents have shared understandings of the chatbot. The views consisted of both advantages and disadvantages of implementing a chatbot to the workplace. The opinions are based on three emerging themes that were considered relevant to the respondents; the efficient business, future vision for the chatbot and secondary view of the chatbot. The TAM-model proved helpful in understanding the empirical evidence and understanding the grounds to acceptance. The study found that the model would be made even more relevant if it would include social influence, in order to understand how the respondent is expected to understand the users experience of the chatbot. Therefore, this study has proposed an extension of the TAM-model that includes the expected user experience. By developing this parameter to the TAM-model the theory is expected to be more rewarding for further similar studies.

<p>Långvarig stress ökar risk för ohälsa och sjukfrånvaro, med negativa konsekvenser för individ, organisation och samhälle. En preventiv metod för stresshantering är Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT). Syftet var att med en randomiserad, kontrollerad studie undersöka huruvida en kortvarig ACT-intervention påverkar stress och generell psykisk hälsa hos socialsekreterare inom Stockholms stad (<em>n</em>=106). Bortfall hanterades med intent-to-treat-analys. Vid förmätning rapporterade två tredjedelar av deltagarna hög stressnivå (PSS≥25). Resultaten visade att de som genomgått interventionen (<em>n</em>=70) hade signifikant lägre skattningar av stress, generell psykisk ohälsa och utbrändhet jämfört med kontrollgrupp (<em>n</em>=36). Separata analyser visade att dessa skillnader fanns även för deltagare med hög stress vid förmätning, men inte för de med låg. Effektstorlekarna var små till måttliga. Ingen signifikant skillnad fanns för prestationsbaserad självkänsla, psykologisk flexibilitet eller krav och kontroll i arbetet. Genom randomisering kontrollerades även för gruppledarinflytande. Slutsatsen var att interventionen kan användas för att minska symtom på stress, utbrändhet och psykisk ohälsa hos socialsekreterare. Vidare forskning bör undersöka effekten över tid.</p>

Långvarig stress ökar risk för ohälsa och sjukfrånvaro, med negativa konsekvenser för individ, organisation och samhälle. En preventiv metod för stresshantering är Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT). Syftet var att med en randomiserad, kontrollerad studie undersöka huruvida en kortvarig ACT-intervention påverkar stress och generell psykisk hälsa hos socialsekreterare inom Stockholms stad (n=106). Bortfall hanterades med intent-to-treat-analys. Vid förmätning rapporterade två tredjedelar av deltagarna hög stressnivå (PSS≥25). Resultaten visade att de som genomgått interventionen (n=70) hade signifikant lägre skattningar av stress, generell psykisk ohälsa och utbrändhet jämfört med kontrollgrupp (n=36). Separata analyser visade att dessa skillnader fanns även för deltagare med hög stress vid förmätning, men inte för de med låg. Effektstorlekarna var små till måttliga. Ingen signifikant skillnad fanns för prestationsbaserad självkänsla, psykologisk flexibilitet eller krav och kontroll i arbetet. Genom randomisering kontrollerades även för gruppledarinflytande. Slutsatsen var att interventionen kan användas för att minska symtom på stress, utbrändhet och psykisk ohälsa hos socialsekreterare. Vidare forskning bör undersöka effekten över tid.

A challenge related to the expansion of wind power concerns how wind power developers can foster a good relationship with local communities. Building on research on social acceptance for wind power, this thesis addresses two identified gaps. The main focus is a theoretical gap, where previous research is criticized for assuming perfectly flexible organizations when suggesting how social acceptance can be enhanced. Also, an empirical gap is addressed by studying India, a different socio-economic and socio-cultural context compared to western contexts, which previous research has focused on. The aim is to study how management’s stakeholder prioritization affects community acceptance through a qualitative case study of a large Indian wind power developer with data from semi-structured interviews with senior management and internal company reports. The results show that managers’ stakeholder prioritizations and organizational constraints affect community acceptance and that the factors that enhance community acceptance has to be adapted to the context.

Methods for conditional Poisson sampling (CP-sampling) and Sampford sampling are compared and the focus is on the efficiency of the methods. The efficiency is investigated by simulation in different sampling situations. It was of interest to compare methods since new methods for both CP-sampling and Sampford sampling were introduced by Bondesson, Traat &amp; Lundqvist in 2004. The new methods are acceptance rejection methods that use the efficient Pareto sampling method. They are found to be very efficient and useful in all situations. The list sequential methods for both CP-sampling and Sampford sampling are other methods that are found to be efficient, especially if many samples are to be generated.

In the age of knowledge-based economy, knowledge has been replacing land, labor, capital and equipment and becoming one of the most important production factor. Facing the global, violent competition and management environments like rapid technology improvement, fast speedy, service and customer orientation, employee dispersion and high levels of manpower flow, and close corporation relation, enterprises which can create, accumulate, manage and use knowledge efficiently will develop forever. This is why more and more enterprises implement knowledge management to transfer employees¡¦ experiences and knowledge into organizational knowledge. Enterprises use knowledge management as the foundation of organizational development and innovation to shorten learning curve, promote firms¡¦ productivities and to innovate economy value. Knowledge management has become the mainly management strategy. Enterprise¡¦s installation of knowledge management system is the important part of knowledge management, and it is inevitable to enhance the efficiency of knowledge management. The expenses are high for knowledge management system in software, hardware, installation and training, while the profits depend on employees¡¦ acceptance and actual use. This study uses the ¡§Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology/ UTAUT¡¨ as the basis, and considers the characters of knowledge management system and users to determine the structure. So enterprises can use it for reference in planning, installing and valuing knowledge management system. After analyzing the data, the main results of this study are as follows: 1. Influencing employees¡¦ acceptance factors on system are job performance, ease of use, corporation support and facilitating conditions. 2. Significant positive correlations are identified among job performance, ease of use, corporation support, facilitating conditions, intension to use and actual use. 3. The factors of influencing on system¡¦s intension to use are job performance and ease of use. And the factors influencing system¡¦s actual use are job performance and facilitating conditions. Intension to use influences actual use directly. 4. Employees with different characters have different degrees of attention on different factors. 5. Job performance is the mainly influencing factor for employees on the degree of system acceptance.

Facing the change of administration environment and the impact of business globalization, it is getting clear that the trend of taking transnational administration and work allocation by firms. Developments in process reengineering and information technology result that Supply Chain Management(SCM) offers an excellent approach for firms to create higher competitiveness. So, in the emerging supply chain versus supply chain competitive environment, the ultimate success of the individual businesses will depend not only on the advantage in competitiveness they posses, but on management¡¦s ability to enhance powerful SCM system. Posco, CSC¡¦s main competitor, in Korea has implemented process innovation and SCM system recently. Both NSC in Japan and Boa Steel in mainland China are establishing SCM system. CSC also establishes SCM system now to accelerate the promotion of his productivity. Based on ¡§the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology¡¨(known as UTAUT), this study considered the property of CSC and applied existing measurement scale with some modifications. Totally, 170 samples were collected from the department related to SCM system. In this study, we analyzed the employee¡¦s acceptance by means of Factor Analysis, Correlation Analysis and Multiple Linear Regression. The major conclusions derived from this research are: 1.The employee¡¦s acceptance of SCM system is high. 2.There are 4 key factors: Usefulness, Supporting, Ease of Use, and Incentives, which are extracted from this study significantly and positively related to employee¡¦s behavior intention. 3.Usefulness and Supporting both influence employee¡¦s behavior intention significantly. Moreover,Usefulness is the most important factor of all. 4.Different control variables influence employee¡¦s acceptance indirectly on each dimension.

In 2002 federal funds, known as the Primary Care Health Transition Fund (PCHTF) were transferred to the provinces to experiment with different models of health services delivery in primary care. The Northern Health Authority used the fund to implement a Chronic Disease Management Community Collaborative using the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Breakthrough Series and the British Columbia (B.C.) Expanded Chronic Care Model. Included in the Chronic Care Model is an information systems component that enables a population-based approach using guidelines and data to plan, organize, monitor and deliver care for patients with chronic illnesses. In British Columbia a secure web based system, known as the Chronic Disease Management (CDM) Toolkit was developed by the Ministry of Health and made accessible to all physicians in the province to facilitate CDM by collaboratives and individual general practitioners (GPs). Technology acceptance is a mature concept in the information systems literature, and models of technology acceptance are important in health care with the increasing deployment of information systems to support clinical and management work processes. Understanding what variables influence clinicians to use appropriate technology could promote the diffusion of technology in health care. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) is a recent (2003) model that consolidates eight models of technology acceptance that are prominent in the information systems literature. The UTAUT analysis revealed that social influence, usefulness, and facilitating conditions are important variables for the acceptance of new technology. With some adaptations to fit the health care context, the UTAUT was found to be an effective tool to measure CDM Toolkit acceptance in the Northern Health Authority. The field observations highlighted salient issues not captured by the UTAUT, including security certificate implementation, access and confidentiality, physician participation, data entry, flow sheets, infrastructure and training.