Research suggests that disengaged employees have contributed to the 28.5% reduction in the mining industry's contribution to South African gross domestic product. Some South African mining leaders lack strategies for engaging employees. Using the employee engagement framework, the purpose of this single case study was to explore successful strategies that South African mining leaders use to engage employees. The target population was mining leaders, purposefully selected because of their success with engaging employees at a typical South African mining company. Data collection was through face-to-face interviews with 4 leaders; a focus group interview with 9 employees; and a review of archived organizational documents, including internal case organization surveys, reports, emails, and Facebook posts. Data were analyzed using inductive coding of phrases and words from interviews while additional data gathered from participants' displays, websites, and other documents supported theme interpretation through methodological triangulation. Within this group of South African leaders, findings revealed that leader behavior improved employee engagement, situationally relevant employee engagement strategies improved employee engagement, and communication strategies improved employee engagement. Improving employee engagement contributes to social change by shaping employees' experience of their work environment, thereby improving their personal well-being and living conditions while maintaining a balance between work and personal interests.

Eighty-five percent of all firms operating in Nigeria are small-and medium-sized business enterprises (SMEs) and contribute almost 55% to the gross domestic product (GDP) in Nigeria. Capital flight and other growth inhibitors pose threats to the sustainability of SMEs in Nigeria. This exploratory multiple-case study was to determine strategies SME leaders use to sustain business operations in Nigeria. The study participants consisted of 15 SME leaders from 3 regional manufacturing firms who had successfully implemented strategies to sustain SMEs in Nigeria. Bertalanffy's general systems theory and Freeman's stakeholder theory were the conceptual frameworks used in the research. The data collection processes included semistructured interviews and reviewing company documents. After analyzing the interview data and validating through member checking, 5 core themes emerged during the data analysis process: creating new markets, encouraging opportunity for sustainable growth, securing additional funding sources, employee participation in decision making, and gaining competitive advantages. The findings may promote social change among the business community leaders by identifying essential characteristics to improve the posterity of SMEs in Nigeria.

Perpetuating African ancestral customs, Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans avoid the African American identity crises illuminated by the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. The poetry of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and Waring Cuney incorporate W.E.B. DuBois’ double-consciousness theory to reveal the identity issues and ancestral alienation plaguing African Americans at the turn of the twentieth-century. In comparison, unique political and social circumstances in New Orleans allowed enslaved Africans to practice their ancestral customs weekly. The preservation of this heritage fostered a black community in New Orleans rich in traditions, pride and self-conviction. The development of Mardi Gras Indian culture and the allusions to Africa in Harlem poetry reveal the power of ancestry to establish identity.

The effects of the colonial project in Kenya created multi-faceted damages to the land and indigenous people-groups. Using the lens of ecofeminism, this study examines the undergirding structures that produce systems such as colonization that oppress and destroy land, people, and other beings. By highlighting the experience of the Kikuyu people within the Kenyan colonial program, the innovative and ingenious response of Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement proves to be a relevant and effective counter to women's disempowerment and environmental devastation in a post-colonial nation. The approach of the Green Belt Movement offers a unique and accessible method for empowering women, restoring the land, and addressing loss of cultural identity, while also contributing a theoretical template for addressing climate change.

Movement and storytelling are the links between past and present; both dance and literature have the same artistic and primal origins. We began to dance to express and communicate, to worship and feel. We tell stories for the same reasons: to learn from the past and to be able to communicate in the present. This work explores the many connections between literature and dance through examinations of six dance forms: Native American, Bharatanatyam, West African, Ballet, Modern, and Post-Modern dance.

Poor loan repayment causes the decline and failure of some microfinance institutions. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies that microfinance (MFI) leaders use to reduce loan default in the base of the pyramid market. The study population included 6 MFI leaders, 12 borrower community-based groups, and 4 staff members of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA Rwanda) who reduced MFI loan default in Rwanda. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with 3 MFI leaders, 3 ADRA Rwanda staff members, and 3 members of borrower groups. Data were also collected through focus groups with 3 borrower community-based groups comprising 6 to 8 members. Additional data were collected through the analysis of MFI and ADRA Rwanda organizational documents. The Varian group lending model was the conceptual framework for the study. Data analysis involved methodological triangulation and the Gadamerian hermeneutics framework of interpretation. Four major themes emerged: intrapreneurship and environmental business opportunities, favorable loan repayment conditions, strategies for choosing borrower groups, and loan use monitoring. A sustainable microfinance institution can produce social change by providing microfinance loans that clients can use to start and grow microenterprises that can become the source of income for improving the lives of clients and their family members. Findings may also be used to create economic growth through the participation of more people in economic activities in the base of the pyramid market.

Supply chain disruptions are detrimental to the performance of companies due to the associated loss of profitability and reduced sustainability. In 2016, organizations lost at least $1.2 million in a single supply chain disruption. Guided by the contingency theory of fit, the purpose of this exploratory multiple case study was to explore the strategies agribusiness managers use to prevent and mitigate the effects of disruptions in the agro-food supply chains. A total of 5 purposefully-selected agribusiness managers from Harare, Zimbabwe participated in semistructured interviews. Participants were senior agribusiness managers who implemented successful strategies for preventing and mitigating the effects of disruptions in agro-food supply chains. Three themes emerged from the thematic analysis of interview data and review of organizational documents: collaboration among supply chain partners, business continuity management, and the use of a multiple supplier base. Agribusiness managers must first understand the sources of disruption risk, assess the impact of the risk, and then select an appropriate strategy based on the level of uncertainty and risk. By managing the risks effectively, managers can improve the performance and competitiveness of their businesses. The implications for positive social change may include a reduction in supply chain costs, provision of better services and products to consumers, and lower prices of agro-food products to consumers which could lead to an improvement in the lives of consumers.

This thesis aims to explore how conceptions of the black prophetic tradition, as discussed by thinkers Cornel West and George Shulman, might be expanded into the realm of African American musical traditions and genres. I argue that musical genres like the blues and hip-hop function as an affective discourse that aesthetically, politically and religiously function as sites of resistance to white supremacy and provide alternate pathways to liberation as compared to more canonical instantiations of the black prophetic. In particular I provide close readings of performances and art by Nina Simone and Kanye West.

Despite the ongoing investments in programs to increase sexual health awareness among young adults globally, many youths remain vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Two-thirds of all STDs occur among youths engaging in high-risk sexual behaviors, which put young adults at higher risk of STDs and can result in serious consequences including infertility. Additionally, the social consequences of STD affect families and communities. While a need exists for increased public awareness of STDs among young adults, extant intervention and prevention activities should be informed by a cultural perspective, including the integration of community and government roles. The purpose of this social ecological study was to investigate the perceptions of STDs and the potential factors responsible for the increased frequency of STDs based on the lived experiences of 20 young adults with STDs in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Through a qualitative approach using a phenomenological research design, this study employed semi-structured interviews, and the resultant data were analyzed and coded. The findings indicated that college-aged students increasingly engaged in sexually risky behavior with multiple sexual partners for financial gain and power. Additionally, while institutions promoted abstinence as an effective strategy to reduce STD infections, the findings indicated a strong relationship between the phenomenon and individual interconnectedness with the larger society. Because the sexual behavior of young adults in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria, is influenced at multiple ecological levels, effective and sustaining culturally appropriate STD interventions must involve the larger society including young adults in all stages of intervention development and implementation.

This thesis explains recent accounts of discrimination and cutbacks in reproductive health spaces in Tunisia. Complicating dominant analyses, which attribute these events to the post-revolution political atmosphere which has allowed the proliferation of islamic extremism, I interpret these instances as a manifestation of a deeply rooted stigma against sexually active single women. I trace this stigma’s inception to the contradictory way that Habib Bourguiba conceptualized modernity after independence, and the responsibility he assigned to Tunisian women to embody that modernity. This responsibility remains salient today, and is putting Tunisian women in an increasingly untenable and vulnerable position. After independence, Bourguiba instated a series of policies and programs aimed at demonstrating the modernity of Tunisia. The success of Tunisia’s modernization was determined, and continues to be determined by the woman’s social transformation and embodiment of modernist values. Bourguiba’s modernist platform was constituted not only by typically ‘Western’ values, such as economic prosperity, family planning, education, and gender equality, but was also deeply informed by the islamic and cultural values that hold the woman’s primordial role to be mother and wife, and expect her to abstain from sex until marriage. The modern Tunisia woman thus became expected to both obtain higher levels of education and actively participate in the public sphere, and also uphold virtues around premarital virginity, marriage, and motherhood. Her fulfillment of these tasks marked the independent nation’s progress and modernity. Today, as more and more Tunisian women are increasingly empowered to fulfill one facet of their obligation and attend university, participate in the labor market, and make use of the growing contraceptive technologies available to them, they become more likely to postpone marriage and engage in premarital sexual relations. These latter behaviors transgress the second facet of the woman’s obligation, and threaten the very integrity of the modern nation. Women are thus becoming more and more subjected to societal punishment — stigma — which manifests in many forms, including discrimination in reproductive health care spaces.