Although there are many how-to manuals on forming business/school partnerships, there is little valuative information on what actually takes place within them. This dissertation, a case study of a school-to-work partnership between an urban high school's business education department and the local business community, affords a practical insight into the dynamics of such a cooperative. A series of in-depth, phenomenological interviews were conducted with student workers and their workplace mentors. Their candid, powerful testimonies reflect the backgrounds, attitudes, and concerns that each brought to the workplace. Their personal voices express the relationships and interactions that defined their work experiences. Additional interviews with key figures in several similar contemporary programs confirmed that business/school partnerships are as complex and sensitive as the personalities of the individuals and the characters of the institutions that form them. Although all of the participants in this study attest to the value and importance of such partnerships, it is also evident that the demands of sustaining a successful program are daunting. This study suggests that implementing the business/school mandates as proposed in school reform legislation will be difficult, if not impossible. The evidence in this study illustrates that predominantly minority students from disadvantaged backgrounds can succeed in an initial work experience, can grow through that exposure, and can then create new personal visions for themselves. Of the twenty-five business students who participated in this cooperative program, over half entered a two or four year college upon graduation; six were offered a permanent position with a business partner. The director of the partnership that is at the core of this study, a committed teacher and a business owner, was available on a daily basis to provide students with personal guidance as they assimilated new experiences, faced unexpected challenges, or redefined new understandings. The overall findings substantiate the value of such consistent individual support for students in their first adventure into the world-of-work.

This study reports managers' accounts of conflict between their personal values and the values they perceived in the demands their organizations made on them. The purpose of the study was to identify and describe the characteristics of such experiences, including how the conflicts were resolved, impact on the managers, and impact on their organizational commitment. Twenty senior middle-level public sector managers were interviewed using a semi-structured interview procedure. The interviews provided 66 conflict accounts for analysis. Six major sources of conflict were identified, relationships to staff or people external to the organization accounting for 75% of the conflicts. Five major value orientations were identified: Public Service; Management; Professional; Personal; and, Political. More pervasive and underlying source lay in the shifting value orientations in the public sector, principally between an orientation to career service and professional management. Managers have a complex organizational relationship, identifying more with the ethos of the public service than with their particular Ministry, agency, or department. Three ways of resolving value conflicts were proposed and investigated: Conforming, Principled, and Integrative. Managers sought to achieve preferred outcomes rather than resolve the value dilemmas. On occasions when demands involved legal, public interest issues, or professional standards, managers conformed. Principled resolutions prevailed only in a few more subjective situations such as the extent of personal caring for staff. Eight strategies for managing for preferred outcomes were identified: using integrating values and superordinate values; seeking alternatives; delaying; relocating responsibility; protesting; and, leaving. Conflicts impact significantly on managers. Negative impacts include frustration and anger; unethical behavior; poor health; and interrupted career movement. If successfully resolved or managed they may lead to senses of confidence and well-being, and developmental change. Conflict impacts negatively on the relationship with the organization through loss of commitment. Social literacy theory (Freire, 1972), psychological contract theory (Schein, 1970), and faith development theory (Fowler, 1981) are useful theoretical perspectives with implications for management practice. Issues for management education and for further research are considered and the significance of the study is placed in the broader contexts of promoting personal growth and responding to major crises.

To a large extent, management is perceived as a Western notion and is based on Western assumptions and norms. Most of our understanding of management came from the American experience. The problem lies in the assumption by these writers and researchers that what they think is true in the West, it is true for all cultures. This is a problem in cross-cultural management theory and practice. This study was an attempt to challenge the imperialism in cross-cultural management. It attempted to voice the Singaporean Chinese managers' conception of Chinese management through a Singaporean Chinese researcher using an interpretive approach. The specific purposes were to (1) discover Chinese managers' perception and definition of management; and (2) describe the way they manage. This study followed an interpretive paradigm of research and analysis which allows representation of the perspective of the participants. It aimed to reveal and reflect the world as it is. Metaphor was used as a means to understand how Chinese managers in Singapore perceived Chinese management and how they manage. Six interviewees from Singapore local Chinese organizations were selected for the study. Indepth interview was used as the research method. The research findings were presented through six stories and five scenes. Six stories (Chapter Four) were presented how they felt about Chinese management, their organizations and their managerial work. The five scenes (Chapter Five) were the interpretation and analysis of the "stories". Scene 1 focused on the Chinese managers' perception of the characteristics of Chinese management. Scene 2 contrasted the differences between Western management and Chinese management. Scene 3 highlighted the dilemma of the old and young generations and the dilemma in integrating Western and Chinese management. Scene 4 presented four metaphors and a meta-metaphor that capture the conceptions of Chinese management. Scene 5 presented five metaphors that describe the work of Chinese managers. The research findings were discussed in relation to the literature. Implications for Singaporean Chinese managers, management educators, organizational theorists, cross-cultural studies and future research were presented.

Family-owned businesses are associated with a low rate of survival. Statistically, less than three in ten will survive the first 50 years. The literature acknowledges that the issue of succession is critical for organizational development and continuity. Effective (successful) successors are defined in the literature as those persons who have the title and power of office and, in the long term, demonstrate the ability to create a positive trend of growth and profits for the business. The research consists primarily of quantitative analysis. The bulk of the research is predicated on 254 respondents, of which 181 are classified as effective successors and 73 as ineffective successors. Additionally, four in-depth interviews with successors were conducted and analyzed to verify the quantitative dimension and to lend breadth to the constraints of a survey questionnaire. The purpose of the research is to identify factors common to effective successors and ineffective successors. The data gathered centered on two topics: successor demographics, and successor attitudes relating to their families, themselves, and their businesses. The data show some interesting and clear differences between effective and ineffective successors. This information should be of interest to family-owned businesses, family therapists, business consultants, and academicians. The research is driven by six hypotheses. The results show three of the hypotheses to be consistent with the literature, while the remaining three uncover new information. The three hypotheses which coincide with contemporary researchers replicated that most successors: worked elsewhere before joining the family firm; willingly came into the business; and had positive outlooks on the businesses. The remaining three hypotheses uncover what appear to be new data about successors: that most successors are first exposed to the family business between 10 and 11 years of age; that there is a level of competition residing in the successor and aimed at the predecessor; and that 2nd-, 3rd- and 4th-generation successors generally work around 60 hours per week in order to get the job done. The study concludes by offering specific recommendations for further research. These recommendations were generated by the research findings, which present some new implications for research, theory, and practice.

The United States Office of Employment Security, early in 1962, reported that there were nearly five million available workers unemployed in the United States (3). An economic recession causing industry to cut back on production, more efficient methods in the manufacturing process, and the rapid changes in labor brought about by automation were listed as a few of the causes contributing to this condition. Another cause as depicted by an industry-produced film, "The Awesome Servant," showed that a large number of Americans that have had their jobs taken over by a machine have not been re-hired because they lack an employable skill. The p light of labor was portrayed by showing that machines have either replaced or displaced laborers. Those who have skills have been displaced to help build machines, market them, tend, or repair them. Those workers who have been replaced by the machines, and do not have technical skills, are finding it difficult to remain employed . The film also indicated that many companies are keeping their displaced employees on paroles and training them for other jobs . However, other organizations must release their employees and are forcing them to look for work elsewhere (5).

This study was an attempt to present a proposal for the development of business education in Viet-Nam. It formulated the philosophy and objectives of business education in Viet-Nam in general both at the university and the secondary level. It also aimed to define the basic model of organization, curriculum development, and faculty recruitment and training. The proposal was based on principles of business education widely accepted in American, Asian, and European countries and on the results of the analysis of the Vietnamese educational system and its environment. It was revealed that, anywhere in the world, there is a vital need for a well-founded general education to be supplemented and complemented by various types of vocational education, one of which is business education. It was also conceived that, with reasonable adaptations, principles of business education developed and widely accepted in other countries may be applied in Viet-Name As a result of the study, it was proposed that business education should be a related and integral part of the Vietnamese total program of education. In Viet-Nam today there is a great need for qualified business managers and competent white collar workers to strengthen the national business system. A strong business system is needed to facilitate the transfer of technology, to develop commerce and industry, to achieve economic independence, and to accelerate rehabilitation after the war. The objectives of business education in Viet-Nam should be general for everyone, prevocational and vocational at the secondary level, and professional at the university level. Vietnamese business education should reconcile culture and career in order to provide competent employees, managers, and administrators who are socially, emotionally, intellectually, and civicly open-minded citizens. The proposal also recommended that a Faculty of Business and section of business education teacher-training of the Faculty of Pedagogy should be created in the state university. At the secondary level business education should be offered as general education in the traditional academic high schools and as vocational education in the upper secondary schools of business and in the business education stream of the comprehensive high schools. Private business education institutions should be encouraged as one segment of the national effort toward adult vocational education. A business educator training program should be planned and realized as soon as possible because it is vital to the development of a business education program.

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Through experience-based learning courses students deepen and possibly alter presently held understandings and assumptions when such classroom experiences allow students to practice skills and reflect on behaviors, actions and activities that simulate "real world" situations (Andresen, Boud & Cohen, 2000). Engaging in "real-world" situations exposes students to the type of emotion-laden interactions that are encountered upon entering the workplace. To date, little research has been conducted that investigates the relationship between experience-based learning courses, reflection and emotional competency. Therefore, this research explored new ground, opening up further discussions as to the role of experiential learning in developing students' emotional intelligence. Sport Event Management, a course conducted at a University in the North Eastern US region with 25 undergraduate and graduate students, was the setting for this empirical investigation into the impact of an experience-based learning course on students' emotional competency. Specifically, a quasi-experimental, mixed methods design was used to determine if students' emotional competency could be developed over the course of one semester when students were not formally trained or instructed in emotional intelligence theory. To aid in the examination of the impact on students' emotional competency development, differences between the experience-based learning course, Sport Event Management, and two courses using more traditional teaching methods were investigated. Differences between experimental and comparison group students' emotional competency were investigated at the conclusion of the spring semester using quantitative (ECI-U) and qualitative (Critical Incident Interview and exit interview) methods. Results from the quantitative measure (ECI-U) supported the contention that an experience-based course can positively increase students' emotional competency over the course of one semester but for graduate students only. However, qualitative results suggested that for both undergraduate and graduate students the impact of an experience-based learning course was more conducive than traditional courses to fostering the social and emotional learning that contributes to emotional competency development. Specifically, the experience-based learning course contributed to students' development of emotional competencies related to self-understanding and their ability to understand and interact with others in an organizational setting.

The dominant paradigm used in the literature to describe Organization Development (OD) has had limited success in fully representing OD-in-practice. The widespread reliance upon functionalist conventions to describe OD practice limits opportunities for insights and understanding obtainable through the use of alternative ontologies. Attempts to offer alternative conceptualizations are discouraged by the need of academicians to publish articles consistent with dominant perspectives and the lack of incentive for practitioners to publish at all. However, some initial efforts have been made to identify this problem and offer different ways of thinking about OD. The purpose of this study was to add to these efforts by offering a metaphor for considering organization and OD practice which reflects the more subjective assumptions of an interpretive paradigm. This study first reviewed the four most often used texts in OD graduate training programs across the continental United States. Texts were viewed as the repositories of conventional thinking, and Burrell and Morgan's (1979) multiparadigmatic framework served as a foil to explicate the assumptions of traditional views. This review suggested some oscillation between the image of organization invoked and descriptions of OD practice and practitioner role. Secondly, an elaboration of the interpretive perspective was offered, and examples of applications to organization theory reviewed. This served as a foundation for re-thinking organization and organization development as sense-making. Once a rudimentary framework of OD as sense-making was developed, seven practitioners were interviewed to ascertain whether the offered perspective either reflected or informed their descriptions of practice. Interestingly, practitioners offered perspectives along a continuum, with some consultants describing their work in fashions highly consistent with conventional views, and other invoking the more precarious notions of the social world consistent with interpretive assumptions. A final contrasting of conventional and alternative views of OD was developed, informed by insights gained as a result of the views practitioners shared.