Un banco del tiempo (BDT) es el nombre formal que se le da a unas instituciones comunitarias que operan con horas de tiempo personal y laboral como moneda oficial. Son sistemas organizados de moneda social que permiten a sus usuarios intercambiar su propio tiempo y destreza en forma de créditos de servicio. La unidad de moneda es una hora de trabajo. Los BDT son parte de la categoría de moneda alternativa social y representan una evolución moderna de entidades clásicas como los trueques. Los BDT valoran conceptos como compartir, igualdad y mutualismo. Así, funcionan como un sistema alternativo a los bancos tradicionales, y pueden así complementar a la moneda oficial de un país. El mercado no valora o recompensa muchos tipos de trabajo imperativo, como criar niños, constituir familias fuertes, revitalizar vecindarios y preservar el medio ambiente entre otros. Los BDT proveen un vehículo para recompensar, honrar y registrar este tipo de trabajo imperativo. Un caso contemporáneo que retrata perfectamente la implementación y los beneficios de los BDT se encuentra con España. En este país, los BDT se están usando para combatir los efectos de su reciente recesión y la crisis económica de los últimos seis años. Esta tesis tiene el propósito de examinar los beneficios de la adopción progresiva de los bancos del tiempo por todo el mundo, y en ella se analizará el caso de España como modelo ideal. Ya que estos bancos constituyen instituciones bastante nuevas, el propósito principal es estudiarlos para promover más investigación.

Since its inception, the video game industry has been both a new medium for art and innovation as well as a major driving force in the advancements of many technologies. The often overlooked video game industry has turned from a hobby to a multi-billion dollar industry in its short, forty year life. People of all ages and genders across the world are playing video games at a higher clip than ever before. With so many new gamers and emerging technologies, it is an exciting time for the industry. The landscape is constantly changing and successful business models of the past will need to find ways to adapt if they wish to remain successful in the growing industry. Looking at how past trends and technological innovations have driven the industry gives understanding and insight into where it is at today and where it will go in the future. Video games have become an interactive art medium which inspires users to explore and create. The digitalization of games and their extreme popularity reflect our instinctive desire to seek out game-playing for its fun, cooperative, and competitive nature.

Researchers have explored immigrant identity in various contexts, but few studies have examined identity in low-income immigrant women entrepreneurs. To address this research gap, I conducted in-depth interviews with eight low-income Latino immigrants who were starting their own businesses and receiving support through a local microenterprise development program (MDP). The study explored how participants' microenterprise efforts affected their identities and their investments in learning English. The research found that entrepreneurship promoted positive identity construction by providing opportunities for participants to develop personal and cultural pride, strengthened parental roles, and interdependence with the community. These benefits helped participants decrease family stress and increase optimism for the future, regardless of the microenterprises' financial success. Participants reported that their families were healthier and their children were doing better in school, suggesting a broad impact beyond the business owner. This finding indicates that MDPs and other social service programs should have explicit goals related to increasing participants' symbolic resources. In the language-learning realm, this study introduced the construct "relationship with English," extending Norton's (2000) notion of investment in language learning. The relationship construct encompasses the situated nature of immigrants' English use, investment in learning, and feelings about using English. The businesses helped most participants improve their relationship with English by providing motivation and informal learning opportunities. The non-English speaking participants improved their relationship with English by finding ways to use English even without working on their ability to speak. This finding suggests that social service agencies, ESL programs, and employers should broaden their view of immigrants' capabilities to use English and to invest creatively in their own learning. Another significant finding was that participants demonstrated signs of internalized racism, which can make it hard for immigrants to see their own strengths. New research could help MDPs and other social service providers address internalized racism and decrease its negative impact on identity construction. Looking ahead, long-term studies of MDP participants could help optimize program design, extend learnings to other types of programs, and help providers, policymakers, and funders allocate resources for maximum effect.

The present study was conducted to capture the collective voice of expert organizational development consultants. Until now, very few studies have been conducted that take into account the collective voices of organizational development consultants. More specifically, the purpose of the present study is to explore and gain a deeper understanding of the approaches expert organizational development consultants use throughout their engagement with their clients in an attempt to add value to and enhance organizational capacity. To understand the process used by this distinct group of leaders, phenomenological qualitative inquiry was the methodology used to conduct this study. Data were collected through in-depth, face-to-face interviews with seven practicing expert consultants in the Jacksonville, Florida area. Seven themes emerged through careful analysis of the data, supported with relevant concepts from the professional literature. The study has meaningful implications for the study of organization development consulting. It concludes with recommendations for consultants and researchers in the field of organizational development and change.

Employee turnover in the U.S. fast food industry has been high, averaging rate 150% per annum. The purpose of the correlational design study was to examine the relationships between job satisfaction factors, job dissatisfaction factors, and employee turnover intentions among fast food employees to determine whether a statistically significant relationship exists between these variables. The population for the study consisted of 144 fast food restaurant employees working in the East Coast in the United States. The theoretical framework was Herzberg's 2-factor motivation-hygiene needs theory, which describes job satisfaction factors and job dissatisfaction factors. Internet survey data of 144 participants were analyzed using Pearson-product correlation coefficients and multiple linear regressions analysis. The study findings revealed statistically significant relationships between job satisfaction factors and employee turnover intentions (p < .01), and job dissatisfaction factors and employee turnover intentions (p < .01). Among the job satisfaction factors, responsibility had a stronger relationship with employee turnover intentions (-.52) compared with other factors. Under job dissatisfaction factors, company policy had a stronger relationship with employee turnover intentions (-.52) compared with other factors. In addition, criterion variance of employee turnover intentions associated with combined job satisfaction factors was stronger (35%) than were the combined job dissatisfaction factors (31%). The study findings are designed to inform fast food restaurant managers in taking actions to reduce employee turnover, resulting in improved business financial sustainability and long-term growth.

Despite the high failure rate of African American small businesses in the United States, only 2% of the U.S. Small Business Administration loans in 2016 were awarded to African American business owners. Most small business owners cite lack of access to financial resources as an influential factor that leads to business failure. Grounded in resource-based view theory, the purpose of this multiple case study was to identify strategies African American small business owners in Los Angeles County, California use to obtain financial resources to achieve sustainability for at least 5 years. Data were collected from in-depth interviews with 4 purposively selected African American small business owners and supplemented with a review of internal reports and original business plans that outlined their financing strategy. The data analysis process entailed Yin's 5-step analysis to guide the coding of participants' responses to identify keywords, phrases, and concepts to develop theme clusters. Through thematic analysis, 4 themes emerged to include: financial resources improved business success and stability, internal financing, business mentors and networking to secure financial stability, and overcoming nonfinancial challenges. All participants noted access to financial resources as the most important resource needed for their business to succeed, particularly in the initial phase of launching their businesses. The implications for social change include the potential to enhance African American small business profitability and growth leading to new employment opportunities, improved community amenities, and business mentor programs with youth, which can encourage wealth for the surrounding community of Los Angeles County and local government.

This thesis evaluates economic development, planning, public policy, and business strategies to create successful business incubators in Massachusetts’ post-industrial cities. These post-industrial cities in Massachusetts are dubbed “Gateway Cities” because they were once the economic engines of the region as well as areas of entry for many foreign-born residences to live and work. These cities have been recently plagued by high unemployment, poverty, and low business investment as many businesses, especially manufacturing, have located elsewhere. Legislation and policies involving redistribution of wealth to these Gateway Cities has recently been enacted to strengthen these communities. Although there currently isn’t a cohesive policy for business incubators in Gateway Cities, this thesis strategizes that such an approach could be beneficial for these cities, their regions, and the state as a whole.

Modern manufacturing organizations exist in the most complex and competitive environment the world has ever known. This environment consists of demanding customers, enabling, but resource intensive Industry 4.0 technology, dynamic regulations, geopolitical perturbations, and innovative, ever-expanding global competition. Successful manufacturing organizations must excel in this environment while facing emergent disruptions generated as biproducts of complex man-made and natural systems. The research presented in this thesis provides a novel two-sided approach to the creation of resilience in the modern manufacturing organization. First, the systems engineering method is demonstrated as the qualitative framework for building literature-derived organizational resilience factors into organizational structures under a life cycle perspective. A quantitative analysis of industry expert survey data through graph theory and matrix approach is presented second to prioritize resilience factors for strategic practical implementation.

Scholars from various disciplines have demonstrated that popular culture factored significantly in Cold War contestation. As a pervasive form of cultural content and unifying medium for baby boomers worldwide, pop music played an important part in the power struggle between the era’s two adversarial camps. Historical studies of the past thirty years have identified initiatives of cultural diplomacy, from radio broadcasting to live concert tours, as key to disseminating Western music in Eastern Bloc societies. This project explains how cultural commerce across the divide of the Iron Curtain familiarized millions of music fans in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) with popular sounds from the United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western democracies. Detailing a process that affected all Bloc states in similar ways, it seeks to enrich the scholarly discourse on the role of pop culture in the twentieth century’s defining ideological conflict. Through analysis of previously unavailable or inaccessible sources, the dissertation reconstructs the economic development of a communist culture industry and measures the commercial significance of Western commodities in one Eastern Bloc marketplace. Drawing on untapped archival files, it traces the evolution of Deutsche Schallplatten (German Records) from a small private firm into a flagship enterprise on the GDR’s cultural circuit. It illuminates how dependency on technology and resources from capitalist countries prompted East Germany’s managers to prioritize the westward export of classical recordings for the purpose of earning hard currencies. Based on oral histories of contemporary witnesses, it documents how the Amiga label through the parent company’s business ties to capitalist partners advanced the import of Western jazz, blues, rock, pop, and dance music to exhaust the purchasing power of the home audience. Empirically evaluating formerly classified production data for a total of 143 million records, it reveals how the state-owned monopolist engineered a de facto takeover of the domestic marketplace by American, British, and West German performers to achieve high profitability. The dissertation argues that intensifying Westernization of its walled-in music market exemplified the GDR’s decision to concede the Cold War battle over cultural preferences and political loyalties of its citizens out of economic necessity.

This thesis presents the business case for installing green roofs on movie theaters and shopping centers. These businesses can then derive increased profits from the environmental benefits of reduced energy use and increased stormwater retention. After presenting the basic design and benefits of a green roof, the thesis develops stand-alone business plans for a movie theater and shopping center. The author finds that green roofs are a profitable sustainability solution for the commercial enterprise.