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Ed. D.

An approach to organizations which views them as social constructions provides new insights into the phenomenon of organizational decline. In this view, organizations are seen not as objective entities, but, rather, are viewed as products of the human beings who comprise their membership. This view also sees human beings as actors whose behavior is governed not only by rationality, but also by unconscious processes. Any full understanding of organizational action requires an appreciation of the extent to which human beings are governed by the dynamics of the psyche, which operates outside of conscious awareness. An approach to organizational decline which encompasses these assumptions examines how the members of the organization consciously and! or unconsciously collaborate to create the conditions of decline. This research begins with a psychoanalytic model of human behavior, Bowen Theory, which explains how individuals function within relationship systems such as families and organizations. The theory also examines how dysfunction is created within those systems when the relationship process becomes ineffective or dysfunctional. Using the case study method, the dissertation describes how the decline experienced by three distinct organizations can be understood as a consequence of the relationship process created and sustained by the participants in each of the organization's human system. / Ph. D.

A philosophical and historical review of the evolving and growing definition of democratic education through the writings of John Dewey, Nel Noddings, and Joyce Rothschild was accomplished in a literature review that included commentaries from the works of Jesse Goodman, John Goodlad, Amy Gutmann, Hugh Sockett, Kenneth Strike, and Maxine Greene, and others. The review of literature leads up the to the ethnographic case study of an alternative school that has been in existence for twenty-two years and is a member of the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools. As an ethnographic work, I "write the culture" as I find it at Connectionist School with a special interest in the systemic, organic differences between their democratic organization and traditional bureaucratic public and private schools. The study is a contribution to school reform efforts that are directed toward transformation of schools (Goodlad, 1990; Strike, 1993; Sockett, 1993) and emphasizes the need for a pervasive ethic of care (Noddings, 1984, 1992). / Ed. D.

Almost twenty-five years ago, James Coleman's Equalitv of Educational Opportunity reported that "Schools make no difference." Though it was received with dismay and frustration by liberal educators, the Coleman report was not the first to indicate that public schools give unequal access to the "American dream." Since that time theorists have attempted to develop models to explain why students tend to exit the educational system with much the same social and economic potential as their parents. / Ed. D.

Issue exploration is used as a preliminary phase in strategic decision making. It performs the function of allowing strategic decision makers to encounter new information, learn from it, and use it to help them sort the strategic problems from the non-strategic problems. The function of issue exploration effort is to focus strategic resources on the strategic problems and to avoid solving the non-strategic ones. In statistics, solving the wrong problem is considered as making an Error of the Third Kind. For strategic decision makers, solving non-strategic problems can also be considered as making an Error of the Third Kind. An "Organizational Disposition For Change Framework" was developed to research the exploration behavior of thirty strategic decision-making management initiative:s for information technology development in Fairfax County, Virginia. The results supported the hypothesis that strategic decision-making initiatives that included exploration behavior significantly outperform those initiatives that did not. / Ph. D.

Self-managing teams (SMTs) are receiving increasing attention from organizations striving for continuous improvement and searching for innovative ways to get their employees involved and empowered. More and more organizations are realizing the significant impact these teams have on quality, productivity, the social circles, worker esteem, and profitability. Consultants and researchers have also paid significant attention to the concept of SMTs, focusing on many aspects of these teams. However, little research has been directed toward the training needs of former supervisors, who, by a plant transitioning to SMTs, have now to take up the role of being coaches of the teams. They invariably are caught in the middle between empowering their teams and satisfying the needs of upper management. The confusion about their new roles may lead to unsuccessful implementation of the teams. This research is an attempt to answer questions related to the training issues of leaders of self-managing teams. The purpose of this study is to help managers and consultants further understand the issues, concern, problems and difficulties faced by the coaches of SMTs. The case study sight for this research was the AT&T plant in Richmond. Some of the outputs of this study are: prioritized lists of the issues and concerns of the coaches at AT&T, a simple cause-effect analysis, important issues and solutions proposed by the coaches, and a list of recommendations based on the overall analysis. / Master of Science

A job-related social skills program for high school students with mild cognitive impairments, using a range of media materials has been implemented in several school districts in Virginia. The program, developed under the auspices of the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs, will be examined in this study for issues of implementation and adoption in public high schools. The use of traditional experimental designs in program evaluation is seriously questioned when complex issues of implementation are involved. These issues are magnified in special education settings where subject assignment, sample size, individualized instruction, and teacher choice of materials are uniquely present. Consequently, a case study approach of four classrooms following the techniques of Miles and Huberman and Yin was used to examine the implementation process. Three major factors were used to organize data collection: teacher understanding of existing curriculum and goals and teaching style, congruence between the existing and new content and decision making related to implementation, and instructional delivery and the way program use actually looked. While all teachers appeared to like and accept the program, they did not want it to alter their existing classroom plans, teaching styles, and personal interaction approaches. Each teacher showed a unique defense of his or her existing educational style, and the new program was adapted to the ongoing classroom situation, rather than vice versa. If faced with decisions between using the new program and fulfilling existing requirements, these teachers chose to reject the program. The great variation in implementation and modification of the program across these sites supports the need for more careful descriptive site by site studies that allow for differences that cannot easily be identified in quasi-experimental designs. / Ph. D.

This exploratory study examined the nature of the relationships between two preschool teachers and four of the children in their care. Of particular interest was the influence of primary attachment models or mental representations of each individual, on the interactions between teachers and children. Data on the teacher-child interactions were gathered through classroom observations and in depth interviews. Parents of the children were interviewed to obtain information on the children's primary attachment models. Findings support the conclusion that early attachment models were influential in defining current teacher-child relationships. These findings have implications for the training of teachers and for further research. / Ph. D.

The principal objectives of this study were to determine: a) the direct effect of an apartment manager’s leadership style and b) the direct and indirect effects of functional health, morale, and social activity on residential satisfaction using a path model. The sample for this study consisted of residents of government subsidized housing for the elderly in Virginia. The majority of the respondents were widowed, white females with and average age of 73. The sample was drawn from 10 apartment communities selected from a list of 19 communities containing 2,156 apartments. A self-administered instrument was developed, pretested, and revised as needed, and sent to one-half of the residents in each of the 10 communities. The responses were scored to determine the respondents' levels of residential satisfaction, perception of the apartment manager•s leadership style, level, of social activity, morale, and functional health. A total of 210 usable responses were obtained from the initial distribution of 582 instruments and one follow-up mailing. The total response rate was 36.1%. Leadership style emerged as having the strongest direct effect on residential satisfaction, .329, followed by social .222, morale, .071, and functional health, -.067. The R² was .262. The model was refined, positioning functional health, morale, and social activity as exogenous variables with leadership style as the intervening variable. The analysis was conducted separately for the group of respondents with eight years or less of education and for the group with more education. The total effect of every bivariate relationship was greater for the group with less education. The total effect of leadership style on residential satisfaction was .446 for the less educated group and .267 for the group with more education; for social activity, .371 and .178: for morale, .134 and .019; and for functional health, -.093 and .014, respectively. The R²s were .327 and .102, respectively. Leadership style of the manager has a strong direct effect on the residential satisfaction of the respondents as does their level of social activity. The total effect of morale and functional health on residential satisfaction is minor with functional health having a negative effect. The residential satisfaction of those with less education was more strongly affected by all variables than were the group with less education. / Ph. D.