Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1974. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 176-178). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

Despite growing consensus that educational reform has changed the nature of school leadership, the contemporary literature provides limited insight into how educational change impacts the identity of those who are centrally involved. Although the principal is deemed to be a critical lynch-pin in school improvement, relatively few studies seek the informative voices of principals to understand the identities assumed as principals engage in change processes, and how principals address consonance and dissonance between their identities and internal and external demands. In this study, interpretive approaches were used to explore the relationship between principal identity and educational change. I used purposeful sampling to select six principals within central Alberta. Multiple individual interviews were conducted with each principal. Additionally, I recorded notes in my researchers journal which also served as a record of my thinking as the study unfolded and as an additional data source. Data analysis involved identifying patterns and themes pertinent to the research questions. Micropolitical analysis suggested that the nature and degree of change was influenced by the four identities principals assumed as they engaged in educational change: (a) organizational architect (visionary and analyst sub-identities), (b) mediator (disseminator, meaning maker, and problem solver sub-identities), (c) awakener (teacher and learner sub-identities), and (d) protector (caregiver and advocate sub-identities). A degree of overlap and reciprocity, as well as competition, between identities and sub-identities existed. Principals assumed identities were derived from access to sources of organizational power. Principals constructed their own understandings and responses to change by assimilating, accommodating (including symbolic accommodation and compromise), or resisting (through evidence-based argument, avoidance, and opposition) new ideas or approaches. Although principals often felt at odds with the prevailing discourses of educational change, they both consciously and inadvertently reinforced dominant ideologies. Expectations for legitimacy and cohesion preoccupied principals thinking and influenced identity salience. Principals identities and responses impacted the potential for change. My key recommendation is that principals need to consider how their identities, positional power, and responses to change shape the nature and extent of educational change. I conclude with further questions and directions for practice, policy, and research. / Educational Administration and Leadership

The United States presently focuses much of its energy on the prevention of terrorism through particular counterterrorism policies and strategies. Today, deterrence is the primary theoretical basis for counterterrorism policies. If the United States invests so heavily in deterrence as a counterterrorism strategy, is it successful? If not, what are its theoretical flaws? Who is best served by efforts to prevent terrorism through a deterrent project? This thesis will argue that a more appropriate understanding of terrorism is necessary. In order to achieve a more holistic conception of the terrorism problem, efforts should be made politically and theoretically to incorporate international relationships that include politics, economics and culture. Such an approach to understanding terrorism as a collective action that is related to various social structures is not facilitated within the 4 present theoretical application of deterrence to counterterrorism. Therefore, this thesis is a political and economic approach to understanding the relationship between theories of terrorism and strategies of counterterrorism. If deterrence is not the most appropriate way of addressing terrorism, then the first step to creating alternative strategies is to analyze the deterrence policies currently in place. Therefore, this thesis is a stepping stone to moving past present conceptions of how to address terrorism; in order to critique U.S. counterterrorism strategy and understand why deterrence is employed as a strategy so that we can create more suitable counterterrorism strategies.

Thesis (D.B.A.)--Maastricht School of Management (The Netherlands), 2002. / Supervisor: Leo van Geffen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Psychology, Committee on Human Development, June 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--York University, 2003. Graduate Programme in Education. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 187-196). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL:http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url%5Fver=Z39.88-2004&res%5Fdat=xri:pqdiss&rft%5Fval%5Ffmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft%5Fdat=xri:pqdiss:MQ99297

The Transtheoretical Model of Change is intended to be a general model of change that can be applied to many populations and domains of change. However, most of the studies that have investigated this model have focused on addiction-related topics or on individual psychotherapy. The current study explored whether this model's predictions applied to couples and their readiness to change their relationship. Data from two samples were collected. The first sample consisted of 65 volunteer couples recruited from the community. The second sample consisted of 55 couples that participated in a 9-week relationship enhancement seminar. Factor analyses of questionnaires designed to measure the stages of change and processes of change predicted by the Transtheoretical Model of Change did not produce the hypothesized factors. In general, use of change processes did not predict change in relationship satisfaction. However, there was some evidence that wives' use of change processes had more impact on relationship satisfaction than did husbands' use of change processes. Couples at higher stages of change tended to experience greater improvements in marital satisfaction than did couples at lower stages of change. Couples with partners at similar levels of readiness to change did not experience greater improvements in marital satisfaction than did couples at dissimilar levels of readiness to change. In general, couples using the processes of change that matched their stage of change did not experience greater changes in marital satisfaction. However, as predicted by the Transtheoretical Model of Change, use of consciousness raising processes was less helpful for couples at higher stages of change than for couples at lower stages of change. Reasons for the failure to support many of the claims of the Transtheoretical Model of Change are explored and suggestions for future research are provided.

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The purpose of the study was to examine organizational structural, cultural, pedagogical, and economic (reward system) elements of a traditional research-oriented university for influences on faculty adoption of computer-mediated learning technologies (CMLTs). Emergent driving and restraining societal and organizational influences (Lewin, 1951) on faculty members adoption of CMLTs were examined. Faculty members perceptions of the extent to which university policies and practices were aligned to support the successful design, development, and implementation of CMLTs were explored. <p>A case study of faculty members, who had led CMLT development teams in a provincially funded Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) initiative at one university between 2000 and 2005, was conducted in four stages. In the first stage of the study, focus groups and members checks were held with instructional designers in order to identify potentially information-rich CMLT projects. Findings from this included an examination of the social negotiation process among members of CMLT development teams, and provided the bases for selecting faculty members to invite to participate in the study. Stage Two was a pilot of the faculty interview protocol that resulted in protocol refinement. In Stage Three, seven faculty members and one graduate student participated in interviews and members checks of the results. Faculty members were asked to describe their motivations for adopting CMLTs into teaching praxis, any resultant changes to their scholarship of teaching, the compensation they received for time invested in pedagogical and technological innovation, and the extent to which institutional structures, cultures, and policies had supported or impeded their efforts. Stage Four involved an environmental scan of institutional and provincial documentation of the TEL initiative as an avenue to corroborating interview data.<p>In this study, it was found that faculty motivations for CMLT adoption included individual responses to departmental initiatives, curricular renewal and standardization activities, personal-professional development, integrating research into teaching, enhancing student learning, increasing the flexibility of student access to learning opportunities, and improving communications with students. Participants reported a variety of resultant changes to their scholarship of teaching: (1) a shift away from traditional lectures and toward learner-focused tutorials, small group and peer-to-peer discussions, and independent learning opportunities for students accessing electronic learning resources; (2) a new or renewed interest in using innovative instructional strategies and learning environments; and (3) a new or heightened interest in researching educational effectiveness. Organizational support for CMLT projects included fiscal support from the TEL program, and in some cases, additional funding provided by departments or colleges; project management support from the institution; pedagogical support from instructional designers; technical and aesthetic support from information technologists, media developers, graphic artists, and a medical illustrator. Organizational and cultural impediments to successful completion of projects varied across college settings. Lack of sufficient time to devote to CMLT development projects, balancing competing research, teaching, and administrative responsibilities with project activities, and therefore, coping with a mismatch between tenure and promotion requirements and necessary time commitments to CMLT projects were pervasive. Difficulties in coordinating large development teams, the slow pace of acquiring approvals for new programs, problematic project management models, and colleagues skepticism about and fear of integrating technology into teaching were common themes. <p>This study surfaced implications for organizational change that could better enable faculty efforts to adopt CMLTs. Expanding tenure and promotion criteria to include CMLT development work (Archer, Garrison, & Anderson, 1999; Hagner & Schneebeck, 2001) and revising intellectual property policies for CMLT artifacts to better acknowledge faculty efforts (Hilton & Neal, 2001; Tallman, 2000) could do much to encourage the integration of technology into teaching. Promoting educational effectiveness research studies (Chyung, 2001), and bringing CMLT efforts in from the margins to become a core activity in the scholarship of teaching (Bates, 2001) could erode current skepticism and fear about technologies displacing faculty members (Olcott & Schmidt, 2000). <p>Finally, in this study, theoretical implications for organizational change were posited. Traditional centralized and bureaucratic management styles are not well suited to supporting CMLT initiatives in higher education (Bates, 2001). A more distributed approach to leadership (Knapper, 2006) could better support necessary efforts to innovate, experiment, prototype, evaluate in order to incrementally improve project outcomes (Suter, 2001), create synergies between teaching and research activities, and garner faculty commitment to integrating computer-mediated learning technologies into contemporary teaching praxis.

In a world where the actions of firms have profound consequences, and in which existing corporate norms frequently have controversial impacts on the broader society, the issue of transforming corporate institutions is of increasing importance. What mechanisms allow reforms to be proposed, understood, accepted and eventually adopted throughout an organizational field? How do practices which diverge markedly from prior norms become both acceptable and widely imitated? There is an accelerating use of social movement theory and organization theory to understand and explain campaigns for social change and corporate responses. In this study, I explore the influence of governance activists on the norms of corporate governance in Canada. In the years immediately after the introduction of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the United States, Canadian governance activists began to advocate a new model of the role of corporate boards. They wished to strengthen the independence of board from management, and their model quickly became normative. Institutions changed swiftly and unmistakably. This setting provides an opportunity to investigate the means by which institutional entrepreneurs introduce new practices to an organizational field, how the practices they advocate acquire value, and the conditions under which new practices are integrated into the decision-making processes of organizations. I first conduct a multi-practice study that examines the importance of rankings as an algorithm or calculative device that is congruent with corporate logics. I then examine the diffusion of these practices using a heterogeneous diffusion model. The logic of activists, the structure of organizational fields and the rational decision making of individual firms each play an essential part in the process of institutionalizing new and divergent practices.