Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1993.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1993. / Also available in print.

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Educational Psychology in the Department of Educational Psychology and Special Needs Education at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2014. / This research aimed to determine the perceptions that Foundation Phase educators from schools in the Lower Umfolozi District held towards disruptive behaviour. It studied the perceptions of educators towards the characteristics of disruptive behaviour, as well as the extent that it existed in their classrooms and the impact that it had on teaching and learning. A survey questionnaire was distributed to educators from 26 schools and 92 questionnaires were returned. The researcher used SPSS to conduct data analysis. Findings suggest that a majority of the educators experienced disruptive behaviour in their classrooms. They perceived similar behaviours to be disruptive, with many participants identifying ‘shouting out’, ‘walking around the classroom’, ‘talking in class’ and ‘playful behaviour’ as being disruptive. The results from the survey suggest that disruptive behaviour did affect their teaching, both in terms of educator motivation and the quality of teaching, as well as the learning of the students in terms of academic outcomes.

The benefits of new IT-induced organisational changes, such as new organisational information systems (IS), depend on the degree that system users adapt by proactively changing themselves, their work routines, and even the technology itself in order to reap its strategic capabilities and advantages. However, researchers are increasingly concerned that IS research has provided very little indication about how IS users’ IT adaptive strategies are formed and evolved over time and how such adaptive behaviours employed by IS users influence subsequent IT use and individual-level performance outcomes. This thesis investigates in-depth the evolution of IT adaptation behaviours towards disruptive IT events in the case study of a Medical Clinic attached to one of Iran’s elite Oil and Gas industry companies. The case study investigated the individual coping behaviours of the employees of this Medical Centre as a consequence of the introduction of a mandatory Work System Computerisation (WSC) initiative. Work System Computerisation project refers to both the replacement of manual work processes with computers as well as modernisation of the existing out-dated computerised work systems in the medical centre under investigation. According to the case study, each of the seven sub-units of the Medical Centre implemented a different WSC scheme and the consequences of the introduction of the scheme resulted in differing outcomes among the employees of those sub-units, such outcomes being related to a complex interplay of the individuals’ coping behaviours, appraisals and emotional responses and the environment. The term ‘Disruptive IT event’ in this study refers to any enhanced or completely new information technology in different units within the medical centre (i.e. Work System Computerisation schemes) that replaced and disrupted existing work processes/practices and had resulted in disruptive and unpredictable changes to users’ daily routines. The theoretical lens used in this study is the Coping Model of User Adaptation (CMUA) elaborated by Coping Theory, which also underpins the model. CMUA provides a useful theoretical basis for deeper understanding of users’ adaptive responses to a new work information system (IS) as well as direct analysis of the impact of such adaptive responses on system usage. The other theoretical concept used, which addresses issues not readily covered by the CMUA, was a typology of adaptive behaviours from Roth and Cohen (1986): avoidance vs. approach. This allows for further clarification of how different types of individual-level adaptation acts evolve over time and affect individual-level IT use outcomes. Furthermore, how these various adaptive acts enhance or hinder the extent to which the new IT is used can also be explained. The research questions guiding this thesis are as follows: (1) How do IS users’ adaptation tactics and strategies evolve over time when dealing with a disruptive IT event? (2) How do alterations in users’ coping strategies subsequently influence their IT use outcomes and overall performance? The study’s methodological approaches and underlying philosophical assumptions followed an interpretive research approach. A broadly interpretive approach was adopted in this study with the aim of understanding the complexity of human sense making and their IT adaptation behaviours as the situation emerges. The research was carried out in one state of Iran, Mashhad, and took place during the period of 2011-2012. The findings of this thesis have both theoretical and managerial implications. From a theoretical perspective, this study expands on the work of Beaudry and Pinsonneault (2005) who suggested that the process of user adaptation could be understood in light of coping theory. The results of this study and the additional identified perspectives and enhancements which are represented in the following ways could help to advance the field of user IT adaptation behaviours in IS research. This study contributes to the existing IT adaptation literature by providing rich insights into the phenomenon of user IT adaptation behaviours within the context of Iran. Adopting an interpretive approach through a longitudinal process-oriented perspective has provided a greater understanding of the patterns of user adaptation to IS, users’ psychological constructs, initial patterns of their coping strategies, the alterations in such coping efforts over time, and the consequences of these evolutions on IT use outcomes in different divisions within a healthcare environment. The appraisal of ‘challenge’ is an influential contributor to the users’ subsequent adaptation process that CMUA is mute about it. The findings indicate that since the challenge appraisal represents a ‘positive stress’, some levels of challenge are useful to mobilise IS users towards IT adoption and use. The correlated concerns identified in the research (i.e. a web of complex personal, social and technical concerns) play a vital role on users’ adaptation processes following the IT implementation and over time. This highlights the importance of feedback loop in the adaptation process (which represents users’ revaluation process), and how the direct and indirect impacts of such interventions affect users’ reassessments of the IT event and their subsequent efforts and outcomes.  The concept of emotion that is missing from CMUA is influential especially where non-IT savvy users’ behaviours toward significant IT events may be influenced by extreme emotions.  Outcomes of this study highlight the theoretical importance of preserving the distinction between approach-, and avoidance-oriented emotion-focused behaviours in exploring how emotion-focused behaviours may influence behavioural outcomes such as system usage. The consideration of parallel processes for users’ IS appraisal is another area of theoretical expansion. The findings also suggest implications for practice as well as directions for future research. Understanding how employees’ IS appraisals considerably affect coping efforts and ultimately their technology performance outcome is critical for successful IT implementations and use in work settings. The results could assist decision makers in assessing user adaptation concerns and the intensity of such apprehensions at each phase of the change process and hence address them more effectively.

This exploratory study examined the effectiveness of child teacher relationship training (CTRT) with at-risk preschool children exhibiting disruptive behavior. The participants included a total of 23 Head Start teachers and their aides, and children identified by their teachers as exhibiting clinical or borderline levels of externalizing behavior problems. Teacher participants included 22 females and 1 male; demographics were reported as 56% Hispanic ethnicity, 17% Black American, and 22% European American. Child participants included 15 males and 5 females; demographics were reported as 60% Hispanic, 30% Black American, and 10% European American. A 2 by 3 (Group x Repeated Measures) split plot ANOVA was used to analyze the data. According to teacher reports using the Teacher Report Form (C-TRF) and blinded raters’ reports using the Direct Observation Form (DOF) to assess disruptive behaviors, children whose teachers received the CTRT intervention demonstrated statistically significant decreases (p < .05) in externalizing behaviors on the C-TRF and total problems on the DOF from pre- to mid- to post-test, compared to children whose teachers participated in the active control group. The CTRT intervention demonstrated large treatment effects on both measures (C-TRF: ?p2 =.173; DOF: ?p2=.164) when compared to CD, revealing the practical significance of the findings on reducing disruptive behaviors. According to independent raters on the DOF, 90% of children receiving the CTRT intervention moved from clinical levels of behavioral concern to more normative levels of functioning following treatment, establishing the clinical significance of CTRT as an early mental health intervention for preschool children in Head start exhibiting disruptive behavior.

This study investigated the impact of child teacher relationship training (CTRT) on teachers’ ability to provide emotional support in the classroom, teachers’ use of relationship-building skills, and teachers’ level of stress related to the student-child relationship. Teachers and aides from one Head Start school were randomly assigned to the experimental group CTRT (n = 11) or an active control Conscious Discipline group (CD; n = 12). Overall, 21 females, 11 (CTRT) and 11 (CD), and one male (CD) participated in the study. Participating teachers and aides identified themselves as the following: 13 Hispanic/Latino, 5 Black American, and 5 European American. Teachers and aides identified children with clinical levels of disruptive behavior problems for the purpose of selecting children of focus for the study. The children’s mean age was 3.63 for CTRT group and 3.36 for CD group. Overall, 9 females, 2 (CTRT) and 7 (CD), and 10 males, 6 (CTRT) and 4 (CD) participated in the study. Teachers reported children’s ethnicity: 13 Hispanic/Latino, 5 African American, and 1 other. A two-factor (Treatment x Group) repeated measures split plot ANOVA was utilized to analyze the data with an alpha level of .05. According to objective raters blinded to the study using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) and the Child Teacher Relationship Skills Checklist (CTRT-SC) and teacher reports using Index of Teaching Stress (ITS), results revealed a statistically significant interaction effect for the experimental teachers’ use of child-teacher relationship skills (CTRT-SC: p = .036), a non-statistically significant interaction effect for the experimental teachers’ ability to provide emotional support (CLASS: p = .50), and a non-statistically significant interaction effect on teacher stress (ITS: p = .997). Partial eta squared effect sizes were calculated to determine the practical significance of the findings. Compared to the active control, CTRT demonstrated large treatment effects over time on the CTRT-SC (?p2 = .19) and the CLASS (?p2 = .16). Study findings provide support for CTRT as an effective intervention for increasing Head Start teachers’ ability to provide emotional and relational support to at-risk students.

Over the last two decades, extensive research has been undertaken to understand incumbent firms’ adaptation behavior to disruptive innovation, considering technological change as the most important focus of analysis. Recently, there is an emerging literature that views disruptive innovation as a business model problem in which a technological innovation is deployed. In this literature, disruptive innovation is understood to be primarily a function of conflict between an incumbent’s traditional and an entrant’s new business model. This raises two major questions. First, although the original theory of disruptive innovation evolved from technological studies, this theory persists to explain all types of disruptive innovation over time (Markides, 2006: 19). Furthermore, disruptive innovation has always been studied from an incumbent firm perspective. With the need to shift the research focus from a technology to a business model, we also need a new framework to understand disruptive innovation taking the business model as the unit of analysis taking both the entrant’s and incumbent’s perspectives. Building on business model innovation studies (Govindarajan and Gupta, 2001; Normann, 2001; Hamel, 2000) and the established technology based disruptive innovation theory (Christensen and Raynor, 2003; Christensen, 1997), this study offers a systematic business model framework to comprehend disruptive phenomenon from both an incumbent’s and an entrant’s perspectives. Second, disruptive innovation studies predominantly focus on high-tech industries. Increasingly many low-tech industries are being affected by disruptive non-technological market-driven business model innovations. Considering that disruptive innovation theory is principally iii technology based, a review of the literature suggests that we know little about the differences between high-tech and low-tech market-driven disruptive innovations in terms of their evolutions, competitive and disruptive effects. From the strategic management literature point of view, the contribution of this study becomes even more relevant when the two questions are examined across economic regions. Although there is ample evidence that shows disruptive innovations are not always restricted to developed economies, little is known about how incumbents in developing economies adapt their organizations to disruptive business model innovations. This study takes South Africa as a development economy case-study. The empirical setting of the current study includes four South African industries: the mobile and IT industry (high-tech), banking, insurance and airlines (lowtech) industries. In addressing the two key question of the study, the dissertation presents the empirical analysis at the first-order (firm-level study) and second-order (high-tech vs. low-etch study) levels. The first-order study argues that an innovation creates and grows a niche market through radical product design, different core competencies and/or a different revenue model long before it becomes disruptive innovation. It proposes a framework that attempts to model the evolution of this trajectory from an entrant’s perspective. From the entrant’s perspective, a potentially disruptive business model innovation is a process that evolves over time in successive adaptations to endogenous and exogenous innovation drivers that shape the evolution and path of the new business model. An innovation becomes disruptive only when the new business model fully or partially affects an incumbent’s established business model and market. iv Taking the viewpoint of an incumbent firm, the first-order study further offers a framework that seeks to provide a causality model to comprehend the root cause of disruptive innovation and its impact on the incumbent’s traditional business model. One of the major causes of disruptive innovation is the incumbent’s entrepreneurial dilemma. This means that an incumbent’s success or failure is partly contingent on the senior corporate management’s entrepreneurship readiness that is manifested in terms of taking risk initiative, willingness and ability to take appropriate strategic approaches to enable disruptive innovation. By articulating the causes of disruptive innovation, it suggests four key strategic approaches an incumbent should follow to enable disruptive innovation. While the study finds common patterns for the causes and approaches among incumbents across the four industries at a firm-level, some of the hypotheses of this study could not be proven at an aggregated system level. Disruptive innovation is a relative phenomenon: Some innovations that are disruptive to some firms or industries may not be disruptive to other firms or industries. Therefore, the study further re-examines the aggregated firm-level outcomes by disaggregating the data into dichotomous technology versus marketdriven disruptive innovations. By conducting a second-order analysis at the innovation category level, this study adds considerably to extant innovation literature by establishing that a lowtechnology market-driven disruptive business model innovation entails different business model evolutionary processes, different disruptive effects and different managerial implications compared to high-tech disruptive innovation.

Thesis advisor: Karen D. Arnold / For decades, critics have been calling attention to the slow pace of change in higher education (Cohen & March, 1974; Kliewer, 1999; Menand, 2010; Murray, 2008). This pace is clearly at odds with the significant reform necessary to meet the rapidly changing needs of and demands upon the system. Despite the inertia of the past, it seems imperative that we find approaches to innovation that will facilitate increased college access and cost management. This study examined one organization—College Unbound—that identifies itself as a potential disruptive innovation, an innovation that meets the needs of an underserved population, with the potential to “disrupt” the way entire sector operates (Christensen, 1997). Empirical applications of disruptive innovation theory to higher education are limited, and yet there is a strong rationale for its application to the challenge of increasing access and persistence. In an effort to increase understanding of how disruptive innovation might impact higher education, this study looked at how the characteristics of College Unbound and its relationship to the external environment affected the potential capacity of the organization to disrupt the field of higher education. One common characteristic of disruptive organizations is having a enough structural flexibility to respond to changing market and environmental needs (Christensen, 1997). At College Unbound, the primary pivot was a shift in the organization’s target population, from full-time traditional-aged college students in the first three years of the program, to a model of educating adult learners. This transition occurred in response to both the external market, and to tighten the alignment between College Unbound’s staff and internal resources. College Unbound has also faced concerns from both internal and external audiences because of perceptions about quality. To address these concern, College Unbound adapted by changing its internal configuration, and its external partners and relationship to the external environment. Based on these findings, implications for disruption and innovation in higher education are discussed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

With the rise of peer-to-peer software like Napster, many predicted that the digitalisation, sharing and dematerialisation of music would bring a radical transformation within the recording industry. This opened up a period of controversy and uncertainty in which competing visions were articulated of technology-induced change, markedly polarised between utopian and dystopian accounts with no clear view of ways forwards. A series of moves followed as various players sought to valorise music on the digital music networks, culminating in an emergence of successful streaming services. This thesis examines why there was a mismatch between initial predictions and what has actually happened in the market. It offers a detailed examination of the innovation processes through which digital technology was implemented and domesticated in the recording industry. This reveals a complex, contradictory and constantly evolving landscape in which the development of digital music distribution was far removed from the smooth development trajectories envisaged by those who saw these developments as following a simple trajectory shaped by technical or economic determinants. The research is based upon qualitative data analysis of fifty five interviews with a wide range of entrepreneurs and innovators, focusing on two successful innovation cases with different points of insertion within the digital recording industry; (1) Spotify: currently the world’s most popular digital music streaming service; and (2) INgrooves: an independent digital music distribution service provider whose system is also used by Universal Music Group. The thesis applies perspectives from the Social Shaping of Technology (“SST”) and its extension into Social Learning in Technological Innovation. It explores the widely dispersed processes of innovation through which the complex set of interactions amongst heterogeneous players who have conflicting interests and differing commitments involved in the digital music networks guided diverging choices in relation to particular market conditions and user requirements. The thesis makes three major contributions to understanding digital disruption in the recording industry. (1) In contrast to prevailing approaches which take P2P distribution as the single point of focus, the study investigates the multiplicity of actors and sites of innovation in the digital recording industry. It demonstrates that the dematerialisation of music did not lead to a simple, e.g. technologically-driven transformation of the industry. Instead a diverse array of realignments had to take place across the music sector to develop digital music valorisation networks. (2) By examining the detailed processes involved in the evolution of digital music services, it highlights the ways in which business models are shaped through a learning process of matching and finding constantly changing digital music users’ needs. Based on the observation that business models must be discovered in the course of making technologies work in the market, a new framework of ‘social shaping of business models’ is proposed in order to conceptualise business models as an emergent process in which firms refine their strategies in the light of emerging circumstances. (3) Drawing upon the concepts of musical networks (Leyshon 2001) and mediation (Hennion 1989), the thesis investigates the interaction of the diverse actors across the circuit of the recording business – production, distribution, valorisation, and consumption. The comprehensive analysis of the intricate interplay between innovation actors and their interactions in the economic, cultural, legal and institutional context highlights the need to develop a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the recording industry.

Externalizing behavior problems during early childhood are fairly common, with approximately 10% to 15% of young children exhibiting at least mild to moderate disruptive behaviors. Of great significance, disruptive behaviors persist beyond early childhood for a substantial number of children and are related to impaired functioning 111 for children and families. Parent discipline and parent stress are two variables that have been examined in relation to children's disruptive behaviors. While a significant body of research has documented the association between broad parental discipline strategies and behavior problems during early childhood, little research attention has been devoted to specific discipline techniques that may be related to disruptive behaviors. This study surveyed 30 parents of children with behavior problems and 57 parents of children without behavior problems about the discipline techniques they use with their preschool children. The relationships between the specific techniques parents use with their young children, parents' perceived stress level, and parent-reported child behavior problems were examined. Telling the child "no," corrective feedback, lecturing, and scolding were the discipline techniques parents reported using most often. The discipline techniques of corrective feedback and threats as well as parent stress emerged as significant predictors of disruptive behaviors. Conclusions and clinical implications of these findings are provided.