The purpose of this research was to construct and empirically test a theoretical model of surprise and its impact on consumer affect and behavior. First the literature on the emotion of surprise was reviewed with particular emphasis on classification and process models of surprise. A theoretical model of surprise was constructed. A new concept called motivated meaning integration (MMI) was proposed. MMI takes place in a setting that includes the interaction of the appraisal process with factors such as environmental uncertainty and consumers’ individual differences. These interactions impact outcomes such as consumer affect and buying behavior. Ten hypotheses were derived from the theoretical model and empirically tested using several pretests and two main studies. The present research designed and evaluated several surprise manipulations and MMI manipulation checks to effectively test the proposed relationships. Participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk). Although many of the hypotheses were not supported, some important ones were. The results provide some support that a consumer’s sense of personal control interacts with MMI to impact a consumer’s likelihood of choosing unknown or mystery products ( e.g. products in a known category such as beauty products but the actual products are selected by the company). Specifically, consumers who experienced a low sense of personal control (compared to a high sense personal control) were more likely to choose mystery products (vs. objectively similar known products) after they encountered surprise with mystery (vs. with known) elements. The results also provided some support that productivity orientation interacts with surprise appraisal to impact consumer affect. Particularly, consumers with high productivity orientation (vs. low) were more likely to experience higher positive affect after encountering surprise with mystery (vs. with known) elements. The primary implication for theory involves refining the conceptualization of surprise appraisal, especially fast MMI, and adopting adequate measure for testing it. The most relevant implication for marketing management is to offer products with mystery elements because consumers are more likely to choose additional mystery products. If this dissertation stimulates others to pursue research on surprise theory in marketing, my efforts to continue developing scientific theory will be worth it. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

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This research examines the different social costs that have a bearing on the form and content of regulatory intervention underpinning the Auto-Enrolment (AE) pensions’ regime and whether these are recognised within current UK legislation. AE requires employers to assess the workforce and, subject to qualifying criteria, enrol them into a pension and make contributions to the pension. Workers are also required to contribute to the pension although they can choose to leave the scheme, Since its introduction in 2012, more than 4.7 million workers in the UK have now been enrolled into a pension which they did not choose highlighting the impact of the regulatory intervention. The starting point for my research is to consider the history of pension legislation in the UK and the circumstances leading up to the introduction of AE. The next step is to consider whether this legislative intervention is paternalistic and, if so, whether justified. I then consider whether the implementing legislation functions as it was intended or whether there are any unintended consequences. Parliamentary debate at the inception of AE illustrates an intention to ensure that individuals save more for themselves for their own good. Behavioural economics was widely referred to as authority on the hypothesis that individuals do not make rational financial decisions for themselves, justifying legislative intervention to ensure that private pension saving is the default position for all workers in the UK. Paternalistic legislation can be difficult to justify where individual choice is overridden entirely and so the legislation allows for individuals to opt out – soft paternalism or nudge. There is an assumption that low opt-out rates indicate that individuals now agree that the pension saving is in their best interests, justifying the intervention. However, there has been a marked dearth of research into AE savers' actual perceptions of how the schemes work for them. My research has come to close this gap and also allows drawing up some normative conclusions regarding the proper framework for offering and regulating AE in the UK. In particular, participants were asked to discuss their own choices and actions within their workplace pension and understanding of pensions’ information. Employers and professional advisers were also interviewed to build a complete picture of the practical implementation of AE. In considering these findings my work considers whether there are negative or unintended consequences of the policy change and how these are dealt with.

This dissertation approaches the question of sustainability and its influence on company performance, with special focus on the manufacturing industry. In the contemporary production environment, manufacturing operations must take into account not only profit, but also environmental and social performance, in order to ensure the long-term development of the company. Companies have to decide whether they should allocate resources to environmental and social practices in order to improve their competitive advantage. Consequently, in decision-making processes concerning operations, it is important for companies to understand how to coordinate profit, people, and planet. The objective of this dissertation was to investigate the current situation regarding manufacturers’ sustainable initiatives, and to explore the relationship between these sustainable practices and companies’ performance, including financial performance, operational performance, innovation performance, environmental performance, and social performance. First of all, a structured literature review was conducted to identify sustainable factors considered to be important in the decision making of manufacturing operations. The findings were synthesized into a conceptual model, which was then adopted as the basis for designing the survey instrument used in this dissertation. Drawing on Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) reports, empirical research was performed to explore the relationship between environmental management practices and company performance. Interestingly, the findings showed that many environmental management practices had a strong positive impact on innovation performance. Sustainability disclosures and financial performance were further analyzed using extended data from the GRI reports. The results also showed that several sustainability performance indicators, such as product responsibility, human rights, and society, displayed a significant and positive correlation with return on equity in the sample companies. In order to further explore the research area and to verify these findings, a triangulation approach was adopted and new data were collected via a survey conducted among middle and large sample companies in the Swedish manufacturing industry. The results indicated that the sustainable improvement practices had a positive impact on company performance. Some environmental and social improvement practices had a direct and positive correlation with product and process innovation. Furthermore, findings suggested that better cooperation with suppliers on environmental work could help to strengthen the organizational green capabilities of the focal companies. When considering the company’s general approach to implementing sustainable practices, some interesting findings emerged. There were limited significant differences in sustainable practices when comparing different manufacturing sectors, and different countries and regions. However, the results showed that Swedish manufacturing companies often place higher priority on implementing economic and environmental sustainability practices than on social ones. This dissertation contributes to the literature on manufacturing sustainability. The study expands the understanding of how environmental, social, or economic perspectives as a triple bottom line can influence company performance and to a certain extent the supply chain. Identifying and understanding such relationships gives companies the opportunity to integrate sustainability into their manufacturing operations strategy in order to sustain their manufacturing operations over the long term.

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This work is focused on a mediation of grammar in teaching of the German language in primary schools. The main attention is paid to the declension of nouns. I chose for the comparison two completely different outlined textbooks. In view of the fact, that still quite a large number of primary schools teaches according to the textbook "Heute haben wir Deutsch", I decided to confront this textbook with its more modern successor "Deutsch mit Max" and determine whether the conception of modern textbooks differ from those older ones only graphic, i. e. with illustration, and themes that correspond to the age of pupils, or with regard to grammar (the other choice, progression and quantity of grammar structures), and thus are these textbooks more suitable for the current teaching of the German language. Subsequently are the results of this work compared with the views of pupils who are taught according to these textbooks.

<P> The three essays in this thesis conduct empirical research on the economics of immigration using data from the Canadian Censuses. In the first paper, I analyze the impact of immigration on native-born Canadians' wage growth by combining an area approach and a skill approach. The estimated effects of immigration from both a first difference regression and a two-stage regression are either statistically insignificant or significantly positive. The results indicate that there is no evidence for a negative impact of the large immigrant influx during the 1990s on the wage growth of natives. The second essay examines the impact of residence in an ethnic enclave on male immigrants' labour force activities. For recent immigrants who arrived in Canada within ten years, the intensity of enclave residence is found to be negatively associated with their labour force participation rate, but positively correlated with their employment probability. However, living in an enclave has no significant effect on the labour force activity of old immigrants whose years-since-migration is more than twenty. These findings are robust to probit and instrumental variable estimations. In the third essay, I examine the returns to education for first, second and third generation immigrant men. Multivariate regression results indicate that the third generation with at least postsecondary education earn more than the equally educated first and second generations. However, the third generation do not have a wage premium over the second generation when they have high school education and lower. I explain the well-educated second generation's difficulty in translating their intellectual ability into productivity by their ethnic and linguistic distance from the Canadian mainstream, and by negative city-specific effects. I then suggest that immigrant assimilation policies that target the well-educated first and second generations should be designed to promote the acceptance of their human capital by the Canadian labour market. </p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<P> This dissertation aims to advance empirical research in the realm of knowledge sharing in virtual communities and to help practitioners better understand the factors that inhibit (cost) or motivate (benefit) such behaviour. The impact of some costs and benefits (factors derived from social exchange theory) may be contingent upon certain social contexts or conditions (factors derived from social capital theory). To this end, two research models were developed (i.e., a main effects model and an interaction model) that integrate these two theories together. New constructs specific to the virtual community context were also incorporated. To test these models, an online survey was administered to 968 members of a large IT professional virtual community comprising millions of registered users. </p> <p> Findings from a structural equation modeling analysis of this data set suggest that specific benefits and social capital factors have direct effects on an individual's intention to share knowledge, and more importantly, the impacts of some benefits are contingent upon certain social capital factors. Specifically, the impact of online score rewards on an individual's intention to share knowledge with others in the virtual community is contingent upon that person's trust in the people who are seeking knowledge from that individual. Additionally, the impact of reciprocity on an individual's intention to share knowledge is moderated by pro-sharing norms in the virtual community. </p> <p> A major contribution of this dissertation is the provision of new theoretical insights that help explain how certain benefits and social capital factors affect knowledge sharing activity in virtual communities. It is hoped that these insights will help builders and managers of knowledge-based virtual communities better promote online knowledge sharing behaviours and improve the sustainability of such communities in the future. </p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The presented diploma thesis is a practical research of job satisfaction in the chosen company Tomos Praha, a.s. It deals with the theoretical background of job satisfaction, its relation to the motivation and its impact on the performance of the employees. It describes particular theories of job satisfaction and focuses on the factors which influence the job satisfaction. In the practical part it examines the job satisfaction in the company Tomos Praha, a.s. from the different point of view, analyses the the data acquired by the empirical research and proposes the steps for improving the current situation.

Analysts, investors and entrepreneurs have for long recognized the value of comprehensive user profiles. While there is a market for trading such personal information among companies, the users, who are actually the providers of such information, are not asked to the negotiations table. To date, there is little information on how users value their personal information. In an online survey-based experiment 1059 Facebook users revealed how much they would be willing to pay for keeping their personal information. Our study reveals that as soon as people learn that some third party is interested in their personal information (asset consciousness prime), the value their information to a much higher degree than without this prime and start to defend their asset. Furthermore, we found that people develop a psychology of ownership towards their personal information. In fact, this construct is a significant contributor to information valuation, much higher than privacy concerns. (author's abstract)