The number of chronic wounds is rising in the United States, and health leaders face the economic and health burdens these wounds pose to the U.S. health care system. Many investigators have documented the importance of leadership in promoting excellence and reducing health care costs in chronic disease. Yet, the literature lacks information regarding leader strategies used to promote wound treatment cultures of excellence directed toward improved quality and reduced health costs. This study examined leader strategies used to promote excellence in chronic wound treatment to address the problem of the economic and health burdens associated with chronic wounds. The full range leadership theory (FRLT), concepts of patient-centered care, and the disease-specific centers of excellence (COE) model served as the framework for this study. The research questions focused on identifying key leader strategies used to promote quality and excellence in chronic wound centers. Sources of information used in this case study included a questionnaire, company documents, and news articles. A sample of 30 wound COE leaders within the same company were randomly selected. Open coding and thematic data analysis of participant questionnaires generated themes of quality, communication, patient-centeredness, leadership, work environment, and team work. The study results indicated many of the leaders exhibited leadership styles and behaviors consistent with the FRLT; moreover, the use of patient-centered concepts fostered cultures of excellence. This study is important to health leaders and contributes to positive social change by identifying leadership strategies that improve health outcomes, increase quality of care, and reduce health costs associated with chronic wounds.

Leaders of youth intervention programs provide a significant social service by redirecting at-risk youth onto a productive path. The standards for youth-serving organizations are inconsistent from 1 organization to another across a wide range of youth-worker training certification programs in the United States. A single-case study was conducted to explore the strategies that 3 leaders of a nonprofit organization located in Minnesota, use to select, collect, and analyze data to assess the effectiveness of training certification programs for youth workers. The 2017-2018 Baldrige Excellence Framework provided the structure for a systems-based evaluation of the client organization; Freeman's stakeholder theory was the conceptual lens for the study. Data were collected from conducting semistructured interviews, reviewing the participating organization's internal documents and performance outcomes, and analyzing open-source resources. Through thematic analysis, 4 key themes emerged: (a) the social return on investment analysis and the overall cost savings by investing in and supporting youth programs, (b) the opportunity to focus research on certification for youth workers, (c) the value of providing training for youth workers, and (d) the opportunity to provide a platform for the youth to share success stories with their community. Specific recommendations stemming from the research findings were to create a state or national recognition standard for youth-worker certifications and to make youth work a paid profession. Implementation of these recommendations may result in positive social change by improving the lives and trajectories of youth.

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This dissertation examines how Black influencers navigate the highly competitive commercial terrain of influencing. Situated within literature about the commodification of the Black feminine body, neoliberal discourses about individualized digital labor, and the racialization of discourses about Black labor and success, I argue that celebrity status flattens and makes palatable political projects easily consumed by digital audiences. In particular, brands and digital media companies appropriate woke culture at the expense of Black communities, influencers, and people by propping up economic solutions to racial strife and diversifying their public facing images. By offering individualized, market-based solutions, brands and media outlets obscure the systemic forces that plague Black influencers who are precariously positioned within a mode of digital labor that lacks a supportive infrastructure and exacerbates their vulnerabilities. Contextualized by the George Floyd protests of 2020, I further argue that Black influencers do not internalize neoliberal logics or pursue aspirational labor in the same way as their white counterparts due to the material vulnerabilities and systemic pressures explicitly shaping Black women’s experiences on visually oriented platforms such as Instagram and YouTube. Rather, Black influencers challenge traditional definitions of influencing, traversing the line between ‘conventional’ and political work by actively addressing the way systemic issues permeate the sphere of digital labor. Although Black influencers adopt a hustle and grind mentality indicative of neoliberal governmentality, they also work to reclaim their bodies, voices, and individuality against a space fraught with the politics of representation. / Media & Communication

Given the ongoing persistence of anti-Black racism in Ontario education, I enact a curriculum of Black Excellence and antiracism. In partnership with the Ottawa Carleton District School Board and propelled by calls to action from The Ministry of Education and Black advocacy organization, I ask how The Sankofa Centre of Black Excellence course and program may address these systems of racism. I draw on Critical Race Theory as both a theoretical framework and overarching methodology of analysis for my thesis. In the first of three articles within this thesis I begin by framing my understanding of antiracism with an overview of the possibilities and limitation of Culturally Relevant and Responsive Pedagogy in Ontario public schooling contexts. In the second article, I draw on the literature and method of Critical Race Currere to understand antiracism and Black excellence in relation to teaching the Sankofa course. In the third article, I draw on a social action curriculum project research methodology to analyze and synthesize the course curriculum-as-planned and -lived. Finally, I suggest that the continued engagement with Aoki’s (1993) concept of a curriculum-as-lived serves as a departing point for engaging with broader conversations surrounding Black excellence and antiracism curriculum in the Ontario educational system.

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The purpose of this study was to determine the perceptions of 244 school- and district-based administrators who were employed in a Florida school district from 2003- 2011 regarding superintendent second-order change leadership decisions and events to achieve equity and access to excellence for all students in the school district. Interviews were also conducted with 11 active and retired school-based and district-based administrators to specifically address any factors that led to equity and access to excellence as well as any challenges the school district faced when implementing those actions and decisions. Quantitative data were used for a historical comparison of the targeted school district prior to and after 2003 to further understand the impact of equity and access to excellence within the school district. Two superintendent decisions were believed to be extremely educationally significant by respondents: High school reading centerpiece and International Baccalaureate program launch at Seminole High School. Respondents were least familiar with Central Florida Public School Boards Coalition established and Established Principal Forum. Three events were largely believed to be extremely educationally significant by respondents: District rated A each year of accountability, District designated academically high- performing, and Unitary status achieved. Respondents were least familiar with Florida Center for Reading Research project in high schools and Superintendent Leadership transition. iv Responses to open-ended questions indicated that equity and access to excellence were achieved in the school district between 2003 to 2011. The decision to attain unitary status led to other actions and decisions to achieve equity and access to excellence, e.g., the creation of magnet schools, the introduction of open access to Advanced Placement courses. The superintendent’s greatest challenge was perceived by respondents as lack of funding. Interviewees cited poverty as a limiting factor in achievement of equity and excellence. All respondents agreed that working with the lowest achieving 25% of students to improve performance on the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test was key to achieving equity and excellence in the school district. Most of the interviewees believed that all students have access to equity and excellence. In offering advice to other districts, most of the interviewees stressed the importance of focusing on data, demographics, and academic programs, stating that leaders should be committed to achieving equity and excellence and there needs to be total buy-in from the whole district. Further, superintendent success depended on a clear focus, a set of core values and the willingness and courage to implement second-order change.

This study investigated service excellence and hospitality in a healthcare setting. It is unique from other hospitality research in that it considers hospitality and service excellence as separate concepts, applicable across industries. Part of the premise of this study explores how hospitality extends past service excellence to create a comfortable and welcoming environment to combat patient anxiety and stress. Furthermore, this is one of the first qualitative studies on the importance of service excellence and hospitality in the healthcare industry. This case study measured top management's perceptions of service excellence and hospitality within one community-based hospital located in Orlando, Florida. The researcher conducted one-hour interviews with twelve leading managers to gain their opinions of service excellence and hospitality within their organization. Consistent with a thorough review of literature, three conclusions were revealed: 1) there is a strong, but mixed, top management commitment to service excellence and hospitality throughout organization; 2) the terms "service excellence" and "hospitality", when used, were discussed interchangeably as if the two theories were equivalent; and 3) External barriers to the patient experience that were identified included improvement of technology, increased consumerism, quality regulations, and workforce deficits. Internal barriers to the patient experience include communication and inconsistency. The research provided implications to healthcare organizations that are looking to implement practices of hospitality and service management to improve service delivery. Additionally, the study of hospitality outside the industry offers ideas of improvement for hospitality management and organizational researchers. It can also be used as a foundation to formulate additional studies in the area of service excellence and hospitality within the healthcare field, as this research is limited to only top management's views.

Around the world Quality Management is commonly regarded by industrialists and academics as a management concept that encompasses the potential in any organisation of developing into a company-wide philosophy with a profound focus on stakeholder values and improvement processes. However, there are mounting evidence that Quality Management has developed into an important strategic issue also on a national level, and that some leading industrial nations have enjoyed significant gains in the post War era by means of nation-wide progresses in Quality Management. In this thesis organisation is therefore substituted with nation state as the unit of analysis, with the ultimate objective to gain insight into how quality management movements in the industrialised world develop and prosper.  Based on empirical data from the Cross-cultural Quality Management Research Project, a bird' s􀀧eye view of Quality Management is taken in twelve leading industrialised nations. Comprehensive descriptions of Quality in Australia, Brazil, Germany, Japan and Sweden are given in order to identify what national driving factors that currently have an influence on national quality management movements, whereas China, Great Britain, Italy, Norway, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and the United States are assessed on a more overriding level with an objective to determine the factors' scope and characteristics.  The existence and influence of national driving factors in Quality Management was firstly discovered in the mid 1980s by one of the field's pioneers, Dr. Joseph M. Juran, and a core task in this thesis is to re-examine the identified factors current applicability. The outcome is a proposed set of national driving factors, embracing economy, national quality societies, people, certification bodies, industrial structure, organisation and its quality function, and government. Although, these national driving factors are found to be common to all countries, they are genuinely national in the sense that the national context by and large determines the factors' character and influence. To gain insight into how national quality management movements in the industrialised world develop and prosper, it is therefore recommended that focus be direct towards the national context with its national driving factors. The factors are powerful explanatory variables that so far have largely remained an untapped fountain of knowledge within the field of Quality Management.