Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 361-370). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

During the last years, diversity has been a hot topic for both researchers and professionals. In global markets with an increased competition, appropriate management of diversity within an organization might be highly relevant for the success of a company. One kind of diversity is the differences in ages of an organization’s workforce. Today, up to four different generations, each with different characteristics, attitudes, and peculiarities, work together at the workplace. To ensure fruitful, productive, and effective collaboration, cooperation, and cohabitation, leaders are often responsible to manage intergenerational encounters and to delegate tasks in an appropriate way. In fact, leaders and subordinates of different ages and generations have always had to collaborate in organizations. However, especially in today’s times of rising market pressure, increasing complexity and with various increased demands on organizations, a deeper understanding of how leaders might be able to effectively lead their followers and subordinates is of a high value for themselves and organizations.The purpose of this Thesis is it to examine how leaders should behave in intergenerational encounters, i.e. how they should act and communicate to their followers and subordinates of different ages in a way that makes sense to the latter.Within this Thesis, the methodological approach of Grounded Theory is applied. For this purpose, a qualitative research was conducted in which qualitative data was gathered through an examination of the existing literature about leadership, diversity in organizations, and generations. Additionally, eight interviews with leaders, coaches, and professionals from human resource development departments in organizations were conducted. By analyzing those interviews and combining the findings with data from the existing literature, a concept of A Leader’s Generational Intelligence emerged. This concept is composed of the categories Appropriate Behavior Regarding Other Generations, Open Mental Attitude, and Knowledge and Experience. It is assumed that if leaders possess these three elements, they might be able to perform more effectively in intergenerational encounters and might succeed in their attempts to make sense regarding their followers of different ages.The findings of this Thesis may contribute to the discussion about how to appropriately and effectively manage diversity, especially when it comes to generational diversity. For this reason, the outcome of this Thesis might be valuable for future research but also for leaders and professionals.

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This thesis is an investigation of the lived experience of first generation female students in their first year of study at the University of Guelph in Guelph Ontario, Canada. The study highlights the importance of learning about the lived experience of first-generation female students, from their perspectives and in their own words. As previous research focuses most often on the demographics, academic performance, and persistence rates of first-generation students, this study is significant as it approaches the female first-generation student experience from a phenomenological standpoint. The women spoke at length about the effect their parents and siblings had on their academic lives. They talked of their experiences transitioning to university and the issues and challenges associated with their new environments. The participants in this study also shared what advice they would give to other first-generation students entering higher education.

This thesis research examines second generation Canadians’ negotiations of racism and citizenship with the aim of understanding how the former influences the latter. Through questionnaires and focus group discussion, I examine how they understand their racialized experiences and how they believe those experiences are different from, or related to, those of their parents. In addition, I conducted focus groups with an equivalent number of white Canadians in order to observe how the experiences of second generation Canadians of colour differ from those of their white counterparts. The findings of this thesis show that the negotiations of citizenship and racism of second generation Canadians of colour are not only varied, but multidimensional. Focus group discussions reveal that although they experience a variety of forms of racism, participants maintain a relatively positive outlook on Canadian society. This is likely the outcome of processes of identification and rationalization that distinguish them from both their parents and their white counterparts. That their experiences and perceptions of racism are prone to paradox only adds to the necessity for in-depth study and analysis. Although the influences of racism on feelings of belonging in Canada differ, the majority of second generation Canadians of colour report strong attachments to the country. / Thesis (Master, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-26 16:04:43.57

The ideological battle fought between the United States and Cuba has been centrally located in Miami, Florida. The ninety miles of ocean separating the two nations serves as a type of no-mans land, the hypothetical battlefield separating Cuban-Americans from their homeland and families across the Florida straits. For decades, the Miami Cuban community was seen as possessing a single identity, one of vehement anti-Castro sentiment and an ever-present desire to return to the homeland of their memories and past. However, recent literature has suggested that fissures are becoming more apparent in the façade of absolute unity. The break in ideological singularity has emerged along generational lines, invoking Karl Mannheim’s pioneering work on the sociological analysis of generations. This paper attempts to decipher the extent to which a Mannheimian generation is emerging among the youth of the Cuban-American population in Miami Florida. Using discourse analysis an analysis of print news media conducted on 16 articles from the Miami Herald and 11 articles from the New York Times was undertaken to gain an understanding of the coverage of two major events seen to have an impact on young Cubans in both Miami and Cuba (Juanes’ concert for peace and the Elian Gonzalez case). This analysis shed light on the extent to which an older generation of Cuban-Americans maintains control of resources. As expected, the Miami Herald was far more likely to espouse ideology supportive of the exile ideology. It became clear that generational ruptures were recognized only when they did not conflict with the traditional rhetoric of anti-Castroism and discourse of regime change in Cuba. Without this type of space for vocalizing dissent, it is difficult for a counter-movement along generational lines to form. Overall, this thesis demonstrates that the exile ideology maintains control over what is considered permissible dialogue in traditional media outlets such as the Miami Herald, pointing to the conclusion that not all voices and opinions are recognized within the Cuban-American community in Miami. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2011-02-20 08:42:19.368

Stochastic generation of daily precipitation at multiple sites is frequently needed to evaluate the long-term effects of hydrologic and climate-change in design and operation of water resources systems. Capturing the spatial dependence of precipitation at multiple sites into a stochastic model presents a great challenge because of the non-normal bivariate distributions of precipitation-amounts. Without normalizing the precipitation amounts, many models have attempted to establish spatial dependence through alternative methods that tended to be cumbersome. In contrast, representing precipitation in Gaussian fields provides a generic structure that is well-amenable to statistical analyses facilitating easy implementation of models. The thrust of this thesis is to generate normalized precipitation data and transform them back into the original domain for applications and analyses. A multivariate censored distribution (MCD) and a multivariate autoregressive censored process (MACP) are developed to formulate two weather generation (WG) models. Parameters of censored distributions were estimated by using the maximum likelihood method. To reduce the magnanimity in the number of parameters and their temporal variation, elements of covariance matrices of models were represented by periodic functions. The performance of models was evaluated by comparing discrepancies in attributes. Three performance measures (i.e., the coefficient of determination, the coefficient efficiency and the root mean square error) suggested that simulated data to be indistinguishable from the historical precipitation sequences. The models were implemented with other techniques to address the three most common problems encountered in daily precipitation records. The first implementation is related to simulation of precipitation at un-gauged sites using the WG-MACP model with general regression neural networks or Kriging methods. The second implementation was related to infilling of missing observations a using the WG-MCD and WG-MACP models with Gibbs sampling. The third implementation was related to downscaling of monthly and daily output of the Canadian regional climate model (CRCM) using traditional and parametric Delta change methods.