The purpose of this research is to establish an innovative organizational culture in a Turkish software company. In order to do this, the perceived current and the preferred organizational cultures of the company were studied. The preferred culture of upper management and the differences between the perceived current and preferred organizational cultures by different employee groups were also investigated. The culture assessment was performed using Cameron and Quinn&rsquo / s (1999) Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI). According to the survey results, the company&rsquo / s current culture was Hierarchy culture, and the least perceived current culture was Adhocracy. The preferred organizational culture of employees was Clan and Adhocracy was the second. Top management&rsquo / s preferred organizational culture was Adhocracy. Different from the employees, top management also believed that Adhocracy also exists in the company after Hierarchy culture. After analyzing the company&rsquo / s current and preferred cultures, a model based on Lewin&rsquo / s (1958) model of Organizational Change was adapted. Lewin&rsquo / s model was modified by removing the first stage of the model: unfreezing / it is believed that there will be no resistance to change when trying to establish an innovative culture. As for further research, a tactical plan should be established according to the proposed actions and the model established for the company should be tested if it reaches its goal or not.

Creativity and innovation are different. How to encourage employees to produce the innovative behavior in the business organization in this century are very important and urgent. This study hopes to discuss the relationship among the personality traits, personal playfulness, organization playfulness climate and employee¡¦s innovative behavior. It¡¦s taken 30 organizations in Taiwan and the effective volume was 1,213, the returns-ratio reached 95.21%. We will use HLM (hierarchical linear model) to analyze the data instead of the regression analysis in tradition. The major result of this study are as following¡G 1.Locus of control has a significant effect on employee¡¦s innovative behavior. 2.A-type character has a significant effect on employee¡¦s innovative behavior. 3.Positive affectivity has a significant effect on employee¡¦s innovative behavior. 4.Negative affectivity has no significant effect on employee¡¦s innovative behavior. 5.Personal playfulness has a significant effect on employee¡¦s innovative behavior. 6.Organization playfulness climate has a significant effect on employee¡¦s innovative behavior. 7.Organization playfulness climate has no moderate effect on the relationship between locus of control and employee¡¦s innovative behavior. 8.Organization playfulness climate has no moderate effect on the relationship between A-type character and employee¡¦s innovative behavior. 9.Organization playfulness climate has no moderate effect on the relationship between positive affectivity and employee¡¦s innovative behavior. 10.Organization playfulness climate has no moderate effect on the relationship between negative affectivity and employee¡¦s innovative behavior. 11.Organization playfulness climate has no moderate effect on the relationship between personal playfulness and employee¡¦s innovative behavior.

How to encourage employees to produce the innovative behavior in the business organization in this century are very important. This study hopes to discuss the relationship among the personal playfulness, Job involvenment, organization playfulness climate and employee's innovative behavior. It's taken 30 organizations and the effective volume was 1,213, the returns-ratio reached 95.21%. We will use HLM (hierarchical linear model) to analyze the data instead of the regression analysis in tradition. The major result of this study are as following: 1.Personal playfulness has positive effects on employee's innovative behavior. 2.Job involvenment has positive effects on employee's innovative behavior. 3.Organization playfulness climate has positive effects on employee's innovative behavior. 4.Organization playfulness climate has no moderate effect on the relationship between personal playfulness and employee's innovative behavior. 5.Organization playfulness climate has no moderate effect on the relationship between job involvenment and employee's innovative behavior.

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Tagungsband

Secondary level engineering education is a relatively new field of study. This report evaluates an activity in which high school students experience simulated disabilities as they interact with and redesign consumer products. These activities are also known as empathic experiences, in which the designer is challenged to place himself or herself in the position of a lead user who pushes a product to its extremes and experiences various customer needs sooner and more acutely than the typical user. The purpose of this study is to determine whether or not these types of empathic experiences help high school students develop more innovative product ideas in a concept generation activity. The results of this study are compared with similar studies that use college students for the subject pool. Differences between subject pools are examined to identify implications for secondary engineering education and assessment. / text

Conventional continuous steel bridges only exhibit composite behavior in the positive moment region. Similar composite action may also be achieved in the negative moment region by casting a bottom concrete slab between the points of inflection. Such a section is referred to as "double composite" since it is composite in both the positive and negative moment regions. Savings in double composite bridges arise because expensive steel is replaced by inexpensive concrete to carry compressive loads. Although double composite bridges have been designed and constructed since at least 1978 there has been limited research. Thus, current designs rely on existing provisions for designing conventional 'single' composite bridges. This fails to fully exploit the advantages or recognize the weaknesses, if any, of double composite action. This thesis presents findings from a cooperative research project involving USF/URS/FDOT in which full-scale tests and theoretical analyses were carried to develop appropriate limit state rules for designing double composite bridges. A 4 ft. deep, 48 ft. long, 16 ft. wide box girder bridge representing the entire negative moment section at a support of a continuous full-size box girder bridge was fabricated and tested at FDOT's Structural Research Center, Tallahassee under fatigue, service and ultimate loading. Based on the findings from these tests and non-linear finite element analyses conducted by USF, URS proposed new design rules. This thesis focuses on the applications of these rules to develop a model design example for use by bridge engineers. The example was specifically selected from AISI so that a cost comparison with conventional design could be made. For completeness, an overview of the experimental results is also included in the thesis.

Information technology (IT) professionals are continually placed in diverse employment arrangements as organizations continually look for ways to cut costs, enhance performance and maximize organizational goals. Organizations are using strategies beyond hiring permanent employees to achieve objectives in alternative sourcing. Even though the cost differential is positive when employing non-permanent individuals instead of permanent employees, little is known about the effects on the IT professional.This field study was designed to test the effects of employment arrangements on the IT professional's psychological contract and the effects of the level of fulfillment of their psychological contract on their organizational citizenship and innovative work behaviors using psychological contracts and social information processing theories. IT professionals were sampled from four different employment arrangements.The empirical findings show that there are differences in the IT pro proessional's psychological contract as explained by their employment arrangement, as well as by their perceptions of the characteristics of their particular employment arrangement. Permanent full-time IT professionals consistently had higher perceptions of their employer's obligations to them, than did IT professionals from the other employment arrangement categories. The level of fulfillment of the IT professional's psychological contract explained differences in their organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) as a collective, with significant differences in the advocacy participation and obedience citizenship behaviors. This study also found significant relationships with the level of fulfillment of the IT professional's psychological contract and their innovative work behavior, as well as their organizational citizenship behaviors individually, specifically loyalty, advocacy participation, obedience, and functional participation. The primary predictors of the dimensions of OCB were the levels of fulfillment of the psychological contract as it relates to the scope, focus, and tangibility dimensions.The exploratory analysis into the characteristics of the employment arrangement provides a clearer understanding as to what encompasses the actual employment arrangement for IT professionals of differing categories. Independent contractors indicated significantly more job control than permanent full-time and contract company workers. Permanent full-time and permanent part-time have greater job stability than do independent contractors and contract company workers. Permanent full-time have greater benefits provided than the other three categories of IT professionals.

Encounters  and  relations  between  people  with  different  cultural  backgrounds  tend  to  be  primarily  discussed  in  terms  of  exclusio,  prejudice  and  conflict.  This  thesis  focuses  on  the  creative  aspects  of  intercultural  encounters.  The  starting  point  is  that  the  parties  involved  sometimes  succeed  in  avoiding  the  latent  conflicts  between  cultures  by  acting  trategically.  The  aim  of  this  thesis  is  to  increase  understanding  of  the  possibilities  represented  by  intercultural  encounters  and  to  identiy  the  strategies  employed  by  the  actors  who  try  to  deal  with  the  contrasts  and  dilemmas  involved  in  encounters  with  other  peopl  with  different  cultural  experiences,  identities  and  methods.  The  empirical  part  of  the  thesis  is  based  on  four  qualitative  case  studies  that  are  characterised  by  rather  positive  co‐operation  between  the  actors  in  the  intercultural  encounter,  i.e.  "immigrants"  and  the  majority  society  in  Sweden.  The  empirical  data  are  based  on  45  individual  interviews,  two  focus  group  discussions  and  a  number  of  minor  observations  made  in  the  inland  part  of  northern  Sweden,  where  the  case  studies  were  carried  out.  The  principal  result  of  this  research  is  that  the  actors  begin  to  see  culture  as  a  possibility  when  they  find  themselves  in  a  osition  where  they  feel  obliged  to  change  their  established  patterns  of  behaviour,  due  to  some  sort  of  crisis  situation.  The  strategies  used  by  the  actors  to  deal  with  culture  conflicts  can  be  divided  into  intra‐group  strategies  and  inter‐group  strategies.  The  former  attempt  to  achieve  relative  homogeneity  between  the  competing  groups  in  the  field  of  the  intercultural  encounter,  while  the  latter  illustrate  how  the  participants  deal  with  what  they  experience  as  differences.  Four  inter‐group  strategies  have  been  identified:  1)  the  status  quo  strategy,  2)  the  loose  coupling  strategy,  3)  the  selective  strategy  and  4)  a  culture  mixing  strategy.  The  latter  three  are  characterised  by  innovative  combinations  that  organise  the  existing  cultural  elements  in  a  meaningful  way  These  strategies  result  in  new  cognitive  structures,  whose  limits  maintain  the  balance  between  different  cultural  elements. / Möten och  relationer  bland  människor  med  olika  kulturell  bakgrund  diskuteras  idag  övervägande  i  termer  av  social  och  kulturell  exkludering,  fördomar  och  motsättningar.  I  denna  avhandling  har  jag  valt  att  fokusera  på  kulturmötens  kreativa  aspekter.  Min  utgångspunkt  är  att  deltagande  parter  i  vissa  fall  lyckas  att  kringgå  kulturmötenas  inneboende  motsättningar  och  överbrygg  det  kulturella  avståndet  genom  att  handla  strategiskt.  Syftet  med  avhandlingen  har  varit  att  öka  förståelsen  av  kulturmötens  möjligheter  och  att  identifiera  aktörernas  handlingsmönser  när  de  försöker  hantera  kontraster  och  dilemman  i  möten  med  människor  som  skiljer  sig  i  fråga  om  kulturella  erfarenheter,  identiteter  och  metoder.  Hur  handlingarna  organiseras  för  att  förmå  människor  att  gemensamt  fungera  under  kulturmötenas  villkor,  är  frågan  vars  svar  förväntas  förtydliga  hur  den  kreativa  potentialen  i  kulturmöten  kan  tillvaratas.  Utformning  av  aktuella  handlingsstrategier  och  deras  effekter  analyseras  i  termer  av  motsvarande  kognitiva  strukturer.  Dessa  ställs  mot  varandra  och  analyseras  i  ett  kognitivt  sociologiskt  perspektiv.  Avhandlingens  empiriska  del  grundas  på  fyra  kvalitativa  fallstudier.  Bedömningsgrunder  för  urvalet  av  dessa  fall  har  varit  att  det  skulle  röra  sig  om  händelser  eller  projekt  som  äger  rum  i  glesbyden  och  som  inkluderar  en  någorlunda  affirmativ  bild  av  samverkan  mellan  aktörer  från  olika  kulturell  bakgrund.  Ett  av  de  studerade  fallen  har  exemplifierat  en  icke‐affirmativ  bild  av  samverkan  för  att  kontrastera  de  övriga  fallen.  Empiriska  data  har  insamlats  genom  totalt  45  individuella  intervjuer,  två  fokusgruppsdiskussioner  samt  några  mindre  observationer.  Avhandlingens  huvudresultat  är  att  aktörerna  uppfattar  kultur  som  en  möjlighet  först  när  behovet  att  förändra  etablerade  beteenemönster  upplevs  som  nödvändigt  på  grund  av  krisförhållanden.  I  den  meningen  kan  kris  och  instabilitet  ses  som  en  förutsättning  för  att  kulturmötens  kreativa  möjligheter  ska  kunna  tillvaraas.  Handlingsstrategier  som  aktörerna  använt  för  att  hantera  kulturella  motsättningar  kan  uppdelas  i  inomgruppsstrategier  och  mellngruppsstrategier.  De  förstnämnda  syftar  till  att  uppnå  en  relativ  homogenisering  bland  de  konkurrerande  grupperna  inom  de  fält  som  ingår  i  kultumöten,  medan  de  sistnämnda  åskådliggör  hur  deltagarna  går  tillväga  för  att  hantera  uppfattade  olikheter.  Jag  har  identifierat  fyra  mellangruppstrategier:  1)  status  quo‐strategi,  2)  frikopplingsstrategi,  3)  selektiv  strategi  och  4)  kulturblandningsstrategi.  De  tre  sistnämnda  kännetecknas  av  innovativa  sammanställningar  som  organiserar  befintliga  kulturella  element  på  ett  meningsfult  sätt.  Effekter  av  dessa  strategier  resulterar  i  nya  kognitiva  strukturer,  vars  gränsdragningar  bevarar  en  balansgång  mellan  olika  kulturella  element.

The thesis seeks to study through a qualitative text analysis how strategic policy concepts from three different policy documents concerning the use of the European Regional Development Fund can be said to align with two theoretical concepts from the field of regional development. Furthermore this paper aims to analyse how the theoretical- and policy-concepts are operationalized in the project that received funding in accordance with the policy concepts in one of the policy documents.