This study addresses a campus institutional effectiveness (IE) process and its influence on faculty and staff. Although a comprehensive, rational IE process appeals to campus leaders, this study found that it creates significant faculty and staff challenges. Campus leaders, faculty, and staff differ in their (a) knowledge and support of IE; (b) participation in IE process activities; and (c) perceptions of IE strengths, weaknesses, and usefulness. Needed IE data are typically available to campus stakeholders except for student learning outcomes data across all academic programs. Administrators, faculty, and staff agree that a lack of time is the major IE impediment. IE expectations may be too challenging for campus participants, and faculty and staff need more institutional support to analyze and use existing data. Future research should focus on faculty and staff aspects of community college effectiveness.

Many universities and colleges are shifting their missions from teaching-oriented to research-oriented (Clark, 1978, 1983; Riesman, 1956; Selingo 2000), a phenomenon that has become known as academic/institutional drift. During recent years, the knowledge society has created an environment that further encourages the shift by influencing stakeholders in higher education institutions to increasingly accept the role played by research institutions as the most legitimate. Consequently, higher education institutions are becoming increasingly involved in the pursuit of knowledge creation. They are concluding that legitimacy and prestige will be obtained in return, as well as material resources (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004).Despite the fact that the production of knowledge by Latin American universities is marginal in an international context (Albornoz, 1993; Albatch, 2003), some of them are experiencing institutional drift. Using a case study in combination with a qualitative approach, this research project aims to highlight the nature and implications of the phenomenon through focusing on a Mexican university system. Semi-structured interviews with individuals occupying key positions within the organization and institutional documents constitute the study's sources of information. In addition, academic capitalism, institutional theory, and Hackman's theory of resource allocation are utilized as its theoretical framework.The findings of the study show that although the institution is actively engaging in academic capitalism, societal benefit is not being neglected as a result of such engagement. Nonetheless, the findings relate academic capitalism to further stratification within and across the institution's campuses. It is also concluded that the institution is experiencing isomorphic change by modeling itself after those universities it perceives as prestigious and legitimate in the research endeavor. Regarding internal resource allocation, it is demonstrated that a unit's centrality with respect to the institution's research strategy greatly explains its gains in institutional resources.This study also includes some implications and recommendations for the institution to concentrate on and/or address in order to succeed in its research endeavor. Lastly, some considerations regarding further research are introduced.

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The study reported in this thesis attempted to determine some of the effects of institutional living on a group of elderly people. The study endeavored to discover whether any changes took place between the expectations of the persons planning to enter a home for the aged and the opinions of the same persons after they had lived in the home.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

In a world where the actions of firms have profound consequences, and in which existing corporate norms frequently have controversial impacts on the broader society, the issue of transforming corporate institutions is of increasing importance. What mechanisms allow reforms to be proposed, understood, accepted and eventually adopted throughout an organizational field? How do practices which diverge markedly from prior norms become both acceptable and widely imitated? There is an accelerating use of social movement theory and organization theory to understand and explain campaigns for social change and corporate responses. In this study, I explore the influence of governance activists on the norms of corporate governance in Canada. In the years immediately after the introduction of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the United States, Canadian governance activists began to advocate a new model of the role of corporate boards. They wished to strengthen the independence of board from management, and their model quickly became normative. Institutions changed swiftly and unmistakably. This setting provides an opportunity to investigate the means by which institutional entrepreneurs introduce new practices to an organizational field, how the practices they advocate acquire value, and the conditions under which new practices are integrated into the decision-making processes of organizations. I first conduct a multi-practice study that examines the importance of rankings as an algorithm or calculative device that is congruent with corporate logics. I then examine the diffusion of these practices using a heterogeneous diffusion model. The logic of activists, the structure of organizational fields and the rational decision making of individual firms each play an essential part in the process of institutionalizing new and divergent practices.

In a world where the actions of firms have profound consequences, and in which existing corporate norms frequently have controversial impacts on the broader society, the issue of transforming corporate institutions is of increasing importance. What mechanisms allow reforms to be proposed, understood, accepted and eventually adopted throughout an organizational field? How do practices which diverge markedly from prior norms become both acceptable and widely imitated? There is an accelerating use of social movement theory and organization theory to understand and explain campaigns for social change and corporate responses. In this study, I explore the influence of governance activists on the norms of corporate governance in Canada. In the years immediately after the introduction of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the United States, Canadian governance activists began to advocate a new model of the role of corporate boards. They wished to strengthen the independence of board from management, and their model quickly became normative. Institutions changed swiftly and unmistakably. This setting provides an opportunity to investigate the means by which institutional entrepreneurs introduce new practices to an organizational field, how the practices they advocate acquire value, and the conditions under which new practices are integrated into the decision-making processes of organizations. I first conduct a multi-practice study that examines the importance of rankings as an algorithm or calculative device that is congruent with corporate logics. I then examine the diffusion of these practices using a heterogeneous diffusion model. The logic of activists, the structure of organizational fields and the rational decision making of individual firms each play an essential part in the process of institutionalizing new and divergent practices.

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The software outsourcing has already become a trend. Today, the progress of software technique is getting more and more rapid, and the computerized requests have increased too much more. Each trade, confronts the demands of software, has gradually thought about going on with outsourcing. This research is with such a starting point, to study the outsourcing projects, in order to find the way to succeed in outsourcing practices. The steel industry is a typical manufacturing industry of Taiwan, which the computerized degree has not been popularized like others. This research is to regard steel industry of Taiwan as the target of studying. Choosing the best practice of this environment, and through the implementation experiences of best practice, it comes to study what factors influence whether the software outsourcing project succeeds or not. This research combines the Institutional Theory with work standards of the software outsourcing, as the foundation of the theory. And then cooperate with the four stages, planning, assessment, control, confirming, to marshale the external institutions and formal internal institutions of the software outsourcing in theory; Equally, according to the current practices of best practice, separating into the same four stages, get the formal and informal internal institutions and external institutions, which implement in the best practice. Finally, verify the theory and the practice, to analyze what¡¦s the difference. By the experiences and implementations of best practice, we can verify the factors that influence the software outsourcing. Besides to clearly define the internal and external formal institutions, we still need the informal institutions as an auxiliary. It will be a great benefit to the software outsourcing. Of course, the company must define the institutions as could as possible to the limitation that the formal institutions can be. And try to make them be worked. But many informal institutions play the key role behind. Without the informal institutions, the software outsourcing projects might move towards failing too. If the formal and informal instituteions can complement each other, the failing rate of a software outsourcing project will be minimized.