Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Houston, 2007. / (UMI)AAI3273791. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-07, Section: B, page: 4753. Adviser: Lawrence H. Schulze.

<p> The purpose of this study was to investigate the social, economic and technological factors that influence rates of adoption of innovative stormwater management approaches in municipal organizations in the Great Bay watershed, NH. The scope of this study was to investigate how innovations spread through municipal populations in a specific region and watershed area of the US. The methodology used mixed qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews, case studies, and surveys to examine perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs that influence the adoption of innovative stormwater management solutions, as well as the governance characteristics of municipalities at different stages of adoption. Major findings include: adopter categories can be relatively easily and quickly categorized into early and late majorities as a preliminary means to identify populations of ready and willing audiences interested in and capable of advancing innovations; early and late adopter classifications followed general diffusion theory, but differed in substantial ways that could influence overall project or program success; and finally that early majority communities have more internal and external capacity to advance innovations as well as higher levels of peer-to-peer trust to offset perceptions related to economic risk that can either advance or stall innovative stormwater management solution adoption. This research offers insights on how to allocate scarce resources to optimally improve water quality through stormwater management solutions, and makes recommendations for how to effectively and efficiently generate greater understanding of complex barriers to adoption that thwart innovation in municipal governance organizations. One significant implication is that agents of change who want to move innovations through a broad municipal population should focus their efforts on working with innovators and early adopters that have status within relevant peer networks and who have capacity to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of innovations.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Central Florida, 2009. / Adviser: Tim Kotnour. Includes bibliographical references (p. 184-192).

<p> Disengaged employees cost U.S. companies billions of dollars annually in lowered productivity, a cost which has been compounded by the difficult economic situations in the country. The potential for increasing productivity through increased employee engagement was examined in this study. Using personal engagement theory and the theory of planned behavior, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how the experiences of salaried aerospace employees affected productivity and the financial performance of an organization. Interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 20 aerospace employees whose responses were codified and analyzed to identify themes. The analysis indicated that (a) the lived experiences of employees influenced employee engagement, (b) employee engagement affects organizational commitment and performance, and (c) trust and respect and leadership are essential components to keep employees engaged. Eighty percent of the participants indicated that as employee engagement increases so too does organizational performance. The implications for positive social change include new insights for leaders seeking to increase productivity and financial performance, and to support employee engagement for maintaining sustainability, retaining talent, increasing profits, and improving the economy.</p>

<p> In this study the researcher provides a behavioral framework for managing massive airline flight disruptions (MAFD) in the United States. Under conditions of MAFD, multiple flights are disrupted throughout the airline's route network, customer service is negatively affected, additional costs are created for airlines, and governments intervene. This study is different from other studies relating to MAFD that have focused on the operational, technical, economic, financial, and customer service impacts. The researcher argues that airlines could improve the management of events that led to MAFD by applying the principles of crisis management where the entire organization is mobilized, rather than one department, adapting organization development (OD) interventions to implement change and organization learning (OL) processes to create culture of innovation, resulting in sustainable improvement in customer service, cost reductions, and mitigation of government intervention. At the intersection of crisis management, OD, and OL, the researcher has developed a new conceptual framework that enhances the resiliency of individuals and organizations in responding to unexpected-yet-recurring crises (e.g., MAFD) that impact operations. The researcher has adapted and augmented Lalonde's framework for managing crises through OD interventions by including OL processes. The OD interventions, coupled with OL, provide a framework for airline leaders to manage more effectively events that result in MAFD with the goal of improving passenger satisfaction, reducing costs, and preventing further government intervention. Further research is warranted to apply this conceptual framework to unexpected-yet-recurring crises that affect operations in other industries.</p>

<p> Ordered mesoporous carbon (OMC) materials have attracted great interests from NASA due to their remarkable properties, such as high specific surface area, regular and tunable pore size. These features show great potential for being used in the water recovery system (WRS) in the International Space Station (ISS) as potential adsorbents. Various methods have been explored on the OMC preparation and modification to achieve better adsorption results. In this research, acrylic acid was used as a carbon precursor to synthesize OMC using a common silica mesoporous template (SBA-15). The influence of silica template amount was tested by using different ratios of SBA-15 to acrylic acid. The modification processes were conducted by immersing methods using four different aqueous solutions: 30% ammonium hydroxide, 0.1% sodium hydroxide, 1 mol/L aluminum chloride, and 0.02 g/mL urea solution. BET-SSA, FT-IR, TEM, TGA, and XRD were used to characterize the structures of OMCs and modified OMCs. It demonstrated that all the products had well-ordered hexagonal structure. The modifying procedures had eroded the surface of the OMC, but the highly ordered structures had been preserved based on the TEM and XRD results. FT-IR analysis indicated that the functional groups were introduced to the surface of the modified OMCs, which affected the adsorption capacity significantly. Resorcinol, a typical total organic carbon (TOC) model compound, was selected to evaluate the adsorption behavior of the OMCs and modified OMCs. Adsorption study illustrates that OMC produced by 3:1 ratio of SBA-15 to acrylic acid showed a higher adsorption capacity than that of OMCs produced with other ratios. The ammonium hydroxide modified OMC had the highest adsorption capacity of 40.6 mg/g for resorcinol removal, compared with that of the other three modified OMCs.</p>

<p> This qualitative study examined the ways in which process subversion, defined as any attempt, conscious or unconscious, to work around, ignore, or turn to one's own purposes an established process, occurs in Scrum software development. Scrum is a software development methodology that uses self-managing teams and a well-defined process but does not dictate developer practices. It has been shown in previous research that problems with Scrum can cause issues with productivity and software quality. This descriptive phenomenological study specifically examined the ways in which process subversion was experienced by Scrum Masters. The Scrum Master is a coach and facilitator to the development team in Scrum. The study revealed a wide variety of perceptions of the Scrum Master's role as well as sources of subversion ranging from individuals on the development team to the structure of the organization. The study also revealed the creativity used by some Scrum Master in responding to such subversion. This study is important because it fills a gap in the extant literature in dealing with the problems that occur when an organization attempts to use Scrum as its development process, and provides insights that may be helpful in either mitigating the effects of such subversion or preventing it outright. </p>

<p> Two US Forest Service draft monitoring protocols are used to assess the effectiveness of design channels at road-stream crossings by comparing their physical channel dimensions to those in the natural channel. Level II physical monitoring is a time intensive, quantitative and statistically based procedure for assessing effectiveness at selected sites. Level I physical monitoring is a less detailed, rapid procedure limited to a few simple measurements and observations for assessing effectiveness at a large number of sites. Study objectives were to: 1) test and refine the field methods for collecting data by the levels I and II physical monitoring protocols; 2) find a meaningful way to combine the data collected by levels I and II into separate effectiveness evaluations by each protocol; and, 3) evaluate whether the level I protocol can be used as a proxy for the level II protocol. Where the two protocols systematically differ, field data help distinguish why. </p><p> Study results for all objectives (combined) include: improved field methodologies, recommendations for further development, and separate summary rubrics for the levels I and II monitoring protocols. The recommendations are of three categories; channel metrics/data collection, methods of scoring each metric, and sample sizes. Some of most significant of those recommendations are described within the following paragraphs. </p><p> Data collection methods might be improved to save time, increase the accuracy of protocol evaluations, and facilitate agreement between the levels I and II protocol evaluation results. The techniques by which the level I bankfull stage and coarse fraction of the gradation metrics are collected should incorporate level II methods. Instructions for collecting level II coarse fraction of the gradation data should specify measuring all particles within the channel, including particles much larger than the sampling frame. The level I method by which the representative reach is selected should incorporate a basic longitudinal profile survey in which only the most prominent grade controls separating slope segments are captured. Decreasing the allowable gradient difference between the level II design channel and representative reach might also improve accuracy. The method by which the levels I and II protocols compare channel units (or channel unit sequences) between the design and representative reach should be equivalent, as should the rules by which slope segments and channel units are defined. Finally, the channel metrics of low flow width and bed irregularity are inconsistent with the objectives of physical effectiveness monitoring, in that they are aspects of habitat, rather than strong controls on channel form. I suggest they be eliminated from the levels I and II protocols. </p><p> The level II summary rubric scores most metrics statistically by a Wilcoxon Rank-Sum test of medians. For most metrics, the Wilcoxon Rank-Sum test appears to be a reasonable way to compare representative reach and design zone data. For the metrics of bed and bank irregularity, however, a test of distributions (e.g., Kolmogorov-Smirnov) is recommended instead. The coarse fraction of the gradation metric would be more fairly assessed if the modes of the particle size (in phi units) were compared instead of the medians. Doing so would allow the design and representative reach gradients to be slightly different (as does the criteria for selecting a representative reach) without penalizing the metric score. </p><p> The levels I and II summary rubric tools created were used to evaluate twelve AOP road-stream crossing designs. The performance of the levels I and II summary rubrics were then assessed by the evaluation results at those twelve sites. Levels I and II generally seemed to provide effectiveness evaluations which agreed with site observations, data, and photographs. Further, the summary rubrics facilitated concurrent evaluation of the many channel dimensions which together affect the hydraulic conditions experienced by aquatic organisms. In addition, the simple utility of the levels I and II summary rubric tools should encourage effectiveness monitoring and help restoration practitioners learn from their mistakes, ultimately improving aquatic organism passage design methods and results. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)</p>

<p> Hurricanes have the potential to damage critical infrastructure systems, disrupt workforce and commodity flows, and can cause adverse socioeconomic impacts on the affected regions. Workforce disruptions in the aftermath of a hurricane can degrade regional productivity because the majority of business operations are labor-dependent. Furthermore, the recovery process is further exacerbated by the inherent interdependencies among economic sectors, which give rise to direct and indirect economic losses in the affected regional economy. This dissertation research extends the economic input-output (I-O) model to formulate a disaster recovery model for assessing the economic losses triggered by workforce disruptions. The research develops a risk-based framework that can guide the process of assessing and managing hurricane impacts on regional interdependent systems. Furthermore, this research presents an impact analysis model to assess the uncertainties associated with workforce recovery. The uncertainty in workforce disruptions is linked to hurricane intensity levels inducing a statistical dependence relationship between hurricane intensity and the recovery period estimates for each workforce sector. This research, to the best of our knowledge, demonstrates the first attempt to integrate such a statistical dependence relationship with an economic I-O modeling approach. Additionally, the resulting methodology is capable of identifying and prioritizing the most critical workforce sectors on the basis of economic loss and sector inoperability metrics. The identification of such critical sectors supports the decision-making process by narrowing the focus on sectors that incur the greatest production losses due to workforce unavailability.</p>

<p> In at least 45 low- and middle-income countries, piped water systems deliver water for limited durations. Few data are available of the impact of intermittent water supply (IWS) on the water quality and quantity delivered to households. This thesis examines the impact of intermittently supplied piped water on the quality and quantity of water delivered to residential taps in Hubli-Dharwad, India, when compared to continuous piped water supply. A framework for understanding the pathways through which IWS can impact water quality is first developed. The extent to which contamination occurs in Hubli-Dharwad is quantified by comparing microbial water quality throughout the distribution system in an intermittent system and a continuous system in the same city. The mechanisms affecting water quality in the IWS network in Hubli-Dharwad are identified by measuring changes in water quality over time using continuous measurements from pressure and physico-chemical sensors paired with grab samples tested for indicator bacteria. In the final chapter, a new method of measuring household water consumption in an IWS when supply durations are limited and few metered data are available is developed. This thesis showed that the intermittent supply was frequently subject to contamination in the distribution system and that households with intermittent supply consumed limited quantities of water. While these results demonstrated that converting to a continuous water supply can improve water quality when compared to intermittent supply, this conversion may not be possible in the near future for resource-constrained towns and cities. This thesis contributes to knowledge of the mechanisms causing contamination and constricting water access in IWS systems, which can help improve systems to ensure that people with piped water receive water that is reliable, safe, and sufficient.</p>