<p> The goal of this dissertation was to contribute to research on practical nursing students&rsquo; self-efficacy and the sources that build self-efficacy including mastery experience, vicarious learning, social persuasion, and physiological and affective states (Bandura, 1986). Specifically, the focus in this study was on students&rsquo; self-efficacy change and development through the measurement of students&rsquo; confidence in ability to engage in medical surgical simulations during the last semester of a practical nursing program. The results of this study revealed perceived self-efficacy did not change, but participants indicated an overall strong sense of efficacy to engage in medical surgical simulations. Additionally, students relied on all four sources that build self-efficacy (Bandura, 1986). In other words, students relied on personal perseverance in facing obstacles, sought the nursing faculty&rsquo;s assistance and encouragement to perform well, observed and modeled their teachers&rsquo; behaviors, and successfully managed their physiological and emotional states. Strong self-efficacy was concluded to be a key factor in the success of practical nursing students. Thus, there is a need for future experimental and theory-driven studies that utilize the self-efficacy approach to reduce student attrition and contribute to academic and professional accomplishment of practical nursing students. </p>

<p> This phenomenological study sought to understand the life experience of retired Flag/General Officers who transitioned from highly visible and accomplished careers in the US Military into executive leadership roles in other sectors. Participant selection was limited to those executive military leaders with a minimum of three years (for those currently employed) or five years (for those fully retired) of executive level leadership experience in the civilian sector and was focused on bringing clarity to the challenges they faced. Specifically, it explored how their leadership style and professional identity may have been influenced by the change in culture and mission and, most importantly, what they learned about themselves as a result of the lived experience. </p><p> Twelve participants were purposefully selected across all branches of the US military and a semi-structured protocol was utilized in accordance with Barnard's (1988) recommendation. Individual profiles were developed and interview data was analyzed using Moustakas' (1994) phenomenological analysis method. Through phenomenological reduction, five themes and seventeen sub-themes emerged.</p><p> The leadership transition experience of the participants was captured by crafting structural and textural descriptions, by integrating structural-textural descriptions, and by synthesizing the emergent meanings and essences of the phenomenon as a whole.</p><p> This study offers the following five conclusions: </p><p> 1. The experience of career transition is expressed in terms of boundaryless opportunity and professional transformation </p><p> 2. The ability to adapt to a new organizational culture is dependent upon ones openness to accept and embrace change </p><p> 3. Success is rooted in a commitment to ones core leadership principles and an intuitive willingness to flex ones leadership style as needed </p><p> 4. Professional identities adjust in response to new environments, new networks of relationships, and new role expectations </p><p> 5. Professional transformation is a process of self-discovery and self-renewal </p><p> The conclusions that emerged from the findings of this study illuminate the meaning and significance of the career transition experience of the twelve participants and contribute to the career transition literature.</p>

<p> Poor executive leadership of organizations over the last 20 years has resulted in the destruction of stakeholder value, loss of jobs, and in some cases, risk to the entire enterprise. An executive search firm database, encompassing 16,000 leaders from 300 organizations, was analyzed to determine if the commonality and transferability of leadership competences could be used to improve executive assessment. Implicit leadership theory, where leaders are gauged by the individuals that surround them, served as the theoretical foundation. The study also relies on a leadership competency model used by the executive search firm that constructed the database and is based primarily on behavioral-event interviewing method of assessment. Inferential statistics were used to analysis the data with analysis of variance and Tukey post-hoc methods for testing mean differences, and with correlation and regression analysis to test for associations and explained variances. The executive roles were found to show a commonality of competency profiles and transferability across the disciplines studied, with the exception of the chief executive officer (CEO) role. These findings suggest that a new CEO should not be sourced directly from the other executive functions inside or outside the firm. The Outstanding leader database indicates a strong universality and interchangeability of leaders at this higher-ranking level, regardless of discipline and industry; the database is a source of new potential CEOs. Results Orientation is by far the strongest developed of the competencies for all leaders. Social change will result from better selection of top executive leaders with a positive impact for employees and all the stakeholders of the corporation or institution.</p>

<p> Deviant leadership is pervasive and destroys value and lives while leadership and followership are indispensible dyadic components of organizational performance and value in post-industrial, globalized, and complex competitive environment. Deviant leadership is an understudied destructive sub-optimal force by misapplication of organizational leadership resulting in loss, underperformance, and adverse individual impact in the modern complex organizational environment. Deviant leadership is leadership behaviors, traits, or styles that destroy organizational performance and value, and impact followers&rsquo; followership, well-being, and engagement. The emerging crucial knowledge of deviant leadership within the broader field of complexity-based leadership is oriented at destructive sub-optimal actions of leaders; contrary to the corpus of leadership literature on positive traits, theories, styles, and applications. The knowledge and application gap between destruction and loss created by deviant leadership and strategies, mitigations, and awareness for eliminating or reducing the phenomenon created a need for the exploration of deviant leadership from the follower perspective. The study of the experience of deviant leadership for followers and followership is a parallel-interrelated field of leadership study, as new organizational imperatives have resulted from a complex, connected, information-based global economy in the post-industrial age. Complexity leadership theories use complex adaptive systems as basic whole units of studying the continual dyadic relationships and interactions of leaders, followers, and followership as the interconnected symbiotic system that creates organizational value. Despite the huge volume of modern literature and knowledge on positive leadership, the serious problem of deviant leadership was unabated, understudied, and pervasive in modern complex organizations, and was addressed through rich, deep qualitative phenomenological exploration. The purpose of the study was enhanced understanding of deviant leadership for crucial awareness in maximizing effort and minimizing loss in complex adaptive organizational systems within the global economy with added information, strategies, and interventions. The meaning, essence, and invariant nature of deviant leadership was explicated from 12 organizational followers in the United States who compete in the global competitive environment. Collected and processed data enabled the qualitative phenomenological determination of how deviant leadership exists. Deviant leadership was found to be a pervasive phenomenon affecting followers and their followership in the global competitive environment.</p>

<p> The aim of this study was to investigate the perceptions of organizational workers to identify (1) To what extent do the perceptions of support staff in the financial industry regarding the leadership behaviors of direct supervisors affect their levels of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, (2) What motivational techniques used by transactional and transformational leaders appear to be most effective at motivating support staff in the financial industry. The research questions were investigated through qualitative in-depth interviews with 14 employees in the financial industry. Analysis of data shows a close relationship with transformational leaders and positive intrinsic employee motivation and with transactional leaders a positive relationship with extrinsic employee motivation. The results of this study indicate that when intrinsic motivation is available without any extrinsic motivation, people are motivated intrinsically, but the feelings of motivation diminish quickly. When intrinsic motivation is present with extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation is significantly undermined. The large difference in the generational cohorts was the most substantial finding from this study. Over eighty three percent of the younger generational cohort (22-28 years old) preferred a transactional leader and just over 83 percent of the older generational cohort (43-54 years old) preferred a transformational leader. The results of this study have implications for recruiting and selection, and leadership development.</p>

abstract: Over the past several years, engagement and embeddedness have become popular research topics for academics and practitioners alike. Research has demonstrated associations between these constructs and a variety of predictors and outcomes. Prior research has not, however, placed enough emphasis on the roles of employee type, industry type, and work setting in determining predictors and outcomes. Additionally, the relative roles of engagement and embeddedness in predicting outcomes have not been thoroughly investigated. This study investigated the predictors and outcomes of engagement and embeddedness among unskilled, production line employees working in food processing in the agricultural industry by conducting a survey of employees and their supervisors. Employees answered questions about personality, motivation, satisfaction, engagement, and embeddedness while supervisors answered questions about each employee's performance. Results suggest that both engagement and embeddedness predict employee satisfaction and that engagement does so more strongly, both of which support prior research. However, results contradict prior research by suggesting that embeddedness is strongly predicted by traits internal to the employee while engagement is not, and neither engagement nor embeddedness significantly predicts employee performance. Further, the findings suggest that employees working in different settings and industries may experience work differently, and the measurements used to understand their experiences should reflect these differences. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Psychology 2012

<p> This mixed model study analyzed the relationship between school climate and teachers&rsquo; intentions to remain in their current position, teacher job satisfaction, and teacher absenteeism. All participants completed the Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire, Job Satisfaction Survey, and a personal questionnaire. Among elementary educators, significant negative relationships existed between restrictive principal behavior and disengaged teacher behavior and job satisfaction. Among middle school educators, a significant negative relation existed between restrictive principal behavior and teacher job satisfaction, and significant positive relationship existed between supportive principal behavior and teacher job satisfaction. This study led to a recommendation to focus on both teacher-principal and teacher-teacher relationships to improve job satisfaction among educators.</p><p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to understand the implications of management support and employee engagement on the improvement of organizational efficiency, as a byproduct of employees adopting organizational Project Management Methodologies (PMMs). Previous PMM-based research has not focused on assessing the (a) influence of management support and employee engagement on PMM adoption or (b) effect of PMM adoption on organizational efficiency. The PMM adoption and resistive factors researched included: PMM practices, training, coaching, PMM design involvement, PMM feedback, project type, employment type, and PMM practitioner experience level. An exploratory qualitative research method was supported by an online survey data collection method and thematic analysis data analysis method. Two Project Management Institute (PMI) Chapters comprised a sample population of over 2400 professionals. A sample size of 29 surveys was acquired through data collection that produced five key themes: (a) PMM tailoring, (b) vetting of PMM best practice, (c) good communications, (d) management support via PMM training and coaching, and (e) employee engagement via proactive involvement and reactive feedback with the caveat of receiving fair treatment. These themes promoted PMM adoption and accumulatively support higher levels of organizational efficiencies. Research findings enrich existing knowledge surrounding PMM adoption and organizational efficiency due to the pre-existing research gap.</p><p>

<p> Workplace wellness programs (WWPs) aim to curtail health-care expenditures while increasing employees&rsquo; health and wellness. However, WWPs are not effective at helping employees affected by obesity, and participants may be penalized with higher health care costs for not meeting biometric markers. The disease burden to treat the related health conditions for those with obesity cost $1.42 trillion in 2014 and continues to increase. This retrospective multiple case study examined seven companies and 10 employees within the theoretical framework of positive psychology and global well-being models to identify themes. The employees were exemplary cases that lost 3% BMI or 10 pounds of weight and kept it off for six months or more while utilizing their WWP. Eight themes emerged including meaningful relationships, vitality, positive emotions, resilience, optimism, confidence, trust/faith, and hope. The eight themes provided insights for a unique way to integrate and examine positive psychological capital and positive organizational health as a strategy for long-term well-being, weight loss, and health in WWPs. The top four themes identified extrinsic shared motivational constructs that could be identified and strengthened by values in action and positive psychology interventions to promote WWP engagement and success. An organization supporting a health and wellness culture can benefit over time with healthier, happier, and productive employees. The lower four themes offered awareness of intrinsic motivation and self-concepts for deeper meaning within the context of weight loss and maintenance. This research presents a template (Weight and Wellness Mindset) to organize positive psychological variables that may be examined through quantitative research. The positive psychological constructs may be measurable to promote hedonic and eudemonic well-being and impact employees&rsquo; engagement and success in WWPs. </p><p>

<p> The workplace has entered an international era where the need for proactive, globally-aware employees has become increasingly crucial. More than ever, employees are responsible for agentically investing in their own development and work outcomes&mdash;including job satisfaction. This study investigates the relationship between agentic career practices, organizational support, and job satisfaction. Better clarity is needed to understand the career management skills and practices that individuals can develop to navigate the modern workplace. This study compared 2,870 individuals across 73 nations. Five Career Development Practices (CDPs) (connecting with others, planning for development, branding, adapting, and stretching) were found to be meaningfully connected to job satisfaction (<i>R</i>² = .46) where connecting with others emerged as the most potent CDP. Furthermore, the order of the CDPs&rsquo; potency in explaining job satisfaction varied by global region to indicate practices vary by culture. </p><p>