<p> This qualitative study explored the Identification stage of transorganization development concerning the issue of supporting disadvantaged Richmond youth in the San Francisco Bay Area. Seven participants from four youth-serving organizations in Richmond were recruited using convenience and snowball sampling strategies. Participants were interviewed about the challenges disadvantaged Richmond youth currently face; which organizations may form the membership of a transorganizational system focused on supporting disadvantaged Richmond youth; and what these member organizations&rsquo; goals, motivations, values, current activities, and outcomes are. Richmond youth were found to face a multifaceted set of challenges affecting all aspects of their lives. A range of nonprofits, for-profits, and public sector organizations were identified as currently operating in the space. The leading goal for their organizations is to help youth to better themselves, and to do so, they deliver a range of services that achieve the aims of awareness building, mental and emotional support, recreation outings and activities, and academic support.</p>

This dissertation seeks to understand how formative experiences during organizational socialization exert a longstanding influence on individuals’ performance. Although there is evidence that conditions experienced early in a career or in the initial period of organizational tenure can leave a lasting imprint on individuals’ work-related cognition and behavior, little is known about the performance implications that result from such imprints. Moreover, despite increasing interest in imprinting processes at the individual level, much research in this area has been narrow in scope, focusing mostly on the imprinted influence of early mentors and coworkers, and giving little attention to other factors that contribute to the formation of imprints. To address these gaps, I develop theory about the lasting performance implications of two key features of the context in which socialization takes place: (1) the intra-organizational resource environment upon a newcomer’s entry; and (2) the initial structural position that a newcomer occupies within the network of work relationships in the organization. My core proposition is that imprints created by these conditions enhance or hinder subsequent performance depending on the extent of fit between the imprint and current conditions. This proposition has novel implications for the determinants of individual attainment in organizations; for the paradoxical relationship between initial resource conditions and subsequent performance; and for the nature of network structures that produce individual advantage. Unique longitudinal data and qualitative interviews in two professional service firms provide evidence for this framework.

<p>Within the discourse of scholarly research into organizational culture, intelligence studies, law enforcement reform and organizational change, the examination of post-9/11 organizational assessments and implementation has become an emerging area of investigation. This mixed-methods research focused on how mandated organizational culture change affected a traditionally hierarchical organizational subculture. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was mandated to implement an organizational culture change. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States directed the FBI to move from a traditional reactive investigative paradigm, to one of an intelligence-based, preventative framework. Utilizing a survey based on the competing values framework of organizational culture, and semi-structured qualitative interviews, the effects of mandated organizational culture change were identified in the FBI Special Agent organizational subculture. The data from the quantitative portion of the research identified an ongoing hierarchical organizational culture, and also revealed a preference for a more inclusive based organizational culture. The qualitative interviews provided a deeper understanding of the quantitative data in that the organizational subculture under study reported experiencing an organizational identity crisis because of the mandated organizational change. Through the research, the Special Agent organizational subculture was identified as having experienced a loss of positional primacy within the organization. The research implications identify areas of further study within several academic disciplines including organizational culture, organizational change, organizational identity, public administration and intelligence studies. </p>

<p> The following study explored the experiential eustress accounts of nurses within a hospital work environment. Previous literature found some level of connection between eustress and hope, self-efficacy, collaboration, resilience, and self-perceptions of health. However, the previous literature was attempting to explore and explain a cognitively appraised construct, eustress, without first gathering experiential accounts of the construct from participants. This may have altered the discoveries previously made and necessitates the following research. The current study produced data that helped to address the gap in the previous literature relevant to the guiding research question: What is the eustress experience of RNs in organizational contexts? The constructivist grounded theory method was used to answer the research question. The current study explored the experiential accounts of 12 Registered Nurses (RN) from a hospital within the Western US. All participants were RNs, female, aged 25-65 and having various experience levels (5 to 43 years). Various levels of grounded theory coding were used on the data to produce three models and a theory. The current study found that the participants explained eustress differently than the terminology used in previous literature. All accounts of eustress were directly connected to intense situations (highly stressful experience) that had positive outcomes. These eustress experiences altered the RNs in self-reported beneficial ways, ranging from enhancing confidence, resilience, and professional growth to changing motivation, altering professional perceptions, and changing how they felt about stress in general. The presence of a collaborative, open-minded, and trustworthy team was also noted as having a profound effect on participant recollections of eustress.</p><p>

<p>This mixed methods study examined the impact of an online mindfulness-training program on mindfulness and the attention levels of eight employees working in an organization. All participants showed increased levels of mindfulness at the end of the intervention. The attention levels for participants increased for two of the three attention scales used to measure attention levels. The two attention scales that showed increases were mind wandering and attention, whereas distraction showed no significant increase comparing baseline to post-levels. The qualitative information gathered emphasized learning and greater levels of awareness around mental states and emotional states. This study showed preliminary support for the value of online mindfulness programs in organizations and future research should continue to examine how mindfulness can support employees.

<p> Research and development (R&amp;D) innovation has become an important competitive advantage that is essential to the biopharma industry and critical to drug development (Bennani, 2012; Cuatrecasas, 2006; Douglas, et al., 2010; Garnier, 2008; Hine &amp; Kapeleris, 2006; McKelvey, 2008; Pisano, 2006, 2010). Cultivating R&amp;D innovation carries a distinct challenge of balancing between fostering conditions for creativity while at the same time managing for technical, scientific and operational efficiencies. However, the trend in the industry is toward using more process management techniques focused on formalization, standardization, control and efficiency in order to accelerate drug discovery efforts (Brown &amp; Svenson, 1998; Cardinal, 2001; Cuatrecasas, 2006; Hine &amp; Kaperleris, 2006; Johnstone et al., 2011; Paul et al., 2010; Scannell et al., 2012; Sewing et al., 2008; Ullman &amp; Boutellier, 2008). </p><p> This study was designed to explore how early drug discovery scientists experience creativity in a highly coordinated and managed work environment. The research questions were as follows: <i>How do scientists working in the early discovery phases of the R&amp;D pipeline experience creativity; and how does a highly managed and coordinated work environment influence scientists&rsquo; experience of creativity?</i> The basis for understanding their experiences was captured through detailed stories and reflections about their personal background, early influences and professional experiences as a scientist. </p><p> The sample included 10 early drug discovery scientists who work for either a pharmaceutical, biotech or bio-pharmaceutical company based in the United States of America (USA). A basic qualitative study was conducted with in-depth interviews as the primary method of data collection. Data were analyzed using multiple iterations of coding, describing and classifying to interpret what creativity means, how scientists experience creativity within their work environment and what factors influence this experience. Conclusions and implications about what creativity means, how scientists experience creativity and the various dynamics that shape this experience are presented in the following pages.</p><p>

<p> This study examined a feature of organizations that, prior to this work had not been identified or defined: Organizational Bias. If an organization can learn, have an identity and memory, then an organization can hold bias. Organizational bias occurs when an organization&rsquo;s culture, as defined and reproduced within its interactions with agents and actors, prevents actors from becoming agents by denying them the power required to change the organizational structure. This exclusionary aspect of bias creates a significant obstacle for educational institutions, many of whom define their missions as serving all students and providing a place that builds, supports, and serves community. Organizational ethnography was used as the methodology to examine organizational bias. Data were collected in a committee space designed to be inclusive of community members and other actor voices as they evaluated new high school course proposals. Data were comprised of the following: observations of all meetings, documents, such as correspondence between members and documents produced as a result of or that informed the committee&rsquo;s work, and interviews with members. The data were analyzed using a combination of interactional analysis and axial coding. Findings illustrated that patterns of exclusion initiated through the institutional structure of talk constituted and reconstituted organizational bias. This structure created relevant opportunities for resource use (e.g., credit information), which agents were able to perform, but from which actors were excluded, that afforded them the agency to reconstitute the practical and tacit knowing of the organization, which then reproduced the initial structure. Implications for this work include a clearer understanding of how educational organizations hold bias, what patterns of interaction to examine, and how to interrupt the reconstitution of those practices to be more inclusive of actors in an effort to work more closely toward the defined mission.</p><p>

<p> The objective of this study was to investigate leadership in nonprofits. Specifically, the goal was to contribute to the empirical literature on the relationship between pastoral leadership styles and the organizational effectiveness of their churches. This quantitative ex-post facto study investigated the explanatory power leadership styles have upon the overall organizational effectiveness among Baptist pastors in a Southern Baptist Association in a Western state. Leadership styles was measured by Avolio, Bass, and Zhu&rsquo;s 2004 Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 5x Short [MLQ] and organizational effectiveness was measured by a Southern Baptist Association in a Western state&rsquo;s annual church profile, respectively. This explanatory research encompassed the comparative relationship between the variable of pastoral leadership styles and how they influence the variable of organizational effectiveness in churches, as defined by church membership, the number of baptisms, and financial giving. A sample of 28 pastors self-reported their leadership styles in an online survey. This was followed by a comparison of the organizational effectiveness statistical data sets collected from a Southern Baptist Association in a Western state to the pastoral leadership styles. SPSS, v. 22 was used for data analysis. The findings state pastoral leadership styles as transactional and transformational. A <i>t</i>-test was conducted to compare the means of the leadership styles. Based upon the <i>t</i>-test results, it was determined there is a difference between the leadership styles of pastors and the organizational effectiveness measures of their churches. The difference was significant.</p><p>

<p> As never before, nearly every aspect of our lives in modern Western society is influenced by a web of institutions. Whether driving to work, making a deposit at the bank, or shopping for groceries, our lives are inextricably linked to the institutional construct known as a corporation. Society has become fiercely aware of and opinionated about the deeds and values of corporate entities (The Harris Poll, 2016). Though it may seem so, corporations are not faceless establishments, but are made up of human persons guided by boards of directors whose leadership in the boardroom becomes an expression of a corporation interacting with this living planet. </p><p> Governance systems, defined as the process by which corporations are made responsive to the rights and wishes of stakeholders are at a critical juncture (Lorsch, 2012b). Corporate governance has been cited by many as fundamentally flawed (Turnbull, 2010), entrenched in old patterns of thinking (Scharmer &amp; Kaufer, 2013), and in need of new insights (Sonnenfeld, 2002). This theoretical study establishes the need for a paradigmatic shift in corporate governance&mdash;one that might embolden corporations to live into their fullest potential of shaping a regenerative society, one in which life creates conditions for life, one that serves the well-being of the whole (Senge, Smith, Kruschwitz, Laur &amp; Schley, 2008). </p><p> I imagine corporate governance realized through a participatory paradigm. I offer specific characteristics of this mindset: reflexive knowing, generative engagement, creative enactment, and mutual regard that, when practiced in the boardroom, are likely to foster needed new insights capable of reframing and repurposing the work of governing. A new model for corporate governance is not offered; rather, I suggest boardroom practices grounded in relationship and powered by integral knowing, which will benefit governance, no matter the model. What if corporations, guided by governing boards exercising a participatory perspective, used their significant influence toward shaping a society that fosters human flourishing?</p><p>

<p> The recent surge in religious studies coupled with the strict decline in religion creates the backdrop for the need for this paper. In this study, I use a fantasy theme analysis approach to analyzing data from 23 semi-structured interviews with Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) pastors. I utilize Institutional Work Theory, Symbolic Convergence Theory, and Bona Fide Group Perspective to understand how the dominant coalitions within the PCA interact to affect change in the institution. My findings highlight the difficulties associated with embedded agency and new contributions to each of the aforementioned theoretical perspectives. My project offers a perspective on the uniqueness and value of studying religious denominations as institutions.</p><p>