<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>

Variational inequalities have been used to study problems involving partial differential equations with unilateral constraints, such as free-boundary problems. They have also gained much recent interest in the field of operations research, particularly in the study of competitive equilibrium problems. The main focus of this work is to develop efficient algorithms for the computation of large-scale economic equilibria under weaker conditions than those considered previously. The prototype that we use in the analysis is the spatial market equilibrium system with direct price functions. We take advantage of the special structure of the variational inequalities, hence reformulate the problems, via a dual approach of Mosco and a linear algebra argument, as multivalued equations involving two maximal monotone operators. We then apply a relaxed proximal point method with variable parameters to the new formulation. In finite dimensions, we prove that the splitting sequences so generated are convergent to the equilibrium and the Lagrange multipliers, respectively. We also develop variational inequality formulations for migration networks and spatial market systems with goaling constraints. Based on the given economic equilibrium conditions, we establish the corresponding variational inequality formulations. In the second case, we provide direct equivalence proof that is motivated by the governing economic conditions. Essentially, we establish that the economic conditions are the dual forms of the corresponding variational inequalities. By applying the theory of variational inequalities, we then study the qualitative properties of these spatial equilibrium systems. In particular, we show the existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium in each case, assuming some monotonicity conditions that can be interpreted economically. We then apply the above numerical scheme to the variational inequality formulations of spatial equilibrium systems. As a result, we obtain a class of methods of multipliers for the computation of the studied economic equilibria. The methods so derived have an important feature that they require only monotonicity instead of strong monotonicity of supply price functions and demand price functions. They still require strong monotonicity of transaction cost functions. Finally, since they are splitting algorithms, they are suitable for decomposing large-scale problems. With a sequence of penalty parameters being set properly, each split part can then be computed sequentially or parallelly.

<p> Prison reformists, lawmakers, human rights activists, lobbyists, investors, government agencies, and other civil and government actors play a large role in the state of the private prison industry&rsquo;s rate of growth, especially in the past 15-20 years. A 2001 Bureau of Justice Statistics study concluded that big cost savings promised by the private prison industry in the United States &ldquo;have not materialized.&rdquo; Corrections Corporation of America&rsquo;s stock price took its largest plunge in 2000 and never bounced back to its late 90s high. However, despite successful divestment campaigns and legislation against prison privatization after reports of irresponsibility, CCA stock has issued dividends to their investors since 2012, and several analysts currently list CXW (CCA stock) as a recommended buy and hold. Although the United States federal prison population dropped in 2014 for the first time since 1980 (along with private populations), CCA&rsquo;s stock price remains relatively the same today as the day Attorney General Eric Holder made the announcement. Since the fall of share prices, CCA has converted to a REIT in order to avoid corporate taxes and focused heavily on litigating and lobbying to influence voting decisions on sentencing, regulations, and law enforcement. This lobbying assists in filling prison beds and winning government contracts, with lobbying expenditures over $3.3 million in 2005. With respect to economic, social, and political indicators and by juxtaposing the theories of Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and Karl Polanyi this study will focus on whether CXW investors can influence the re-embedding of the economy (the subordination of the markets to social relations), with a quantitative focus on the fluctuation of CXW stock prices and their relationship to reports of CCA irresponsibility in the media.</p>

The research is a small-scale study of the potential benefits of Child Psychotherapy assessment of Looked After Children in transition, for the child and for the professional network caring for the child where the child psychotherapist-researcher is part of the network working together to plan for the child’s long-term future. The assessments aim to bring specific understanding of the child’s emotional state and emotional needs, of his perception of what has happened in his life and of the ways in which his development has been influenced by these external events and perceptions. The assessments also explore the potential for the work to help the child make sense of his history and of himself and the assessments aim to be a distinct and essential part of the overarching assessment process which informs preparation of the children and their prospective carers for permanent alternative placement. Four latency-aged children in transition were assessed in an inner-city community-based Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service by the clinician-researcher. using Standard child psychotherapy techniques were used with some adaptations of technique to address the children’s transitional status. The assessment framework included in-depth interviews with social workers and foster carers and information from schools. Process recordings of the assessment sessions are the primary data in this enquiry and these are analysed using an adapted version of Grounded Theory methodology. The depth and complexity of the children’s experiences and their internal worlds is strikingly revealed by the assessments, in new and compelling detail. All of the assessments were highly significant in shaping short and long-term provision for the children. The outcome of the study strongly supports the inclusion of child psychotherapy assessment as part of an integrated, multi-disciplinary assessment process for all children in transition. The method of assessment and of analysis of data transfers well to a range of Looked After Children in transition in the study as well as providing an effective basis from which to communicate clearly and effectively across interdisciplinary boundaries: making possible a more truly representative, responsive and integrated map for the future.

<p> The purpose of this qualitative research study was to examine and identify the best practices and strategies for human resource managers and organizational leaders to utilize to decrease the generational gaps amongst the four generations currently employed in the labor force, and to create and sustain a vital, multigenerational workforce. The four generations currently working side-by-side in the United States are the Traditionalists, the Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y, better known as the Millennials. Each generational cohort brings unique variables to the workplace such as behaviors, expectations, personal values, communication styles, and motivational factors that create challenges for organizations. Learning how to overcome these challenges will assist in creating connectivity among the cohorts, benefiting organizations in numerous ways, including greater operating efficiency and retention of employees. </p><p> By understanding the different characteristics and needs of the four respective generations, as well as recognizing how to utilize the strengths of each generation, organizational leaders and human resource professionals can utilize the findings to advance generational management strategies for creating and managing a vital intergenerational workforce which is accomplished by staff from each of the four generations working together constructively to support the goals and purpose of the organization. Findings from this study may also contribute to the existing methods human resource managers and business leaders currently use to create workplaces of greater understanding, mutual respect, appreciation, acceptance and inclusiveness of the four different generations in the workforce, as well as facilitate new human resource policies to address workplace differences and conflict amongst the four generations. Further, the benefits from a vital intergenerational workforce may increase employee productivity, satisfaction, retention, loyalty, and the ability of employers to attract new talent from each of the four generations to its workforce. </p><p>

<p> This dissertation examines perceptions of purpose in family foundations and the impact of differences in those perceptions on family foundation board composition/function and on grant making activities. One of the primary decisions facing the donor who creates a private foundation relates to governance. Here, the donor arguably faces a deeply personal choice: to what extent should the donor&rsquo;s family be involved? Related to this choice is the question of the degree of focus on the mission-related aspects of the organization or the family-related aspects of the organization. This dissertation explores whether family foundation trustees view family purposes and social impact purposes as meaningful for the foundation they represent and whether trustees differ with regard to the degree to which they emphasize one or the other. If family foundation trustees do meaningfully differ in this regard, what difference does an emphasis on family or social impact purposes make on board composition, grant making focus and stability, similarity to one&rsquo;s peers, and other factors? Through a combination of survey, interview, and review of publicly available material, this dissertation explores this question for a sample of family foundation trustees in two Midwestern states. Eugene Tempel, Ph.D., Co-Chair Leslie Lenkowsky, Ph.D., Co-Chair</p>

<p>The management consultancy profession has shifted from being a deeply academically rootedprofession to a profession where the connection to academic institutions is more indistinct.Where the knowledge within management consultancy firms comes from is more and moreunclear. The gap between management practice and academic research is sometimesdescribed as unbridgeable for several reasons. Our purpose of this study is to see howimportant academic research and theory is to management consultancy firms’ knowledge baseand what impact obstacles and outer pressure can have on this.As our theory base for this study we have the “Three Basic Elements of theKnowledge System and their Interrelations” model by Werr and Stjernberg (2003). We haveredefined and also added some elements to this model and thereby designed our own model“The Knowledge Base System in an Institutionalized Environment” which functions as aground for our analysis.We have performed this study by using the quantitative method ofquestionnaires where we have used two types of questionnaire, one for the companies and onefor the consultants. The conclusions that we can draw is that academic research and theory isvery important to management consultancy firms’ knowledge bases. However, the consultantssay they have greater usage of their experiences in their daily work, even though they useacademic research and theory as a mean to communicate with each other within theconsultancy firm. A conclusion of this is that experience and academic research and theorymight not be in conflict but have different functions and complement each other.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 210-229).

The management consultancy profession has shifted from being a deeply academically rootedprofession to a profession where the connection to academic institutions is more indistinct.Where the knowledge within management consultancy firms comes from is more and moreunclear. The gap between management practice and academic research is sometimesdescribed as unbridgeable for several reasons. Our purpose of this study is to see howimportant academic research and theory is to management consultancy firms’ knowledge baseand what impact obstacles and outer pressure can have on this.As our theory base for this study we have the “Three Basic Elements of theKnowledge System and their Interrelations” model by Werr and Stjernberg (2003). We haveredefined and also added some elements to this model and thereby designed our own model“The Knowledge Base System in an Institutionalized Environment” which functions as aground for our analysis.We have performed this study by using the quantitative method ofquestionnaires where we have used two types of questionnaire, one for the companies and onefor the consultants. The conclusions that we can draw is that academic research and theory isvery important to management consultancy firms’ knowledge bases. However, the consultantssay they have greater usage of their experiences in their daily work, even though they useacademic research and theory as a mean to communicate with each other within theconsultancy firm. A conclusion of this is that experience and academic research and theorymight not be in conflict but have different functions and complement each other.

Friendship matters. Practical support, caring, moral guidance, enjoyment, improved health and greater life expectancy are but a few of its benefits. Despite living in a stigmatizing social environment where isolation is common among disabled youth, some disabled teens establish strong friendships. A nuanced understanding of these meaningful friendships from the perspective of disabled teens was constructed through this qualitative study. Teens aged 15 to 20 who self-identified as experiencing stigma due to disability were recruited from urban, suburban and rural areas of Nova Scotia, Canada. Each teen was involved in a friendship of at least six months duration and had a close friend (with or without a disability) who was also willing to participate. Seven boys and seven girls, all but one of whom were disabled teens, took part in the study. These seven sets of friends engaged in research interviews and participant observation sessions. Nine adults who witnessed the friendships develop over time were also interviewed. Preliminary coding was completed using Atlas.ti. This was followed by a deeper, critical approach to analysis which generated three inter-connected themes. The first theme outlines how stigma disrupts the friendships of disabled youth though a range of processes (labeling, stereotyping, status loss, separation) that arise from and contribute to ableism discrimination against disabled people. The second theme, finding a balance between adult support and surveillance, emphasizes the crucial role adults play in facilitating the friendships of disabled youth. The final theme, disrupting oppression to create enduring friendship, highlights the strategies used by these disabled teens to make and keep friends in a stigmatizing society. Strategies most often used that appeared to be effective for participants were disrupting norms about friendship, coming out as disabled, connecting through stigma, and choosing self-exclusion. Two strategies horizontal hostility and passing as nondisabled were potentially harmful to disabled youth and in some ways limited friendship opportunities. Ideas to counter the harmful effects of ableism while creating lasting friendships are addressed to disabled teens, to their families, to allies in the education system, and to the broader community.