Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, 2007. / Title from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 25, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0748. Adviser: Wolfgang Bielefeld.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Sociology, 2007. / Title from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 25, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0770. Adviser: Brian Powell.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: . Adviser: John J. Lawler. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 231-238) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

<p> Healthcare, hospital environments, and the nursing workforce have been a focus of late in both the professional literature and public media especially in the wake of the Institute of Medicine's reports <i>Keeping Patients Safe-Transforming the Work Environment of Nurses</i> (IOM, 2004) and <i>The Future of Nursing-Leading Change Advancing Health</i> (IOM, 2011). These reports address patient safety and workforce issues such as staffing, organizational culture, and workforce characteristics. Very little research has been undertaken on the culture of night nursing or the roles, experiences and characteristics of night nurses. Therefore, a study of night nursing, using a qualitative ethnographic methodology, was chosen to address this gap. Because subcultures can influence the larger culture, knowledge regarding their unique characteristics and attributes becomes critically important especially in the culture of a large hospital.</p><p> The purpose of this study was to develop a description of night nursing as a subculture within the larger culture of nursing care and nursing practice that exists in a hospital setting. Data were collected during the researcher's 100 hours of participant observations on five differing nursing units in two hospitals, using semi-structured transcribed interviews with eight nurse informants on these same units, and through an analysis of relevant hospital documents. A synthesis of the collected data identified a subculture of night nursing with shared domains or attributes such as unique roles, rituals, hierarchies, and insider/outsider perspectives.</p><p> The final description included four themes that were extrapolated from the synthesized data: (1) night nursing is characterized by camaraderie and teamwork; (2) the environment of a night nurse is conducive to the development of critical thinking; (3) night nurses engage in a constant reflection about sleep; and (4) night nurses share a feeling of being undervalued.</p><p> The findings from this study have implications for administrators who must be aware of and understand the needs of night nurses especially related to being valued and included. For nurse educators, important implications center on preparing students for the uniqueness of the role of the night nurse, and planning formal educational offerings during the night shift for nurses. Further research is warranted using quantitative methods to validate and explore the themes and domain descriptions identified in this study.</p>

<p> As a disengaged and underutilized community resource, young people have the potential to develop leadership skills and express themselves in community action. For this study, the researcher interviewed 13 young adults from rural areas of Alabama. These 18- to 20-year-olds had taken part in community leadership skills programs during their high school years. In this qualitative investigation, the researcher used a multiple case study model that included in depth, one on one interviews and personal observations. Analysis of the data revealed three themes for civic engagement: (a) the participants expressed their ideas and feelings, orally and in their writings; (b) they discussed their leadership skills; and (c) they applied their leadership skills. These results further suggested to the researcher that motivation, confidence, self esteem, and relationship building skills were reinforced by the leadership skills programs, and those factors were applied within the participants' communities. Based on the evidence derived from this study, the ideas and leadership skills of young people have value and strength, especially for rural communities.</p>

<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> The onset or inception of organizational decline has been largely bypassed in management research over the past two decades, even though understanding this fundamental typology is key to mitigating organizational failure, while also providing important insight regarding how managers respond to phenomena that they may neither expect or understand. Understanding how managers observe, decide, and act in times of uncertainty, and how organizational culture and other factors may shape that environment, are important for scholars and practitioners alike to understand. This dissertation argues that corporate decline has largely been misunderstood from the perspective of onset or initiation; that the manager's decision-making process in times of decline must be considered in relation to the actual causes and factors associated with decline, and that the fundamental definition of organizational decline must be revised in light of advances in our understanding in management over the past three decades. This qualitative empirical descriptive study reviews literature regarding organizational decline with emphasis on the onset of decline, presents an equation for understanding a firm's propensity for decline, provides a revised definition of organizational decline, and examines the decision-making process of management when faced with decline based on symbolic interactionism theory.</p>

<p> The Christian ex-gay movement was born in 1973 with the founding of Exodus International, which would soon become an international umbrella ministry purporting reparative "ex-gay" therapies as a viable method of dealing with "unwanted same-sex attractions". In 2012, then-president of Exodus, Alan Chambers, renounced reparative therapies in recognition of the wide-spread harm they had caused. In June of 2013, Chambers announced his intention to close Exodus' doors. Aspects of minority discrimination inherent to the broader Christian sex prescription and mirrored in the Christian ex-gay movement are discussed, along with the influence of the Post-Victorian conceptualization of sexuality on ex-gay ideology, the social movement ideologies driving the reparative therapeutic model, and the ex-gay and pro-gay Christian hermeneutics of the queer-relevant Biblical canon. In its final days, Exodus International served as a methodological tool to discern ex-gay collective action frames. The present research purposively sampled Exodus Association member churches and qualitatively analyzed the framing work performed by Exodus Association pastors in sermons addressing homosexuality. The data was coded according to the core collective action framing tasks conceptualized by David Snow and Robert Benford: diagnosis, prognosis, and motivation. A clear division among the churches emerged as themes from the "pulpit discourse" unfolded, one faction emphasizing truths and objectifying the issue of homosexuality, and the other faction emphasizing grace and humanizing homosexuals as people. The division of member churches of the now-dead Exodus Association into truth and grace perspectives is discussed as a reflection of the splintering of the larger ex-gay movement. </p>

<p> I have designed and implemented a new online communication training tool (XHTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, MySQL) that potentially maximizes a job candidate's ability to obtain job offers. All demographic statistics show people with disabilities as the largest minority group currently unemployed in the United States. Those who seek work have a higher chance of being unemployed, find a low-level job, or find part-time employment. With communication training, job candidates gain the ability to market their skills to potential employers and increase the likelihood of obtaining a job offer. I researched into ADA law that provided guidelines when developing the system and discuss a job candidate's rights in each step of the interview process. Using a Model-View-Controller (MVC) based framework, I have built a system that adapts to a user's disability, and presents them with a tailored list of interview questions and answers. For this paper, mobility and visual disabilities were focused on. The database contains legal interview questions, illegal questions under ADA law, and gray area questions (questions that may seem illegal but really not). This allows us to challenge the communication skills and knowledge of the user and encourage them to learn how to improve. PHP modules were built to be flexible and independent from each other. Different modules can be loaded and unloaded in the Controllers thereby allowing flexibility in the system. Having independent modules also reduces the time to debug code. Participants are given multiple choice answers to each interview question in a 10-question training session and rated based on their performance. Answers are assigned points (from 1 to 4) and are calculated at the end of a training session. A group of California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) students were given a 2-part survey before and after communication training and provided promising results on the effectiveness of the system. Overall, attitudes of participants showed the entire group agreed that communication is a key aspect in a job interview and that communication training would help them obtain more job offers. Participants that completed part-2 of the survey indicated that communication training through the system has overall helped their abilities. Long-term usage of the system could potentially show an increase in job interview performance (i.e., job interviews vs. job offers) and therefore, increasing the employment rate for people with disabilities.</p>

<p> Prompted by frequent media reports of school fraud and a lack of relevant K-12 literature, this research study was designed to investigate current fraud prevention practices in public school districts in New York State. Using a "fraud triangle" model, an analysis of existing legislation and professional practice guidelines reveals that an integral element is being overlooked in current fraud prevention efforts, namely employee attitudes (more formally rationalization). </p><p> In an effort to fill this gap, management and accounting literature is used to identify ten specific practices associated with a decreased likelihood of fraud rationalization in the business setting. Primary research is then used to ascertain the extent to which these business practices have been implemented in New York State public schools. HLM is used to examine the nature of the relationship between the presence of these practices within a school district and employee attitudes about rationalization, as a proxy measure of fraud risk. </p><p> Data concerning both district practices and employee attitudes about fraud were collected using an online survey of 938 employees from 56 randomly selected K-12 school districts in New York State. Findings reveal low or non-existent levels of district implementation for eight of the ten suggested fraud prevention strategies. However, where strategies have been implemented, employees are less likely to report rationalization about fraud. (As the number of strategies increases, rationalization tends to decrease.) The effect of individual strategies is examined. Several district and employee demographic factors are also found to have mitigating effects. </p><p> Based on the results of this research and analysis, specific recommendations are presented in an attempt to improve school district fraud prevention efforts. The analysis also suggests areas where follow-up research studies are warranted in light of this new base-line data.</p>