<p> The purpose of this two-phase, sequential mixed methods study was to examine and explain factors relating to leadership in diversity-oriented churches in the United States by obtaining quantitative results from a sample of 65 senior pastors and 92 top-management team members, then follow-up with a multiple case study to explain the results in more depth. The instruments used for quantitative data collection were the 20-item four-factor Cultural Intelligence Scale, the adapted 8-item Openness to Diversity Scale, and the Leadership Practices Inventory. The study's sixteen findings establish significant relationships between leader cultural intelligence, top-management team openness to diversity, and leadership practices, and elucidate how those relationships contribute to a positive organizational diversity climate. In addition, openness to diversity and church polity were discovered to influence TMT perceptions of the senior pastor's leadership practices. Therefore, the findings support the conclusion that investigating intercultural leadership in a domestic organization could reveal new theoretical insights while having implications for leadership practice and organizational effectiveness.</p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to examine the attributional association between servant leadership and global leadership. The research employed a correlational, hypothetical-deductive, cross-sectional quantitative research strategy with two established instruments to measure servant leadership and global leadership attributes. The sample included 413 leaders and executives of organizations in northeast Indiana in the United States. The study found a close association between servant leadership and global leadership and between individual leadership attributes of both constructs. The strength of the correlative relationship between the two leadership constructs was found to be dependent on a leader's leadership position and gender. Post hoc analysis revealed differences in servant leadership by a leader's gender and the type and size of organization. Differences in global leadership were found between leaders when moderated by size of organization and number of countries the organization does business with, but not the proportion of products or services sold to foreign countries.</p>

<p> An employee's trust in their leadership is an important antecedent to organizational commitment. It is commonly believed that committed employees will work harder to achieve organizational objectives, so organizations often try to foster commitment in their employees to achieve improved organizational performance. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the relationship between trust and organizational commitment. The population consisted of 31 employees from 3 high-technology organizations in the United States. The study consisted of 2 research instruments and 5 demographic questions that were administered to employees of 3 high-technology organizations. The survey instrument used to measure trust was Cummings and Brimley's Organizational Trust Inventory. This instrument separates trust into the 3 dimensions of keeping commitments, negotiating honestly, and not taking advantage. The survey instrument used to measure organizational commitment was Meyer and Allen's Three Component Model. This second instrument separates organizational commitment into the 3 dimensions of affective commitment, normative commitment, and continuance commitment. The study revealed a strong positive correlation (r =.38) between an employees' total trust and their total organizational commitment. The study revealed that 12 of the 16 possible correlations between trust and organizational commitment were positively correlated. The study findings indicate that leadership skills are critical to increasing trust levels that enable organizational commitment. By improving the leadership and organizational antecedents that promote a trustworthy environment, employees become more committed and organizational performance improves.</p>

<p> Organizational consolidation and restructuring is a long held public sector quick-fix solution to issues of limited congressional funding, ineffective structure, and/or the presumption of hierarchical failures of leadership, in hope of improving organizational performance. Such attempts at federal government reorganization are often criticized in terms of <i> dollars and sense</i>&mdash;attempting to save dollars, but not making much sense. While a plethora of literature exists on private sector reorganization (i.e., merger and acquisition) and their workforce, there is scarce research available on similar events for the public sector. </p><p> This case study sought to understand the impact of mandated federal consolidation on the public sector workforce. Leveraging Cheney's (1983) and Bergami and Bagazzi's (2000) theories and studies on organizational identification, the second order effect on identity and identification for the associated federal workforce was revealed as having significant negative impact&mdash;worthy of immediate leadership attention and future study. A key conclusion of this study provided insight into public sector individual identification as grounded in differing psychological contracts dependent on status (military versus civil service), but revealed a shared an incremental hierarchical default to patriotism as the final vestige for rationalizing identification. </p><p> Recommendations are offered for future public sector studies as a dichotomous evaluation of military versus civil service, expanding literature beyond the private sector, and offering practical insight for the world's largest employer, the Department of Defense, with likely benefit for the workforce and the taxpayer. The question remains whether the study leadership will leverage these lessons learned or just continue their journey <i>sailing on a sea of hope</i>. </p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between a Black-owned radio station's organizational culture and its social impact. Although these constructs have been researched in isolation, there are no known studies that have considered whether a relationship exists between the two constructs. Furthermore, there is no evidence that either construct has been studied within the context of a Black-owned business. Businesses owned by Black Americans represent an important and fast-growing segment in the American economy and, therefore, warrant further investigation in order to contribute diverse perspectives to research and theory building in organizational science. </p><p> The primary research question guiding this study was, "what is the relationship between a Black-owned radio station's organizational culture and its social impact?" Secondary research questions examined social impact in relation to specific elements of organizational culture and how listeners experience the radio station's social impact. The study was conducted using case study methodology. The site of this study was WHUR-FM (WHUR), the commercial radio station owned by Howard University. Interview participants included 10 purposefully selected Black Americans: 8 current and former employees and 2 listeners of WHUR. Other sources of evidence analyzed for the study included observations, documentation, archival records, and physical artifacts. </p><p> This study found evidence of a synergistic relationship between the organizational culture and social impact of WHUR. The findings were based on consistencies observed between the radio station's values-based organizational culture and its impact on internal and external communities.</p>

<p>Can virtual work simply be described as doing the same work in a different venue? Is the virtual workforce merely a construct of technology? Where does the virtual worker fit into the paradigm of telework? And how does leadership of the virtual workforce need to adapt to accomplishing work in a virtual environment? The fact is that the culture of virtual work has become increasingly rooted over the years. Most recently, economic struggles and the advanced technology associated with a global economy have set the stage for a more connected workforce in more disconnected venues. Virtual work offers distinct positives for organizations as well as employees. Employers save financially by reducing the costs associated with physical footprints, and employees save commute time as well as commute costs. While virtual organizations may appear to be a panacea for the economic and time complexities that beset employees and corporations, the success of the virtual workforce presents a viable challenge to leaders. Instead of leading less in a relatively anonymous environment, leaders need to alter their leadership behaviors to be able to lead more in the virtual workspace. Through a phenomenological study, the research herein was designed to explore and offer insights into leadership behaviors, from the vantage point of virtual workers, that positively or negatively influence the success of virtual organizations. The significance of this topic rests in the fact that leadership behaviors play a central role in defining the success of a virtual organization (Society for Human Resource Management, 2010). Hence, the purpose of this study is to explore the leadership behaviors that positively and negatively impact the success of a virtual organization. Using an analysis of research that defines the successful virtual organization as one that maintains metrics that are equal to or exceed in-office environments in terms of employee productivity, retention, attendance, development, and promotions, this study examines leadership behaviors from the vantage point of virtual workers. </p><p> <i>Keywords</i>: virtual workforce, telework, leadership traits, leadership behaviors, productivity, retention, attendance, training, employee promotions </p>

<p> Survey data were collected from 445 part-time transportation workers to test three sets of competing hypotheses about primary and secondary part-time workers that were developed from Partial Inclusion theory (Allport, 1933), Investment Model theory (Farrell &amp; Rusbult, 1981), and the Part-time Work Arrangements perspective (Feldman, 1990). The Investment Model constructs explaining job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intent received the most support. However, the part-time work arrangements perspective also received some support as there were significant differences in organizational commitment and turnover intentions between primary and secondary part-time workers. The application of Partial Inclusion theory to the part-time worker subgroup context was not supported.</p><p> INDEX WORDS: Part-time Employment, Investment Model theory, Partial Inclusion theory, Part-time Work Arrangements, Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment, Turnover Intent, Transportation Industry.</p>

<p> This study is a qualitative, exploratory examination of the phenomena of humor in the workplace. The purpose is to derive a better understanding of how real people enact humor in the workplace by examining the humor depicted by and through fictional characters in comic art. The body of work of cartoonist, Scott Adams, was the primary source of data. The study relies on what the imaginary characters of <i>Dilbert</i> find absurd, funny, and ridiculous about an imaginary workplace, the employee-employer relationship, the content of the characters' jobs, or in the social relationships of fictional characters. It involves analyzing specific cultural artifacts, comic strips, as representations of human action. </p><p> Utilizing qualitative media analytical techniques, the study explores ethnographic materials (comic strips). A random sample from the universe of <i> Dilbert</i> strips was developed and theoretical sampling was used to discern the identities and personality traits of the main characters. Emergent groupings and themes were developed by repeatedly interacting with the data, reflection, extensive note taking and exploring patterns. The research question is answered from within a framework of comic art of the workplace using descriptive language that is informed by theories of humor. </p><p> The idea of presence in mediated communication is discussed and the significant themes of ridicule and disparagement theory are explicated. Key findings include the assertion that, in some cases comic plausibly serves as a proxy for reality as well as the implication that ridicule but plays a significant but inadequately understood role in social development. The researcher proposes that humor may be understood as mythopoeic language. </p><p> Recommendations for directions in future research include management and organizational studies of humor and communities of practice, learning and development, sensemaking and organizational culture. Further investigation into the relationship between ridicule and bullying could be fruitful. Qualitative media analysis has the potential to produce enormous gains in knowledge creation. </p>

<p> Employee turnover is one of the greatest problems facing top management teams. The general problem is that employee undesirable voluntary turnover regularly occurs in organizations. This study of job embeddedness is unprecedented and is the first scholarly work using a sample from the Aerospace and Defense Industry. The purpose of this quantitative study was to evaluate the primary data collected to examine the linear association between job (organization and community) embeddedness at the sub-dimension (fit, links, and sacrifice) level and voluntary turnover in the Aerospace and Defense Industry subpopulation System Engineering and Technical Assistance (SETA) support contract workforce. The sample (n = 185) included full-time working adults age 18 to 65 in the United States. The respondents, for two weeks in mid-Spring 2014, self-reported and completed a Likert scale survey as the primary data collection instrument. Three research questions were investigated. Research question 1 determined the relationship between on-the-job embeddedness and voluntary turnover amongst defense SETA support contract employees. The study findings revealed there is a significant relationship between on-the-job embeddedness and intention to voluntary turnover. Research question 2 determined the relationship between off-the-job embeddedness and voluntary turnover amongst defense SETA support contract employees. The study findings revealed there is a significant relationship between off-the-job embeddedness and intention to voluntary turnover. Research question 3 asked, "What is the difference between age, job embeddedness, and voluntary turnover amongst defense SETA support contract employees?" This research question was eliminated because of data skew. In addition, significant gender statistical analysis differences exist.</p>

<p> This interpretive qualitative grounded theory study served to explore whether barriers still exist that impede employment for individuals with disabilities (IWD), and ascertain whether hidden factors impact employee engagement for IWD. This study includes a description of key terms related to this research in addition to other definitions of employee engagement to show the array of meanings associated with employee engagement. The literature review chapter includes a review of literature concerning barriers to employment for IWD, and employment engagement. However, a lack of literature exists that examines employee engagement for IWD. Additionally, the literature review chapter discusses the role of leadership concerning employee engagement, and the significant role of generational differences in the 21st century workforce. The data collection open-ended interview process and analysis focused on learning the meaning that the 33 participants held about employee engagement. The chapter on findings includes a discussion of the emerging grounded theory of resilience engagement in addition to the barriers to employment and factors to ensure employee engagement for IWD. The summary, conclusions, and recommendations chapter includes a description of implications and makes recommendations for further research. Finally, this dissertation shows that law makers and employers still have to ensure all members of society are treated equally and are able to live a prosperous life.</p>