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The purpose of this study was to better understand value development in an emerging adult, college student population, and to further define, identify and clarify family characteristics that influence values. Theories have sought to examine the developmental influences in emerging adulthood, but little research exists examining the role of the family, particularly in regards to value development. The current study reviewed the literature on emerging adulthood, values, and self-determination theory with attention to family influence. Questions addressed in this study included: 1) are perceived parent values predictors of emerging adult values, 2) will the quality of communication between parents and emerging adults and the presence of an emotionally supportive relationship with both mother and father moderate the relationship between the perception of parent values and emerging adult values, and 3) does the family environment influence the types of values emerging adults perceive to be important to their parents? For this purpose, 200 college students completed 5 different self-report questionnaires measuring the constructs of values, perceived parent values, family environment variables, family communication variables, and quality of relationship with both father and mother. Parents of college students completed a self-report questionnaire measuring their socialization values for their children and a questionnaire measuring family communication; however, the small number of parent responses prevented the data from being used in statistical tests. Multiple regression analyses indicated that perceived parent values predicted emerging adult values. Moderation analyses showed that family communication and the quality of the relationship with father and mother did not strengthen the relationship between perceived parent values and emerging adult values. Lastly, a warm family environment and family activities were significantly related to how important emerging adults’ perceived intrinsic values to be to both their father and mother. Family structure was significantly positively correlated the importance emerging adults’ perceived their fathers to place on extrinsic values, but not their mothers. Implications for the findings of the current study will be discussed, as well as, limitations and future research recommendations.

Thesis advisor: Rosen Valchev / The current rise in nationalist sentiments and emphasis on developing immigration policies around the world led to the question of how have attitudes towards immigration and non-native people affected the differences in economic growth across post-communist countries in the Central and Eastern Europe regions? Using survey data from two waves of the World Value Survey as well as quantitative control data and proxy variables, this study contradicts expectations based on current literature in that it shows how negative attitudes towards others are correlated with higher growth. Such results demonstrate what could be a recurring phenomenon for countries in transition. However, the possibilities of inaccurate survey responses and data limitations due to survey inconsistencies must be kept in mind. The following research is not an all-encompassing answer to the aforementioned question. Instead, it illustrates a divergence from current literature and demonstrates a need for continuous investigation into how personal values are affecting nations as a whole. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2019-05-01. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: . / Discipline: . / Thesis advisor:

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In this thesis, I investigate the influence of environmental values on the work of environmental policy advisors in a regional council in New Zealand and the influence on the institutional values of their work environment on their personal environmental values. Values are relatively stable concepts of socially acquired beliefs and norms that influence the perception and behaviour of humans and are organised in interdependent and dynamic structures that can be changed through social experiences. Environmental values are partly responsible for environmentally friendly behaviour, which encompasses a variety of activities and even lifestyle choices. People, who have chosen to work in the environmental sector are exposed to environmental values through working for institutions that represent environmentally friendly principles. By working in an environmental context, environmental values can get changed by social interaction, which can lead to an adjustment or approximation to the dominant notion of environmental values within the workplace (Finegan, 2000) Although policy advice is expected to be a neutral and objective task, statements are still written by persons with an individual opinion that, although suppressed, represents the values of the writer (Heineman, Bluhm, Peterson, Keary, 2002). It is therefore likely that the whole process of evaluating information and preparing a policy recommendation is influenced by the values of the policy advisor. My findings indicate that environmental values of employees get adjusted to the institution's environmental values through their work. This happens through a merging of their private environmental values into their professional values, through processes of adjustment. This change not only results in identification with the job but also presents a way to circumvent possible value conflicts in the work environment. The policy process involves a number of stages where information is re-evaluated and discussed to fit the formal and structural requirements of policy making under the Resource Management Act, which is done in collaboration with others. This leads to a social construction of values that are represented in collaboratively developed policy recommendation. In my conclusion, I show that policy advisors at regional government level use. in New Zealand have environmental values, use them for environmental protection, and adjust them to work more efficiently for the environment within a public service organisation. The use of their environmental values by the participants show that they are environmentalists and do what environmentalists do, but in a quiet, unobtrusive way.

What role do values play in professional women's lives with regard to their sense of self, their consciousness, and their perceived choices in the gender dynamics of social relations? This study investigates the evolution of values over a lifetime, their nature, dynamic and role in women's identity formation in the family setting. How might the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM) have influenced the participants’ new choices and gender relations, their conditioned beliefs about self-in-the-world and their conscious worldviews? A sample of twelve women born between 1937 and 1948 was interviewed in-depth about the values they grew up with, if and how their values changed during the time of the WLM, what they are valuing now in their midlife and what they see as important for their future. Three frameworks influenced this study. Ken Wilber's integral framework of All Quadrants All Levels (AQAL) provided insight into the spectrum of consciousness. Spiral Dynamics (SD) gave an interpretation of the communal dimension of how values cluster into historically defined worldviews. The Australian Values Inventory (AVI), a Personal Development Profile, was used in this study to analyse the current values of the participants. Coming from an eco-feminist perspective, I used a case study approach in conjunction with the standardised AVI instrument. During the research process a wholarchical perspective of what I call Soul Purpose Ecology (SPE) emerged with its Wholarchical Dynamic Analysis (WDAnalysis), which I have used to interpret the data. The findings in this case study propose a soul-centred embodied ethics as prevention, healing and reorganisation of a threatened world. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship and effect of a Death Awareness Training program on personal values and value systems. The experimental group experienced Death Awareness Training and the control group participated in an exercise assumed to be unrelated to the experimental group experiences. The Rokeach Value Survey (RVS) for terminal and instrumental values was used to obtain measures of value system change.Prior to the group experiences, the sample of 28 subjects was randomly divided into two groups of fourteen subjects each. The subjects were master's level counseling students. The experimental group (six males and eight females) participated in two hours and five minutes of Death Awareness Training. The control group (seven males and seven females) spent an equivalent amount of time viewing and discussing a videotape on family therapy.The Rokeach Value Survey for terminal and instrumental values was administered to both groups before and after the group experience. The subjects responded to the RVS by rank-ordering both lists of values from one to eighteen, most to least important. The RVS was scored to obtain value change scores for each subject, for both lists of values. Direction of change was not a factor. The value change scores were then subjected to two way analysis of variance. The selected level of significance was .05.The first major null hypothesis--there is no statistically significant difference in value change scores between the experimental group and the control group--was statistically rejected (F = 6.29; df = 1,52; p <.05). Therefore, it was asserted that Death Awareness Training had a statistically significant effect in the reprioritization of personal value systems.The second major null hypothesis--there is no statistically significant difference in value change scores between terminal values and instrumental values--was also statistically rejected (F = 8.29; df = 1,52; p <.05). This indicated that Death Awareness Training caused a statistically significantly greater reprioritization of instrumental values than terminal values.The third major null hypothesis--there is no statistically significant difference in value change scores in the interaction among groups and values--was not statistically rejected (F = 1.56; df = 1,52; P >.05), and therefore not investigated. Since this hypothesis was not rejected, four sub-hypotheses were not investigated and therefore not rejected.The following conclusions were drawn from the study:1. Relatively short periods of Death Awareness Training achieved significant changes in personal value systems.2. Changes in personal value systems resulting from Death Awareness Training may also result in changes in observable behavior.3. Conceptions and meanings of death prior to Death Awareness Training were bases on inaccurate information.4. Personal value systems existing before Death Awareness Training were based on misconceptions, misperceptions, fear, guilt and distorted individual and collective thoughts about death.5. Death Awareness Training created inconsistencies and imbalances in existing value systems causing changes in the value systems designed to remove or reduce the inconsistencies and imbalances.6. Death Awareness Training altered desired modes of conduct more than desired end-states of existence. The perceived end product of life remained basically the same but the quality, in terms of the process of life, was significantly changed as a result of Death Awareness Training.The results of the study indicate that Death Awareness Training can be a useful procedure for counselors, therapists and mental health practitioners of all kinds to assist clients manifesting death and death-related concerns, to explore personal meanings and perceptions of the clients' conceptions of death, to alleviate personal fears concerning their death and the death of significant others, and alter dysfunctional behavior patterns emulating from or in a death context.Since Death Awareness Training resulted in changes in personal value systems, counselor educators may want to consider providing similar training programs to counselors in training. This is necessary so that the value system a counselor will use in the counseling relationship to effect a multitude of decisions and outcomes with a client will not be a value system based on misconceptions, misperceptions, and fear. This is particularly true with, though not limited to, clients manifesting death and death-related concerns.

It is a commonly held notion among many Aboriginal people that one’s worldview, knowledge, values and identity are shaped through the connection one has with the physical and spiritual components of their traditional territory; the land and waters, the beings which occupy these places and one’s ancestors. For the members of Missanabie Cree First Nation, the connection with their traditional territory was disrupted as a result of the failure of the Crown to set aside land in the treaty process in the early 20th Century. Through a review of literature on the Cree of Northern Ontario and Quebec, this thesis answers questions raised by the community concerning their ancestors’ traditional resource management methods, and the kinship roles associated with these methods. Q-method is used to determine the current day values the members hold regarding the land and waters in and around Missanabie. Knowledge of these values, where members agree and disagree, can assist leadership in making decisions about how to proceed in the reestablishment of a viable Aboriginal community within the traditional territory. From the Q-method, three factors which represent the members values emerged; Cultural and Spiritual Values, Economic and Conservation Values, and Community Infrastructure Values. The factors demonstrate that the First Nation holds a mix of traditional and contemporary values with differences appearing in how each factor describes members’ connection to the land and the desires of what members want the land to provide. To move forward in their journey toward reestablishment on their traditional lands, compromises and accommodations within the community need to be reached, and can best be achieved through comprehensive land management planning.

The thesis addresses the translation process of organisational core values. Core values can be seen as the guiding principles that reveal how the organisation conducts its business. These are often written down as a part of the company’s philosophy and tend to be explicitly articulated to all their entities and functions throughout their organisation. By doing so, the organisation wish to benchmark certain behaviour among their employees. In this thesis, the purpose is to explore how the employees in a subsidiary translate and understand the core values of their Swedish employer. Our aim is to investigate what happens with the meaning of the core values when translated by the employees, as well as to see how these values are visible in the employees day-to-day actions. In this study, a qualitative approach have been used and a case study has been conducted in one of H&amp;M’s subsidiaries. Through 12 semi-structured interviews with employees with different roles in the organisation we have been able to create further understanding of the phenomenon of core value translation in a Chinese setting. H&amp;M is a large, multinational retail company with presence in 49 countries all over the world. This case study can serve the purpose guide managers wanting to understand how their Chinese colleagues accept and interpret their strategies, as more and more Swedish companies are expanding to China. The nature of the study is of abductive character, where we have used the ‘systematic combining’ approach. This enabled us to incorporate new theories and data throughout the research process to facilitate our understanding of our findings. The theoretical background has thus served as base for our understanding and have been constantly reviewed and revised during the research process. Our conclusion from this study is that the translation of the core values relies on the institutionalised organisational procedures and processes set in place. What supported the translation process were mainly the daily conversations with fellow colleagues and repeated procedures, such as meetings and interaction between positions. We also found that those values that had a clear practical usage, tended to be easier for the employees to translate into own actions. Our main finding is however, that the employees translated the core values into a guiding tool that supported and joined the workforce in their daily activities. All parts of the value ‘package’ had been re-contextualised to fit the employees in their local context and were visible in their actions in various ways, but with the common purpose to guide.

Title: Recreating Meaning Through Cultural Investments – A Case Study of Volvo IT in France Swedish Title: Återskapa Mening Genom Kulturella Investeringar – En Fallstudie av Volvo IT i Frankrike Authors: Pegah Esmaeili and Filip Holmdahl Tutor: Lena Andersson Background For what reasons do organizations invest in culture? Could it be seen as an initiative from management to create some form of control and to manage the reality of employees? A company that systematically is working and investing in their organizational culture is Volvo IT by creating a cultural network consisting of a Cultural Manager, Cultural Navigators and Cultural Ambassadors. The question is if the rest of the organization share the efforts made in these investments? This thesis will investigate if the investments made by the management, to manage a wanted meaning, are shared by the lower level personnel.Purpose To create an improved understanding between managements strive, through cultural investments, to recreate and manage a wanted meaning and how the employees perceive these investments. Method The empirical data was collected through interviews and ethnographical observations at Volvo IT in Lyon. This study takes on an explorative inception by looking at if a company putting lots of effort into their organizational culture actually manages to deliver the same meanings throughout the organizational levels. Additional methods used include field notes, photography and participant observation. Results Organizational culture is both a structure and a process. It is needed to provide a structure of how to make sense of reality for every employee but is not only shaped by management. It is a process, which is always under constant change and must accept diverse meanings and hence there must be space for diverse meanings in the shared ones resulting in a recognizing instead of a blaming culture. Symbolic aspects, such as symbols, rites, slogans and stories, will increase the cultural understanding between management and employees but they should be so invisible that they become visible in daily behavior. Keywords Volvo IT, Organizational culture, meaning, symbolism, management, employees