Michel Foucault is a celebrated post-structuralist theorist that has helped shape gender and sexual theory. In A History of Sexuality Volume 1 Foucault dismantles many longstanding sexual traditions and morals by exposing them as societal constructs. According to Foucault, anonymous yet fully invasive power sources have shaped and continue to shape sexual culture and more importantly, individual beliefs about sexuality. However, Foucault's obsession with the influence of power limits his sexual theory in three particular ways. First, he disregards the female sexual experience; second, he undermines individual agency; and third, he undermines the innate desire for love and family. The first half of the paper focuses on his dismissal of the female experience and individual agency. This section of the thesis relies heavily on other feminist scholars, social studies, and the work of historians. The second half of the paper focuses on the human desire for love and family and looks to dystopian literature to help critique Foucault. Dystopian literature has often been paired with modern cultural criticism, including psychoanalysis and post-strucutralism as both act as critiques of the permeating effects of societal control at a community and individual level. However, even dystopian literature leaves some room for individual agency and explores the innate desire for love and family.

This study uses agency theory to test whether the demand for quality audits by listed Chinese companies is associated with changes in ownership structure, which is characterized by the dominance of the state, institutional and individual shareholders. The empirical test results obtained in a concentrated ownership setting are supportive of agency theory. Specifically, I find that the decrease of state shares and the corresponding increase of institutional shares result in a demand for higher-quality audits in China’s stock market. The results provide empirical support for the government’s recent initiative in reducing state ownership in listed companies to improve firm performance and the supply of quality accounting information through independent auditing.

This dissertation examines how gender operates as agencies for women’s environmental justice activism. I contend that women’s activism, often taking place through collaborative and collective means, presents new opportunities to theorize rhetorical agency that include women-centric and leaderless forms of grassroots organizing. To this end, I explore various agencies for women’s collaborative environmental communication—motherhood, eco-spirituality, and political calls for recognition—that work to test the boundary conditions of rhetorical studies in ways that find empowerment and resistance in a collective rather than in any one particular person. In developing these accounts, I construct a framework that emphasizes the agentic capabilities possible through collaborative rhetorics of resistance—the communicative performances of defiance and empowerment put forth by groups of people that often result in the articulation of collective identities, the challenging of dominant structures and institutions of power, and work to inspire mutual critique and reflection in others. Theories of rhetorical agency assist in documenting and illuminating the ways speakers navigate discursive and material constraints as they bring their audience to action, but often do so by privileging the rhetoric of individual (male) speakers. By exploring collaborative rhetorics of resistance, this dissertation project tests the boundary conditions of rhetorical agency and generates a more comprehensive understanding of how loose networks of people enter into, take part in, and possibly redirect the course of environmental deliberations. This dissertation project is focused on the ways in which women rhetorically collaborate to craft collective subjectivities, protest environmental threats to their families and communities, and inspire mutual critique and reflection in others.

This thesis addresses a series of disconcerting moments that emerged during a research study with seven fourth and fifth grade students who participated in an after-school Technology Think Tank and their classroom teachers at a Midwestern elementary school. These moments were marked by heightened power, identity performances, and emotions and were disturbing not only as they occurred, but remained bothersome upon reflection in the days and weeks afterwards. In this research I call them ‘haunting moments.' The primary data sources for this research were audio and video files that I initially analyzed for volume. This process verified my premise that the haunting moments were linked to an increase in speaking volume that differentiated them from other discourse. Then I employed a two-fold coding approach including interpretive phenomenological analysis which generated a comprehensive list of codes including textual and social functions of technologies. My analysis led to a pursuit for a framework for understanding the haunting moments in the Think Tank and classrooms. I contextualized them within a theoretical matrix which included the dialectical relationship of standardization and resistance and the inextricable role of power, identities, and emotions with that dialectic. Standardization was accomplished through mechanisms of control that I identified as discursive positioning and surveillance. These mechanisms were resisted by mechanisms of agency. I also described the important role of technology-- which mediated the mechanisms of control and agency that were used in the service of standardization and resistance. Theorizing and framing haunting moments leads to a more complex understanding of literacy learning. This research describes how standardization and resistance, along with the emergence of moves of power, identities, and emotions are an inevitable outcome of participation in discourse communities, however this inescapability does not signify inevitability or preclude agency through improvisation or authorship.

This study examines the reactions of market makers and investors to large dividend increases to identify the motives for dividend increases. Uniquely, this study simultaneously tests the signaling and agency abatement motivations as explanations of the impact of dividend increases on stock prices and bid-ask spreads. The agency abatement hypothesis argues that increased dividends constrict management's future behavior, abating the agency problem with shareholders. The signaling hypothesis asserts that dividend increases signal that managers expect higher or more stable cash flows in the future. Mean stock price responses to dividend increase announcements during 1995 are examined over both short ( _1, 0) and long ( _1, 504) windows. Changes in bid-ask spreads are examined over a short ( _1, 0) window and an intermediate (81 day) period. This study partitions dividend increases into a sample motivated by agency abatement and a sample motivated by cash flow signaling. Further, this study examines the agency abatement and cash flow signaling explanations of relative bid-ask spread responses to announcements of dividend increases. Estimated generalized least squares models of market reactions to sampled events support the agency abatement hypothesis over the cash flow signaling hypothesis as a motive for large dividend increases as measured by Tobin's Q and changes in the distribution of cash flows.

The scholarly field of traditionally religious women has during the last decade gone from a so called “paradox-approach” which identifies women’s agency with the capacity of acting autonomously – something most clearly demonstrated through acts of resistance – to a nonparadox approach defining agency as a continuum encompassing both resistance to and compliance with traditionally religious structures. While the latter approach assumes that women’s participation in traditional religions is not necessarily a paradox – mainly because some women value religious submission – this thesis argues that the paradox of women and religion becomes essential when speaking about religious feminism. This has proven particularly evident in this study’s Grounded theory approach to blog posts written by Mormon feminists. By combining theories on cognitive dissonance with religious ambivalence this thesis finds that Mormon feminist bloggers express an agency of virtuous ambivalence where they perceive the relationship between their faith and their feminism as dissonant but simultaneously describe this as an ambivalence of religious virtue which bestow upon them a sense of freedom, authenticity and creative potential.

Nearly half of all frontline leaders in U.S. federal agencies during 2015 were unprepared to improve employee engagement. The lack of successful strategies to improve employee engagement in federal government agencies has led to decreased operational performance. Guided by the employee engagement theory as the conceptual framework, the single case study design was selected to explore the successful strategies that frontline leaders use to improve employee engagement at a federal agency in central Maryland. Data collection involved face-to-face, semistructured interviews with 4 frontline leaders and federal agency documents indicating employee engagement. The data analysis process included Yin's 5-step method and revealed 2 major themes: effective organizational communication, and enhancing employee development. Employee engagement improves if frontline leaders use strategies that involve effective organizational communication and enhancing employee development to promote open, transparent communication, teamwork, collaboration, skills development, incentives, rewards, and improved work-life balance. The implications for social change include the potential to implement successful engagement strategies in the federal agency, because employees who are more engaged generate better performance and productivity, build valuable work relationships, enhance career, and increase wages to improve the well-being and prosperity of themselves and their families. Improved performance and productivity could help to lower operating cost at the federal agency; thus, creating opportunities to reinvest savings into local community outreach programs that contribute to healthy living, well-being, and economic prosperity.

Research studies have investigated issues in the teaching of writing, particularly at the elementary and university levels. Studies of out-of-school writing done by adolescents have focused on digital contexts and social media. This study examines the intersections of the out-of-school and in-school writing worlds of three high school writers: a poet, a novelist, and a contest essay writer. I use data gathered over seven years from the student writers and four of their English language arts teachers. Research questions focused on how notions of student writers and the teaching of high school English might be informed by the ways student writers described their out-of-class writing and motivation for writing, how their teachers developed and implemented their philosophies and practices in teaching writing, and how the student writers developed their internally persuasive discourses about writing. In analyzing case study data to answer these questions, I used constant comparison analysis and narrative inquiry analysis, drawing upon theories of heteroglossic discourses, figured worlds, and writing identity. My findings show that in the intersections of out-of-school and in-school writing experiences, students select some writing practices and discourses from their teachers to adopt or adapt, such as developing writing processes, participating in writing communities, and caring about writing. They complicate their definitions of writing, however, as they create figured worlds of writing in which they explore identity, navigate and negotiate complex emotions, and receive recognition. The students illustrate their dialogism with writing discourses in stories of improvisation in which they find power and enact resistance. I argue that writing teachers need encouragement, education, and agency to entertain more complex perceptions of student writers and teaching writing to support students for future personal, academic, career, and public discourse worlds.

State federal vocational rehabilitation (VR) agencies are one of the most wide spread and oldest programs designed to help individuals with disabilities. Currently, VR agencies provide various services designed to aide individuals with disabilities obtaining and maintaining employment. Currently, VR agencies serve approximately 1 million individuals with disabilities and spend about 3 billion dollars annually. Given how large and the amount of state and federal dollars are spent on VR, it is important that the outcomes of this program are researched and evaluated. The purpose of this study was to examine how different variables are related to VR outcomes across states. More specifically, this study utilized the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) as a framework to study how contextual factors such as personal characteristics, agency level factors, and state-economic variables impact the employment rate of three different groupings based on state VR agency performance. This study utilized secondary data analysis to explore these relationships using the FY 2013 RSA-911 dataset was paired with the 2013 American Community Survey (ACS). Multiple regression analysis was used to investigate the relationships that exist between personal characteristics and state economic factors across the VR performance groups. Further, a hierarchical linear model (HLM) was used to investigate how the relationship between personal level characteristics and state economic variables may be influenced by investigating this data by considering the levels of the agencies. Results of this study revealed that agency-level factors and state economic variables are important predictors of the employment rate. The final model of the HLM found that state economic variables and agency-level factors moderate the relationship between personal characteristics and the employment rate. Further, all agency-level factors and state economic variables except poverty resulted in a significant relationship regarding the employment rate. In this final model, none of the personal characteristics were significant. The results of the multiple regressions revealed different relationships exist among personal characteristics, agency-level factors, and state economic variables and employment rate given the performance group.

The objective of this paper is to examine the impact the Financial Services Modernization Act (FSMA) of 1999 has on the consolidation of the banking industry. The FSMA allows banks to simultaneously offer commercial banking, investment, and insurance services. I find a strong positive market response to the announcement of bank acquisition of brokerage firms (10.2 percent) and insurance companies (9.3 percent), but no significant response to bank acquisitions. I also find support for two complimentary hypotheses that explain the long-run returns to the acquiring banks. The "product-market spillover hypothesis" states that the post-consolidation returns of the acquirer are directly related to the banks' ability to cross market their products and services to a more diverse client base, while the efficiency hypothesis states that banks acquire financial services companies to realize efficiency gains resulting from exploiting economies of scale. Finally, I show that the premiums paid in the post-FSMA acquisitions increases with the diversity of the transaction. In addition, this study is the first to link managerial turnover to mutual fund managerial structure in a manner that indicates the strong presence of a conflict of interests between investors and fund sponsors in an area of fund governance where we have been led to believe there are strong and well-functioning mechanisms to guard against the exploitation of investors. I utilize the unique characteristics of mutual funds where managers sometimes manage multiple "firms" simultaneously, something not generally observed in industrial firms. I test the governance mechanisms using the mutual fund complexes management structure; unitary and multiple fund management (UFM and MFM). This study shows that UFMs tend to have higher asset growth rates and higher fees than MFMs, suggesting that sponsors can benefit more from keeping them intact. I find that changing managers under the UFM is more costly to sponsors making them more reluctant to fire poor performers. I document that underperforming UFM are -2.77 percent less likely to be replaced than their underperforming MFM counterparts. In addition, the conflict of interests affect the replacement decision, as high expense ratio fund managers have a lower probability of replacement for a given level of underperformance.