The first version that was uploaded to Macsphere was the incorrect version. I was advised to re-upload the correct version. / This research project interviewed child protection workers to understand how they used strengths-based theory and the Signs of Safety model in practice to facilitate engagement and build rapport with families. In addition, child protection workers were asked for their definitions of engagement and rapport building, since these concepts have multiple definitions in child welfare. In semi-structured individual interviews, child protection workers provided their perspectives regarding what fostered or hindered their efforts to engage with families. A structural and critical lens was applied to the analysis of the data, to reveal what organizational and relational factors positively or negatively influenced engagement. This study found that all workers identified strengths-based theory and the Signs of Safety model as producing positive outcomes. The workers‟ descriptions of strengths-based practice included positive aspects such as being forthright about their role and their mandate, and working from the family‟s strengths instead of focusing solely on risk. Workers‟ responses regarding the Signs of Safety model varied. Two workers were from an agency (CAS-A) that promoted and used Signs of Safety with families, and two workers were from an agency (CAS-B) that had just began to use the model in settings with colleagues. Workers‟ descriptions of the model were positive and highlighted the collaborative aspects of the model, its inclusion of the family in planning, and affording the workers with a balanced assessment that contained elements of safety and risk. In contrast, this study found that despite the strengths-based focus of these approaches, they had limitations. Workers described factors within and external to the worker/client relationship that influenced whether or not workers would use either approach. All workers discussed instances when engagement with a family was not successful, and consistently MSW Thesis – L.A. Mabo McMaster School of Social Work iv described client resistance as a barrier to the process. However, this study found that client resistance was connected to power dynamics present in the worker/client relationship, and the dual role workers had to assume to do their job and satisfy their agency mandate. The workers interviewed for this study described reverting to their role of investigator, when the family was resistant. This study found that a worker‟s authority was implied, and related to a family‟s feelings of powerlessness and fear. All workers provided examples of both types of resistance. As a result, this study concluded that strengths-based approaches could not address the issue of power, and were effective only with the family‟s cooperation. Workers described wanting to apply strengths-based approaches but felt overwhelmed by organizational factors such as time constraints due to caseloads, and excessive administrative burden. This study found that these factors were influenced by Provincial policy, which emphasizes productivity and cost efficiency over family engagement. Workers identified lack of agency support to apply strengths-based approaches as a barrier, with the exception being CAS-A, that promoted the Signs of Safety model and permitted its workers to be interviewed for this study. The findings of this study have direct implications for practice and future research. To address the issues identified by this research, practice and policy may need to be modified to promote strengths-based practices to offer services that will meet the needs and safety of the child and family. Further research is recommended, with a larger sample from an agency that uses strengths-based practice and the Signs of Safety model, to determine whether positive outcomes can be linked with these approaches. It is also recommended that research include the perspectives of child protection workers and families. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

This thesis examines three uniquely different community engagement methods that explore the relationship between community values and the physical landscape in two Appalachian communities; Austinville, VA and St. Paul, VA. Each community engagement method is 1) introduced via literature review/case study, 2) modified from the case study to suit local conditions, and 3) analyzed for effectiveness in connecting local values and the physical landscape. I then reflected on this academic research through the lens of a three-year employment as a community development and natural asset planner with a 501(c)3 non-profit in southwest Virginia. The professional experience revealed five community systems that impacted the overall effectiveness of community engagement processes and had the potential to position communities, and their public projects, for a higher level of success. The community systems included: Capacity and Readiness, Involvement, Leadership, Communication, Frame of Reference and Community Vision. Research and professional practice together suggested that an intentional effort to understand and incorporate community values via community engagement ultimately led to more meaningful designs in the public sector. / Master of Landscape Architecture / This thesis examines three uniquely different community engagement exercises that explore the connection between a community’s core set of principles and the physical landscape in two Appalachian communities; Austinville, VA and St. Paul, VA. Each community engagement exercise is 1) introduced by looking at previously completed projects, 2) modified from the previous project to be customized for each communities specific needs, and 3) analyzed for effectiveness in understanding how local values relate to the physical landscape. I reflected on this academic research after completing a three-year employment as a community development and natural asset planner with a 501(c)3 non-profit in southwest Virginia. The professional experience revealed five “community systems” that determined, in part, whether the community engagement exercise would be successful. The community systems included: Capacity and Readiness, Involvement, Leadership, Communication, Frame of Reference and Community Vision. Recognizing and enhancing these community systems early in the design process positioned communities, and their public projects, for a higher level of success. Research and professional experience together suggested that an intentional effort to understand and incorporate community members and their personal values into a design ultimately led to more meaningful designs in the public sector.

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The main goal of this thesis is to highlight the importance of employee engagement and deeply investigate employee engagement among selected employees in medium size organization, which operates in Liptovský Mikuláš. Besides finding out the total employee engagement, author examines the level of cognitive, physical, and emotional engagement too. Results are then compared to other studies provided by Gallup and CIPD research centers. Thesis further introduces the link between employee engagement and age, gender and occupation of workers. Additionally, it presents the importance of individual employee engagement drivers for employees. The data collection was done by using questionnaire and structured interviews. After the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the research results, author presents possible recommendations that observed organization can use in the future in order to improve the engagement level.

The purpose of this research was to investigate if selected cultural and national aspects had an effect on employee engagement drivers. Another aim was to find out if applying global engagement tools in different cultures would provide an accurate engagement report. Finally, a new tool was proposed and examined in this study by companies operating in the Middle and Near East regions. Employee engagement has been of growing concern to business leaders as well as occupational psychologists, since it was claimed to relate to organisational productivity and long term success. Despite this growing concern and various consultancy solutions provided, few academic researches tackled cross cultural employee engagement aspects. In this research, both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies were used. The qualitative research data consisted of two in-depth interviews with employees working in the Middle and Near East regions. The quantitative research data was gathered with the aid of two questionnaires. One hundred and eighty nine responses were received out of two hundred and seventeen questionnaires sent. The response rate was eighty seven per cent. This research produced a number of key findings: (a) Cultural, national and organisational factors affect engagement drivers. (b) Engagement drivers change over time, at least in priority. (c) Measuring engagement through a globally designed fixed tool is not likely to produce accurate results that management can use to plan for actions. The main conclusion drawn from this research was that current approaches to measuring employee engagement are taking engagement drivers as common for granted, and this concept should be revised. The author recommends that leaders should investigate and run an analysis of engagement drivers before any engagement survey is undertaken. A new tool has been presented by the research and was tested by a number of organisations. This tool takes into account building engagement questionnaires based on key drivers analysed from specific work cultures.

Many innovative businesses have discovered an added value in collaborating with experts, users or other stakeholders in developing innovative products or services. Not all collaboration with stakeholders, however, corresponds to the criteria for opening up an innovation process to the needs of societal actors under the terms of responsible innovation. The question of what makes collaboration meaningful in the sense of responsible innovation was presented and discussed in a 75 min workshop at the European Science Open Forum (ESOF) in Toulouse, France in June 2018. Identified success factors and challenges for making a collaboration process meaningful for the collaborating parties highlight the importance of competent process preparation and facilitation, investment of time and effort to enable mutual understanding and the development of trustful relationships as well as the collaborating partners' willingness to implement changes that result from the collaboration process.

Thesis advisor: Henry Braun / Informed by Astin's Input-Environment-Outcome (I-E-O) model and Pascarella's general model, this study explored the nature of student-athletes' engagement in educationally purposeful activities, described their engagement patterns, and revealed the relationships between student engagement factors and college outcomes by class and gender for 2596 student-athletes from 30 Division-I institutions. This research demonstrated that the NSEE Five Benchmarks constructed for the general population did not fit student-athletes. Therefore, engagement factors for student-athletes were constructed based on a subset of component items from the Five Benchmarks. Hierarchical Linear Models (HLM) were then applied to National Survey for Student Engagement (NSSE) 2006 and the aggregated school level data from the NCAA. The research results reveal that the association patterns between engagement factors and college outcome variables Satisfaction (SA), General Education and Personal Competence (GEPC), and Personal and Social Development (PSD) across all class and gender subgroups are very similar, but differ from those for GPA. This research concludes that engagement in educationally purposeful activities is the best predictor for student-athletes' college outcomes (except GPA). The analyses also reveal that what students do on campus contributes more to their college outcomes than who they were at matriculation and which school they attend. In particular, for all outcomes, the fraction of the total variance due to between-school differences was very small and the relationships between the coefficients of school-level equations and school-level characteristics were inconsistent. The results of this study, along with other related studies, can help colleges devise strategies to better fulfill their primary obligation to create genuine educational opportunities for their student-athletes through fostering their holistic development. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation.

Uma das bases do sistema de franquias é a relação entre franqueado e franqueador. O franqueador, proprietário da marca, é responsável pela formatação do negócio e por formar as bases de uma rede padronizada, um dos pilares desse tipo de sistema. O franqueado desempenha o papel de manter a sua unidade segundo os preceitos e modelos impostos pela franqueadora. A rede pode se prejudicar por decisão de franqueados que não se engajam e apresentam comportamento diferente. A pergunta que orientou o trabalho foi: O que leva os franqueados a não se engajarem na rede de franquia? Para responder a pergunta foi elaborado um modelo de fatores que influenciam no engajamento e que serviram de base para o objetivo da tese - buscar os fatores que influenciam os franqueados a não se engajarem. O estudo apresenta a relação entre os agentes envolvidos, aprofundando os conceitos da teoria da agência em franquia, principalmente na escolha de novos parceiros e na manutenção dos atuais. Além disso, verifica-se a importância de fatores comportamentais, tais como pró-atividade e capacidade de adaptação e não apenas dos econômicos, usualmente considerados pelos franqueadores. Para a elaboração da tese utilizou-se a Theory Building from Cases (Teoria Baseada em Casos), estudando franqueados de três redes de franquia estabelecidas com mais de dez anos de atuação que totalizam por volta de 400 franqueados em seus quadros (setenta, noventa e duzentas e trinta unidades respectivamente). Para a elaboração da tese foram realizadas 37 entrevistas (3 franqueados; 8 consultores de campo; 24 franqueados e 2 entrevistas teste) totalizando mais de 60 horas de entrevistas. Qualitativo e exploratório, o estudo comparou franqueados engajados e não engajados por meio de dados primários se utilizando das técnicas de analise de conteúdo por meio do software MAXQDA12. O estudo, que partiu de trinta fatores de influência, apresenta um modelo de não engajamento de franqueados de seis fatores, divididos em duas dimensões, Franqueador: Problemas de Comunicação, Falta de Supervisão e Monitoramento e Influência na Rentabilidade e; Franqueado: Pouca Capacidade de Adaptação, Não Conhecimento do Sistema e Baixa Pró-Atividade. Esses fatores dificultam a construção da confiança no franqueador e problemas de agência. Destaca-se que a falta de comunicação com a equipe pode ser um fator desencadeante desse processo, um gatilho desse não engajamento. Na tese também fica claro que o nível de empreendedorismo pretendido pelas franqueadoras para seus franqueados ainda é algo difícil de mensurar e não muito claro. / One of the franchising foundations is the relationship between franchisee and franchisor. The franchisor, brand owner, is responsible for formatting the business and establishing the bases of a standardized franchised chain, one of the pillars of this type of system. The franchisee plays the role of keeping its unit according to the precepts and models imposed by the franchisor. The franchise chain may be harmed by franchisees who decide not to engage and present different behavior. The question that guided the work was: What leads franchisees not to engage in the franchise chain? In order to answer this question, a model of factors that influence engagement was developed. It served as basis for the purpose of the thesis, which is to look for the factors that influence franchisees not to engage. The study presents the relationship between the agents involved, deepening the concepts of the agency theory in franchising, mainly regarding the choice of new partners and maintenance of the current ones; moreover, the importance of behavioral factors is verified as well, such as, proactivity and adaptability and not only the economic ones which are usually considered by franchisors. In order to elaborate the thesis 37 interviews were conducted (3 franchisees, 8 franchise field consultants, 24 franchisees and 2 test) totaling more than 60 hours of material. Qualitative and exploratory, the study compared engaged and not engaged franchisees through primary data using content analysis techniques by operating MAXQDA12 software. The study, which started off from thirty influence factors, presents a six-factor model of franchisees non-engagement, divided into the following two dimensions: Franchisor (Communication Problems, Lack of Supervision and Monitoring and Influence on Profitability) and Franchisee (Poor Adaptability, No Knowledge of the System and Low Pro-Activity). These factors hinder confidence building in the franchiser resulting in agency issues. It is accentuated that the lack of team communication can be an initiating factor to this process, a trigger of this nonengagement problem. In this thesis it is also clear that the entrepreneurship level intended by franchisors to their franchisees is still something very difficult to measure and it is very unclear.

Pour la première fois dans l’histoire des entreprises, trois générations se côtoient : les baby-boomers (plus de 50 ans), la Génération X (entre 30 et 50 ans) et la Génération Y (moins de 30 ans). Bien que la diversité soit au coeur du leadership moderne (Cox, 1994), « l’ère est un aspect du leadership qui n’a pas reçu l’attention qu’elle mérite » (Bennis & Thomas, 2002, p.10). Ce travail décrit le contenu des valeurs générationnelles [visée descriptive] et quel leadership développer pour générer un engagement commun de ces trois générations [visée transformative]. Le triple cadre théorique de la diversité, de la motivation engagement et du leadership est mobilisé. La démarche de recherche est qualitative de nature exploratoire. Cinquante-trois entretiens ont été menés au sein de trois organisations privées (Whirlpool France, Manoir Industrie et PMC) pour préciser la nature du lien des baby-boomers, de la Génération X et de la Génération Y avec le leadership et l’engagement. Au niveau théorique, les résultats qualitatifs confirment que les valeurs des trois générations diffèrent. Au niveau managérial, l’identification des valeurs de leadership permet de préciser comment le leadership peut évoluer pour favoriser l’engagement commun des différentes générations. En conclusion, des recommandations sont proposées en matière de leadership des différentes générations. / For the first time in corporate history, three generations are working together: the baby-boomers (people who are more than 50 years old), the Generation X (people aged between 30 and 50 years old) and the Generation Y (people who are less than 30 years old). Although diversity lies at the heart of modern leadership (Cox, 1994), “era is an aspect of leadership that has not received the attention it deserves” (Blessed & Thomas, 2002, p.10). We offer to study the contents of generational values [descriptive function] and what leadership to develop to meet those values and generate the common of engagement of all three generations [transformative function]. Our work is based on a triple theoretical background, namely diversity, engagement and leadership. Our qualitative research is exploratory by nature – fifty-three interviews were carried out within private organizations (Whirlpool France, Manoir Industrie and PMC) to specify the nature of the bond of the three generations (i.e. baby-boomers, GenXers and GenYers) with leadership and engagement. At the theoretical level, the qualitative results confirm that the values of the three generations differ. As for management, the identification of leadership values makes it possible to specify how leadership can evolve to support a common engagement amongst the three generations. In conclusion, we formulate some recommendations to lead the various generations.

Uma das bases do sistema de franquias é a relação entre franqueado e franqueador. O franqueador, proprietário da marca, é responsável pela formatação do negócio e por formar as bases de uma rede padronizada, um dos pilares desse tipo de sistema. O franqueado desempenha o papel de manter a sua unidade segundo os preceitos e modelos impostos pela franqueadora. A rede pode se prejudicar por decisão de franqueados que não se engajam e apresentam comportamento diferente. A pergunta que orientou o trabalho foi: O que leva os franqueados a não se engajarem na rede de franquia? Para responder a pergunta foi elaborado um modelo de fatores que influenciam no engajamento e que serviram de base para o objetivo da tese - buscar os fatores que influenciam os franqueados a não se engajarem. O estudo apresenta a relação entre os agentes envolvidos, aprofundando os conceitos da teoria da agência em franquia, principalmente na escolha de novos parceiros e na manutenção dos atuais. Além disso, verifica-se a importância de fatores comportamentais, tais como pró-atividade e capacidade de adaptação e não apenas dos econômicos, usualmente considerados pelos franqueadores. Para a elaboração da tese utilizou-se a Theory Building from Cases (Teoria Baseada em Casos), estudando franqueados de três redes de franquia estabelecidas com mais de dez anos de atuação que totalizam por volta de 400 franqueados em seus quadros (setenta, noventa e duzentas e trinta unidades respectivamente). Para a elaboração da tese foram realizadas 37 entrevistas (3 franqueados; 8 consultores de campo; 24 franqueados e 2 entrevistas teste) totalizando mais de 60 horas de entrevistas. Qualitativo e exploratório, o estudo comparou franqueados engajados e não engajados por meio de dados primários se utilizando das técnicas de analise de conteúdo por meio do software MAXQDA12. O estudo, que partiu de trinta fatores de influência, apresenta um modelo de não engajamento de franqueados de seis fatores, divididos em duas dimensões, Franqueador: Problemas de Comunicação, Falta de Supervisão e Monitoramento e Influência na Rentabilidade e; Franqueado: Pouca Capacidade de Adaptação, Não Conhecimento do Sistema e Baixa Pró-Atividade. Esses fatores dificultam a construção da confiança no franqueador e problemas de agência. Destaca-se que a falta de comunicação com a equipe pode ser um fator desencadeante desse processo, um gatilho desse não engajamento. Na tese também fica claro que o nível de empreendedorismo pretendido pelas franqueadoras para seus franqueados ainda é algo difícil de mensurar e não muito claro. / One of the franchising foundations is the relationship between franchisee and franchisor. The franchisor, brand owner, is responsible for formatting the business and establishing the bases of a standardized franchised chain, one of the pillars of this type of system. The franchisee plays the role of keeping its unit according to the precepts and models imposed by the franchisor. The franchise chain may be harmed by franchisees who decide not to engage and present different behavior. The question that guided the work was: What leads franchisees not to engage in the franchise chain? In order to answer this question, a model of factors that influence engagement was developed. It served as basis for the purpose of the thesis, which is to look for the factors that influence franchisees not to engage. The study presents the relationship between the agents involved, deepening the concepts of the agency theory in franchising, mainly regarding the choice of new partners and maintenance of the current ones; moreover, the importance of behavioral factors is verified as well, such as, proactivity and adaptability and not only the economic ones which are usually considered by franchisors. In order to elaborate the thesis 37 interviews were conducted (3 franchisees, 8 franchise field consultants, 24 franchisees and 2 test) totaling more than 60 hours of material. Qualitative and exploratory, the study compared engaged and not engaged franchisees through primary data using content analysis techniques by operating MAXQDA12 software. The study, which started off from thirty influence factors, presents a six-factor model of franchisees non-engagement, divided into the following two dimensions: Franchisor (Communication Problems, Lack of Supervision and Monitoring and Influence on Profitability) and Franchisee (Poor Adaptability, No Knowledge of the System and Low Pro-Activity). These factors hinder confidence building in the franchiser resulting in agency issues. It is accentuated that the lack of team communication can be an initiating factor to this process, a trigger of this nonengagement problem. In this thesis it is also clear that the entrepreneurship level intended by franchisors to their franchisees is still something very difficult to measure and it is very unclear.