Cheri Huber is a contemporary American Zen Buddhist interested in the relation between self-hate and suffering. Her style is aphoristic, loosely organized, and in her own words, "a swirling mass of notions." My paper organizes her scattered ideas on suffering and self-hate into a coherent system. Her views on self-hate and suffering sometimes make us uncomfortable. In one of her early works, she points out that, after presenting her thoughts to people, "they tend to not want to talk to us anymore." After explaining her views on self-hate and suffering, I will explain why we occasionally react with uneasiness to her observations. That explanation is based on recent research on hidden and implicit bias.

Överallt dyker AI upp och ska rädda världen med sina fördomsfria, kognitiva och prediktiva algoritmer som kan förutspå framtiden – inte minst inom rekrytering. Vi människor har fördomar. Det är ett faktum i livet, och det påverkar alla områden i våra liv. Fördomar eller bias kan vara både medvetna och omedvetna, men de flesta är vanligtvis oavsiktliga och stammar från djupt sittande sociala övertygelser som är svåra att övervinna. Som rekryterare och medmänniskor som ansvarar för människors framtid måste rekryterare vara otroligt öppna för att inte basera sina beslut på medvetna eller omedvetna fördomar. Att lyfta fram orden unbiased recruitment är det starkaste säljargumentet för AI-rekrytering idag. Liksom att algoritmerna styr. Det handlar om att AI är blind för sådant som rekryterare färgas av. AI ser bortom namn, bakgrund och skola. Skillnaden är att rekryterare ofrivilligt, skulle ta kandidatens ålder, etnicitet och kön i beaktande och bedöma dem med det, medan en AI endast tar hänsyn till faktiska uppgifter. Eftersom AI kommer att basera sina val på kompetens, det i sig skulle öka effektiviteten och förbättra produktionen och vi skulle även  se mer varierade arbetsteam gällande  ålder, hudfärg och kön. Dock även om AI programmeras för att fungera opartisk, kan vi inte med säkerhet säga att någon har lyckats konstruera en helt objektiv AI. Syftet med denna rapport är att på ett kvalitativt sätt undersöka hur företag använder sig utav AI i sin rekryteringsprocess för att möta bias samt om införandet av AI kan minimera eller själv ger upphov till bias..  Informationssökningen kommer att ske genom tidigare forskning samt semistrukturerade intervjuer med intressenter insatta i AI verktyget för att kunna besvara forskningsfrågorna.

This dissertation in practice was a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of Model School Policy 506, Student Discipline (MSBA, 2019), as it relates to the school-to-prison pipeline across the nation as well as in Minnesota. Model Policy 506, co-authored by the Minnesota School Board Association and the Minnesota Association of School Administrators, is offered to school districts that subscribe to MSBA’s policy services. The homogeneity in school discipline policy across Minnesota provided an opportunity for this study. The purpose of this CDA was two-fold: to assess the discourses instantiated in Model School Policy 506, and to determine, through the figured world tool of inquiry, what the seven building tasks are accomplishing in Model Policy 506 for the reader to assume as social truth regarding student behavior and schooling. Data was collected through an iterative process and examined for themes. The CDA included multiple reviews of Model Policy 506 through the figured world tool of inquiry (Gee 2014), discerning and charting of the activities of the seven building tasks (Gee, 2014), assessing text complexity of policy discourse through a Lexile review, and capturing word repetition via computerized software as well as noting infrequent use of terms or absence of ideas. Major findings include that Model Policy 506, Student Discipline, acted to reinscribe teacher implicit bias, and that policy language was invested and embedded in racial structures. A Call to Action was written to be shared with the executive directors of the Minnesota School Board Association and the Minnesota Association of School administrators as an actionable response to the complex issue of social justice in discipline policy.

Bakgrund: De senaste åren har uppdragsanalys ökat i popularitet bland svenska bolag. Förespråkare menar att uppdragsanalys är ett bra sätt för mindre företag att synas på finansmarknaden. Kritikerna hävdar att uppdragsanalyser är för positivt vinklade och att oberoendet försvinner. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att analysera och bidra till ökad förståelse för av vilka anledningar företag köper uppdragsanalys samt vilken effekt de upplever att analysen har medfört. Vidare syftar studien till att analysera om företagen eller uppdragsanalytiker upplever att det finns en beroendeproblematik vid uppdragsanalys. Metod: För att besvara studiens syfte används en kvalitativ metod med en små-N-studiedesign. Tolv semistrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes, åtta med företagsrespondenter och fyra med uppdragsanalytiker. Syftet med de semi-strukturerade intervjuerna var att fånga och tolka respondenternas upplevelser av uppdragsanalys. Slutsats: Studien visar att de främsta anledningarna till att bolag köper uppdragsanalys är att de vill attrahera nya investerare. Effekten av uppdragsanalys beskrivs av de köpande bolagen som ökad likviditet i aktien samt ökat antal aktieägare. Både uppdragsanalytiker samt företagsrespondenter upplever att det finns ett problem med oberoendet vid uppdragsanalys men hur det upplevs skiljer sig åt. / Background: Commissioned equity research has increased in popularity among Swedish companies during the last few years. Advocates argue that commissioned equity research can help smaller companies stand out on the financial markets while critics argue that commissioned equity research tend to be overly positive and that there’s a conflict of interest. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyze and contribute to the increased understanding of the reasons to why companies purchase equity research and the effect they experience it has had. Furthermore, the purpose of this study is to analyze whether the purchasing companies or the equity analysts’ experience that there is a problem regarding the conflict of interest that has been linked to the phenomena. Method: This study takes a qualitative approach with a small-N-design to answer the purpose. Twelve semi-constructed interviews were conducted to capture the experiences of the respondents in order to answer the research questions and to capture the phenomenological perspective. Conclusion: The results of this study show that the main reason behind companies’ decision to purchase equity research is to attract investors. The effects of commissioned equity research, as described by the companies, are increased liquidity in their stock and an increased number of shareholders. Both equity analysts and corporate respondents experience that the conflict of interest with commissioned equity research is a problem, but how the problem is perceived differs.

South Africa and China established their first official diplomatic ties in 1998. A decade later in 2008 China had become South Africa’s largest bilateral trade partner which presents both complementary and competitive outcomes for the South African labour market. This study explores the competitive outcomes, particularly the impact that China has had on the skill bias of manufacturing employment within South Africa’s local municipalities between 2001 and 2011. The study follows on from two theories of trade: the Heckscher-Ohlin theory with its Stopler-Samuelson theorem, and specific factor theories. The identification method employed in this study was developed by Autor, Dorn and Hansen (2013) and seeks to exploit variation across South African municipalities which stems from initial differences in industry specialisation and instrumenting for South African imports using changes in Chinese imports by other low- and middle-income countries. The data used in the current study is from the UN Comtrade as well as South African population census data from 1996, 2001 and 2011. This study makes two main contributions to the literature by looking at the impact that import competition has on manufacturing employment in local labour markets, and how this impact varies by skill set and gender. The main finding of the study was that Chinese import exposure was biased against low-skilled workers as it resulted loss of employment for the low-skilled workers, and had a minimal effect on the employment of high-skilled workers.

This dissertation develops, applies, and investigates new methods to improve the analysis of logistic regression mixture models. An interesting dose-response experiment was previously carried out on a mixed population, in which the class membership of only a subset of subjects (survivors) were subsequently labeled. In early analyses of the dataset, challenges with separation of points and asymmetric confidence intervals were encountered. This dissertation extends the previous analyses by characterizing the model in terms of a mixture of penalized (Firth) logistic regressions and developing methods for constructing profile likelihood-based confidence and inverse intervals, and confidence bands in the context of such a model. The proposed methods are applied to the motivating dataset and another related dataset, resulting in improved inference on model parameters. Additionally, a simulation experiment is carried out to further illustrate the benefits of the proposed methods and to begin to explore better designs for future studies. The penalized model is shown to be less biased than the traditional model and profile likelihood-based intervals are shown to have better coverage probability than Wald-type intervals. Some limitations, extensions, and alternatives to the proposed methods are discussed.

Though the least squares technique has many advantages, its possible limitations as applied in the atmospheric sciences have not yet been fully explored in the literature. The assumption that the atmosphere responds either in phase or out of phase to the solar input is ubiquitous. However, our analysis found this assumption to be incorrect. If not properly addressed, the possible consequences are bias in the linear trend coefficient and attenuation of the solar response coefficient. Using USU Rayleigh lidar temperature data, we found a significant phase offset to the solar input in the temperatures that varies ±5 years depending on altitude. In addition to introducing a phase offset into the linear regression model, we argue that separating what we identify as the solar-noise is to be preferred because (1) the solar-noise can contain important physical information, (2) its omission could lead to spurious conclusions about the significance of the solar-proxy coefficient, and (3) its omission could also bias the solar proxy coefficient. We also argue that the Mt. Pinatubo eruption caused a positive temperature perturbation in our early mesopause temperatures, exerting leverage on the linear trend coefficient. In the upper mesosphere, we found a linear cooling trend of greater than -1.5 K/year, which is possibly exaggerated because of leverage from the earlier temperatures and/or collinearity. In the middle mesosphere we found a cooling trend of -1 K/year to near zero. We use the autocorrelation coefficient of the model residuals as a physical parameter. The autocorrelation can provide information about how strongly current temperatures are affected by prior temperatures or how quickly a physical process is occurring. The amplitudes and phases of the annual oscillation in our data compare favorably with those from the OHP and CEL French lidars, as well has the HALOE satellite instrument measurements. The semiannual climatology from the USU temperatures is similar to that from the HALOE temperatures. We also found that our semiannual and annual amplitudes and phases compare favorably with those from the HALOE, OHP, and CPC data.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Marijuana use is associated with many health risks, but is increasingly becoming more accepted; thus, use rates, as well as negative consequences, are growing. There is a need to better understand marijuana use behaviors so as to reduce its negative effects. The current study sought to test the viability of applying urgency theory to marijuana use behaviors by examining several pathways among negative urgency, marijuana-related attentional bias, coping motives, and marijuana use behaviors, across men and women. Participants (n=120, mean age= 26.61 years (SD=9.28), 50% women, 63% White/Caucasian) were recruited from the Indianapolis, IN area to participate in a cross-sectional study in which they completed self-report measures and a visual-probe computer task with eye-tracking following negative mood induction. Regression analyses and the PROCESS macro were used to examine study hypotheses. Several pathways were supported: Negative urgency was significantly associated with coping motives (β=0.24, p=0.01), coping motives were significantly associated with marijuana use behaviors (ΔR2= 0.55, p<0.01), and a serial mediation model was supported, in which the relationship between negative urgency and negative marijuana consequences was mediated by coping motives and then by marijuana use frequency (c’= 0.20, 95%CI= 0.06 to 0.50). Competing models were examined and not supported. There were no statistically significant pathways involving the attentional bias measures; although there was a pattern of small effect sizes demonstrating that attentional biases may relate to marijuana use behaviors in men and not in women. Findings from the current study serve as preliminary support for applying urgency theory to marijuana use behaviors. Overall, these findings suggest that negative urgency is a distal risk factor that influences the development of other, more proximal, predictors of marijuana use and negative marijuana consequences. Future studies should examine the time order of these relationships longitudinally to replicate and provide more confidence in the causal order of the model supported in the present study.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Workers who request a flexible schedule to accommodate their biologically-determined sleep-wake cycle (chronotype) may face prejudice if supervisors perceive them, particularly “night owls”, as lazy or unconscientious. Such bias may be exacerbated in organizational cultures characterized by stability and control. Thus, chronotype bias was examined in a 2 (rigid vs. flexible organizational norms) X 3 (morningness chronotype, eveningness chronotype, educational pursuit/control as reason for a flexible schedule request) online scenario study. Participants were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (N=398) and were instructed to act as managers to decide whether to approve a fictitious employee’s request for a flexible schedule. Organizational culture and reason for schedule request were orthogonally manipulated in the scenarios. Ps completed measures of schedule approval (including an open-ended justification item), beliefs about the employee’s performance (job-specific task performance, contextual performance, personal discipline, and conscientiousness), and manipulation checks, as well as measures of their own chronotype. Ps were less likely to approve a flexible schedule request for employees with chronotype-based requests (both morningness and eveningness) compared to control (educational pursuit/control request). Task performance beliefs mediated the effect. Organizational norms had both a direct and moderating effect on schedule approval, such that approval was higher and chronotype bias was weakened in the flexible norm condition compared to the rigid norm condition. Ps’ own chronotype had no direct or moderating effect on schedule approval. Qualitative content analysis of Ps’ justification for the schedule approval decision revealed that Ps justified their decision on the impact of schedule approval on the organization.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The purpose of this research was to investigate the social and cultural constructions of leadership and how search committee members evaluate candidates for leadership positions. Moreover, how they conceptualize, measure, and evaluate leadership potential of candidates. To explore this issue, the following research questioned were answered: How do members of an executive search committee construct their views of leadership?; In what ways do the individual, social, and cultural constructions of leadership held by search committee members influence behaviors and outcomes of a search committee? In this study, I investigated how members of a search committee constructed their views of leadership and in turn how this influenced the search process for an executive leader. In order to explore this issue, this study is approached through the constructivism paradigm and informed by critical inquiry, using case study methodology. I followed one executive search process from the charge meeting until the committee made its recommendation to the hiring authority. The unit analyzed in this search employed a leadership competency model and tools which mapped to this model, in an effort to mitigate the influence of bias. I used semi-structured interviews with committee members to understand their views on leadership. I supplemented interviews with observations and document analysis as means of collecting data for the study. Three findings emerged through data analysis: the role of background and identity on views of leadership, the influence of personal and societal constructions of leadership on individual behaviors and search outcomes, and the application or utility of using a leadership competency model. Through my findings, I demonstrated how individual’s background and identity shaped their perceptions of what it meant to be a leader. Additionally, how they rated and talked about candidates matched their individual views about leadership rather than the leadership competency model they were asked to use. More specifically, analysis illuminated that minoritized search committee members had drastically different beliefs about leadership and experiences serving on the search committee. I concluded the study by outlining implications for policy, future practice, and future research, including offering a conceptual framework and tools for an equity-minded search process.