Previous research indicates that social norms interventions provide a promising avenue to encourage behaviour change. This study examined the efficacy of a social norms intervention, with the inclusion of personalised individual feedback, to encourage pro-environmental behaviour change. A qualitative approach was used to gain an in-depth understanding of how people respond to social norms feedback and personalised individual feedback on environmental behaviours. Central to this research was an innovative Facebook app called iGreen, which was designed specifically by the author and a number of colleagues to provide a seven-week social norms intervention. This app comprised environmentally themed games, a quiz on aspects of everyday domestic behaviours that impact on the environment, and the ability to provide feedback on respondents’ previous quiz answers. Respondents were randomly allocated to either a no feedback group, a personalised individual feedback group, or a group in which feedback also included the average quiz answer of other iGreen users (social norms feedback group). A sample of fifty-one people who used iGreen completed all quizzes, forty-four of these respondents completed a post-intervention questionnaire, and thirty respondents were interviewed. Drawing on elements of a discourse analysis approach to analyse the interviews enabled an in-depth understanding of why a social norms intervention might, or might not encourage pro-environmental behaviour and how people respond to personalised individual feedback and social norms feedback. The major finding in this research is that the quiz encouraged behaviour change because the questions increased the salience of injunctive norms and personal norms. This supports the focus theory of normative conduct and norm activation theory, which both state that increasing the salience of norms influences behaviour. Another finding is that environmental behaviour change can be constrained due to people associating some behaviours with the stigmatisation of environmental activists. Lastly, respondents in all three intervention groups claimed to have changed some behaviour and there were no apparent differences between the groups. This suggests that increased salience (in this case induced by answering repeated quiz questions) encouraged behaviour change. This raises the question of whether increased salience, rather than feedback, may account for some of the behaviour change found in previous social norms research. This research identifies key elements of an intervention that can increase its potential to encourage pro-environmental behaviour which has potential practical application in the design of innovative social norms interventions. The main contribution of this research is the discovery that making people’s everyday behaviours more salient can encourage pro-environmental behaviour. A digital quiz is a simple, cost-effective and engaging method for increasing salience and encouraging behaviour change, and this should be explored in future research.

This thesis considers from a theoretical and historical standpoint the different political implications of experiencing togetherness as a source of pleasure and joy. The first part critically reflects upon the discourse of “sociability” developed from early modernity to the 19th century and examines the most significant institutional formations that characterised its practice, with a particular focus on the passage from aristocratic salons to the bourgeois world of cafes. The sociability of the upper classes is then compared and contrasted with the forms of collective joy of the plebs, critically accounting for the way in which subjectivity and the body are differently implicated in the discourses surrounding carnivals, collective dancing and ecstatic practices. The second part focuses on the 20th century arguing that from this point the conflict between high and low sociability diminishes its political relevance to give way to increasingly ambivalent forms of togetherness based on the consumption of experiences and situation. The paradigms of the scene, the brand and the game are discussed as the primary institutions of a new dominant form of sociability deeply embedded in economic cycles. Finally, in the last part the notion of “militant conviviality” is introduced as a concept-tool to describe an emerging body of practices that are raising the stakes of sociability as an important component of radical political action today.

<p> Leadership in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) has remained an under-researched area in the management literature, especially in developing countries such as Nigeria. SME owner-managers in Nigeria lacked in-depth understanding of their leadership style to objectively evaluate its implication on long-term performance and growth of their enterprise. The purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to explore the experiences of SME owner-managers in Nigeria to gain an in-depth understanding of their leadership style and its implication for long-term performance and growth of their enterprise. The conceptual framework for this study was anchored in two key concepts; leadership styles and leadership in SMEs, with the full range leadership model as the theoretical foundation. The research question sought to explore the role of SMEs owners and managers leadership styles in the long-term success of their enterprise. Interview data were collected from 6 SME owner-managers who employ less than 200 employees within the manufacturing, education, and trading sectors. The cross-case synthesis technique was used for data analysis which allowed for within-case analysis and cross-case comparisons. Findings from this study showed that Nigerian SME owner-managers do not follow any specific leadership style. They exhibited few characteristics of transformational and transactional leadership behaviors, leaning more to transactional leadership. This study has significance for positive social change by providing insights on how leadership styles can improve the performance and sustainability of Nigerian SMEs, thus increasing their capacity to create employment.</p><p>

<p> The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences of African Americans as mentees in cross-ethnic mentoring relationships with two research questions: Through the lived experience of the mentee, what characteristics should a mentor possess in cross-ethnic mentoring relationships, and from the lived experience of the mentee, what behaviors can the mentor and mentee exhibit to ensure positive outcomes? For the purpose of this study, a cross-ethnic mentoring relationship is described as a mentoring relationship between a Caucasian American mentor and African American mentee. Leadership theories&mdash;transactional leadership theory, transformational leadership theory, servant leadership theory as well as transformative learning theory&mdash;were used to guide the data collection and data analysis process for this study. Each participant reflected on an aspect of leadership and its application to their mentor. Five themes were revealed from the data collection, expanding the existing literature on mentoring: authenticity, openness, trust, communication, and race neutrality. Participants shared the memories of their mentoring relationships, highlighting the importance of mentoring in providing extended networks and resources, the acceptance and support from their mentors as well as, creating a space for race neutrality.</p><p>

<p> This study examined the function of complexity leadership in the generative emergence of new ideas in a high-performance nonprofit organization. The conceptual framework for the study combines Uhl-Bien, Marion, &amp; McKelvey&rsquo;s (2007) Complexity Leadership Theory with Lichtenstein&rsquo;s (2014) concept of generative emergence in order to investigate the growth of new ideas in high performance nonprofit organizations. The study was conducted at Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana (GICI), a high performing nonprofit that is one of 162 local Goodwill member agencies that make up Goodwill Industries International (GII). </p><p> This empirical case study examined the emergence and successful operation of one innovative idea&mdash;the creation and operation of public charter high schools&mdash;with GICI&rsquo;s operating territory. Data was collected through interviews with GICI leaders, board members, and community leaders, well a review of documents pertinent to the case. Merrriam&rsquo;s (2009) case study framework guided the collection of the data, and coding followed the process outlined by Salda&ntilde;a (2013). </p><p> The study identified numerous specific leadership actions as they appeared through each stage of the generative emergence process. These were coded and analyzed through the lens of CLT in order to address the study&rsquo;s research questions. Case findings determined that, in high-performing nonprofits, the function of complexity leadership in the generative emergence of new ideas is to identify, interpret, and respond to specific system behaviors so that the idea has the best possible chance to reach its full potential. </p><p> The study shows that if a high performing non-profit organization is to employ complexity leadership to successfully grow and implement new, innovative ideas via generative emergence, a mix of administrative, enabling, and adaptive leadership actions must be employed during each phase of the process. The study has implications for both CLT and Generative Emergence because it provides specific, empirical examples of the elements articulated by each concept. The study offers implications for practice since the structure and definitions provided by both CLT and generative emergence may be helpful to organizations as they generate and manage the growth of new ideas.</p><p>

In this thesis I show how various theories and methodologies borrowed from complexity science, organisation science, and network science can be suitably integrated to provide a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to the study of innovation processes. I study the network foundations of success in innovation ecosystems and I conduct several empirical investigations to identify those network characteristics that are expected to correlate with positive outcomes and success. I assess the extent to which the diversity and the strength in the networks of relationships boost the performance and success of scientists and early-stage firms. To this end I analyse two large-scale data sets about scientific publishing and start-up firms by making use of already existing topological network measures and by proposing novel measures to characterise the degree of interdisciplinarity and access to diverse pools of knowledge in scientific collaborations. Results provide empirical support to the idea that collaboration sustains innovation and performance by facilitating knowledge diffusion, acquisition and creation. First, results indicate that the networks of interaction between start-ups have a strong impact on the firms' longterm success. Second I find that, while abandoning specialisation in favour of moderate degrees of interdisciplinarity deteriorates scientific performance, very interdisciplinary scientists tend to outperform specialised ones. Additionally, I address the computational challenges related to the size of the data sets used and their time-varying nature. In particular I focus on the scalability challenges of incremental graph algorithms. The thesis contributes in this direction by proposing new efficient algorithms and data structures to handle and to analyse large graphs whose nodes and edges change rapidly over time. These efforts have been collected and made available to the public in the form of a web platform (http://lab.startup-network.org/) and an open-source python package, NetworkL (https://networkl.github.io/).

<p> The cooperative industry plays a significant role in the delivery of electricity and new technology to rural America. The impact of rural electric cooperatives on the American economy is significant through the employment of 72,000 workers and returning $800 million in margins to members annually. The absence of literature regarding performance management among rural electric cooperatives in the United States is evident. This quantitative study examined three aspects of performance management and whether or not they enhance the financial performance of a rural electric cooperative and reduce employee turnover. The sample included the entire National Rural Electric Cooperative Association&rsquo;s (NRECA) entire database of 831 rural electric cooperatives across America. Data from this sample revealed a surprisingly significant relationship between performance evaluations and increased employee turnover. Data analysis revealed no significant findings between the performance management system and pre-employment selection measures and financial performance. Research showing an increase in employee turnover related to employee evaluations among cooperatives may play a role in the decision to implement an employee evaluation process or not.</p><p>

The engagement of employees has been a 'hot topic' among business and organizational behaviour researchers, consultants and human resource practitioners in recent years. Engagement is a motivational concept. In this study employee engagement (or job engagement) has been defined as an employee's full investment of oneself in one's work activities. The study nevertheless accepts that the field of engagement has been plagued with numerous terms, definitions, measures and theories. Although engagement research originated in the early 1990s, there is today a lack of consensus and consistency about important conceptual issues, such as definition and dimensionality. The current scholarly work sought to bring some clarity to the field by firstly recognising two broad streams for which the conceptualizing, theorising and operationalizing of engagement have differed markedly. The self-investment and anti-burnout engagement streams were named. Next, a domain for research focus was selected. The self-investment engagement stream, which offers the most unique, objective and encompassing meaning and theory of engagement, was identified. This stream recognises Kahn's 1990 work as the foundation of engagement study. The conceptualization of engagement as the full-investment of oneself, physically, cognitively and emotionally in one's work has been derived from this early contribution. The theory of engagement found within the self-investment stream, proposes that several antecedents influence three psychological conditions, which in turn predict engagement. in the current study, task-relevant job resources, socially relevant job resources and job demand characteristic were incorporated in the theoretical framework for evaluation. The job characteristic antecedents are task significance, skill variety, autonomy, feedback, internal interaction, work overload, friendship opportunity and managerial support. The psychological conditions of engagement are known as psychological meaningfulness, availability and safety. The study's results have supported the hypotheses that task significance and internal interaction are direct predictors of meaningfulness; autonomy, feedback, internal interaction and work overload are predictors of psychological availability; while, friendship opportunity and managerial support are significantly associated with psychological safety. The three psychological conditions were positively associated with engagement. It was found that psychological meaningfulness mediated the associations between the other two conditions and engagement. Then, skill variety showed a direct positive association with engagement, rather than an indirect association via one of the psychological conditions.

Key words: supply chain management, capacity planning, spot market, long-term contract, contract theory / The long-term supply commitment is made deal through strategic interactions between the players of the supply chain. Game theoretical analysis is conducted to study the bargaining behaviors of the players. Optimal contract design can be obtained in various bargaining power scenarios: Contract Manufacturer Stackelberg, OEM Stackelberg, and Vertical Nash game. We also extend the analysis for single Contract Manufacturer and single contractual customer to multiple customers. The multi-units auction mechanism is also discussed briefly. / This thesis studies the problem of strategic capacity planning for make-to-stock manufacturing systems in the presence of a spot market and a long-term contractual channel in a continuous-time infinite horizon setting. The spot market is run by a B2B online exchange where the sales and prices are random over time while the long-term contractual channel is established by a structured contract in which the price and volume to be delivered are pre-negotiated. / Typically, we consider a supply chain which consists of an upstream manufacturer (e.g. Contract Manufacturer) and a downstream manufacturer (e.g. OEM). The two parties of the supply chain are linked by a long-term contract and both of the parties can trade in the spot market. To study the strategic behaviors of the contract manufacturer and the OEM, we first characterize the optimal operating strategies of the players under a specific contract and then analyze the influence of the contract terms on the optimal policies and the expected profit functions. We find that the optimal contracting strategy of the contract manufacturer can be characterized by a supply curve, which is a price-volume pair and strictly upward slopping, and the optimal contracting strategy of the OEM can be characterized by a demand curve, which is strictly downward slopping. / Pang, Zhan. / "August 2007." / Adviser: Youyi Feng. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: B, page: 1305. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 117-122). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

This study aims to expand the existing knowledge of the role of networking in innovation. It focuses on Russia, a country with a transition economy. On the governmental level, the lack of understanding of the networking mechanisms that Russian start-ups use to support their innovation creates a barrier to effective decision making related to the development of the national innovation system. On the start-up level, this lack of understanding hampers the ability to select effective networking strategies aimed at ensuring that companies can achieve their aims in each stage of their development. In order to determine the scope of opportunities for companies to establish external relationships and to set the context for the interpretation of the primary data, the author conducts a detailed analysis of the evolution of Russia's national innovation system. The investigation is based on secondary data, including official government documents, articles, and publications in the scientific literature and newspapers. To gain a deeper understanding of the interrelationship between networking and innovation, the study investigates the networking behaviour of Russian SMEs, represented by a sample of 59 companies that launched business activities in Moscow between 2009 and 2017. To collect primary data, in-depth interviews were carried out with the founders of these companies. To conduct a comparative analysis of networking behaviour of companies with different degrees of innovativeness, entrepreneurial ventures in the sample are grouped into four innovativeness categories: very low, low, medium and high. The findings confirm the key proposition that innovative start-ups are more actively engaged in networking and have wider networks. In addition, the study shows that more innovative start-ups build and govern their networks of business contacts differently than less innovative start-ups. Finally, the author discusses implications for the development of theory and practice, reflects on the limitations of the research, and makes suggestions for future research on innovative networking that might build upon this study. A key contribution of this DBA thesis to practice emerged in the sphere of the author’s teaching and administrative activities at the Lomonosov Moscow State University Business School. The results of this study were utilised in the construction and implementation of an educational project (February-April 2018) in which students worked closely with technological start-ups to help them establish vital contacts in their business and market environments. Therefore, the knowledge obtained from this study was taught to students and applied in practice in the implementation of a systematic approach to the search for and expansion of contact networks conducive to innovation. As such, it helped students develop networking skills and assisted start-ups in successfully solving tasks related to the commercialisation of innovative products and services.