<p> This qualitative, phenomenological research study addressed the research question: What is the experience of leaders when they think strategically in a VUCA environment? The study explored what happens when leaders think strategically in a VUCA environment and how such thinking occurs. Of specific interest were the triggers of strategic thinking, the strategic questions being asked, and the methods used to develop insight. The term VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity and is used interchangeably in this study with the term "complex" to represent the Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition program management environment (Army, 1998). </p><p> Ten acquisition program managers and deputy program managers for major DoD acquisition programs were selected as referred by naval aviation acquisition program executive officers. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and transcribed to capture the program managers' lived experience and the meaning they made (Seidman, 2006). Data were analyzed and themes developed using Moustakas's (1994) modification of the Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method as a guide. </p><p> The study had four findings: (1) strategic thinking utilizes an extensive range of knowledge, abilities, and conditions that enable clarity of thought; (2) strategic thinking occurs deliberately as both a high-level creative and a tactically grounded process; (3) strategic thinking is fueled by iterative individual and group analytical and dialogical activities to address the knowledge needed to create strategic-to-tactical linkages and frameworks; and (4) strategic thinking is a deeply personal experience that evokes a wide range of positive and negative emotions. The study concluded that strategic thinking is a cognitive, emotional, and behavioral phenomenon that is both high-level and tactically grounded and is fueled by individual and group analytical and dialogical activities to address needed knowledge, enable clarity of thought, and create strategic-to-tactical linkages and mental models to develop enabling strategies. Further, the characterization of the VUCA environment needs to include the structural elements that may impede the ability to adapt and respond, and the triggers for strategic thinking need to include having the explicit responsibility to think strategically. Implications for theory, practice, and future research are offered.</p>

<p> A leadership program was created for students to gain skills and/or change their behavior using Appreciative Inquiry and Video Self Modeling, VSM. In 2011a youth that experiences a disability had been unable to achieve a skill utilizing traditional methods of skill acquisition. He employed the Appreciative Inquiry and VSM leadership program and was able to achieve 100% skill acquisition. Appreciative Inquiry was used to gather information on what makes a participant who experiences a disability feel successful and the theme of the greater organization/class which was independence, provided guidance for examples of success. Videos were created showing students succeeding in activities that they have not yet achieved or participate in with low frequency. These activities were documented as a barrier to success typically in the Individual Education Plan, IEP. Viewing these videos aids the individual in achieving a goal as they viewed this desired future as the present in the majority of cases.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, 1999. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 60-11, Section: B, page: 5802. Adviser: Evonne Schaeffer.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, 2002. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 63-06, Section: B, page: 3034. Chair: Amy Wisniewski.

Over the past 20 years, scrapbooking has become immensely popular in America. This dissertation is the study of scrapworthy lives, that is, how lives become structured by scrapbooking and how people show others that their own life and the lives of their loves ones are value—or scrapworthy. I conducted in-depth interviews with 38 scrapbookers, 11 scrapbook industry workers, and 10 family and friends of scrapbookers. I also used photo-elicitation interviewing techniques with both the scrapbookers and the family members and friends of 10 scrapbookers to examine a selection of scrapbook pages the respondents had completed. I used grounded theory methods to analyze my data, providing a more thorough understanding of scrapbooking. Scrapbooks are a site where people socially construct a narrative of their life. Through scrapbooking, scrapbookers do gender, family, race, ethnicity, and religion. Stratification within the larger society can be seen within the scrapbooking thought community. Moreover, through scrapbooking, people can demonstrate their membership in other thought communities (e.g., motherhood). Though scrapbookers are able to demonstrate their gender, family status, race, ethnicity, and religion through scrapbooking, the hobby is done primarily for the scrapbookers and not for others. Scrapbooking is a leisure activity, though some may consider it as a form of work. Scrapbookers are a thought community in their own right and an excellent site to explore Zerubavel’s (1997) six cognitive acts (i.e., perceiving, classifying, reckoning time, attending, assigning meaning, and remembering). In particular, scrapbookers come to classify nearly everything (including people, things, time, and space) in the world around them as either scrapworthy or not. Scrapbooks are a modern narrative form, though versions of scrapbooks have been around for centuries. Scrapbooks are memorials about everyday life. The content of scrapbooks is what is left out of the typical history book but is considered just as memorable by scrapbookers. Scrapbookers are storytellers. These stories could just as easily be passed down orally or recorded on blogs and some scrapbooks combine elements of oral histories and blogs. Ultimately, scrapbooks are memorials about the scrapbooker.

<p> Understanding the role of the public school teacher and how that role has changed over recent history is critical to comprehending the nature of teaching and teachers in American schools. This 2-phase, hypothesis-generating study was undertaken to develop a deeper understanding of the role of the teacher and, in particular, the ways that role has remained stable or changed across the historical process. It explored how the role of the teacher is construed by current, experienced teachers through personal construct systems and through their shared enactments of a social construct system proposed as an extension to personal construct theory. Departing from the traditional disciplinary approaches that have characterized much of the previous research on this topic and which have been limited in scope and method by their associated paradigms, this study adopted an interdisciplinary, mixed methods approach that integrated the perspectives of several disciplines and professional fields. It employed the repertory grid technique (RGT) from personal construct theory to elicit personal constructs from 16 experienced teachers in intensive RGT interviews to identify shared constructs. Those shared constructs were then employed as an inferred social construct system in an anonymous online survey of experienced practicing teachers (<i>n</i> = 258) to identify the ways in which that social construct system is enacted in construing the role of the teacher across the historical process, envisioning the future role of the teacher, and perceiving the ideal role. Latent class analysis indicated heterogeneity in teachers' views regarding the role and substantial perceived change across recent history, suggesting a lack of role consensus. The study also compared the participants' views of the ideal role of the teacher with their expectations for the future. The findings have implications for future research and for educational theory, policy, and practice.</p><p> <i>Keywords:</i> education history, repertory grid technique, teacher role</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Michigan, 2005. / (UnM)AAI3186741. Chair: Jana Nidiffer. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-08, Section: A, page: 2862.

 The majority of Americans profess to hold pro-environmental attitudes and intend to engage in environmentally friendly behavior. Yet their actions tell a different story. The goal of this study was to explain the gap between widely held pro-environmental attitudes and the lack of corresponding individual and collective behavior. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods and applying the principles of grid-group cultural theory, cognitive sociology, and identity theory I examined the meanings people ascribe to the environment, how they think about behavior relative to the environment, and justifications for the performance of environmentally significant behavior. I administered an on-line survey to a nationally representative sample of individuals. By applying grounded theory methods to the textual data generated by open-ended survey questions I developed a model of environmentally signficant behavior which describes the underlying factors that influence the performance of pro-environmental behavior. Individuals develop environmental socio-cognitive schemas based on the ways in which they use the six cognitive acts (perceiving, focusing, classifying, signifying, remembering, and timing) in thinking about the environment. They use these environmental socio-cognitive schemas to filter and interpret environmental discourse, construct a body of environmental knowledge, and guide environmentally significant behavior. According to this study, the explanatory link between pro-environmental attitudes and pro-environmental behavior lies in the concept of proximity. Performance of pro-environmental behavior is driven by the distance individuals perceive themselves to be from environmental issues. Attitudes toward the environment remain abstractions whereas behavior is situational. Individuals from different cultural groups hold different ideas about the relationship between humans and nature, the extent and severity of environmental issues, and how those issues should be addressed. The findings from this study provide a foundation for developing effective strategies for influencing environmentally significant behavior. This study is important because environmental issues are real, their potential impact is substantial, and time is of the essence in addressing them.

Culture plays a part in the construction of legal understandings in the Supreme Court contrary to much legal scholarship. The oral argument of the Supreme Court is a unique way for Justices to gather information beyond the formalized briefs and prior written opinions. In the oral argument the Supreme Court Justices utilize cultural codes as tools to probe, shape, negotiate and challenge the legal meanings and boundaries of the case before them. Using the oral argument transcript in a 2010 Supreme Court case on the issue of whether California has the right to censor the sale of violent video games to minors, this study attempts to understand the sociological processes behind constructing law. Findings show cultural codes being used by the Justices, in this legal context of an oral argument, to address the border disputes and help to establish the specific legal parameters of a case.

<p>This dissertation presents a new theoretical solution to the sociological <i>problem of observability</i>: the question of the extent to which and by what means individuals "observe" or infer mental states of other individuals, thereby sharing knowledge with them. The answer offered here states that the social situation of <i>dialogue</i> permits a speaker to use utterances to compel a hearer to generate specific and expectable assumptions about some of the speaker's intentions and beliefs.</p><p>In order to show precisely why and how dialogue possesses this capacity, the dissertation proceeds deductively. Dialogue is defined as a situation where interlocutors (1) are <i>compelled to overhear</i> what the respective other is saying, (2) apply <i>socially shared semantic rules</i> to decode utterances into private cognitive representations, and (3) act <i>as if </i>they expect that any utterance they make will be met with a <i>reply of acceptance </i>rather than a reply of rejection. It is demonstrated that the bilateral operation and anticipation of these constraints allows the hearer of an utterance to make a systematic guess at the intentions and beliefs that led its speaker to produce it.</p><p>Drawing on the works of H. Paul Grice, the dissertation shows that the hearer's guess becomes systematic by focusing on an <i>underlying informative intention</i>. It corresponds to the intention the speaker could anticipate<i> </i>the hearer would ascribe to him. By means of this expectable imputation, the hearer arrives at an <i>adequate </i>explanation of what social goal the speaker's utterance was meant to achieve.</p><p>The treatise concludes by analyzing the specific conditions under which a minimum sequence of three turns leads to <i>mutually ratified shared knowledge</i>. Whereas the status of merely shared knowledge is fundamentally precarious, mutually ratified shared knowledge is mutually recognized to be mutually known and, therefore, constitutes a societal solution to the problem of observability.</p>