This dissertation examines the gendered experience of professional engineers in Alberta, Canada. The study is based on qualitative interview data collected from men and women trained in engineering (n=36) and textual analysis of materials produced by engineering organizations (Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta; the Consulting Engineers Association in Alberta; the Engineering Alumni Association at the University of Alberta; and the School of Engineering at the University of Calgary). Drawing on the theoretical insights of Bourdieu, in combination with Connells constructionist perspective on gender, the dominant norms of the profession, the idealized traits and dispositions of engineers, and the impacts of a (mis)match between these broader norms and individual traits on commitment, are examined. The dissertation is structured around chapters that: 1) describe the dominant ideals of the engineering field; 2) examine whether the norms of engineering reflect gendered and racialized ideals; 3) argue for attention to professional identity and personal alignment with the profession over traditional notions of retention; 4) examine three key traits of engineers (or the engineering habitus): a strong work ethic, individual responsibility, and being rational problem-solvers; 5) analyze a primary engineering trait, technical orientation, in relation to retention and gender; 6) describe masculinities enacted in the profession and how they parallel differences in commitment and the engineering habitus; and 7) explore womens perceptions of gendered personalities, structural issues in the balancing of family and work, and the relationship between organizational support of work-life balance and commitment to the profession. Through these analyses I find that women, and those less tied to the technical, are less likely to be committed to the profession. Yet this conclusion is far from determined as multiple factors come into play including a professional culture that pushes engineers to their limits, organizations that do not support or provide work-life balance opportunities, an emphasis on individual responsibility within rigid structures, and an ideal of making a difference in a field that reinforces the status quo. These factors, when further combined with gendered norms, create a profession in which the retention is far from that of a simple pipeline.

Organizational commitment and transformational leadership have been found to correlate positively with each other and with organizational effectiveness. However, much of the commitment research has been based on traditional organizations with employment relationships, raising questions as to whether the research can be generalized to voluntary organizations. Research on transformational leadership has occurred across a broad spectrum of organizations and causal links to objective measures of performance have been hypothesized. The purpose of this research was to extend the existing commitment, leadership, and organizational effectiveness research into the context of a voluntary organization, and contribute new knowledge and understanding of these relationships. The nature of a specific voluntary organization, the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M University, was examined in terms of the relationships among affective commitment to the organization, transformational leadership style, and ultimately organizational effectiveness. A hypothesized causal model was proposed to explain the relationships among these three variables. The Affective Commitment Scale and Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire were found to be valid and reliable in the voluntary organization examined. Consistent with prior research, a significant positive correlation was found between affective commitment and transformational leadership. However, extending this relationship to organizational effectiveness through the hypothesized causal model was not supported.

Abstract of Research Paper Name of Research Paper Program / Department Date of Graduation Postgraduate Adviser : A study of the relationship among the work values, career development and organizational commitment of middle- and old-aged career changing workers ¡V Taking the private security guards of Kaohsiung City as the main scope : Executive Master of Public Policy Program, College of Social Sciences, National Sun Yat-Sen University : The 2nd semester of the academic year 2004 : Han-Yung Chiu : Dr. Bih-Shiaw Jaw The purpose of this study is to investigate the interrelationship among the work values, career development and organizational commitment of the middle- and old-aged career changing workers in the private security industry so as to let the enterprises understand the working attitudes of the security guards currently working in their organizations, and explore the difference of population statistical variable on the career development, organizational commitment and work values, as well as the effects of work values on organizational commitment and the planning of career development. Apart from investigating the establishment of the structure of this study through literature, this study takes the private security guards of Kaohsiung City as the research targets for verifying the above theoretical structure. The acquired information is applied to the quantitative analysis by statistical method. And multiple-regression analysis is conducted under the control of population statistical variable. This study is finally concluded as follows: 1. The middle- and old-aged employees in the private security industry are mostly the job-ceased workers who start working again. The main reason for the cessation of their previous jobs is the termination of business. After observation, the reason of their current employment is still mainly the ¡§basic economic need of family.¡¨ 2. The work value that the middle- and old-aged employees in the private security industry stress most is ¡§social interaction and economic orientation,¡¨ implying that they have a high extent of concern for whether reasonable economic returns can be obtained from work as well as whether the company can offer a complete system to satisfy their sense of security. 3. As to the career development of the middle- and old-aged employees in the private security industry, the average scores of each construct is above average. The construct of career development that the employees stress most is ¡§ability exertion.¡¨ Especially the employees at a younger age, they are more concerned about whether their abilities can be exerted than the older employees. 4. The loyalty of the middle- and old-aged employees in the private security industry towards their servicing organization is above average, with emotional commitment getting the highest average scores, and the next items being regulative commitment and continuous commitment. It can be seen that the middle- and old-aged employees¡¦ loyalty towards organization is due to their emotional dependence on, understanding of and involvement in the organization. They even think that their loyalty should be a must in their posts of private security guards. As to the extent of their remaining in their organizations, it is rather low due to the consideration of cost. Key words: Work Values, Career Development, Organizational Commitment

Under a free market economic system, the managements as a minority are in control of capitals and the important production means, whereas the labors need to provide their manpower and time for the relative wages in order to maintain the bread and butter for their everyday living. An intense relationship filled with oppositions and resistances is therefore easily found between labor and management in the environment today. Owing to the special political and economic backgrounds of our country, it is difficult for unions, (and especially unions) to elaborate on the functions that the unions should play. The unions of our country had been mocked on as ¡§labor insurance unions¡¨ or ¡§flower vase unions¡¨; therefore we would like to find out whether a union exists in our country, which does not offer labor insurance or national health insurance services yet still operates and functions fully as a normal union? Do any union commitments exist between the union members and the unions? How strong are these commitments? And what are the reactions on the degree of participation to the unions? Reviews on academic literatures have shown that not much research was conducted on union commitments and member participation to the unions. Moreover, academic literatures focused on the studies on industry unions as opposed to unions. It is therefore the goal of this research to find out whether union commitments for the members would influence people¡¦s decisions to join unions, through the discussion on related theories and physical evidences. Through this research we hope that we could gather and arrange some management references worth other unions to follow, as well as providing physical suggestions for the future development of the unions of our country. The subjects of this research are the members of the ¡§Keelung City Customs Brokers¡¦ Union¡¨ (currently with 1,200 members), in total 600 questionnaires were issued where 255 of them were collected and 243 of them valid. Factor analysis was used in this research to test the reliability and construct validity of the questionnaires. On confirmation of the reliability test, statistical methods such as the analysis of variance and the regression analysis were further used to come to the following conclusions: 1. Union commitments have strong positive effects on the member participation in the union: (1) The higher the ¡§Union Loyalty¡¨ a member has for the union commitment, the higher is his/her participation to the union. (2) The higher the ¡§Willingness to Work for the Union¡¨ a member has for the union commitments, the higher is his/her participation to the union. (3) The higher the ¡§Responsibility to the Union¡¨ a member has for the union commitments, the higher is his/her participation to the union. 2. The personal statistic variables of the members have strong positive effects on their participation in the union: (1) Male members have higher union participation than female members. (2) The older member in age, the higher is his/her participation to the union. (3) The longer Member in union seniority, the higher is his/her participation to the union. (4) Members with union organizer experiences have higher union participation than members without prior union organizer experiences.

The study serves to recap, based upon the author¡¦s more than three decades of servicing Japanese manufacturer in export processing zones, in deciphering an imminent question concerning whether the Japanese manufacture in export processing zones will continue to thrive the such export processing zone environment in a sustainable development amid the fiercely competitive economy, in light that the Japanese manufacturers had once invested heavily in the initial start-up stage to now almost in a dormant stage. Further in addressing how the quality of a business payroll system and its organizational committee to its employees continues to determine a business¡¦s sustainable management and development, the study also attempts to focus on how the Japanese manufacturer employees view their payroll systems, identify with their organization commitments and how their payroll systems affect their organizational commitments as references in future business management and decision maker and for a sustainable fortuity operating from the export processing zones. Based on the foreign background and motivation, the study deployed questionnaire poll focusing on export processing zone Japanese manufacturers/as study subjects, from which a total of 1,129 valid questionnaires have been recalled covering a total of 42 Japanese owned manufacturers/throughout the export processing zones. Statistics means adopted in the study primarily concern descriptive statistics, t factor assessment, singular factor variable analysis, simple relevancy analysis, classic relevancy analysis, inductive analysis and so forth, with major findings concluded as follows, 1. There are ominous differences how gender, age group, seniority, education, position, inception stage of a manufacture and industry types come to affect export processing zone Japanese manufacturer employees as to how they view the organization¡¦s induction of base payroll declared under the national health insurance program and how they identify to such, and are ominous differences how they view their emotional commitment, ongoing commitment and ethical commitment toward the organization. To which, an organization is best to alleviates the differences among employee responses, improve its management approach, and improve its organizational commitment and the design of an adequate payroll system with which to improve its overall competitiveness. 2. With the health insurance-based payroll system found natively correlated and negatively influencing the emotional commitment, an organization is best to adequately adjust its payroll system to avoid undercutting the morale. 3. With the health insurance-based payroll system found positively correlated and positively influencing the emotional commitment and ethical commitment, an organization is best to adequately adjust its payroll structure focusing on different individuals, made in conjunction with addressing the overall business competitiveness. 4. With the performance-based payroll system found positively correlated and positively influencing the emotional commitment and ethical commitment, together with how export processing zone employees identify highly with a performance-based payroll system, it is prudent that an organization attempts to improve means of performance evaluation by inducting a performance-based payroll system with which to excel its overall competitiveness and achieve a sustainable management. 5. The integration of some of the demographic variables, i.e. age, seniority and education to the payroll system can affect how the employees identify their organization commitments, hence it is also prudent to take into consideration of their potential impact in the design of a payroll system for sustainable the organization with a high level of organizational commitment. Recapping the foregoing findings, the study also presents recommendations to export processing zone Japanese manufacturer/exporters and to subsequent researchers pursuing in this domain.

If a company concentrates its attention into developing the structure and improving the performance, then it has owned partial characteristics of a learning organization basically. If the employees' perception of these characteristics increases their commitment to the organization, the managers will be confident in taking action leading to organizational revolution. In this research, the characteristics of an organization are treated as independent variables, organizational commitment as a dependent variable, personal characteristics as a control variable, while questionnaires are designed to gather data. 357 units of questionnaires (with 302 effective respondents) were distributed to the employees who work in two companies, which had good performances and have experienced organizational revolution in the past two years. To analyze the data collected from the two companies, various types of analysis were carried out including internal reliability analysis, Pearson correlation, one-way ANOVA and regression. The research findings show that the perception of the characteristics of a learning organization by employees does affect the organizational commitment. This means that in the event of an organization stepping forward to becoming a learning organization, the characteristics of a learning organization will exist in working experience, organizational structure, organizational culture, and information management, and the characteristics will promote employees¡¦ value commitment, effort commitment, and retention commitment. As listed below, the relation between characteristics of a learning organization and organizational commitment is meaningful for the organization, managers and employees. 1. An enterprise is able to promote its competitive strength in human resource management by building a learning organization. 2. Apart from job position, payment, image of firm, and financial performance, characteristics of learning organization are also an important element that can engage the employees in the organization. 3. Building a learning organization to promote employees¡¦ organizational commitment is helpful in order to cut down the expenses in raising the efficacy of the employees. 4. Organizational commitment can be promoted through the characteristics of a learning organization. These are a cause for the identification of common aims among employees and the organization, but not a result from advantage exchange, and this commitment is based on a stable foundation. 5. It enables managers to practice organizational revolution with more confidence, and thus the constitution and competence of the organization will get improved. 6. Being a part of the characteristics of the learning organization, manager behavior is related to the employees¡¦ organizational commitment. If managers get used to introspecting, the relation between staffs and supervisors can improve, and management efficiency can be promoted. 7. For the supervisor who takes charge of the human resource management in a company, the task to build a learning organization has become an important strategy of human resource management. 8. A learning organization can result in high employee motivation. Innovation and learning are encouraged in a democratic and open environment, and most employees will become motivated in the process of organizational learning and revolution. Therefore, the managers can take action for revolution in the organization with great confidence.

Organizational commitment and transformational leadership have been found to correlate positively with each other and with organizational effectiveness. However, much of the commitment research has been based on traditional organizations with employment relationships, raising questions as to whether the research can be generalized to voluntary organizations. Research on transformational leadership has occurred across a broad spectrum of organizations and causal links to objective measures of performance have been hypothesized. The purpose of this research was to extend the existing commitment, leadership, and organizational effectiveness research into the context of a voluntary organization, and contribute new knowledge and understanding of these relationships. The nature of a specific voluntary organization, the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M University, was examined in terms of the relationships among affective commitment to the organization, transformational leadership style, and ultimately organizational effectiveness. A hypothesized causal model was proposed to explain the relationships among these three variables. The Affective Commitment Scale and Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire were found to be valid and reliable in the voluntary organization examined. Consistent with prior research, a significant positive correlation was found between affective commitment and transformational leadership. However, extending this relationship to organizational effectiveness through the hypothesized causal model was not supported.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

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