Press releases serve as a major influence on public opinion of a politician, since they are a primary means of communicating with the public and directing discussion. Thus, the public’s ability to digest them is an important factor for politicians to consider. This study employs several well-studied measures of linguistic complexity and proposes a new one to examine whether politicians change their language to become more or less difficult to parse in different situations. This study uses 27,500 press releases from the US Senate between 2004–2008 and examines election cycles and natural disasters, namely hurricanes, as situations where politicians’ language may change. We calculate the syntactic complexity measures clauses per sentence, T-unit length, and complex-T ratio, as well as the Automated Readability Index and Flesch Reading Ease of each press release. We also propose a proof-of-concept measure called logical complexity to find if classical Boolean logic can be applied as a practical linguistic complexity measure. We find that language becomes more complex in coastal senators’ press releases concerning hurricanes, but see no significant change for those in election cycles. Our measure shows similar results to the well-established ones, showing that logical complexity is a useful lens for measuring linguistic complexity.

Failure to collect reimbursement because of changing regulations negatively impacts hospital profitability. A multiple case study approach was used to explore the successful strategies billing managers employed to collect reimbursement for all legitimate Medicare claims. The target population for this study included 5 hospital billing managers from 3 organizations in the Northern New Jersey region. The complexity theory was used as a framework for assessing changing Medicare regulations and how the managers adapted to them. The data collection process for this study involved gathering data from participant interviews, documentation from the organizations of the participants, and government documented regulations and manuals. The logical and sequential order of data analysis for this study embraced Yin's 5-steps data analysis that includes compiling data, disassembling data, reassembling data, interpreting the data, and concluding. The successful strategies billing managers used that emerged as themes were remaining up to date with Medicare changing compliance regulations; enhancing communication with staff, multiple departments, and Medicare; and adopting a robust billing system and other systems that compliment billing. The implications of this study for social change include the potential to ensure access to patient care for benefiting families and communities through the sharing of successful strategies for Medicare claims.

Nonlinear and chaotic environmental changes characterize health services organizations as complex adaptive systems in which leaders must exercise non-traditional leadership practices to succeed. Health services leaders who have learned and implemented traditional linear management approaches are ill prepared to lead in complex environments. This study tested complexity and adaptive leadership theories of agility and resilience in complex health systems. The purpose of this quantitative cross-sectional internet-based survey study was to quantify relationships between independent variables of agility and resilience and secondary dependent variables of financial, patient satisfaction, quality and human capital outcomes. The impact of turbulence was also examined. Included sample data were collected from 533 employed healthcare leaders using probability-based systematic proportional random sampling methods and were analyzed through correlation, regression, one-way analysis of variance, t tests, and Hayes PROCESS statistical analytics. Agility correlated with and predicted patient satisfaction outcomes. Resilience independently correlated with and predicted financial performance and patient satisfaction outcomes and augmented the correlation and predictability of agility. Agility and resilience cumulatively predicted financial performance outcomes. Turbulence was related to agility, resilience, financial performance, and patient care quality outcomes and mediated relationships with financial and patient care quality outcomes. Health services leaders may apply these findings to promote social change through the implementation of the agile and resilient leadership approaches necessary to achieve organizational performance outcomes that benefit vulnerable populations.

Supervision literature has indicated the importance of the supervisory working alliance in the development of effective supervision (Landy, Ellis, & Friedlander, 1999). While there has been a wealth of research on the role of the supervisory working alliance within supervision, there is a dearth of information on how this alliance is formed (Cooper & Ng, 2009). The purpose of this study is to examine if supervision cognitive complexity is a unique aspect of cognitive complexity within counseling and better understand its role in the formation of the supervisory working alliance. Forty-two participants were selected from CACREP accredited masters and doctoral programs located in the North Central region of the Association of Counselor Educators and Supervisors (NCACES). Cognitive complexity was measured via two different measures: the Counselor Cognitions Questionnaire (CCQ) and Supervision Cognitive Complexity Questionnaire (SCCQ). The supervisory working alliance was measured by the Supervisory Working Alliance Inventory-Trainee (SWAI-T) which measures the supervisory working alliance from the perspective of the trainee. Results indicated a strong correlation between counseling cognitive complexity and supervision cognitive complexity. Further, the supervision working alliance was not significantly correlated with either measure of cognitive complexity. Supervision cognitive complexity did provide a significant contribution to the variance accounted for in the subscale of client focus in the SWAI-T. Implications for counselor educators and supervisors are discussed.

Placing security cameras in buildings, finding good locations for cameras to enforce speed limits or placing guards to defend a border are some of the problems we face everyday. A nation that wishes to defend its border with armed guards wants to be sure the entire border is secure. However, hiring more guards than necessary can be costly. A start-up company moving into a new building wants to be sure every room in the building is seen by some security camera. Cameras are expensive and the company wants to install the smallest number of cameras; at the same time the company wants to be sure the building is secure. These problems, and many other visibility type problems, are not easy to solve in general. In some specific cases, optimal solutions can be obtained quickly. In general, finding an optimal solution may take a very long time. The original results of this thesis address some of these problems. We show some positive results for solving some of these visibility problems. We also give some negative results for some of these problems. These negative results are useful because they tell us that we are unlikely to find a fast algorithm to solve a particular problem optimally.

The focus of this study was to examine perceptions of middle school teachers regarding the changing role of the secondary middle school principal and compare teachers' results with assistant principals' and principals' perceptions of their role, thus adding the voice of teachers, regarding the secondary principal's role, to existing literature. Data was collected electronically using the survey method in one urban Florida school district. Qualitative and quantitative data were captured using the Principal's Role Questionnaire (PRQ) (Goodwin, 2002). Thirty-six principal role descriptor statements on the PRQ survey requested a level of agreement from research participants regarding changes, current and future roles of the secondary principal. Four open ended comment requests allowed participants to comment on the principal's role in those areas. Role descriptor statements were categorized into four areas: strategic leadership, instructional leadership, organizational leadership and political and community leadership. Quantitative findings revealed that teacher perceptions regarding the secondary middle school principal's role were significantly significant for only 14 of the 36 role descriptors when compared to principals' scores. Teachers' mean score ratings were lower than principals' for all 36 PRQ items, however their scores were considered in agreement, as no score was lower than 2.52. Lower score ratings for all 36 PRQ items suggested somewhat of a disconnection between principals and teachers as to the principal's role. Qualitative findings from teachers varied from an understanding of the principal's role to suggestions for the principal. Further research is needed to determine secondary principal role expectations that are important and desired by secondary teachers.

Abstract not available

Strategic decision-making is a fundamental process in business management as strategic decisions affect the long-term health of the organisation. However, a constantly and unpredictably changing business environment, becoming progressively more complex as time passes makes strategy formulation increasingly difficult. Shock events such as terrorist attacks, rapidly spreading communicable diseases, and unexpected business failures of large and well-established companies greatly affect organisations by making it difficult to effectively plan for the future. This thesis contributes to the strategic decision-making literature by investigating the role of shock events in a complex system, namely strategic decision-making. Using chaos/complexity theory as an intellectual platform this thesis argues that strategic decision-making is a complex, open, dynamic and non-linear system and that shock events can represent an opportunity in strategic decision-making. A number of contemporary writers are calling for more integrated models. In response this research proposes a generic and integrative framework that highlights the complexity of strategic decision-making and its processes. The research is qualitative and a single-case study approach was chosen, examining the decision-making processes in a large Australian regional airport. Data collection was triangulated, consisting mainly of in-depth interviews with executives but also included questionnaires, and quantitative and qualitative archival data. It was found that shock events influenced strategic decision-making by causing evolutionary changes in the strategic decision-making processes. In addition it was found that shock events impacted on internal drivers such as cognition and organisational culture. The shock event was perceived as an opportunity, which resulted in changing decision-making processes a change in business strategy. It was concluded that environmental perception, intuition and an opportunity-seeking culture can play an important part in strategic decision-making following a shock event.

Biodiversity is a concept that plays a key role in both scientific theories such as the species-area law and conservation politics. Currently, however, little agreement exists on how biodiversity should be defined, let alone measured. This has led to suggestions that biodiversity is not a metaphysically robust concept, with major implications for its usefulness in formulating scientific theories and making conservation decisions. A general discussion of biodiversity is presented, highlighting its application both in scientific and conservation contexts, its relationship with environmental ethics, and existing approaches to its measurement. To overcome the limitations of existing biodiversity concepts, a new concept of biocomplexity is proposed. This concept equates the biodiversity of any biological system with its effective complexity. Biocomplexity is shown to be the only feasible measure of biodiversity that captures the essential features desired of a general biodiversity concept. In particular, it is a well-defined, measurable and strongly intrinsic property of any biological system. Finally, the practical application of biocomplexity is discussed.

Any computation is facilitated by some physical process, and the observable quantities of any physical process can be viewed as a computation. These close ties suggest that the study of what universal computers are capable of may lead to additional insight about the physical universe, and vice versa. In his thesis, we explore three lines of research that are linked to this central theme. The first partition shows how notions of non-computability and undecidability eventually led to evidence of emergence, the concept that even if a ‘theory of everything’ governing all microscopic interactions were discovered, the understanding of macroscopic order is likely to require additional insights. The second partition proposes a physically motivated model of computation that relates quantum complexity, quantum optimal control, and Riemannian geometry. Thus insights in any one of these disciplines could also lead to insights in the others. The remainder of this partition explores a simple application of these relations. The final partition proposes a model of quantum computation that generalizes measurement based computation to continuous variables. We outline its optical implementation, whereby any computation can be performed by single mode measurements on a resource state that can be prepared by passing a collection of squeezed states through a beamsplitter network.