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The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between employees' perceptions of their immediate supervisors' relations-oriented and task-oriented leadership behaviors and different types of organizational commitment. Bass & Avolio's (1995) Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ Form 5X) was used to measure relations-oriented and task-oriented leadership behaviors. Meyer & Allen's (1997) Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) was used to measure organizational commitment. Participants in the research included 361 employees who worked for the city of Charlottesville, Virginia. These employees were located in eight departments that varied in the area of technical functioning, size, and academic levels. Factor analyses, with principal component extraction and varimax rotation, were performed to determine how the MLQ Form 5X items would load onto a 2-factor model of relations-oriented and task-oriented leadership behaviors. The task-oriented items of contingent reward loaded with the relations-oriented items, and the non-leadership items of laissez-faire loaded with the task-oriented items. These findings resulted in an arrangement of relations-oriented and task-oriented subscales that was different than the arrangement proposed by Bass & Avolio (1995). Correlations for the MLQ Form 5X revealed multicollinearity among all the relations-oriented subscales and two of the task-oriented subscales, preventing any interpretations about the amount of variance that any particular type of relations-oriented or task-oriented leadership behavior might explain in organizational commitment. Factor scores were used to perform regressions and investigate the amount of variance relations-oriented leadership behaviors and task-oriented leadership behaviors explained in organizational commitment. Relations-oriented leadership behaviors explained the greatest amount of variance in affective commitment, somewhat less variance in normative commitment, and no variance in continuance commitment. The results for task-oriented leadership behaviors revealed the same pattern of relationships with the different types of organizational commitment, only weaker. / Ph. D.

This study explores the influence of employee perception of acquisition success and the dispositional antecedents of positive affect and adaptive coping on employee- organization commitment during the 60-day period following a business acquisition. Allen & Meyer's affective, normative and continuance model of commitment was used for the dependent variables. A single sample was analyzed using a hierarchical regression approach. The survey was conducted with TRW's GIT Division, and included 51 employees who participated in three web- based surveys. The surveys were administered at (a) the change of control date, (b) 30 days, and (c) 60 days after the change of control date. Through a full- model regression, the combined dispositional and demographic variables were found to have a significant impact on the three components of employee- organization commitment. Specifically, the dispositional attribute of positive affect had a statistically significant predictive relationship to affective and normative commitment. Employee perception of acquisition success was found to have limited influence only on affective commitment, and finally, company service was determined to have a small predictive value for continuance commitment. The changing nature of the relationships between the independent variables and the dependents over time led to the conclusion that the employee sample was experiencing several symptoms of merger syndrome during the initial post- acquisition time period. As a single case, the study cannot be considered conclusive, however, the study does provide insights into the changing nature of employee- organization commitment during a specific time of organizational change. Research into additional dispositional antecedents to employee commitment is suggested, as well as further research on employee commitment after the initial 60-day post- acquisition integration period. / Ph. D.

Married bisexuals who come out to their heterosexual partners do not invariably divorce. This qualitative study included 14 intact, mixed orientation married couples. The mean marriage duration was 14.5 years, and the mean time since the bisexual spouse had come out was 7.9 years. The research focused the negotiation processes around three constructs: (a) sexual identity; (b) gender identity; and (c) marital commitment. Dyadic interviews were used to generate a grounded theory of the identity and commitment negotiation processes occurring among intact mixed orientation married couples. The findings revealed two sexual identity trajectories: Bisexuals who identify before marriage and reemerge within marriage; or bisexuals who do not identity before marriage but who emerge from within marriage. Two gender identity processes were reported: gender non-conformity and deliberate gender conformity. Finally, two negotiation processes around marital commitment were found: (a) closed marital commitment, and (b) open marital commitment. Closed marital commitment was defined as monogamous. Open marital commitment had four subtypes: (a) monogamous with the option to open; (b) open on one side (i.e., the bisexual spouse was or had the option to establish a tertiary relationship outside the marriage); (c) open on both sides or polyamorous; and (d) third-person inclusive (i.e.. couples had or were seeking a third person to bring into their marriage for both spouses). The implications for research and clinical practice were discussed. / Ph. D.

Riley (1998) indicated that our nation's neediest communities, those with high rates of poverty and all too often large minority populations, suffer most from shortages of qualified teachers. Schools with these characteristics are often our Title 1 schools. Staffing these schools can be a very difficult task. Haberman (1987) attributed the shortage of qualified urban educators to factors such as racism, fear, a generally negative perception of what teaching in an urban setting is like, and the low percentage (5%) of faculty in schools of education who have urban teaching experience, which affects their ability to prepare teachers for urban settings. With the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), a new federal regulation, this task becomes even more arduous. This act requires that, effective the first day of the 2002-2003 school year, new teachers hired to teach in Title 1 schools be "highly qualified" (U. S. Department of Ed., 2002). This study was designed to determine why teachers choose to remain in the urban setting. The researcher surveyed experienced teachers (minimum of 10 years) in the Norfolk Public Schools District, a large southeastern urban school district, to determine the reasons why teachers stay in this urban district. The sample included all current teachers in this district with a hire date of August 1991 or before. The survey instrument used was designed to gather the following information: (1) why do teachers select urban school districts?, (2) why do teachers remain in this urban school district?, (3) what professional development activities are important in urban districts?, (4) what is the level of commitment of teachers who remain?, and (5) what is the relationship between reasons why teachers remain and their level of teacher commitment? Distributions of frequencies, mean scores, and standard deviations revealed survey results as they related to (a) gender of teacher, (b) race/ethnicity of teacher, (c) grade level assignment, (d) number of years of teaching experience in an urban district, (e) age of teacher, and (f) education level of teacher. A composite score was calculated for the teacher commitment section of the survey instrument. Also, a correlation matrix was conducted to determine the significance of the relationship between reasons why teachers choose to remain in this district and levels of teacher commitment. Other statistical analyses used were t-tests, ANOVAs, and Tukey post-hoc tests. The results of the study revealed that teachers choose to remain in this urban school district because they feel they have been effective in working with urban children; they have developed good collegial relationships within the district; and they have gained a sense of self satisfaction from working in this district. These reasons and several others were found to have statistical significance in teachers' levels of commitment. Also, teachers who were female, African-American, middle school teachers, with greater years of experience proved more likely to remain in this urban district. The findings of this study reveal significant implications to this and other urban school districts. Teachers have to feel some intrinsic motivation to remain in urban districts. Districts should use the results of this study to assist in developing opportunities for teachers to enhance their levels of self-satisfaction and to improve their hiring practices. Attention to these issues will increase teacher retention rates in urban districts. This study provides a foundation for future study in the areas of teacher retention, commitment, teacher certification and retention, and teacher quality. / Ed. D.

The current study employed an ABA design with a control group to assess the effectiveness of a commitment strategy in reducing meat consumption among university students (n=70). Participants who were randomly assigned to the commitment condition did not consume significantly less meat than participants in the control group, t (48)=.74, p=.47. 79% (n=19) of participants in the control group decreased their meat consumption from baseline to treatment phase, compared with 96% (n=27) of participants in the treatment group. Additionally, when both groups were collapsed, all participants reduced meat consumption from baseline to treatment phase t (51)=8.6, p<.001. Participants' scores on the Motivation Towards the Environment Scale, a measure of self-determined motivation towards environmental behavior, were not significant predictors of meat consumption behavior before or during the intervention, t(67)= -.26, p=.80, t(51)=.53, p=.60. Implications and directions for future research are discussed within the paper. / Master of Science

Two thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. Traditional obesity interventions (e.g. drug therapy, diets, behavior therapy) generate moderate short-term weight loss but have little evidence of long-term weight maintenance. The cultural phenomenon of "yo-yo dieting" mirrors empirical findings which suggest that weight loss, albeit demanding, is a far easier process to target than weight maintenance. The present study sought to evaluate the efficacy of an acceptance based behavioral intervention designed to generate improvements in psychological health and quality of life in obese and overweight adults as well as encourage gradual and sustainable weight loss. The therapy package combined the traditional behavioral interventions of self-monitoring and goal setting with an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) protocol across eight weekly individual therapy sessions. While no significant immediate weight loss was observed following the intervention, significant improvements in general psychological health, reductions in anxiety and escape maintained eating, and increases in weight related acceptance and action were found in the treatment group (n = 9) compared to a wait list control group (n = 10). These findings suggest that an acceptance based intervention targeting wide band outcomes might serve as a viable alternative to traditional approaches targeting only immediate weight loss.

No / A recent paper in Accounting and Business Research by Lau et al. (2008) offers systematic evidence to explain whether managers’ perceptions on fairness of performance evaluation procedures affect attitudes such as job satisfaction; and if it does, the different behavioural processes involved. Our paper re‐examines Lau et al.’s model and hypotheses to assess the external validity of their findings, based on a very different sample of managers. Drawing on recent organisational justice literature, it further develops the model and examines the potential interaction effects of fairness of performance evaluation procedures and other variables on job satisfaction. Finally, it extends the outcome variable to include manager performance. Using survey responses from 165 managers, supported by 24 interviews, drawn from three major organisations in the manufacturing and financial services sectors, we find that Lau et al.’s results on the indirect effects of fairness of performance evaluation procedures on job satisfaction are generalisable to other organisational settings and managerial levels. However, using their model we do not find support for the outcome‐based effects through distributive fairness. Developing a revised model we observe that the effects of distributive fairness on job satisfaction are indirect via organisational commitment. When the model is further developed to incorporate performance as the outcome variable, we observe similar findings.