The study examines and identifies the perceived favourable conditions needed for employees readiness to support improvements. In the context of Brunei, readiness research in public service organisations is underrepresented if not, non-existent. There is a need for a more comprehensive study that integrates the combined perspective of the interrelated conceptual elements of readiness, its climate and the organisation. Four key findings were identified based on 119 interviews and 665 surveys. Firstly, it was found that as employees self-organise to cope with chaos, an unintended conducive climate that is specific to the Brunei context evolves out of employees readiness to adapt and survive. Secondly, the essential climatic factors that trigger the minimum level of employee readiness are identified. Thirdly, the influential climatic factors that further amplify a higher level of employee readiness are identified. Finally, based on the shared multilevel perspective of employees, the statistical analysis result confirm the hypothesis that there is a positive relationship between the identified climatic factors and employees readiness in terms of the way employees believe in, feel about and act towards improvement. Supported by qualitative findings, the essential climatic factors were identified as being communication, participation, clear task roles and responsibility, and top management s trust in subordinates. Similarly, the influential climatic factors were identified as being efficacy, organisational trust, organisational trusts in top management and top management support and participation. It is concluded that employees readiness can be incrementally developed towards improvement success; however, the contextual conditions need to be recognised and well-tailored. The development of a novel conceptual framework and model demonstrates how employees multidimensional readiness can be triggered and influenced to support improvements in a complex and adaptive organisation.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / The U.S. Army uses a Unit Readiness Index to track the combat readiness of systems. The Unit Readiness Index relies on the accuracy of automated and manual testing of the hardware and related software of the Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) that comprise the system. These tests are based on a GO/NOGO scenario. When an LRU fails, vehicle commanders, and commanders up the chain of command, can override the failure and continue with a mission. Overriding the NOGO recommendations produces a false combat readiness status for the unit, and creates a number of problems related to unit combat decisions as well as logistical support. This thesis introduces a new process for more effectively tracking combat readiness. It outlines some of the problems associated with the current GO/NOGO scenario and examines the current tests, artifacts and data available from the current process. It proposes an additional Report process and shows how this new process will eliminate the readiness tracking problems associated with the GO/NOGO scenario. It also presents the design of a Vehicle Database and Master Fault Database to support the proposed process, and presents several sample reports generated from this Master Fault Database. / Civilian, United States Army RDECOM - TARDEC

This research study was conducted to provide information on school readiness. While there is no national definition for school readiness, states and organizations have developed various definitions to highlight readiness skills that have been deemed important for kindergarteners. The early childhood developmental domains that are often cited in these individual definitions are physical (fine/gross motor), social-emotional, cognition (academics), and communication skills. By considering a holistic approach of school readiness, a child’s development is not isolated to mastering one domain to be “ready” for school. While most states do not have a statutory school readiness definition, many have been measuring school readiness skills for several years. In the 1980’s, a number of states screened or tested children’s readiness skills using standardized assessments before kindergarten entry. In the 1990’s, the attention moved from using a child’s score to determine their placement to assessing a child’s strengths and weaknesses in various skill areas that were associated with identified school readiness criteria. Over the last few years, the focus has continued to shift to include monitoring state-wide school readiness levels and guiding planning and instruction. With no universal definition of school readiness, no universal school readiness measurement instrument exists. However, there are school readiness instruments currently being developed to address the needs of states and school districts. The need for reliable and valid instruments to focus on the various developmental skill levels of young children across domains is apparent. The school readiness instrument, the AEPS (Assessment Evaluation Programming System)-3 Ready, Set 4.0, is being developed to do just that, providing a holistic approach to measuring school readiness. Skills in the following areas are to be assessed on the AEPS-3 Ready, Set 4.0: gross motor, fine motor, adaptive, cognitive, social-communication, social-emotional, literacy, and math. The instrument is to be used by kindergarten teachers to access students in the categories listed above once the school year starts. The information gathered from the AEPS-3 Ready, Set 4.0 would provide teachers with authentic, holistic data on the school readiness skills of children in their class. Through teacher surveys, this school readiness study aimed to answer if field users agreed on the content of the AEPS Ready, Set 4.0 in terms of sequence, breadth, clarity, relevance, and functionality and if field users agreed on the scoring, item and criteria, and usefulness of the AEPS Ready, Set 4.0 for its intended purposes.

No description available.

The purpose of this study is to develop an e-government readiness model and to test this model. Consistent with this model several instruments, IS assessment (ISA), IT governance (ITG), and Organization-IS alignment (IS-ALIGN) are examined for their ability to measure the readiness of one organization for e-government and to test the instruments fit in the proposed e-government model. The ISA instrument used is the result of adapting and combining the IS-SERVQUAL instrument proposed by Van Dyke, Kappelman, and Pybutok (1997), and the IS-SUCCESS instrument developed by Kappelman and Chong (2001) for the City of Denton (COD) project at UNT. The IS Success Model was first proposed by DeLone and McLean (1992), but they did not validate this model. The ITG instrument was based on the goals of the COD project for IT governance and was developed by Sanchez and Kappelman (2001) from UNT. The ISALIGN instrument was also developed by Sanchez and Kappelman (2001) for the COD project. It is an instrument based on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) that measures how effectively a government organization utilizes IT to support its various objectives. The EGOV instrument was adapted from the study of the Action-Audience Model developed by Koh and Balthazrd (1997) to measure how well a government organization is prepared to usher in e-government in terms of various success factors at planning, system and data levels. An on-line survey was conducted with employees of the City of Denton, Texas. An invitation letter to participate in the survey was sent to the 1100 employees of the City of Denton via email, 339 responses were received, yielding a response rate of 31%. About 168 responses were discarded because they were incomplete and had the missing values, leaving 171 usable surveys, for a usable set of responses that had a response rate of 16%. Although the proposed and some alternate models were partially consistent with the hypothesized theory, the confirmation of the relationships among the constructs warrants further research via either by replication of this research or by development a new theoretical model. However, the significant validity and reliability measures obtained in this study indicate that the e-government readiness model has the potential for use in future studies.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / Maintaining the Fleet Readiness Plan (FRP) construct of six aircraft carriers available within 30 days, plus two additional carriers available within 90 days is a difficult task. Maintenance requirements on carriers alone make satisfying the FRP a challenging scheduling problem. We develop a carrier maintenance scheduling model with a goal to meet, as best as possible, the FRP requirements over a ten-year period, while obeying simple maintenance facility constraints. This model allows us to anticipate gaps in coverage and also quantitatively assess the benefit, or burden, of re-sizing the fleet. We conclude that by increasing the average cycle time for a Carrier Strike Group (CSG) to 27 months we can meet the FRP requirements continuously after an initial maintenance adjustment period of 62 months. / Lieutenant, United States Navy

This study explored the usefulness of the Metropolitan Readiness Tests (MRT) as a screening device for minimal brain injury. It was hypothesized that brain injured (BI) children would score significantly lower on Test Six of the MRT than non-brain injured (NBI) children. Test Six is a visual-motor perceptual task.

The problem of this investigation is to determine the amount of agreement or disagreement in the philosophies of certain authors relative to reading readiness in the first grade. Comparative data are included on evidences of the need for reading-readiness program, major factors involved, and desirable types of activities. The purpose of the study is to determine the apparent agreement or disparity found in current educational literature.

The problem in this study was to determine whether the availability of reading material in the home and a child 's socio-economic classification were sufficiently significant to be utilized in helping to predict the reading readiness and reading achievement of first-grade children.

Thesis advisor: Rebekah Levine Coley / Emerging research suggests that children's physical health may account for some of the variability in developmental competencies at school entry, which are the cognitive, learning, and behavioral skills necessary for long-term academic achievement. Most studies on children's health find that neonatal risks, like low birth weight and premature birth, impair children's early functioning, but little is known about other domains of children's health, like global health or acute and chronic conditions, which may be associated with functioning at school entry. Moreover, it is unclear what role physical health may play in children's access to and engagement in home and early childhood education center-based learning contexts, which may function as pathways linking early health disparities with later development. This dissertation tested direct associations between a range of childhood health problems and school readiness skills at kindergarten entry, as well as indirect and interacted associations with early learning contexts. Given the well-established socioeconomic gradient in both health and development, analyses also explored whether associations linking health and development were conditional on family socioeconomic status. Data were drawn from the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (Birth Cohort; N = 5,900), which follows a cohort of children born in 2001 from infancy through kindergarten entry. Linear regressions and path analyses revealed that four of five health conditions were associated with lower school readiness skills, most consistently in the domains of cognitive and learning skills. Neonatal risks, poor health, and hospitalization functioned directly to predict lower cognitive and learning skills, where as asthma diagnosis predicted heightened learning skills. Only poor health functioned indirectly through more restricted home learning activities. Children's time in ECE functioned in a compensatory role to attenuate associations between hospitalization and lower school readiness skills. Across all models, there was no evidence that measured associations varied across the family socioeconomic spectrum. Findings highlight the importance of interdisciplinary research on child well-being and draw attention to potential avenues for prevention and intervention. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.