This study examined the motivations of managers in a Federal government agency to participate or not participate in voluntary government-sponsored training. The researcher distributed a questionnaire, via agency electronic mail, to managers and supervisors in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The questionnaire comprised items selected from three instruments used and validated in previous adult education participation studies and provided the data for this study. Section 1 of the questionnaire addressed demographics, Section 2 addressed non-participation, and Section 3 addressed participation. Respondents rated the degree of influence or importance each item had on their decision to participate or not to participate in government-sponsored training.The data revealed the relative importance of the reasons for participation and non-participation and their relationship to the demographic variables. Cognitive interest and professional advancement were the primary motivations for participation in training. Lack of course relevance and time constraints were the primary motivations for not participating in training. There was no significant difference in motivation between men and women managers for either participation or non-participation. Other demographic variables had low to mid-range correlations with specific reasons for participation and non-participation, none of which were concentrated on a single cluster or factor. / Ed. D.

Nearly half of all frontline leaders in U.S. federal agencies during 2015 were unprepared to improve employee engagement. The lack of successful strategies to improve employee engagement in federal government agencies has led to decreased operational performance. Guided by the employee engagement theory as the conceptual framework, the single case study design was selected to explore the successful strategies that frontline leaders use to improve employee engagement at a federal agency in central Maryland. Data collection involved face-to-face, semistructured interviews with 4 frontline leaders and federal agency documents indicating employee engagement. The data analysis process included Yin's 5-step method and revealed 2 major themes: effective organizational communication, and enhancing employee development. Employee engagement improves if frontline leaders use strategies that involve effective organizational communication and enhancing employee development to promote open, transparent communication, teamwork, collaboration, skills development, incentives, rewards, and improved work-life balance. The implications for social change include the potential to implement successful engagement strategies in the federal agency, because employees who are more engaged generate better performance and productivity, build valuable work relationships, enhance career, and increase wages to improve the well-being and prosperity of themselves and their families. Improved performance and productivity could help to lower operating cost at the federal agency; thus, creating opportunities to reinvest savings into local community outreach programs that contribute to healthy living, well-being, and economic prosperity.

Structural change in organisations is stressful for staff and the managers who must implement it. Most change programs use employee communication techniques to support change directions set by senior executive decision makers-dominant coalitions. This research used a single case study to explain the context and management discourses of a major re-structure of an Australian Federal Government agency, the former Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), during the early 1990s. A content analysis examined the use of keywords in management discourses that argued the need for change. The keywords represented the two major change discourses: micro-economic reform and aviation safety regulation. A critical discourse analysis investigated the dominant coalition's discourse strategies to justify change. Content and process communication theories, and the role of framing in organisational change, were used to explain how employees may have reacted to change directions. The research found that change directions were framed as an economic imperative that clashed with a traditional organisational culture that emphasised the primacy of aviation safety. It found that mixed messages by the two principal members of the dominant coalition who drove change exacerbated the clash. The results suggest a need for further analysis of management discourses used to inform employees about structural change, especially in organisations that have legislative responsibilities. Further analysis of change messages framed by dominant coalitions could lead to a deeper understanding ofhow they affect employees and the change process.

Following each of three major disasters--the financial crisis, the Gulf oil spill, and the nuclear meltdown in Japan--policymakers responded by overhauling the associated regulatory infrastructure. In each case, the response was intended to sharpen the regulator's focus, predicated on the widely held view that asking an agency to satisfy both regulatory and non-regulatory roles induces organizational conflict and impedes performance. In this dissertation, I put this commonly accepted belief about agency structure to the test by analyzing the behavior of regulators also assigned significant, non-regulatory functions. Incorporating data on a broad set of U.S. federal agencies, I first establish that the conventional wisdom holds some truth: Regulators that combine purposes do not perform as well. Even so, through a mix of statistical analyses, formal modeling, and an in-depth study of the former U.S. offshore oil and gas regulator, the Minerals Management Service, I show that assigning regulatory and non-regulatory functions to one agency can, in some cases, still be better than dividing them between agencies. I demonstrate that while the goal ambiguity and conflict introduced by combining roles does impact behavior, overemphasizing this issue misses several important factors affecting regulators tasked with non-regulatory aims. These factors explain both how regulators operate when charged with achieving other goals and why these multiple-purpose mandates persist. First, although the goals may conflict, the underlying tasks supporting these divergent purposes may still require extensive coordination. Second, even within agencies, introducing features that encourage separation between the affected groups can allow regulators to manage ambiguity, but these efforts can simultaneously exacerbate difficulties in achieving synergies generated through Professor Daniel Paul Carpenter Christopher Michael Carrigan close contact. Third, even when the conditions for conflict are present, political and public preferences—and not just internal factors—can play important roles in shaping agency priorities. Fourth, broader social, industry, and environmental shifts can attenuate or accentuate the organizational tension that exists between managing goal ambiguity while encouraging underlying coordination. In sum, only by recognizing roles for a diverse set of forces—operations, organization, politics, and environment—can the existence, behavior, and performance of regulatory agencies that balance non-regulatory mandates be logically explained.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse the first TikTok posts of the Swiss government that were published during the pandemic. This thesis investigates how their Covid-19 vaccine campaign is presented on TikTok and contributes to the field of crisis communication. For this, the analysis relied on two theoretical frameworks. On the one hand, Barthes’ concepts of denotation and connotation (1968) helped to structure the analysis and allowed a clear distinction between the description of visual and textual aspects of the posts as well as possible interpretations. On the other hand, taking the concept of framing (Goffman, 1974) allowed to categorise data and draw patterns of association of the government’s communication with the public. Results of this study show that the frames evidence and facts, claim, call for action and personal motivation are represented in the government’s Covid-19 vaccine-related TikTok posts. Thereby, the government let experts in the field answer to topics of interest to the public and address several concerns about the vaccine such as causing side effects, infertility, allergic reactions, and immunisation after the vaccination. On the other hand, posts also speak to young users and show benefits of getting vaccinated in terms of having more freedom when travelling, meeting people and partying. All in all, the posts make a stiff and planned impression as in an interview situation. Furthermore, people shown in the posts are all middle-class Caucasians, which excludes other subgroups of the population such as non-Caucasians or those with a migration background and is critically discussed. Further studies could elaborate on governments’ post-pandemic communication or other platforms and campaigns.

No description available.

This study presents an understanding of the role of transparency in the communication processes of agencies of the United States Federal Government, as guided by principles of stakeholder management, models of public relations, and a model for government agency communication. These theories and models all suggest that increased openness in organizations will result in improved organizational functioning and in some instances, increases in organizational trust. The perspectives presented in this paper were collected through eighteen semi-structured in-depth interviews of professional communicators for various agencies in the United States Federal Government. The data shows that government communicators recognize the need for transparency in a democratic government, and also illustrates factors that both enhance and constrain transparency. Most of the limited research on government agency communication has focused on media relations and agency spokespersons. The value this exploratory study provides is that it illustrates government communicators understand the value of transparency in communication practices and provides a model for transparency in government agency communication. The research also shows a need for future research to strengthen theory, expand models, and provide examples of how to effectively implement transparency enhancing practices in government communication.

No description available.

With the evolution of Information Technology, especially the Internet, system integration is becoming a common way to expand IT systems within and beyond an enterprise network. Although system integration is becoming more and more common within large organizations, however, the literature review had found IS research in this area had not been sufficient, especially for the development of integration solutions within large organizations. It has made research like this one conducted within a large NZ government agency necessary. Four system integration projects were selected and studied using case study research methodology. The case study was designed and conducted using guidelines mainly from the well-known R. K. Yin’s (2002) “Case Study Research” book. The research was set to seek answers for a series of research questions, which were related to requirements of system integration and challenges for solution development. Special attention had been given to XML applications, as system integration and XML were found to be coupled in many system integrations and frameworks during the literature review. Data were first gathered from all four projects one by one, and then the bulk of analysis was done on the summarized data. Various analysis methods including chain-of-evidence, root-cause-analysis and pattern-matching were adopted. The principles of interpretive research proposed by Klein and Myers (1999) and triangulation were observed. In conclusions, a set of models have been derived from the research, namely a model for clarifying integration requirements; a model for integration solution architecture; a model for integration development life cycle and a model of critical success factor for integration projects. A development framework for small to medium size integration projects has also been proposed based on the models. The research also found XML application indeed would play an important role for system integration; the critical success factors for XML application included suitable development tools, development skills and methodologies.

Submitted by Maria Aparecida (cidazen@gmail.com) on 2017-11-23T18:05:16Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Marcia Cruz.pdf: 1367481 bytes, checksum: 113ec1645b31e2c7b76dcca4cda1ca47 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-11-23T18:05:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Marcia Cruz.pdf: 1367481 bytes, checksum: 113ec1645b31e2c7b76dcca4cda1ca47 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-08-07 / The present dissertation addresses a historical, perverse and persistent problem, whose combat is part of the global international agenda, that is, contemporary slavery in rural areas. Considering the broad scenario in which the theme is inserted, the research hereby presented aims to characterize the particularities of the of slave labor currently occurring in the tocantina region in the state of Maranhão, Brazil. The aim is to assess the extent to which the actions perpetrated by the 16th region Brazilian Government Agency for Labor Law Enforcement (MPT in Portuguese) are effective. In order to do so, the first chapter systematizes the different normative formulations and the international and national juridical framework destined to describe, regulate and curb this historical modality of human being exploitation, in order to identify the normative and legal elements conducive to the investigation that the study aims to proceed. From the identification of these elements, the second chapter proposes to characterize the particularities of slave labor that occurs in the context of the tocantina region, one of the regions with the highest incidence of slave labor, not only in the State of Maranhão, but also in Brazil. Based on this characterization, which dialogues with historical, economic, social and cultural variables, the study analyzes, in the third chapter, the 16th region MPT performance and to what extent this performance is effective in repressing contemporary slavery in rural area that occurs in the tocantina region. In this regard, the approach given to the Public Civil Action instrument is justified since it is the one that has the greatest coercive force among the legal instruments used by the body. The main conclusions are that the municipalities that make up the tocantina region, despite having activities focused on economic development, continue with a high rate of poverty, marginalization and illiteracy, which contributes to the significant incidence of slavery labor in the region, especially in activities like livestock, with a predominance of degrading work and debt bondage. It also notes that the MPT's performance is not in itself capable of reducing slavery in this region, since, based on the Public Civil Actions filed, it is observed that the reality of the workers rescued from the slavery regime is not modified by the MPT´s action, maintaining a high recurrence rate. / A presente dissertação aborda problemática histórica, perversa e persistente, cujo combate faz parte da agenda internacional global, qual seja, o trabalho escravo rural contemporâneo. Diante do amplo cenário no qual o tema se insere, a investigação ora apresentada objetiva caracterizar as particularidades da incidência do trabalho escravo que ocorre atualmente na região tocantina maranhense, a fim de avaliar em que medida as ações de combate promovidas pelo Ministério Público do Trabalho - MPT da 16ª região são eficazes. Para tanto, no primeiro capítulo, o estudo sistematiza as diferentes formulações normativas e o arcabouço jurídico internacional e nacional destinado a descrever, regular e coibir essa modalidade histórica de exploração do ser humano, no intuito de identificar os elementos normativos e jurídicos propícios à investigação que se quer proceder. A partir da identificação destes elementos, o segundo capítulo se propõe a caracterizar as particularidades do trabalho escravo que ocorre no contexto da região tocantina, uma das regiões de maior incidência de trabalho escravo não só do Estado do Maranhão, mas também do Brasil. Com base nesta caracterização, que dialoga com variáveis históricas, econômicas, sociais e culturais, o estudo analisa, no terceiro capítulo, a atuação do MPT da 16ª região e em que medida essa atuação é eficaz na repressão ao trabalho escravo rural contemporâneo que ocorre na região. Neste particular, o enfoque dado ao instrumento Ação Civil Pública se justifica uma vez que é o que possui maior força coercitiva dentre os instrumentos jurídicos utilizados pelo órgão. O estudo traz como principais conclusões que os municípios que compõe a região tocantina maranhense, apesar de contarem com atividades voltadas ao desenvolvimento econômico, prosseguem com elevado índice de pobreza, marginalização e analfabetismo, o que contribui para a expressiva incidência de trabalho escravo na região, sobretudo na atividade pecuária, com predominância de trabalho degradante e servidão por dívida. Constata ainda que a atuação do MPT não é capaz, por si só, de reduzir a escravidão nessa região, pois, com base nas Ações Civis Públicas ajuizadas, observa-se que a realidade dos trabalhadores resgatados do regime de escravidão não é modificada pela atuação do órgão, mantendo-se elevado a reincidência.