Bibliometric evaluation of the literature indicates that a unified theory of program management does not yet exist. The vastly different definitions and implementations of programs across organizations and industries indicate that program management as an organizational concept is not well understood. As researchers have tried to make sense of various perspectives and definitions, it becomes clear that different kinds of programs exist, and further attention to their context is needed. While relationships between structural and environmental variables have been extensively researched in organizational studies, studies in program management are scant, lack incorporation of environmental variables relevant to programs and projects, and lack a theoretical basis with defined concepts. Questions remain on how well these works actually represent and enlighten practitioners. To address these issues, this research applied the Delphi technique along with contingency theory as a theoretical lens to the field of program management to enable simultaneous advancement of theoretical and practical knowledge through participation of fourteen 14 technical program management experts from the public aerospace industry, including the Department of Defense (DoD), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). A conceptual model with constructs and relationships was developed to identify different organizational and management structures that fit optimally with different environmental conditions or contexts. Fundamental to the research was to gain an understanding of (a) impacts to program management for different contexts (b) how and why programs are structured in a particular way, and (c) which structures are more successful than others. The research results informed a program management framework with both academic and practical contributions that may (a) assist managers in deciding how to structure their programs, (b) provide insights on how to correct impacts to success, and (c) aid future researchers in the development of an overarching theory of program management.

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a framework for the gamification of flight simulators to provide an active learning and training environment for military jet pilots. Currently, with the development of visual displays and computer processing capabilities, the modern simulator has made great progress in visual and auditory terms that is incomparable to the past. In addition, functions that were previously implemented through supercomputers and complex hardware devices are now available through desktop computers at an affordable cost. Despite these advances, the simulators so far are thought to have been negligent in building an active learning and training environment for users, focusing only on such things as sound and visual immersion and training requirements. On top of that, misbelief in the effectiveness of pilots' flight simulators, old paradigms failing to keep up with computer technology, and lack of instructor manpower have not led to the progress of simulator training programs. Meanwhile, studies show that the gamified system, which has become an increasingly hot topic in business, health care, and education over the past decade, has made users more motivated and actively engaged in the use of specific platforms. And the resulting effect was also positive. This Research aimed: (1) to examine a research-based Gamification Framework to understand the concept of a gamified system, (2) to identify pilots' flight training needs and motivations, (3) and finally to suggest evaluation tool with example. The Gamification Framework of Flight Simulator(GFFS) was designed on the basis of research and a survey conducted for Korean Air Force fighter pilots for detailed Gamified Flight Simulator(GFS) evaluation tool. GFFS was modified and applied from Kim's gamification framework and the Octalysis framework was used to identify and compare pilots' needs and motivation factors.

The purpose of this paper is to systemize the Crew Resource Management (CRM) by adding new safety factors to prevent and manage aviation safety accidents caused by human errors. Although the aviation industry has been growing and aviation accidents have significantly decreased due to the advancement of aviation technology, aviation accidents caused by human factors have not significantly decreased. About 80% of aircraft accidents are caused by pilot errors around the world. The most common factor is 'Vertigo' from physical limitations of the human body and misunderstanding of flight information, so-called 'Spatial Disorientation (SD). When a pilot experiences SD, it is difficult for him or her to recognize the abnormal situation and overcome it without external assistance. Pilots with higher rank and position are usually more experienced, but that does not necessarily mean they are physically stronger than co-pilots, nor are they exempt from falling into the illusion of flight (i.e., SD situation). Many flight accidents are caused by human factors since there isn't a proper level of communication between pilots. I began the research to apply the economic concept 'Nudge Theory' to flight situations while contemplating how to effectively advise the copilot so that the leader pilot would not be offended. I will seek ways to improve the flight system under the assumption that an additional safety management system within the cockpit can naturally reduce accidents due to human factors to prevent flight accidents. The new aviation safety management system has the flexibility to be applied to a variety of aircraft and flight systems and must be configured according to the characteristics of the aviation personnel. Investigation can be used if necessary, to extract the data needed to develop each item.

Measuring creativity for engineering is paramount; previous research has shown that creativity diminishes as students advance through college. This study intends to find possible predictors for creativity in these students. These predictors include GPA, Hobbies, and Extracurriculars while using the Test of Creativity Thinking – Drawing Production (TCT-DP) as a benchmark for creativity. Participants were Junior and Senior year engineering students in Spring 2021. All eligible study participants were provided a TCT-DP and survey to complete. Individual creative ability was assessed from the resulting TCT-DP using a 13 categorical scoring matrix by independently trained evaluators using the scoring guidelines. The accompanying survey was paired with the creativity scores to provide insight into the participants' leisure habits, Grade Point Average (GPA), and demographics. Multiple linear regression models were used to analyze the relationship between predictor variables and creativity. Results indicated that extracurricular activities and hobbies were predictors of creativity primarily through activities related to the Arts, although additional time spent on these activities does not significantly affect this relationship. GPA was also a predictor of creativity by increasing scores across GPA ranges. The results suggest that participation in any extracurricular or hobby category may be a leading predictor more than the time spent performing that activity. More opportunities for students engaged in extracurricular or hobbies, especially if tied into interdisciplinary categories such as the Arts, would, in theory, produce more workplace-valued creative thinking engineers.

In recent years, electroencephalography (EEG) has become a valuable technique for ergonomics studies of physical activities and other real-life tasks. Since the perception of force exertion is influenced by various psychophysical, cognitive, and social factors, different subjective measures have been traditionally used to measure the perception of physical exertion and related body discomfort. Along with the subjective measures, research showed that neural signals are also necessary objective measures to understanding human perception of physical tasks. However, EEG signatures of different physical exertion levels and perceived physical comfort have not been explored. The main objective of this study was to investigate EEG activity measured by power spectral density (PSD) for isometric arm forces at different levels of physical exertion and physical comfort. The first part of the study investigated PSD changes at five predefined force exertion levels, i.e., extremely light, light, somewhat hard, hard, and extremely hard. The healthy female participants performed physical exertions and rated their level of experienced physical comfort. Significant differences in force exertion and PSD for theta, beta, and gamma waves were observed. Significant correlations were also found between PSD, force, and rating of physical comfort (RPPC). In the second part of the study, PSD changes at predefined physical comfort levels were investigated, namely at very low, moderate, fair, high, and very high comfort levels. The participants also rated the level of perceived physical exertion. Significant differences in force exertion and comfort levels for theta, beta, and gamma power were found. In addition, significant correlations were found between PSD, force, and rate of physical exertion (RPE). Overall, this is a novel study where EEG signatures of isometric efforts by females have been investigated at different force and physical comfort levels. The reported results should improve our understanding of the neural correlates of physical tasks performed by females.

Reducing crowd volumes at Emergency Departments (EDs) has been of a significant concern for healthcare providers worldwide. While some consider Urgent Care at Home (UCH) as a means to ease ED volumes, the combination of lean assessment tools (LAT) and UCH is thought to be a more effective approach to address this complicated problem. A comprehensive framework has been developed to explore the key critical factors of lean assessment tools by integrating these lean effective tools with UCH. That for this study the key step to enhance the operational performance to the framework is the comparative impact of LAT and UCH between two countries, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United States of America (USA) in terms of lean assessment tools, urgent care at home, and their related variables. This important benchmarking study compares thirty responses to survey questions from KSA and USA. The sixty qualified professionals have a vast amount of experience in the field of lean concepts and lean six sigma in both industry and academia. The primary analytical tool for this study is the use of ordinal regression to determine which of the countries have a statistically significant effect on the lean assessment tools, Urgent Care at Home, and their related variables. The results indicate that there is a significant difference in the application of lean assessment tools, Urgent Care at Home, and their related variables. It was found that the increase in the likelihood of better performance in some of variables in the USA Emergency Departments as compared to KSA Emergency Departments. This study provides the framework for future collaborative improvement projects and studies in healthcare for increased performance of EDS.

Modeling the dynamics of social contagion processes has recently attracted a substantial amount of interest from researchers due to its wide applicability in network science, multi-agent systems, information science, and marketing. Unlike in biological spreading, the existence of a reinforcement effect in social contagion necessitates considering the complexity of individuals in the systems. Although many studies acknowledged the heterogeneity of the individuals in their adoption of information (or behavior), there are no studies that take into account the individuals' uncertainty during their decision-making despite its theoretical and experimental evidence in behavioral economics, decision science, cognitive science, or multi-agent systems. This resulted in less than optimal modeling of social contagion dynamics in the existence of phase transition in the final adoption size versus transmission probability. We believe that it is mainly because traditional approaches do not consider the uncertainty stemming from agent interactions through an information exchange that can influence individuals' emotions, change subconscious feelings, and trigger subjective biases. To address this problem, we propose quantum-like generalization of social contagion analysis for the analysis of co-evolutionary dynamics of social contagion. For this purpose, we employed Inverse Born Problem (IBP) to represent probabilistic entities as complex probability amplitudes in edge-based compartmental theory and demonstrated that our novel approach performs better in the prediction of social contagion dynamics through extensive simulations on random regular networks.

The Multi Resolution Modeling (MRM) is a modeling technology that creates a model that expresses the same phenomenon with more than two different resolutions. The MRM study began in the military field where modeling and simulation (M&S) was most actively developed and was recognized as an important area in the integrated system of Live, Virtual, and Constructive (LVC) simulations. Because numerous models of the various resolutions were already built based on the characteristics and training purposes of each weapon system, and the interoperability of these models was a primary task in the M&S community. However, only recommended V&V process guidelines for developing a distributed simulation system are provided, but there was no mention of specific methods or algorithms for verification and validation (V&V) of the MRM implementation. This study proposes a new framework for the V&V of the MRM federation. It is designed to address issues that may arise from the difference in the resolution of each model and evaluate the reliability of the MRM federation by the V&V process. The military expert team has been organized to support the developing process. Based on the developed framework, two case studies were conducted using virtual and constructive simulations. The KnowBook and VR-Forces, which are the Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) simulations, have been utilized for building the MRM federation. The virtual simulation was controlled by active Air Force pilots who are members of the military expert team. Two federations have been constructed for two case studies and evaluated following the process of the developed V&V framework. Simulations of 70 sorties were performed in case study 1 and 77 sorties in case study 2. For data analysis, the federation execution screen was recorded in video and the data was extracted using program code written in Python. R language was used to analyze the relationship between connected objects in each simulation and OriginPro was utilized to plot the 3D or 2D graph for collected data. As a result, the interworking of virtual and constructive simulation has been verified as an effective federation for the pilot training system. The developed V&V framework contributes to identifying the core parts that need to be verified in the MRM federation. This paper also discusses the direction in which the MRM should move forward as well as limitations and future research of this study.

Human personalities combined with working conditions affect how employees react to different work situations. Personality and work environment have also been shown to affect workers' feelings. Employees' psychological health plays an essential role in their performance and productivity in the workplace, and organizational awareness of work-related feelings has sparked interest in investigating this field of study. Teaching is a stressful job; however, research evaluating discrete states of work-related emotions in teachers remains somewhat limited. This study investigated the effects of job demands on teachers' work-related feelings within middle and high schools in the United States and Jordan. The study results revealed several significant relationships between the categories of job demands, including time pressure, discipline problems, and students' motivation, and four work-related feelings expressed by teachers: anxiety, happiness, dejection, and anger. Such knowledge should help manage teachers' feelings and mitigate potentially stressful and adverse health conditions in middle and high school environments. The effect of cultural differences on these relationships has also been discussed.

Based on an extensive literature review, twenty-two variables including both task and incumbent characteristics were ordered in a theoretical causal hierarchy for subjective mental workload estimates. Data were collected from two samples of aircraft maintenance personnel to enable the exploration of several latent and observed variable structural equation models that were consistent with this hierarchy. LISREL VI was used to estimate the parameters of these models and test their goodness of fit. An observed variable model was chosen as best fitting and its stability was assessed through simultaneously estimating its parameters from two samples of data. Eighty-six percent of the model's parameters were able to be constrained to be equal for the two samples. The strengths and weaknesses of this model and the techniques used to develop it are discussed with particular emphasis given to the problems of multicollinearity, the assessment of goodness of fit and the heuristic value of developing such models. One of the most interesting results of the study was that individual difference variables were found to consistently influence mental workload estimates. The general trend of their influence was such that higher ability people tended to rate given tasks as more demanding of mental workload than lower ability people.