Background: High nursing turnover and early nursing career exit rates evidenced by the current global nursing shortage is the impetus for effective strategies aimed at retaining nurses in their current positions. Nurses’ behavioral intentions to leave or stay are not well understood. Aim: This thesis aims to increase understanding of why clinical nurses choose to remain in their current positions and to assess the influence that nursing leaders have on staff nurses’ intent to stay. Methods: Two systematic literature reviews were conducted; one to synthesize current research on clinical nurses’ intentions to stay and the influence of leadership practices on those intentions; the other to determine the appropriateness of conceptualizing intentions to stay and leave as opposite ends of a continuum. Building on two published conceptual models (Boyle et al. 1999; Tourangeau & Cranley (2006), a new theoretical model of nurses’ intent to stay was developed and tested as a structural equation model using LISREL 8.8 and a subset of the QWEST study data provided by 415 nurses working in nine hospitals in one Canadian province. Results: The systematic reviews identified positive relationships between relational leadership practices and nurses’ intentions to stay, supporting the assertion that managers influence the behavioral intentions of nurses and their intentions to stay and leave. Intentions to stay and leave were found to be separate but correlated concepts. Model testing results, χ2=169.9, df=148 and p=0.105, indicated a fitting model that explained 63% of the variance in intentions to stay. Concepts with the strongest direct effects on intent to stay were empowerment, organizational commitment, and desire to stay. Leadership had strong total effects and indirectly influenced intent to stay through empowerment. Conclusions: Findings suggested that intent to stay or leave should be investigated as separate but correlated concepts. Relational leadership that focuses on individual nurses and supports empowering work environments will likely affect nurses choosing to remain in their current positions.

The current study assessed the moderating effects of Age and the mediating effects of Job Satisfaction on the relationship between antecedents Employee Engagement and Compensation Fairness and the outcome variable Turnover Intent. The theory of reasoned action and a theoretical framework for examining age-effects on employee attitudes were used as the theoretical underpinnings for the study. The study utilized a secondary data set with surveyed population including faculty (n = 1,229) from a land-grant institution holding the doctoral/research-extensive classification from the Carnegie Classification and serving about 42,000 students each year with graduates totaling more than 9,000 per year. Findings confirmed that 11 of the 12 items of the Gallup Workplace Audit loaded on the Employee Engagement factor. Findings also confirmed a 3-item solution for the Compensation Fairness factor. Both Employee Engagement and Compensation Fairness demonstrated an inverse relationship with Turnover Intent as expected. Job Satisfaction was found not to mediate the relationship between both Employee Engagement and Compensation Fairness with the outcome variable Turnover Intent. Finally, Age was not found to moderate the relationship between antecedent variables and Turnover Intent. Recommendations for research and practice were made.

Interpreting user actions to better understand their needs provides an important tool for improving information access services. In the context of organic Web search, considerable effort has been made to model user behavior and infer query intent, with the goal of improving the overall user experience. Much less work has been done in the area of sponsored search, i.e., with respect to the advertisement links (ads) displayed on search result pages by many commercial search engines. This thesis develops and evaluates new models and methods required to interpret user browsing and click behavior and understand query intent in this very different context. The concern of the initial part of the thesis is on extending the query categories for commercial search and on inferring query intent, with a focus on two major tasks: i) enriching queries with contextual information obtained from search result pages returned for these queries, and ii) developing relatively simple methods for the reliable labeling of training data via crowdsourcing. A central idea of this thesis work is to study the impact of contextual factors (including query intent, ad placement, and page structure) on user behavior. Later, this information is incorporated into probabilistic models to evaluate the quality of advertisement links within the context that they are displayed in their history of appearance. In order to account for these factors, a number of query and location biases are proposed and formulated into a group of browsing and click models. To explore user intent and behavior and to evaluate the performance of the proposed models and methods, logs of query and click information provided for research purposes are used. Overall, query intent is found to have substantial impact on predictions of user click behavior in sponsored search. Predictions are further improved by considering ads in the context of the other ads displayed on a result page. The parameters of the browsing and click models are learned using an expectation maximization technique applied to click signals recorded in the logs. The initial motivation of the user to browse the ad list and their browsing persistence are found to be related to query intent and browsing/click behavior. Accommodating these biases along with the location bias in user models appear as effective contextual signals, improving the performance of the existing models.

A relatively well established literature already proffers explanations for the persistence of Euroskeptic Radical Right Parties (ERRPs) in Western Europe and for their emergence in the new democracies of the East. The purpose of this study is not to replicate those existing studies; instead, the argument advanced here is that there may be an important intervening factor as yet unexplored in the extant literature. Drawing upon aggregate survey data from select Western European EU member states and a focused case study of Slovakia, this paper seeks to assess the impact of information, in this case information about the European Union, on voting for ERRPs. The argument presented here is that EU information mitigates the support for ERRPs, more so in the East than in the West.

This study examined the importance of the Big-Five personality traits and work values for the prediction of entrepreneurial intent. Data were collected from a sample of 261 undergraduate students at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Results of a hierarchical regression analysis revealed that none of the Big-Five personality factors predicted entrepreneurial intent; however, the importance individuals attached to achievement and social-affective work values accounted for 9% of the variance in entrepreneurial intent, above and beyond personality. The results lend support to the argument that entrepreneurship is a cultural phenomenon and that entrepreneurs are ‘made’ as opposed to ‘born’. Consequently, the implications of culture and gender characterization are discussed in relation to entrepreneurial intentions. Finally, a dynamic model of entrepreneurial emergence is proposed and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The system of General Health Insurance was carried out since 1995 promoting the convenience for people seeking the medical care and helping a lot of medical disadvantaged minority. Moreover, this system also makes the medical resource differential obviously in the area of off-shore and main islands of Taiwan. The medical resource in main island of Taiwan is centralized and syndicated which reveals the helpless plight of poor medical resources and isolated geography in the remote area of off-shore islands conspicuously. This study researches into the mutual moderating effects of the doctors' perception of the work environment, job satisfaction, role stress, and intent to stay for the doctors in the off-shore islands of Penghu. This study retrieves 102 effective questionnaires by a census-taking. The collected data is carried on SPSS15.0 statistical analysis and test by utilizing t-test and ANOVA analysis to calculate the differences of the demographic statistics parameters, perception of the work environment, job satisfaction, role stress, and intent to stay in isolated island area. Moreover, the mutually influenced degree of constructs is scrutinized by multi-regression and path analyses. This research finds that: 1. Sufficient medical and human resources, good medical cooperation, and high working aspiration can improve the doctors' job satisfaction in the off-shore islands of Penghu. 2. Ample medical and human resources and good medical cooperation can reduce the role stress of doctors. 3. Application of the factors in stimulation and sound health care will lead negative and positive influences on doctors. 4. Good medical cooperation encourages the doctors to concentrate their attention on medical work and seldom interference in the doctor's medical work or values can further their intent to stay in the off-shore islands of Penghu.

The importance of public hospitals is dwindling, and the National Health Insurance Bureau takes initiatives such as the system of payment retrenchment and the large reduction in official budgets due to the insufficiency of government finance in order to control the enlargement of medical expenditures. For this reason, it is necessary for public hospitals to make a change so as to get used to the change of the environment. The research takes Kaohsiung Municipal United Hospital as an example to explore the correlation and effect of all the variables of employees¡¦ job insecurity during the pre- and post-mergence on job satisfaction, organization commitment, job involvement and the intent to quit. Meanwhile, hopefully the research can be the reference for managers in terms of human resource strategies while public hospitals are going to merge. There are two periods of distributing questionnaires. At first, 700 questionnaires one month before the hospital mergence (the end of November in 2002), the subject includes doctors, nurses, administrative staffs, medical technicians, and there are 390 returned questionnaires, which reaches 55.7% return rate. One year later after the hospital mergence, we perform again with 731 questionnaires , and 397 returned, which reaches 54.2% return rate. Here are the main finding (discoveries) of the research as follows: 1. The insufficiency of the consider before the hospital mergence and of the communication after the hospital mergence. 2. There are some differences of employees¡¦ job insecurity and employees¡¦ job attitudes, and the departmental mergence after the public hospital mergence. 3. Employees¡¦ helplessness has no effect between private enterprise and public hospital merging on their job satisfaction before the hospital mergence; employees¡¦ helplessness has the negative effect on their job satisfaction after the hospital mergence. 4. Employees¡¦ helplessness has no effect on their organization commitment before the hospital mergence; employees¡¦ helplessness has the negative effect on their organization commitment after the hospital mergence. 5. Employees¡¦ helplessness has no effect on their job involvement before the hospital mergence; employees¡¦ helplessness has the negative effect on their job involvement after the hospital mergence. 6. Employees¡¦ helplessness has no effect on their intent to quit before the hospital mergence; employees¡¦ helplessness has the positive effect on their intent to quit after the hospital mergence.

Abstract With the international age coming, a number of studies have been done regarding the management of expatriates, but little research has focused on the expatriates' decisions to quite their assignment. A comprehensive model is developed to test the cause of the expatriates' turnover tendencies. The model is applied both of the theories from socialization and work-family conflict. Date were obtained with a sample of 171 expatriates in Mainland China from Taiwan's international businesses. Results were indicated that work-family conflict and socialization have the direct effect on intent to leave organization and intent to transfer back prior to the completion of their foreign assignments. Work-family conflict, job similarity, organization support have the direct effect on intent-to-leave the job. Family support has both of the direct and indirect effects on the intent to transfer back prior to the completion of their foreign assignments. Parents' health and the youngest child's age have the indirect effect on the expatriates' intent-to-leave through work-family conflict. Expatriate's position has the indirect effect on the expatriates' intent-to-leave through expatriate's socialization. Implication for international HRM researchers and practitioners are discussed.

While the scale of an organization has been huge and runs for ages, it is not merely the bureaucracy we have to consider but to properly adjust the main structure of the organization that is adverse to boost up the competitiveness. What Taiwan urgently requires is to enhance the nation¡¦s competitiveness; nevertheless, the fundamentals of four-rank government are necessary to make an adjustment. What is more, they are required to alter and simplify the great overlapping in terms of provincial and central government¡¦s human resource, cost, controlled land and numbers of population. The reasons that influence the success and failure of the government reengineering might be sophisticated; however, the key element is undoubtedly the employees¡¦ support and cooperation. In Taiwan, the researches with regard to the government reengineering are mostly concentrated on the domain of system; as to the impacts of government reengineering on staff¡¦s job satisfaction, organization commitment, job involvement and their intention to quit are lack of related-research. Based on the above stated incentives, and with a view to realizing the influences on reengineering government as to staff¡¦s job satisfaction, organization commitment, job involvement and their intention to quit, this research is attempted to study the staff attitude after simplifying the provincial structure and come up with suggestions as guides on formulating human resource¡¦s strategies when carrying out government reengineering by central government organizations. The suggestions that propose in this research are as follows: communicating with the staff by holding the colloquiums frequently; conducting second-job-skill-training seminars based on individual¡¦s needs; appropriately granting authority to the staff to increase their job satisfaction, organization commitment, job involvement as well as decrease job insecurity and their intention to quit.

The new labor pension act effective on July 1. 2005 effective, all brings not the impact to the employer and the laborer, the employer for the consideration enterprise profit, to salary policy, and motivation system whether can remind along with the retirement pension, makes the significant change. In addition, according to is connected the domestic and foreign research demonstration, the work degree of satisfaction with leaves job the wish to have obviously is being connected, has drawn back the new labor pension act made rule since June 2004 male Browe, brings the impact to the enterprise is: The staff loyalty drops, leaves job the tide and the rate of flow increases, outside the work a package of increase and so on.After the employer has taken these measures, the relative staff is unable to the present work to meet its need, therefore this research attempts to understand after the fatigue draws back the newly made official implementation, the staff regarding the salary fair cognition, drive system satisfaction, work satisfaction with leaves job influence the tendency. The research variable material obtains picks the provide questionnaire way, altogether sends out 500 questionnaire, the reflex winding effective sample number is 339, the effective reflex winding rate is 67.8%, after recycling effective questionnaire by SPSS statistical analysis way, picks ways and so on descriptive statistics analysis , correlation analysis, T-Test, one way anova, linear regression, makes variable research each construction surface the statistical analysis, discusses result of the research. The results of the study were as below: 1.The different variable staff, it to the influence of employee intent to resignation in compensation justice, Satisfaction in the motivation, And job satisfaction to have the significance difference personally. 2.The compensation justice, to satisfaction in the motivation, intent to resignation to have the significance difference. 3.The satisfaction in the motivation, intent to resignation to have the significance difference. 4.The job satisfaction, to variable with intent to resignation to have the intermediary influence personally. 5.The job satisfaction, with intent to resignation to the compensation justice to have the intermediary influence. 6.The job satisfaction, to satisfaction in the motivation with intent to resignation to have the intermediary influence. 7.The different variable staff, the compensation justice, satisfaction in the motivation, the job satisfaction to intent to resignation to have the significance influence.