Thesis advisor: Diana C. Pullin / Framed in the context of increased media attention focused on a shortage of qualified candidates for the superintendency of public school districts, this study examines the thought process of educational leaders who are in a position to pursue the superintendency. A review of the literature explored the increasing challenges of the position itself, and examined business and psychology literature concerning applicant attraction and the concept of fit including the factors that may attract and deter potential applicants. Qualitative research methods were used to illuminate the thought process that accompanies consideration of the superintendency. The following research questions were considered: what factors, including job desirability and accessibility, influence the pursuit intentions of individuals qualified to be superintendent, and, how does the mix of motivators and inhibitors impact the decision to pursue or not to pursue the position? Twelve in-depth interviews were conducted with graduates of a doctoral program in educational leadership, all currently working as educational leaders in public school districts. Coded transcripts from the interviews highlighted the importance of perceived positional and organizational fit, the use of a common mental checklist to conceptualize fit, and the weight that is applied to different factors. Data also pointed to the ways in which female and racial/ethnic minorities experience the pursuit process differently, especially in terms of their access to pipeline networks. Recommendations are made for professional associations of educational leaders, search agencies and school districts, and higher education. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

The focus of this study is to explore the effect social media have on influencing consumers’ purchase intentions for different brands. More specifically, this paper aims to examine how different social media communication styles for a brand, such as firm generated content (FGC) and user generated content (UGC), influence consumers’ purchase intentions for different brands when valenced either positively or negatively. Firm-generated content is a communication style which is essentially a form of advertising that is completely controlled by a brand and follows a marketing strategy (Schvinski & Dabrowski, 2016). User-generated content is an original communication style created by consumers that are unrelated to any specific brand and is disseminated via the internet (Daugherty, Eastin, & Bright, 2008). The participants of this study were 61 undergraduate liberal arts college students from southern California. Participants in the study were exposed to various brand descriptions and social media posts and tasked with indicating their purchase intentions for these brands. The results of this study imply that different communication styles as well as different brand valences significantly influence consumers’ purchase intentions. Positively valenced brands positively influenced purchase intentions while negatively valenced brands negatively impacted purchase intentions. FGC was shown to have a more positive effect on purchase intentions than UGC, however, UGC was shown to have a strong negative influence on purchase intention when UGC posts were valenced negatively.

Employee turnover has been responsible for the failure of many small businesses in the United States. Business leaders do not always understand the reasons employees choose to leave an organization. This correlational study, grounded in Herzberg's 2-factor theory, examined the relationship between intrinsic employee job satisfaction, extrinsic employee job satisfaction, and employee turnover intention among employees in small businesses. Participants included 129 employees of a small business in Western New York. The Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire and Turnover Intention Survey were used to collect the data. The multiple regression analysis significantly predicted extrinsic employee turnover intentions, F(3, 103) = 25.687, p = .001, R2 = .428, and while extrinsic motivation was a predictor, intrinsic motivation was not. Recommendations for future research include focus on specific extrinsic and intrinsic categories in additional contexts. Implications for social change include small business owners understanding the motivation behind employee turnover, which may result in reduced costs to the company, keeping experienced employees, reduced errors made by inexperienced new hires, and increased productivity because there is not a learning curve for tenured employees.

We study the aggregate gap between intended and actual fertility in 19 European countries and the US based on a cohort approach. This complements prior research that had mainly used a period approach. We compare the mean intended number of children among young women aged 20 to 24 (born in the early 1970s), meas ured during the 1990s in the Fertility and Family Surveys, with data on completed fertility in the same cohorts around age 40. In a similar manner, we compare the share who state that they do not want a child with actual cohort childlessness. Our exploration is informed by the cognitive-social model of fertility intentions devel- oped by Bachrach and Morgan (Popul Dev Rev 39(3):459-485, 2013). In all coun- tries, women eventually had, on average, fewer children than the earlier expectations in their birth cohort, and more often than intended, they remained childless. The results reveal distinct regional patterns, which are most apparent for childlessness. The gap between intended and actual childlessness is widest in the Southern Euro- pean and the German-speaking countries and smallest in the Central and Eastern European countries. Additionally, we analyze the aggregate intentions-fertility gap among women with different levels of education. The gap is largest among highly educated women in most countries studied and the educational gradient varies by region, most distinctively for childlessness. Differences between countries suggest that contextual factors-norms about parenthood, work-family policies, unemployment-shape women's fertility goals, total family size, and the gap between them.

Retention and productivity levels of a workforce are one of the essential ingredients for organisations to prosper in today's competitive business environment. Turnover intentions of the workforce are an important consideration for managers of organisations, employees, families, and communities alike. This study investigated a comprehensive model of turnover intentions that included two proximal variables, (job satisfaction, and organisational commitment), the distal variables of organisational justice, work strain, work overload, and work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict with the turnover intentions. A questionnaire was completed by 114 participants of the Allied Health workforce at the Waikato District Health Board, from allied health occupational groups, psychologists, physiotherapists, social workers, dieticians, and speech language therapists. Job satisfaction, affective commitment, distributive, interactional, and procedural justice, strain and family-to-work conflict were correlated with turnover intentions. Results of the mediated regression analyses found that job satisfaction and affective commitment are significant mediators between distributive, interactional, and procedural justice, work strain, and family work conflict with turnover intentions. The major implications from this research are that managers of organisation need to foster job satisfaction and affective commitment within their organisation to reduce turnover intentions. In the final chapter, the conclusions are discussed in terms of its practical implications to organisations, employees and the need for future research.

The broad aim of this research program was to advance theoretical and practical knowledge of service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty intentions. This was achieved by refining existing models or concepts, testing relationships between constructs that have not previously been examined, or applying constructs that have been well understood in a specific academic domain, in a service industry context. The current research program began in 2003 with the first published output appearing in 2004. The program was completed in 2007. It consists of nine peer reviewed publications that have been classified into three distinct phases. In many respects it was an evolutionary process, in that earlier findings identified the questions for proceeding research, and while service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty intentions were of primary concern, other constructs were also examined. These were cultural values, work values, consumption emotions, mood and destination image. The unit of analysis in all of the articles was individuals, as opposed to organisations, and as such, the theories and concepts that were examined and tested throughout the research program have their origins in psychology. As a consequence, the research findings have implications not only for the tourism industry, but any service that involves an interaction between people.

This study reviews the burgeoning literature on followership and tests propositions from a recently developed theoretical framework to explore the relationship between follower behaviours, leaders’ perceptions of follower trustworthiness (trusting beliefs), and leaders’ subsequent willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of their followers (trusting intentions). Leaders’ implicit followership theories (IFTs) were examined as a potential moderator of both relationships. Results revealed that passive followership influenced leaders’ trusting beliefs negatively, whereas collaborative followership had a positive influence on leaders’ trusting beliefs as well as leaders’ trusting intentions. The most extreme form of proactive followership, challenging followership, had nonsignificant relationships with leaders’ trusting beliefs and intentions. In addition, leaders’ IFTs did not interact with followership behaviour to produce any change in leaders’ trusting beliefs. However, IFTs were found to moderate the relationship between leaders’ trusting beliefs and trusting intentions. Implications for research and practice are discussed in light of the results.

This study reviews the burgeoning literature on followership and tests propositions from a recently developed theoretical framework to explore the relationship between follower behaviours, leaders’ perceptions of follower trustworthiness (trusting beliefs), and leaders’ subsequent willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of their followers (trusting intentions). Leaders’ implicit followership theories (IFTs) were examined as a potential moderator of both relationships. Results revealed that passive followership influenced leaders’ trusting beliefs negatively, whereas collaborative followership had a positive influence on leaders’ trusting beliefs as well as leaders’ trusting intentions. The most extreme form of proactive followership, challenging followership, had nonsignificant relationships with leaders’ trusting beliefs and intentions. In addition, leaders’ IFTs did not interact with followership behaviour to produce any change in leaders’ trusting beliefs. However, IFTs were found to moderate the relationship between leaders’ trusting beliefs and trusting intentions. Implications for research and practice are discussed in light of the results.

This investigation explored the contextual factors affecting young consumers’ attitudes and their intentions of green purchase behavior in the area of consumer behavior. This study seeks to understand young consumers’ green purchase intentions based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). At the same time, this study also intends to detect variables that influence young consumers’ intentions of buying green products.  In this thesis, a quantitative approach was adopted. Using a sample of 282 young people, a survey was developed and conducted in Umeå University, Sweden. Results indicate that parental influence is the top predictor among all the variables we studied. From the correlation analyses; we can see that top three predictors are important for understanding purchase intentions of young consumers.  Influence of contextual and background factors –parents, peer, and environmental knowledge – clearly played an important role in influencing young consumers’ purchase intentions of buying green products. To the end, a proposed model is developed to understand green purchase intentions of young consumers. Implications for marketers are also discussed in this study.

Feeling connected to one’s community has been associated with increased self-rated health and well-being. Connectivity has also been linked to health behaviours such as smoking and obesity, which have been related to overall health status. Physical activity is related to overall health status as it protects against many chronic diseases. Unfortunately, less than 50% of Canadian adults are meeting the physical activity requirements set out by Canada’s Physical Activity Guide to Healthy Living. Thus, this study determines whether sense of connectedness is associated with current participation in leisure-time physical activity and intention to start or increase engagement in physical activity. Cross-sectional data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) cycle 3.1 was used to analyze the association between sense of community belonging and physical activity among Canadians aged 25 to 64. A series of logistic regression models were used to analyze the data. People reporting a stronger sense of connectedness had greater odds of being physically active with income, education and sex often moderating the relationship. It appeared that the relative odds of being physically active were greatest among people who felt very strongly connected to their communities and in the highest socioeconomic groups. Further, feeling more that very weakly connected to the community increased the odds of intending to start or increase physical activity among inactive females and decreased the odds of intending to increase physical activity among moderately active males. This study provides preliminary results regarding how important social factors may alter population level physical activity. The results from this study inform our understanding of barriers and facilitators associated with physical activity and how policies and conditions which affect community connectedness may be used to enhance physical activity.