Career development (CD) is a multilevel topic involving both the individual and the organization and influencing outcomes at the individual, group and organization level. The established limitations in current CD theory and human resource development (HRD) theory building can be addressed by examining the topic of CD through a multilevel lens. Using multilevel theory building (MLTB) to bridge the theoretical gap between individuals and organizations, this approach to theory building provides an opportunity for HRD professionals to address goals important to both individuals and organizations. Based on the CD and HRD interests described above, the threefold purpose of this study is to develop a multilevel theory of CD as a means of strengthening the theoretical connection between CD and HRD, advancing theory building in HRD, and contributing to meaningful convergence amongst existing CD theory. A new MLTB framework is developed and subsequently used to develop a multilevel theory of CD. Finally, future research options are suggested in order to make the appropriate theory refinements, continue the dialogue about MLTB and multilevel considerations in HRD, and add to the convergence of CD theory by providing a multilevel perspective of CD.

In this thesis, we aim at modeling some aspects of the functional role of emotions on an autonomous embodied agent. We begin by describing our robotic prototype, Cherry--a robot with the task of being a tour guide and an office assistant for the Computer Science Department at the University of Central Florida. Cherry did not have a formal emotion representation of internal states, but did have the ability to express emotions through her multimodal interface. The thesis presents the results of a survey we performed via our social informatics approach where we found that: (1) the idea of having emotions in a robot was warmly accepted by Cherry's users, and (2) the intended users were pleased with our initial interface design and functionalities. Guided by these results, we transferred our previous code to a human-height and more robust robot--Petra, the PeopleBot™--where we began to build a formal emotion mechanism and representation for internal states to correspond to the external expressions of Cherry's interface. We describe our overall three-layered architecture, and propose the design of the sensory motor level (the first layer of the three-layered architecture) inspired by the Multilevel Process Theory of Emotion on one hand, and hybrid robotic architecture on the other hand. The sensory-motor level receives and processes incoming stimuli with fuzzy logic and produces emotion-like states without any further willful planning or learning. We will discuss how Petra has been equipped with sonar and vision for obstacle avoidance as well as vision for face recognition, which are used when she roams around the hallway to engage in social interactions with humans. We hope that the sensory motor level in Petra could serve as a foundation for further works in modeling the three-layered architecture of the Emotion State Generator.