Abstract Due to personal experience, I¡¦m interested in the impact of the leading style on the employees. When I was reading related research, I found that the leading style didn¡¦t show positive correlation on job performance when using the relation-oriented and job-oriented as the independent variable. Modern research support transactional leadership and transformational leadership. Therefore I took leading style as the independent variable, job performance as the dependent variable and the moderating variable is psychological contract. Descriptive statistics, reliability, factor-analysis, Pearson correlation and regression were chosen for data analysis and hypothesis testing. The result is shown as the following: 1. Transactional leadership and transformational leadership have positive impact on job performance. 1.1 Transactional leadership and transformational leadership have positive correlation impact and significant impact on task performance. 1.2 Transformational leadership has positive correlation impact and significant impact on contextual performance. 2. Psychological contract has different impact on job performance. 2.1 On task performance 2.1.1 Balanced contract has positive correlation impact and significant impact on task performance. 2.1.2 Relational contract has positive correlation impact and no significant impact on task performance. 2.1.3 Transactional contract has negative correlation impact and no significant impact on task performance. 2.2 On contextual impact 2.2.1 Balanced contract has positive correlation impact and significant impact on task performance. 2.2.2 Relational contract has positive correlation impact and no significant impact on task performance. 2.2.3 Transactional contract has negative correlation impact and no significant impact on task performance. 3.Psychological contract has positive correlation with leading style and job performance. 3.1Relational contract has negative moderating effect between transformational leadership and task performance. 3.2 Relational contract has negative moderating effect between transformational leadership and contextual performance.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a mathematics enrichment activity used to improve the mathematics performance of students relative to participation in the State Agricultural Mechanics Career Development Event (CDE) and in mandated assessments. The treatment group (13 schools, 43 students) participated in a mathematics enrichment activity situated in an agricultural mechanics context. The control group (16 schools, 56 students) did not participate in the enrichment activity. Both groups, as part of the CDE, were tested with a 100-question word problem examination, completed a individual skill and team activity, and completed a demographic instrument regarding participation in agricultural mechanics CDEs, scholastic performance, use of graphing calculators, enrollment in STEM, agricultural science, and fine arts courses, and other information. After the survey was conducted, schools were asked to provide TAKS exit scores on participating students. These scores were compared between schools and against statewide TAKS scores. Results of the study showed a significant improvement in scores on the individual written examination and teams scores for the agricultural mechanics CDE and on the TAKS exit level mathematics assessment. Mean written examination scores for the treatment group were 69.53; non-cooperators were 57.16. Mean total team scores for cooperating teams were 420.39; non-cooperators had a mean score of 368.13. Mean TAKS exit level mathematics scores for cooperators were 2336.78; non-cooperators had a mean TAKS exit level score of 2331.77. Participation in the enrichment activity improved both CDE and mathematics achievement scores.

The skill of putting in golf contributes approximately 40 percent to one’s total score making it an important skill to master in golf. One of the critical means of improving putting skill is through practice. The purpose of this study was to: (a) investigate if different practice schedules with different degrees of contextual interference (CI) influenced the participants’ immediate and long-term putting performance, (b) examine if performance changes were associated with concomitant changes in specific kinematic parameters, and (c) assess the cognitions of the participants during various stages of the practice of the putting skill. Twenty-four undergraduate students were randomly assigned to either a blocked or random practice schedule. On Day One each participant practiced putting to three targets (4 ft, 8 ft, and 12 ft distance) for a total of 108 trials (36 trials to each target). On Day Two 30 trials of retention (10 trials to each target) and 10 transfer trials (10 ft distance) were performed. To obtain a kinematic description of the putting action, an OPTOTRAKTM 3020 camera system recorded the 3D movement of the putter. Participants’ cognitions were analyzed from stimulated recall interview data. Random practice participants exhibited poorer putting performance during acquisition compared to their blocked practice counterparts but showed superior performance in retention and transfer tests. While the blocked practice participants had significantly lower variability in the amplitude in the x-dimension for backswing, impact velocity, and putter position at impact (z-dimension) during practice, the random practice participants showed significantly lower variability in the amplitude of the x-dimension for the backswing and downswing, impact velocity, and putter position at impact during the retention and transfer phases. Content analysis of interview data yielded three emergent categories: participant focus, self-evaluation of performance, and benefits of practice. The participants provided evidence of active thought processes during the putting task while receiving little instruction. The blocked group focused more on accuracy while the random group was more focused on judging distance. The lack of recognition about the z-dimension has potential implications for how instruction and feedback might be employed during the learning process.

This study aims to find coping resources in two different paradigms of pastoral care using coping theory from the psychology of religion. The intention is to find coping resources that are functional coping strategies to help priests and chaplains in their work with pastoral care. The research questions are: What coping resources can be found in the pastoral clinical paradigm and the contextual paradigm? What are the differences and similarities? The method used is template analysis style where the theories form a framework for the material used to analyse in this study. The theories used for this study are religious coping theory and pastoral care theory. The materials used in this study are two books about pastoral care by Bergstrand & Lidbeck (1997) Själavård I and Patton (2005) Pastoral Care An essential Guide. The analysis points out that the coping resources in pastoral care theory are: tutoring, delimitation, prayer and education. These were represented in both of the pastoral care paradigms. In the pastoral clinical paradigm the coping resources focus was on the individual level whereas in the contextual paradigm the focus was on the group and organisation level. / Detta är en uppsats som via två olika själavårdsparadigm, kontextuellt själavårdsparadigm samt pastoralkliniskt själavårdsparadigm söker finna copingresurser i orienteringssystemet som kan fungera som funktionella copingstrategier för själavårdarens stresshantering i sin yrkesroll som själavårdare. Jag söker efter att finna likheter och skillnader själavårdsparadigmen emellan. Frågeställningarna i denna uppsats är följande: 1. Vilka copingresurser erbjuds för själavårdare av pastoralkliniskt själavårdsparadigm? 2. Vilka copingresurser erbjuds för själavårdare av kontextuellt själavårdsparadigm? 3. Vilka likheter och skillnader kan urskiljas? För att besvara frågeställningarna har jag använt mig av två böcker om själavård, en svensk bok som är skriven för blivande själavårdare, nuvarande själavårdare samt människor intresserade av själavård av Bergstrand och Lidbeck (1997) som heter Själavård I. Jag har även använt mig av en bok som är skriven i en amerikansk kontext om själavård av Patton (2005) som heter Pastoral care an essential guide. Som metod för denna uppsats har jag använt mig av en teoristyrd analys, template analysis style. Denna metod innebär att teorierna är referensramen för uppsatsen. Teorierna jag använt mig av är själavårdsteori samt religionspsykologisk copingteori. Resultatet jag fått fram visar på flera olika copingresurser som funktionella copingstrategier: handledning i grupp eller enskilt, gränsdragning, bön och utbildning. Dessa har varit gemensamma för de båda själavårdsparadigmen dock på olika nivåer, främst individuell nivå eller främst gruppnivå. I pastoralkliniskt själavårdsparadigm är nivån mer åt det individuella medan i kontextuellt själavårdsparadigm är nivån på gruppnivå samt organisationsnivå. I de båda själavårdsparadigmerna fanns inslag av både den individuella nivån samt gruppnivån.

Small information technology and management consulting businesses face increasingly contradictory strategic choices as they develop products and services for the marketplace. Building contextual ambidexterity is essential to the survival of small businesses as they seek to attain a desired balance of alignment and adaptability. Human Resource Management practices facilitate the development of ambidexterity within individuals thereby facilitating ambidexterity of the organization as a whole. Studies suggest that in order for an organization to be ambidextrous, its human resource management function also needs to ambidextrous. High-performance work systems are human resource practices designed to enhance the ability, motivation, and opportunity of employees with the overarching goal of attracting, retaining, and motivating human resources toward the completion of organizational goals. Based on Gibson and Birkinshaw’s concept of organizational ambidexterity, a qualitative case study of a small technology solution provider was conducted to explore the process by which CloudCo attempted to build contextual ambidexterity by implementing a high-performance work system. Findings show that executive management of small technology solution providers can build contextual ambidexterity and sustain a competitive advantage through the implementation of high-performance work systems but must overcome a series of important tensions to do so.

With rising levels of immigration comes a need to know what fosters positive adaptation for the youth growing up in a new culture of settlement.The issue is increasingly studied; however, little of the research conducted has combined a developmental with a contextual approach. The aim of this dissertation was to explore the adaptation of immigrant youth on the basis of developmental theories and models which put emphasis on setting or contextual conditions. This entailed viewing immigrant youths as developing organisms that actively interact with their environments. Further, immigrant youths were seen as embedded in multiple settings, at different levels and with different contextual features. Two of the overall research questions addressed how contextual features of the settings in which the youth are embedded were related to adaptation. Results from all three studies combined to show that the contextual feature of a setting is not of prime or sole importance for the adaptation of immigrant youth, and that the contextual feature of SES diversity is of greater importance than theethnic compositions of settings. The next two overall research questions addressed how the linkage between settings was related to adaptation. The results indicated that adaptation is not always setting specific and that what is happening in one setting can be related to adaptation in anothersetting. Further, it was found that the cultural distance between settings is related to adaption, but that contextual factors affect this relationship. Overall, the results of the dissertation suggests that the adaptation of immigrant youth is a complex matter that is explained better by interaction and indirect effects than by main and direct effects. This highlights the importance of taking all settings in which the immigrant youths are embedded into account and to account for how the settings interact to understand the factors that foster and hinder positive adaptation of immigrant youth. / <p>The article "Homophily in friendship networks of immigrant and nonimmigrantyouth: Does context matter?" in the list of studies is published electronically as "Peer selection and influence of delinquent behavior of immigrant and nonimmigrant youths: does context matter?"</p>

Today’s software systems are becoming increasingly integrated into the lives of their end-users and their ever-changing environments and needs. These demands lead to a growing complexity of systems. The development of adaptive systems is a promising way to manage this complexity. Adaptive systems are able to adapt their behavior at operation time while considering the changing operational environment to maximize the satisfaction of end-user needs. However, adaptive systems have their own challenges to overcome. Especially, requirements engineering for adaptive systems is challenging given the fact that requirements are active runtime entities and can change at runtime. Requirements engineering activities have not only to take place at design but also at runtime. Requirements engineering for adaptive systems is an emerging research area that has so far received little attention, compared to other research areas (e.g., architecture) for adaptive systems. Adaptive systems need to have a full understanding of the context in order to handle the complexity and satisfy end-user needs. Therefore, a new trend in require- ments engineering for adaptive systems emerged to document requirements with the context in which the requirements are valid. Such contextual requirements necessi- tate adaptive systems to consider and define context in order to fully understand the requirements at operation time. Further, adaptive systems must be able to cope with uncertainty inherent in a changing runtime environment. Otherwise, adaptive sys- tems will not be able to satisfy end-user needs. Therefore, after the system has been deployed, support for the evolution of contextual requirements is needed, too. The trend of considering context as part of a contextual requirement poses new challenges in the field of requirements engineering. This dissertation investigates the capture and evolution of contextual requirements for adaptive systems, which leads to three contributions: First, this dissertation presents a framework that differentiates between context and requirements as two separate entities in contextual requirements that can be captured and can be evolved independently. It is especially necessary to capture and evolve the essential context to support the ability of a system to adapt to fulfilling the needs of its end-users, whose requirements and context are constantly changing. The framework is then applied in two case studies. The first case study investi- gates the usefulness of existing requirements elicitation techniques for the elicitation of contextual requirements. This dissertation’s second contribution is the empirical evidence that existing requirement elicitation techniques can be used for the capture of contextual requirements at design time. We propose a combination of interviews, focus groups and prototyping that we found useful in eliciting contextual requirements in our case study. The second study develops and evaluates techniques to support the evolution of context when contextual requirements are validated at runtime. For this purpose we propose an approach which uses machine learning and feedback loops to support the evolution of contextual requirements and which represents the third contribution of this dissertation. / Graduate

The ability to make associations between causal cues and outcomes is an important adaptive trait that allows us to properly prepare for an upcoming event. Encoding context is a type of associative processing; thus, context is also an important aspect of acquiring causal relationships. Context gives us additional information about how two events are related and allows us to be flexible in how we respond to causal cues. Research indicates that older adults exhibit an associative deficit as well as a deficit in contextual processing; therefore, it seems likely that these deficits are responsible for the deficit in older adults’ causal learning. The purpose of the current study was to more directly test how associative deficits related to older adults’ contextual processing affect their causal learning. Based on past research, it was hypothesized that older adults would be less likely than younger adults to acquire and use contextual information in causal learning. A causal learning scenario from Boddez, Baeyens, Hermans, and Beckers (2011) was used to test the hypothesis that older adults show deficits in contextual processing in a causal learning scenario. This task examined contextual processing using blocking and extinction. Participants went through eight blocks of trials in which they were exposed to various cues and outcomes. They provided expectancy ratings that indicated how likely they believed an outcome was to occur, and these ratings were used to assess age differences in use of contextual information in a causal learning scenario. As expected, both younger and older adults demonstrated blocking in that they assigned higher causal value to a previously trained target cue (A+) than to another cue (X) that was only presented in compound with cue A later in the task (i.e., AX+). Additionally, when tested in the context where the association was originally learned following extinction training (i.e., A-), the causal value of cue A decreased for all groups, even if extinction training took place in a different context. However, ratings for cue A decreased even more for younger adults whose extinction training took place in a different context when tested in their extinction context.

This thesis is an exploratory study of the Kitchener John School Diversion Program. As a primarily community-based initiative, this program has been developed in response to a particular social problem, street prostitution. The primary focus of the program is to address the problem by targeting the clients of prostitutes. Using a contextual constructionist framework, eight qualitative, semi-structured interviews and three participant observation sessions were conducted to explore and understand how the John School works within the context of its objectives and mandate. Four research questions have been developed to achieve this and focus on (1) how program objectives are implemented within the operation of the diversion program, (2) how stakeholders problematize prostitution and its social actors, (3) what the social conditions and characteristics related to the social construction of prostitution are, as perceived by the social actors, and finally, (4) how the diversion program addresses the problem of prostitution. Through analysis of the data collected, key findings emerge that help to contextualize the diversion program within a broader understanding of its mandates and operations. Specifically, four objectives are identified as the primary goals of the school, being knowledge dissemination, accountability, diversion and change. There are notable discrepancies, however, in terms of how program staff interpret these objectives within the context of their program lectures and materials. Additionally, while strong themes and typifications emerge with respect to how prostitution and its social actors are problematized by the program staff, these themes and typifications have a tendency to conflict with one another when presented to the participants. For example, where prostitution is understood to be a social problem with a number of victims and perpetrators, the participants are frequently typified simultaneously as both victim and villain. In light of these discrepancies, however, it appears that the intended objectives and the actual operation of the diversion program both work towards the same, ultimate goal: change.

This research explored positive paternal involvement in the lives of children within the broader familial context of marital dynamics and positive maternal involvement. The National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) was used to obtain a longitudinal subsample of 582 first-married couples, as well as the wide range of variables necessary to explore this broader context of paternal influence. Three research questions guided the study: (I) What is the unique contribution of positive paternal involvement-with respect to positive maternal involvement and marital quality- in children's development? (2) How does the influence of positive paternal involvement interact with the influence of positive maternal involvement and marital quality to influence children 's development? (3) To what degree do fathers indirectly influence their children via the marital relationship and the mother-child relationship? Analysis demonstrated little evidence of fathers' unique contribution to children's aggressive/antisocial behavior, school problems, and other outcomes. Similarly, analysis demonstrated no indirect effects for paternal involvement across the 4-5 years span between Wave I and Wave 2 of the NSFH. Specifically, fathers' involvement did not indirectly affect children's outcomes via either the marital relationship or maternal involvement. However, limitations relating to internal reliability rendered findings questionable. Analysis also demonstrated a limited pattern of interaction effects between paternal involvement measures and marital and maternal variables. Specifically, Wave 2 paternal positive activities demonstrated meaningful interactions with maternal positive activities, marital happiness, and marital conflict, with respect to their influence on children's aggressive/antisocial behavior. interaction between paternal positive activities and marital variables indicated that paternal involvement is capable of interacting with other aspects of family context in ways which have both positive and negative consequences for children. Future research efforts address ing these questions should assess parental involvement in greater depth and breath, incorporating a framework capable of addressing both parental warmth and control. Similarly, future research should consider methods capable of addressing multicolinearity resulting from parallel paternal and maternal variables. Finally, future research should explore the various ways in which paternal involvement interacts with other sources of influence within families to impact the lives of children.