Theory is vital for our scientific understanding of the social world. Building, developing, and evaluating theory are therefore central practices within the social sciences. This study performs an evaluation of rational choice theory within the field of political participation. This is a theoretical framework that has had significant problems reconciling theoretical prediction with empirical findings, causing what is called the paradox of participation. For more than sixty years rational choice theorists have tried to develop new formulations of the theory to avoid this paradox. The purpose of this study is to forward this debate by providing a new perspective on rational choice theory that is purely theoretical. Using the evaluative criteria of falsifiability and leverage, the study finds that a theory using both collective and selective incentives, while also allowing the formulation of the theory to change depending on the form of political participation one wants to explain provides the most promising approach. However, the evaluation does reveal some issues in connection to selective incentives. A potential alternative solution to the paradox is therefore briefly discussed, yet a more thorough exploration of this venue is left to future research.

The global nature of today's business environment, coupled with technological advances, compels managers to work with an increasingly diverse workforce worldwide. The purpose of this multiple-case study was to explore how bank managers used employee diversity effectively in the organizational decision-making process. Participants were 10 frontline management staff (middle and executive managers) with the required employee engagement skills involved in the decision-making process of a Nigerian bank. The conceptual framework for this study was rational choice theory, also called rational action theory or choice theory. Participants responded to 8 open-ended semistructured interview questions. The data collection process included validating and triangulating information gathered via member checking and review of archival business documents and peer-reviewed journals. Thematic analysis was used to analyze data from the study. Five key themes emerged from data analysis: recruitment, retention, and improvement of diverse talents; education and integration of employees with a divergent institutional heritage; engagement and leveraging of diverse stakeholders; business innovation, and productivity; and decision-making, and profitability. The implications of this study for social change include employee diversity management and strategic practices that contribute to effective decision-making process in the organization to improve socio-economic development of stakeholders (customers, board of directors, employees, policymakers and business contractors) and promote cohesion within bank staff and stakeholders resulting to improved business relationship and tolerance in society.

No description available.

No description available.

School Choice is a topic that finds itself at the top of school reform and political agendas across the United States, while also being a significant focal point in the educational literature. However, little attention in the debate has been placed on private, independent school choice – including private religious school choice – despite that data that shows “seventy-nine percent of all private schools had a religious affiliation in 1999– 2000: 30 percent . . . affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, and 49 percent with other religious groups” (U.S. Department of Education, 2002, p. 3) and that “initial research on school choice that concentrated on private schools did acknowledge that many parents are likely to choose a private school for religious values” (Bauch and Goldring, 1995). This study focuses on examining the choice behaviors of families who choose independent, nondenominational Christian education, including the reasons they choose to exit before graduation and including the central role of information sources in making such choices. The study uses Rational Choice Theory and Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty Theory as theoretical frameworks in order to couch the findings. The conclusions of this study are further couched in a bi-modal framework that posits choice involves “foundational factors” necessary for further investigation of potential schools and “factors of ethos” that, in essence, “break the tie” in the choice process – leading families to choose one particular school over others. The findings of the study, similar to the findings within other school choice literature, show that word-of-mouth information sources – predominant in informal/relational connections – are clearly the “most helpful” and “most important” sources of information in the choice process. However, the importance of web-based sources and achievement test scores also are found to be significant information sources for families who choose private, nondenominational Christian Education. In addition, in this study the differences between exiters and families that reenroll are not shown to be statistically significant and, therefore, the author suggests that theories focused on the ongoing relationships between constituents and organizations, instead of theories related to exit such as Hirschman’s Exit theory, may be more beneficial in the ongoing school choice and school reform debates.

This thesis will apply a theory consuming method studying voter turnout between swing states in the United States. To accomplish the theory consuming study, the study is divided into two phases. It will start testing Downs’ rational choice theory and apply this to voter turnout. It will then move on to applying the independent variables, socioeconomic background and voting laws to understand voter turnout from this perspective. The study starts with the hypothesis that Downs’ rational choice theory should be able to explain swing states’ voter participation. However, the research shows rational choice theory cannot explain the voter turnout in swing states. In the second phase, the study tests socioeconomic background and voting laws. These two independent variables better explain the voter turnout in swing states. Being well educated while being well off financially have a bigger impact than what rational choice theory can explain. It does not matter if P is overestimated and C is almost nil, it did not help to explain the voter difference in swing states, even though according to the theory, swing states should vote accordingly. To be able to increase voter turnout in swing states with a low voter turnout, not only does voting laws have to become more liberal, but one law in particular seems to make the biggest difference: the possibility to register on election day. However, changing voting laws are not enough. The largest impact is your socioeconomic background. A high educational attainment and being financially stable over the poverty level are the core reasons for voter turnout. Taking people out of poverty and creating opportunities for all to attend college is where higher voter turnout starts.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Tübingen, 2007/2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

abstract: Speculation regarding interstate conflict is of great concern to many, if not, all people. As such, forecasting interstate conflict has been an interest to experts, scholars, government officials, and concerned citizens. Presently, there are two approaches to the problem of conflict forecasting with divergent results. The first tends to use a bird’s eye view with big data to forecast actions while missing the intimate details of the groups it is studying. The other opts for more grounded details of cultural meaning and interpretation, yet struggles in the realm of practical application for forecasting. While outlining issues with both approaches, an important question surfaced: are actions causing interpretations and/or are the interpretations driving actions? In response, the Theory of Narrative Conflict (TNC) is proposed to begin answering these questions. To properly address the complexity of forecasting and of culture, TNC draws from a number of different sources, including narrative theory, systems theory, nationalism, and the expression of these in strategic communication. As a case study, this dissertation examines positions of both the U.S. and China in the South and East China Seas over five years. Methodologically, this dissertation demonstrates the benefit of content analysis to identify local narratives and both stabilizing and destabilizing events contained in thousands of news articles over a five-year period. Additionally, the use of time series and a Markov analysis both demonstrate usefulness in forecasting. Theoretically, TNC displays the usefulness of narrative theory to forecast both actions driven by narrative and common interpretations after events. Practically, this dissertation demonstrates that current efforts in the U.S. and China have not resulted in an increased understanding of the other country. Neither media giant demonstrates the capacity to be critical of their own national identity and preferred interpretation of world affairs. In short, the battle for the hearts and minds of foreign persons should be challenged. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Communication Studies 2017

This thesis examines the effect political trust has on voter turnout among foreign born citizens in Sweden. Economic theory is used as theoretical framework for this study and describes two types of rationale; rationale of voting and rationale of migration, which must be taking into the account when trying to understand the effect of political trust among foreign born citizens. It is from this argued that the incentives to vote for foreign born citizens are very low but that political trust is high due to an improved standard of living. Based on previous research on the positive relationship of political trust and voter turnout as well as the rationale behind it, hypotheses are constructed to be tested in statistical analysis. The hypotheses are that probability to vote increases with political trust, foreign born citizens have higher political trust than native citizens, but that the effect of political trust on voter turnout among foreign born citizens is weaker than for native citizens. The empirical data used for the study are gathered from the 2016 round of the European Social Survey. The statistical analysis supports the hypotheses that probability to vote increases with political trust and that foreign born citizens do have a higher political trust than native citizens. This support in combination with the knowledge that foreign born citizens vote to a lesser degree creates a paradox that would be solved by the last hypothesis, that the effect is weaker among foreign born citizens. However, this hypothesis cannot be completely supported, but there are reasons to believe that with better data the outcome would be positive. The study still reaches the conclusion that political trust among foreign born people is an important issue to take into account for policy makers and future research.

Abstract Employee violations of IS security policies is recognized as a key concern for organizations. Although interest in IS security has risen in recent years, little empirical research has examined this problem. To address this research gap, this dissertation identifies deliberate IS security policy violations as a phenomenon unique from other forms of computer abuse. To better understand this phenomenon, three guidelines for researching deliberate IS security violations are proposed. An analysis of previous behavioral IS security literature shows that no existing study meets more than one of these guidelines. Using these guidelines as a basis, this dissertation examines IS security policy violations using three theoretical models drawn from the following perspectives: neutralization theory, rational choice theory, and protection motivation theory. Three field studies involving surveys of 1,423 professional respondents belonging to 7 organizations across 47 countries were performed for empirical testing of the models. The findings of these studies identify several factors that strongly predict intentions to violate IS security policies. These results significantly increase our understanding of why employees choose to violate IS security policies and provide empirically-grounded implications for how practitioners can improve employee IS security policy compliance.