Stressful experiences external to a marriage (e.g., work stress, finances) are often associated with poor relationship functioning and lowered marital satisfaction, a phenomenon called stress spillover. To date, however, little attention has been devoted to understanding the specific mechanisms through which stress may lead to maladaptive relationship patterns. Drawing from theories of self-regulatory depletion, it was predicted that coping with external stress is an effortful process that consumes spouses' regulatory resources, leaving spouses with less energy to effectively respond to their relationship issues. The current study relied on a sample of 171 newly-married couples to examine whether self-regulatory depletion may mediate the link between external stress and relationship well-being. Couples were asked to complete a 14-day daily diary, which assessed their daily stress, their state of self-regulatory depletion, their marital behaviors, and their daily marital appraisals. Within-person analyses revealed that, on average, couples experienced stress spillover, such that on days when their stress was higher than usual they reported enacting more negative behaviors towards their partner and endorsed less positive appraisals of the relationship. Further evidence revealed that self-regulatory depletion accounted for a majority of these spillover effects. These findings suggest that even happy and committed couples may find it difficult to engage in adaptive relationship processes under conditions of stress. / text

The purpose of this research was to examine the friendships of emerging adults as influenced by familial environments in order to illuminate interpersonal aspects of well-being. Recent literature affirms that friendships play a critical role in the lives of emerging adults; these interpersonal connections rely on the use of friendship formation strategies and maintenance behaviors. Employing a longitudinal design that included both participant and peer reports, this study found that individuals’ use of friendship formation strategies and maintenance behaviors contribute to their overall well-being and that the path for maintenance behaviors was partially mediated by relational quality with friends. Further, it was expected that the propensity to engage in friendship work (i.e., formation strategies and maintenance behaviors) would be predicted by communication within the parent-child relationship. Recent scholarship asserts that parent confirmation affects both the socialization and psychosocial development of children. The current work employed a confirmation perspective to assess how families lay the groundwork for emerging adults’ communicative behaviors in friendship and found that parent confirmation predicted individuals’ use of friendship formation and maintenance behaviors. Together, these associations pave a social-cognitive pathway from family and friendship to well-being. / text

Office is a blooming building type in rapidly developing China. Most of the current Chinese office layouts and work patterns are following the mode from western countries and cities are now becoming the same as any big city in the world. Beijing is the capital city of China keeping unique Chinese culture for thousands of years. It is time for thinking more about preserving regional characters rather than pursuing for the international style. Design can get inspirations from traditional buildings – the right scale, the courtyard space combination, the typical materials application and so on. Thus, for the future office design of Beijing, preserving its own characters and creating an environment fitting for its own culture and people is the keystone. Based on those research and analysis about Chinese office development history, culture background, current office layouts and so on, I provide a prototype – a novel office layout that can respond to emerging work pattern requirements and Chinese culture-work relationship. Then apply the prototype into a specific site to complete a test based on the real scenario. / text

Dell Inc. has a long and storied history that started in a dorm room and through many highs, and some lows, became a $60 billion international powerhouse. Now that the U.S. PC market is so saturated it becomes increasingly important to build long term customer relationships. While Dell transforms itself into an end-to-end solutions provider that will deliver hardware and state of the art services and software it needs to also create a new way to cultivate relationships on the consumer level. Some of these customer relationships have been somewhat damaged due to the extremely rapid growth of the company, its departments, and the amount of customers served. Corporations around the world have been using the same departmental model that has made it easy to manage a company but difficult for a customer to navigate it. This report will analyze the problem with the current departmental model and suggest an alternative that is cost effective and customer centric. / text

published_or_final_version / Social Work and Social Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The purpose of this study was first to describe the impact of the relationship between adolescent newcomers in South Winnipeg secondary schools and their teachers. Additional sub-questions examined teacher valuation of newcomer’s cultural background and solicited advice for both EAL newcomers and educators. Data was collected via semi-structured interviews with recent EAL adult graduates that arrived in Manitoba between the ages of 13-17, with the intent of discovering common themes from their experiences. Results revealed the importance of EAL newcomers having a caring, patient teacher with a sense of humour that has a sincere interest in who they are and in their cultural heritage. They also clearly show the need for schools to look for more effective and authentic ways to connect newcomers with their Canadian peers. This report concludes with recommendations for teachers and administrators to consider when developing teacher PD and programming for newcomer adolescent EAL students. / October 2015

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the relationship between humans and animals in the Hebrew Bible. Although the Hebrew Bible contains a multitude of different perspectives on animals, I argue that there are two basic categories into which these perspectives fall. One group of biblical texts, most notably Gen 1:28, affirms humans’ dominion over animals. Despite the ubiquity of this perspective in scholarly literature, an examination of the entire biblical corpus suggests that these texts represent the minority. A larger group of biblical texts, most notably Job 39:9, depict animals as beyond the dominion of human beings. Rather than attempting to account for every mention of animals in the Hebrew Bible, I will examine a select group of passages that represent each of the two positions. Regarding passages that depict animals as under humans’ dominion, I conclude that while these passages suggest that humans have some authority over animals, that dominion is neither complete nor absolute. Regarding passages that depict animals as beyond humans’ dominion, I will conclude that they in fact indicate that animals are under the direct dominion of God. The Hebrew Bible nowhere grants humans absolute dominion over animals but instead typically presents humans as having little, if any, dominion over animals. In general, the Hebrew Bible presents humans as possessing dominion over domestic animals and lacking dominion over wild animals. This presentation probably reflects the actual relationship that the Israelites had to the animals around them. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

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Consumers watch what a brand does, listen to what a brand says, and expect to make a meaningful connection with a brand via social media. Thus, creating effective and persuasive content on behalf of a brand to attract consumers becomes an important task for today’s marketers in social media. In this dissertation, brand information disclosure is defined as any communication of a brand’s relevant information, thoughts, and feelings, which are generated and deliberately disclosed by marketers. Further, disclosing perceived backstage of a brand by showing various behind-the-scenes information is proposed as a unique type of brand information disclosure, which is interpreted as a higher degree of brand information disclosure. Motivated by the integral role of self-disclosure in interpersonal relationships, the purpose of this dissertation study is to investigate the influence of a brand’s disclosure of perceived backstage information through social media. Specifically, this study explored how the degree and the scarcity of information disclosure would influence on consumer’s intimacy, liking, and trust toward a brand as well as consumer-brand relationship quality. Further, the study attempts to investigate the moderating role of consumer’s advertising skepticism on consumer responses. The findings from this dissertation study illustrate that degree of brand information disclosure is a significant influence on consumers’ brand evaluations and consumer-brand relationship quality in a social media environment. In addition, findings highlighted the influential role of the scarcity of information disclosure, depending upon the degree of information disclosure. Moreover, the findings evidenced how the consumer’s general advertising skepticism can play a significant role when consumers are exposed to information from the brand via social media. / text

Online shopping is becoming more popular in recent decades and there is certainly a variety ofvariables contributing to keeping customers interested in shopping online. Based on research inthe business-to-business setting we proposed four variables including security, communication,product and personalization that influence the relationship quality. The purpose of this study isto investigate whether these variables have impacts on business-to-consumer relationshipquality and explore their practical implications, and then suggest how companies enhance theircustomer relationship. The variables’ effects are empirically tested through regression analysiswith data obtained from questionnaire. The results show that four variables positively influencethe B2C relationship quality, but they have different effects in different companies.Additionally, we make practical recommendations by using Tmall and JD.com as case studies.