Thesis advisor: Michael G. Pratt / Despite calls to understand the micro-foundation of institutional theory and to understand how professional identity change relates to the broader macro context (e.g., Lok, 2010; Lepisto, Crosina and Pratt, forthcoming); exploration of the link between a field-level institutional change and the individual professionals' identity responses within the field remains. For this dissertation, I conducted an inductive qualitative study of French veterinarians and their reactions to "the Service Directive", a European Union regulation that re-categorizes veterinarians as "service providers" from "healthcare professionals." Drawing on interviews with practicing veterinarians, leaders of the field, observations, and archival data, my dissertation advances our understanding of professionals' responses to an institutional change which can potentially redefine what their profession is. My findings suggest that professionals negotiate an institutional change (in this case, the Service Directive) at the professional level before its formal implementation and before individual professionals within their organization engaged in any form of response. My dissertation introduces a model centered on understanding how veterinarians responded to this change at the individual level (and more particularly, in terms of identity) within their organization. This model suggests that individual professionals perceive the institutional regulatory change in hopeful, fearful or ambivalent manners. I found that these perceptions are influenced by professionals' work orientation and perceived organization's time orientation. Further, I found that these perceptions lead to different types of identity responses: identity expansion, identity maintenance, giving up a possible self, and de-emphasizing an existing identity. My research enriches emerging perspectives on identity responses to an institutional change by pointing out various identity responses and tying them to the perceptions of an institutional change. My research further suggests that such a change can be perceived as an opportunity, as a threat, or both, not solely as a threat. Furthermore, my dissertation introduces the notions of orientation (work orientation and perceived organization's time orientation) as key to the processing of an institutional trigger. Finally, it calls attention to an emotional processing of the institutional trigger. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Management and Organization.

The de-industrialisation of the UK economy caused by globalised international markets, advancements in technology and production with changing consumer demands have made much of what was ‘traditional’ manufacturing redundant; this has led to industrial restructuring or even collapse, resulting in mass job redundancies. Market and industrial pressures have intensified since the late 1990s, culminating in the symbolic collapse of MG Rover in 2005 in addition to other key producers in the West Midlands, which represented the end of mass automotive production in the region (Donnelly et al. 2012). This came alongside various geographical, political and economic factors, including the restructuring of regional development agencies, prolonged industrial decline and a period of national economic recession, which presented challenges for any recovery. This thesis examines more precisely the closure of the commercial vehicle manufacturer LDV in 2009, once a part of the larger conglomerate British Leyland. The closure further reinforced the decline in UK automotive manufacturing until that point. The research involves the corporate collapse of LDV and the local government reaction to the closure and the following re-employment pathways of the redundant LDV workforce. The research continues the discussion of plant closures and the issues that redundant workers face when engaged in the labour market during economic recession. In particular, the thesis contribution employs a qualitative approach to examine the difficulties faced by the office tier, or ‘white collar’, workers who possess relatively high skills and who regarded as flexible and less vulnerable workers within the labour market. Yet this research exposes that highly skilled specialist workers are themselves also subject to unique issues when adjusting to the labour market. This topic is covered through the concept of worker trajectories: the research illustrates the unique employability issues and job precariousness that highly skilled workers can experience. The research concludes that the ability of highly skilled redundant workers to adapt effectively requires local job recovery strategies to implement short- and long-term policies with an emphasis on better job search and network development for individuals to sustain a resilient economy, and to mitigate the effects of plant closure upon redundant workers and maintain high skills within the region.

Quantile regression (QR) (Koenker and Bassett, 1978), as a comprehensive extension to standard mean regression, has been steadily promoted from both theoretical and applied aspects. Bayesian quantile regression (BQR), which deals with unknown parameter estimation and model uncertainty, is a newly proposed tool of QR. This thesis aims to make some novel contributions to the following three issues related to QR. First, whereas QR for continuous responses has received much attention in literatures, QR for discrete responses has received far less attention. Second, conventional QR methods often show that QR curves crossing lead to invalid distributions for the response. In particular, given a set of covariates, it may turn out, for example, that the predicted 95th percentile of the response is smaller than the 90th percentile for some values of the covariates. Third, mean-based clustering methods are widely developed, but need improvements to deal with clustering extreme-type, heavy tailed-type or outliers problems. This thesis focuses on methods developed over these three challenges: modelling quantile regression with discrete responses, ensuring non-crossing quantile curves for any given sample and modelling tails for collinear data with outliers. The main contributions are listed as below: * The first challenge is studied in Chapter 2, in which a general method for Bayesian inference of regression models beyond the mean with discrete responses is developed. In particular, this method is developed for both Bayesian quantile regression and Bayesian expectile regression. This method provides a direct Bayesian approach to these regression models with a simple and intuitive interpretation of the regression results. The posterior distribution under this approach is shown to not only be coherent to the response variable, irrespective of its true distribution, but also proper in relation to improper priors for unknown model parameters. * Chapter 3 investigates a new kernel-weighted likelihood smoothing quantile regression method. The likelihood is based on a normal scale-mixture representation of an asymmetric Laplace distribution (ALD). This approach benefits of the same good design adaptation just as the local quantile regression (Spokoiny et al., 2014) does and ensures non-crossing quantile curves for any given sample. * In Chapter 4, we introduce an asymmetric Laplace distribution to model the response variable using profile regression, a Bayesian non-parametric model for clustering responses and covariates simultaneously. This development allows us to model more accurately for clusters which are asymmetric and predict more accurately for extreme values of the response variable and/or outliers. In addition to the three major aforementioned challenges, this thesis also addresses other important issues such as smoothing extreme quantile curves and avoiding insensitive to heteroscedastic errors as well as outliers in the response variable. The performances of all the three developments are evaluated via both simulation studies and real data analysis.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a growing health problem. Current treatment options are not always effective and take several weeks of regular administration before an improvement can be seen in symptoms. Sub-anaesthetic doses of ketamine have been found to have antidepressant effects in previously treatment-resistant MDD after just one dose. However, ketamine also produces short term psychosis-like side effects which are undesirable for MDD patients. Ketamine is known to be an NMDA receptor antagonist, binding within the channel pore to block ion flow, however the molecular mechanism(s) underlying its antidepressant and psychosis-like effects are still unclear. In this thesis several genetically modified mouse lines were used to probe the molecular events involved in ketamine's actions. Firstly, a mouse line in which the c-terminal domain (CTD) of the NMDAR subtype GluN2B had been replaced with that of GluN2A, and a second line in which the opposite replacement had taken place, were used to investigate the role of the CTD in the NMDAR response to ketamine. It was found that the GluN2B CTD is required for the short-term psychosis-like response to a sub-anaesthetic dose of ketamine. This is interesting as the channel pore region, containing the binding site for ketamine, is unaltered in these mutants. Therefore, this finding implicates GluN2B CTD specific intracellular signalling molecules in this action of ketamine and raises the question of whether the CTD itself is able to respond to ketamine binding within the pore to induce signalling changes, perhaps via a conformational change. Secondly, a mouse line, in which the activity-regulated synaptic protein Arc has been tagged with a fluorescent marker, was used to investigate the response of synapses to both anaesthetic and sub-anaesthetic doses of ketamine. In this experiment tagged Arc protein was visible as punctate accumulations at synapses. A novel method termed 'synaptome mapping' was used to image these accumulations across entire coronal sections and to quantify their number, size and intensity. Using this method alterations to the Arc synaptome map were detected 1h, 6h and 24h following ketamine administration. The two doses used produced different changes to this map, with the sub-anaesthetic antidepressant dose inducing increases in Arc puncta number across many brain regions, whereas the anaesthetic dose induced short term (1h) increases followed by longer term decreases in Arc puncta number. This finding links long-term increases in Arc at the synapse with an antidepressant response to ketamine.

This dissertation consists of two essays that discuss the influence of embarrassment on consumers. In the first essay, I examine consumers’ coping responses to embarrassment in a meta-analytic review. In essay two, I utilize an experimental approach to investigate the impact of embarrassing encounters on unrelated consumers who merely observe the situation. In the first essay, the meta-analysis is guided by findings in the literature that demonstrate embarrassment can both promote and detract from consumer well-being. However, despite being investigated for decades, little is known about how consumers cope with embarrassing situations, and when and why consumers respond in positive and negative ways. The meta-analysis draws on the transactional framework of appraisals and coping to analyze the extant literature, construing positive responses as problem-focused coping, and negative responses as emotion-focused coping. I examine both situational and trait factor moderators to explain variance in these divergent outcomes and to resolve competing findings. A meta-analysis of 93 independent samples (N = 24,051) revealed that embarrassment leads to both problem-focused coping (r = 0.21), which can promote consumer well-being, and emotion-focused coping (r = 0.23), which can detract from consumer well-being. The relationship between embarrassment and emotion-focused coping was particularly strong in emotionally intense situations that were out of a transgressor’s control, for female consumers, and for consumers with an individualist orientation. The relationship between embarrassment and problem-focused coping was particularly strong in emotionally intense situations for male and young consumers. The second essay investigates the influence of embarrassing situations on neutral observers of the situation. The extant literature suggests that a consumer who commits a social transgression will experience embarrassment if real or imagined others are present to witness the transgression. However, the parallel embarrassment experienced, in turn, by those observers lacks a theoretical account, since observers have committed no transgression and are not the subject of appraisal by others. I label this phenomenon observer embarrassment, and introduce perspective taking as the underlying process that leads to observer embarrassment. Across six studies, I use physiological, behavioral, and self-report measures to validate the presence of observer embarrassment, as well as the underlying perspective-taking mechanism. Specifically, the results demonstrate that observers are more likely to experience embarrassment when they imagine themselves as the transgressor (versus experience empathy for the transgressor), something more likely to occur when the observer and actor share a common identity. Thus, observer embarrassment is not an empathetic response to witnessing a social transgression, but rather an experience parallel to personal embarrassment of others.

Genetic susceptibility test results have been found to cause differences in coping behavior following testing for the APOE-ε4 gene, associated with Alzheimer's disease. Coping behaviors differ within the first 12 months of testing. Currently, no studies have been conducted beyond the first 12 months comparing positive (P) and negative (N) groups or how sex relates to coping behavior based on positive test results. Based on the theory of primary and secondary control, and theory of stress, appraisal, and coping this study compared differences in coping strategies based on genetic test results and between sexes with positive test results beyond the first 12 months. Participants (n = 280) were selected who had undergone testing for the APOE-ε4 gene 12 or more months prior to the study and had a relative diagnosed with AD. Coping strategies were measured using the Brief COPE scale. Independent measures t test results were significant, indicating differences in coping between P and N groups. The P group reported significantly higher levels of cognitive and emotional coping strategies than did the N group 12 or more months after receiving test results. These findings were consistent with previous studies that produced significances in cognitive and emotional coping strategies between groups in the first 12 months. The findings were non significant for cognitive and emotional coping strategies for sex in the positive group. This study contributes to social change by informing impact decision making by individuals with positive test results for the APOE-ε4 gene in making financial changes, life styles changes, and family and work adjustments affecting their community and society.

Student incivility has become a problem in nursing schools around the country. Researchers have noted that uncivil behavior that goes unaddressed may compromise the educational environment. Nursing faculty have differing standards about uncivil behavior; thus, students experience inconsistencies in approaches to incivility. The purpose of this mixed-methods explanatory study was to explore nursing faculty experiences with, understandings of, and responses to student incivility. The conceptual framework was Clark's continuum of incivility and the conceptual model for fostering civility in nursing education. Descriptive analysis of the level and frequency of uncivil behaviors of nursing faculty members (17 full-time and 15 part-time), as measured by the Incivility in Nursing Education-Revised survey, indicated that faculty most frequently experienced uncivil behaviors at the lower end of the continuum and rarely encountered those at the higher end. A purposeful sample of 12 faculty members (10 full-time and 2 part-time) participated in semistructured interviews, and data were open coded and analyzed thematically. Stress was identified as a contributing factor to student incivility, and faculty responses varied based on the learning environment. Nursing faculty expressed the need for more consistency in responding to student incivility. Based on the research findings, a 3-day professional development workshop on promoting civility in the academic environment was created. By learning practical ways to respond to, and possibly prevent, uncivil behavior in student nurses, workshop participants have the potential to positively affect the lives of future nurses, the health care personnel with whom they will work, and the patients for whom they will care.

Excessive sympathetic cardiovascular reactivity to stressful tasks is a risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Many populations with a greater risk for CVD instead demonstrate blunted cardiovascular reactivity to stressful tasks. The motivational intensity theory identifies how motivation and effort influence sympathetic reactivity. Blunted reactivity may be a potential index of motivational dysregulation, which leads to poor behavioral decisions such as excess smoking or alcohol use, in turn increasing the risk for CVD. The current study sought to demonstrate how inhibited effort due to poor ability feedback with a low-contingency reward could directly increase the risk for CVD through perseverative cognition and impaired recovery. Participants (N = 89) were given either poor or good feedback on a working memory task that was purported to be related to another related working memory task. Participants were then informed that they could secure a low- or high-contingency reward opportunity by meeting a performance standard. EKG, impedance cardiography, blood pressure, and pupillometry were recorded throughout. Pre-ejection period reactivity and self-reported effort were greatest in participants given good feedback with a high-contingency reward and poor feedback with a low-contingency reward. Greater effort and sympathetic reactivity support previous findings linking these two measures. The results also suggest evaluating both internal and external rewards is important when examining motivation.

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that one way New Zealand's high prevalence of child abuse can be reduced is by the government increasing the legislative and policy responses within an ecological framework, to child abuse prevention. This is because such responses would ensure a 'best practice' approach to child abuse prevention. This 'best-practice' approach is one where child abuse prevention measures are community-driven, child-centred, multi-disciplinary and inter-sectoral. Section 1 of this thesis will provide a background on the different types of child abuse, why child abuse occurs and what the consequences of child abuse are. This section will also cover some current statistics on the incidences of child abuse in New Zealand. Additionally, there is a discussion on how child abuse is increasingly being minimised within a family violence paradigm - even though family violence is only one form of child abuse. New Zealand does not have a good track record when it comes to its rates of child abuse. Section 1 is intended to give the reader a very clear picture of how children in New Zealand are not currently being protected adequately enough from child abuse. This protection should be coming from the adults in their lives, in their community and in their nation. Section 2 of this thesis outlines an ecological framework for child abuse prevention. More specifically the way in which such an ecological model is operating presently in New Zealand, at particularly an exosystem (community) and macrosystem (national) level. The second part of this section discusses factors which will ensure the 'success' of an ecological framework for child abuse prevention. By 'success' the author is referring to a framework in which the primary outcome is the prevalence of child abuse in New Zealand is reducing. Section 3 of this thesis will contain the substantive arguments of this paper. New Zealand does currently have in place legislative and policy responses to child abuse prevention. However, the author maintains these responses to date have not been sufficient because New Zealand's rates of child abuse continue to escalate. This section consists of 19 recommendations of legislative and policy responses that could be implemented at a macrosystem/national level. At the conclusion of the recommendations contained in this thesis, it becomes clear that the government does need to respond urgently to New Zealand's growing child abuse rates. New Zealand can no longer afford to have a reactive, ad-hoc approach to child abuse. Nor can the response at a macro level continue to be one of rhetoric where there is more talk on child abuse prevention than there is on activating, monitoring and funding practical solutions. It is the author's contention that if the government considered the interests and welfare of children as paramount in legislative and policy decisions that relate to children, then this will send a strong and clear signal to the adults in childrens' lives that children are not to be abused. Instead, children are to be nurtured, respected and cherished in every way.

The primary aim of this thesis was to investigate the gender-specific responses to supramaximal cycling and to examine the changes in anaerobic and aerobic metabolism that occur in response to high-intensity interval training (HIT). All subjects in the present experiments were untrained, healthy young adults aged between 18 and 35 yr. Cycle ergometry was used for all experimental test procedures and training programs. The accumulated oxygen (AO2) deficit was used to quantify the production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) via anaerobic metabolism during supramaximal cycling. In addition, pulmonary oxygen uptake measured at the onset of exercise was described using mathematical modeling to determine the rate response of the aerobic energy system during exercise. The purpose of experiment one was to examine the test-retest reliability of the maximal accumulated oxygen deficit (MAOD) measured at 110% and 120% of peak oxygen uptake for cycling in seven untrained male and seven untrained female subjects. After one familiarization trial, all subjects performed two MAOD tests at a power output corresponding to 110% and two tests at 120% of peak oxygen uptake in random order. MAOD was calculated for each subject as the difference between the estimated AO2 demand and the AO2 uptake measured during the exercise bout. The mean±standard error time to exhaustion (TE) for the group was not significantly different between trial one (226±13 s) and trial two (223±14 s) of the 110% test. Likewise, the difference in the TE between trial one (158±11 s) and trial two (159±10 s) was not significant for the 120% test. The intra-class correlation coefficients for the TE were 0.95 for the 110% test and 0.98 for the 120% test. The mean MAOD value obtained in trial one (2.62±0.17 L) was not significantly different from the mean value obtained in trial two (2.54±0.19 L) for the 110% test. Additionally, the mean values for the two trials did not differ significantly for MAOD (2.64±0.21 L for trial one and 2.63±0.19 L for trial two) in the 120% test. The intra-class correlation coefficients for MAOD were 0.95 for the 110% test and 0.97 for the 120% test. All intra-class correlation coefficients were significant at p < 0.001. When conducted under standardized conditions, the determination of MAOD for cycling was highly repeatable at both 110% and 120% of peak oxygen uptake in untrained male and female subjects. The results observed in experiment one suggest that the MAOD may be used to compare the anaerobic capacity (AC) of men and women and to examine changes in the contribution of the anaerobic energy systems before and after training. Experiment two examined the gender-specific differences in MAOD before and after 4 and 8 wk of HIT. Untrained men (n=7) and women (n=7) cycled at 120% of pre-training peak oxygen uptake to exhaustion (MAOD test) pre-, mid-, and post-training. A post-training timed test was also completed at the MAOD test power output, but this test was stopped at the TE achieved during the pre-training MAOD test. The 14.3±5.2% increase in MAOD observed in males after 4 wk of training was not different from the 14.0±3.0% increase seen in females (p > 0.05). MAOD increased by a further 6.6±1.9% in males and this change was not different from the additional 5.1±2.3% increase observed in females after the final 4 wk of training. Peak oxygen uptake measured during incremental cycling increased significantly (p < 0.01) in male but not in female subjects after 8 wk of training. Moreover, the AO2 uptake was higher in men during the post-training timed test compared to the pre-training MAOD test (p < 0.01). In contrast, the AO2 uptake was unchanged from pre- to post-training in female subjects. The increase in MAOD with training was not different between men and women suggesting an enhanced ability to produce ATP anaerobically in both groups. However, the increase in peak oxygen uptake and AO2 uptake obtained in male subjects following training indicates improved oxidative metabolism in men but not in women. It was concluded that there are basic gender differences that may predispose males and females to specific metabolic adaptations following an 8-wk period of HIT. Increases in AO2 uptake during supramaximal cycling demonstrated in men after training led to the hypothesis that peak oxygen uptake kinetics are speeded in male subjects with short-term HIT. It was suggested that training does not improve peak oxygen uptake kinetics in women as no change in AO2 uptake was found after 8 wk of HIT in female subjects. The purpose of experiment three was to examine peak oxygen uptake kinetics before and after 8 wk of HIT in six men and six women during cycling at 50% (50% test) and 110% (110% test) of pre-training peak oxygen uptake. A single-term exponential equation was used to model the peak oxygen uptake response (after phase I) during the 50% and 110% tests pre- and post-training. In addition, phase II and III of the peak oxygen uptake response during the 110% tests were examined using a two-term equation. The end of the phase I peak oxygen uptake response was identified visually and omitted from the modeling process. The duration of phase I determined during all experimental tests was not different between men and women and did not change with training in either group. Before training, men obtained a phase II peak oxygen uptake time constant (t2) of 29.0±3.3 s during the 50% test which was not different to the t2 of 28.8±2.2 s attained by women. In addition, the t2 determined during the 50% test was unchanged after 8 wk of HIT in both groups. The peak oxygen uptake kinetics examined during the 110% tests before training were well described by a single-term model in all male and female subjects. The t2 determined before training for the 110% test was significantly faster in men than in women. Furthermore, peak oxygen uptake was unchanged in female subjects and the t2 remained unaltered with 8 wk HIT (pre 45.5±2.2; post 44.8±2.3 s). In contrast, male subjects achieved a significantly higher peak oxygen uptake after training and the t2 determined for men during the 110% test was faster after training (36.4±1.6 s) than before training (40.1± 1.9 s). Improved model fits were obtained with the two-term equation compared to the single-term equation in two of the six male subjects during the 110% test post-training. It was found that the onset of the peak oxygen uptake slow component occurred at a mean time of 63.5±2.5 s and the t2 was reduced to 18.4±1.7 s. Using a Wilcoxon Signed Ranks z-test, the t2 described by the single-term equation in the remaining four subjects was determined to be significantly faster after training than before training, thus confirming the results obtained from the original group (n=6) of male subjects. End exercise heart rate (HREE) values obtained during the 50% and 110% tests were not different between men and women. During the 50% test, HREE values were unchanged, whereas HREE was significantly decreased during the 110% test after training in both groups. These data show that HIT might improve oxidative metabolism in men but not in women as reflected by a greater peak oxygen uptake and faster peak oxygen uptake kinetics during supramaximal work rates. We further suggest that the faster peak oxygen uptake kinetics demonstrated in men after training are probably not due to an improvement in cardiac function. Finally, the augmentation of oxidative metabolism during exercise after HIT in men might be dependent on the intensity of the exercise bout at which the peak oxygen uptake response is examined. The findings presented in this thesis suggest that MAOD is a reliable measure in both male and female subjects and can be used to monitor changes in anaerobic ATP production during supramaximal cycling. Moreover, these data suggest that 4 and 8 wk of HIT produce similar changes in anaerobic ATP generation in men and women. Finally, 8 wk of HIT results in the increase of peak oxygen uptake and AO2 uptake as well as the speeding of peak oxygen uptake kinetics during supramaximal cycling in male subjects. There was no evidence to suggest that oxidative metabolism was improved in women after short-term HIT. In conclusion, improvement in supramaximal exercise performances should be examined specifically for changes in the anaerobic and aerobic contributions to energy production. In addition, it is suggested that gender should be of primary consideration when designing exercise-training programs where improvement in both anaerobic and aerobic metabolism is required.