This dissertation provides results of three studies, which examine the utilization of organizational performance measurement systems. Evidence gathered in the first study provides insight into the number of perspectives or components found in the evaluation of an organization's performance and the relative weight placed on those components. The evidence suggests that the number of performance measurement components and their relative composition is situational. Components depend heavily on the strategies selected by the organization. Bottom-line financial measures like return on invested capital and net profit, while perceived as more important than their nonfinancial counterparts, were not part of the extracted components suggesting that they were viewed as outcomes to be achieved by controlling key nonfinancial measures. The second study examines potential cognitive difficulties inherent in the use of performance measurement systems. Results suggest that whether performance was better than target, worse than target, or equal to target does not affect the perceived importance of the measures. Results also suggest an emphasis on historical financial measures and a lack of emphasis on more forward-looking nonfinancial measures. In addition, there is evidence of a halo effect in that an organization's performance on financial measures appears to influence an individual's perception of the organization's performance on nonfinancial measures. The third study uses structural equation modeling and other related procedures to examine the relationships surrounding an executive's use of performance measurement information. Results suggest that a personality characteristic of executives, specifically their intolerance of ambiguity, affects the amount of information perceived to be important in a performance measurement system. The results further suggest that the amount of information perceived to be important affects the evaluation of organizational performance with perceived risk serving as a mediating variable. Overall, these three studies add to our knowledge of organizational performance measurement system utilization by examining the relative weightings of performance measures, the judgmental effects from utilization of performance measurement systems, and the impact of intolerance of ambiguity on the importance of performance measurement data. In addition, this dissertation examines the link between performance measurement data and the perception of risk in the evaluation of organizational performance. / Ph. D.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Educational Leadership / Sarah Jane Fishback / This study investigated the relationship between the tolerance of ambiguity (AT) levels of the officers attending the U.S. Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) and the creativity of the military plans they developed. Located aboard Fort Leavenworth, KS, SAMS is an Army school providing education to specially selected officers in preparation for duties in positions as battalion commanders and lead planners for Army divisions and corps. The officers at SAMS are grouped into seminars for their classes, and they remain with their seminars throughout the yearlong educational program. The twin purposes of this study were to (a) test for the relationship between AT and creativity suggested by various theories of creativity and (b) contribute to the Army’s efforts to increase the creativity of its officers by empirically identifying the expected positive correlation between the officers AT levels and the creativity of their plans. A sample of 66 officers participated in the study. They each independently developed a military plan in response to a common notional scenario. Subsequently they each independently completed the short version of Norton’s (1975) MAT-50 to measure their levels of AT. Their plans were assessed for creativity using Amabile’s Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT). The high inter-rater reliability among the judges (r = .82) demonstrated the effectiveness of the CAT as a method for assessing the creativity of military plans. Counter to the expectation, analysis of the data revealed a small negative correlation throughout the sample between AT scores and the creativity of the plans, producing a disconfirmation dilemma for the researcher. Analysis revealed that the sample’s collective levels of AT differed among the various subscales of the MAT-50. Additionally, post hoc analysis revealed statistically significant variance of the creativity of the officers’ plans between the different seminars to which they were assigned. In the seminar with the highest creativity scores, there was a small positive correlation between AT and creativity, while in the seminar with the lowest creativity scores, there was a medium sized negative correlation between the two variables. Implications of these findings and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Researchers point to the fact that stress and anxiety among college students are a

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Times of transition are laden with ambiguity, and the move from high school to college has an additional component of role changes to add to this uncertainty. In the spring and summer of 2020, this transition was disrupted by the changes brought on by the pandemic, affecting social norms, routines, and overall mental health outcomes. For professionals such as counselors and advisors to be able to provide specialized support, it is important to understand emerging adults' experiences at this time and to identify factors that helped them cope with this transition. Understanding the development of coping strategies has direct implications for both therapy and clinical practice which can work together to provide a higher quality of care for the people affected by the stress of major life transitions. In this study, I used a mixed-methods design to understand the experience of emerging adults who graduated high school during the pandemic, and the relation between tolerance for ambiguity and coping strategies, resilience, and psychological impact. / Master of Science / The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on so many of us here in the United States and abroad. This was a time in which so much of what we considered normal was totally disrupted by all of the changes that the pandemic caused. For my thesis I wanted to look at how the pandemic changed the ways that students who were in high school transitioned and moved on to college. I wanted to know what existing factors such as their ability to handle uncertainty impacted this transition and if it ended up being helpful for them. For this project I looked at how a person's ability to handle uncertainty, called tolerance for ambiguity in this study, impacted students abilities to cope with uncertainty, psychological impact of the pandemic, and resiliency overall.

This study explored the relationships between roughly 330 participants' tolerance of ambiguity and their preference for either an inductive or deductive presentation of grammar by means of an online survey. Most participants were college students. Other variables examined included years of study, in-country experience, proficiency, age, year in school, and language of choice. A new instrument for measuring inductive vs. deductive preference was also created based on Cohen, Oxford, and Chi's (2001) Learning Style Survey (LSS). Results showed weak correlations between: tolerance of ambiguity and inductive preference (.25), tolerance of ambiguity and proficiency (.25), and inductive preference and proficiency (.20). Additional findings include: a correlation (.62) between proficiency and years of instruction received, a slight correlation (.22) between age and tolerance of ambiguity, no correlation between years of language instruction and tolerance of ambiguity, no correlation between studying abroad and ambiguity tolerance or inductive/deductive preference, and no correlation between age and inductive vs. deductive preference. Lastly, data was analyzed to determine whether language was a contributing factor or not, and only the participants learning Japanese were significantly different (p = .004), with a higher preference for inductive learning.

Med ett urval om 430 deltagare avsåg denna studie att undersöka om sambandet mellan individens moralfundament och fördomsfulla attityder modereras av individens attityd mot tvetydighet, förstådd som faktorerna obekväm inför tvetydighet, moralisk absolutism och behov av komplexitet. För att skapa ett mätinstrument för fördomsfulla attityder utfördes en explorativ faktoranalys utifrån deltagarnas positiva eller negativa attityd responser gentemot 21 olika sociala grupper och kategorier. Analysen replikerade tidigare studier och visade en närvaro av 3 fördomsfaktorer: förringade-, farliga- och dissidenta grupper. För att testa den centrala hypotesen utfördes 6 multipla regressioner som samtliga kontrollerade för ålder. Resultatet visade inte på någon närvaro av en moderationseffekt men väl flertalet huvudeffekter. Överlag var prediktionseffekten av fördomsfulla attityder starkare för bindande fundament relativt individens attityd mot tvetydighet. Bindande fundament predicerade mer fördomsfulla attityder oavsett typ av fördom men effekten var starkast för fördomsfulla attityder mot dissidenta grupper. Moralisk absolutism predicerade fördomsfulla attityder mot dissidenta- och förringade grupper. Behov av komplexitet predicerade mer fördomsfulla attityder mot dissidenta grupper. Obekväm inför tvetydighet predicerade mindre fördomsfulla attityder mot dissidenta grupper. I jämförelse uppvisade moralisk absolutism den starkaste prediktionseffekten av tvetydighetsfaktorerna och detta vid prediktion av attityder mot dissidenta grupper. Ålder uppvisade tecken på en huvudeffekt i det att äldre individer tenderade att vara mer toleranta mot förringade- och dissidenta grupper. Avslutningsvis diskuteras begränsningar och uppslag inför framtida studier. / With a sample of 430 participants this study aimed to investigate if the relationship between the individual’s moral foundations and prejudice attitudes is moderated by the individual’s attitude towards ambiguity, understood as the factors discomfort with ambiguity, moral absolutism and need for complexity. To create a measurement for prejudice attitudes an exploratory factor analysis was performed on the participants positive or negative affective attitude responses towards 21 different social groups and categories. The analysis replicated earlier findings and showed the presence of 3 prejudice factors: derogated-, dangerous- and dissidient groups. To test the main hypothesis 6 multiple regressions controlling for age was performed. The result showed no presence of a moderation effect but there was support for several main effects. Overall the prediction effect for prejudice attitudes was stronger for binding foundations than the individuals attitude towards ambiguity. Binding foundations predicted more prejudice attitudes regardless of type of prejudice but the effect was strongest for prejudice attitudes towards dissident groups. Moral absolutism predicted prejudice attitudes towards dissident- and derogated groups. Need for complexity predicted more prejudice attitudes towards dissident groups. Discomfort with ambiguity predicted less prejudice attitudes towards dissident groups. In comparison moral absolutism showed the strongest prediction effect of the ambiguity factors in predicting attitudes towards dissident groups. Age showed signs of a main effect in that older individuals tended to be more tolerant towards derogated- and dissident groups. Limitations and suggestions for further research is also discussed.

Uncertainty avoidance as a cultural construct has been known to affect worker stress and performance in organizations, but a review of these findings has not been done up until this point. In effort to clarify the relationship between uncertainty avoidance and stress and performance, a comprehensive literature search was performed. Findings from articles on this topic have been presented. In addition, organizational practices for accommodating uncertainty avoidance and other cultural dimensions have been explored. This review shows that uncertainty avoidance appears to be linked to higher stress, while its relationship to performance appears to depend on other factors. Best practices for accommodating uncertainty avoidance tend to include enhanced communication and structure. Ideas for future research on this topic are discussed.

Based on the data obtained, the features of tolerance for ambiguity in adolescents and its relationship with achievement motivation and self-efficacy are demonstrated. / В работе продемонстрированы особенности толерантности к неопределенности старших подростков, взаимосвязь толерантности к неопределенности с мотивацией достижения и самоэффективностью.

One of the major challenges that persists in postsecondary foreign language (FL) education in the US today is how to implement a more integrated approach to language and literature instruction, that is, one that fosters critical awareness on multiple levels and prepares learners to be globally-connected and engaged citizens (MLA, 2007; Swaffar & Urlaub, 2014). Major contributions for achieving these goals have come from an array of pedagogical approaches that share in common their focus on language as a resource for making socially and symbolically rich meanings that do more than convey facts or express objectives. These include those designated as multiliteracies and genre-based approaches, as well as those that promote intercultural, symbolic and literary competencies as integral to the language learning experience. All of these frameworks acknowledge to some extent the fact that ambiguity-understood here as the multiplicity, indeterminacy, or destabilization of meaning-characterizes language itself and thus also our day-to-day and global communication, as well as the experience and process of FL learning. This dissertation, based on a qualitative classroom-based research study, considers how ambiguity can more be comprehensively integrated into FL learning and in particular into text-oriented teaching practices. The approach taken was a pedagogy that embraces ambiguity by providing learners and educators with strategies for navigating the moments of indeterminacy, uncertainty, and doubt that they will inevitably encounter in and out of the FL classroom. The study, set in an intermediate German language and culture course at a large public university, investigates 1) how to incorporate and assess moments of ambiguity more comprehensively across the curriculum and 2) how learners responded to various encounters with ambiguity, including ambiguity of genre, perspective, and silence. Data analysis revealed that purposeful integration of induced ambiguity can facilitate more comfort with those three dimensions and that it complements the principles of a multiliteracies-based FL pedagogy.