Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Full text release at OhioLINK's ETD Center delayed at author's request

Vi har kommit fram till att chefernas reaktioner inte beror på omorganisationen i sig utan hur förändringsprocessen har gått till. Deras reaktioner speglar ett motstånd mot sättet som förändringsprocessen har genomförts på. Det är personerna i organisationen och inte organisationsformen som är det viktiga för cheferna. Vi tycker att de faktorer som påverkar en lyckad förändringsprocess är medarbetarnas delaktighet, möjlighet till en bra dialog innan beslutet är taget, kommunikation samt känsla av sammanhang. / In our thesis, we concluded that the managers' reactions are not due to reorganization in itself but how the change has happened. Their responses reflect a resistance to the manner in which the change has been implemented. There are people in the organization and not organizational form that is important for managers. We think that the factors that influence a successful change is employee involvement, the opportunity for a good dialogue before the decision is taken, communication and sense of coherence.

Conflicts can occur in a variety of brand-relationship contexts, whether pertaining to poor service or product failure or to companies’ violations in regard to moral or legal issues. Though addressing relationship conflicts has become a pervasive issue in brand-relationship research, little is known about factors influencing consumer responses to conflicts. The goal of this research was to address this issue by exploring how consumers utilize their emotional intelligence in coping with problems when conflicts arise. For this purpose, two experiments were performed in this study. The first experiment showed that consumer emotional intelligence (CEI) was critical in predicting coping responses. When encountering conflicts in relationships, consumers who were highly capable in CEI were more likely to direct their emotions positively and productively, and they were less likely to exit the relationships than were those low in CEI. The second experiment further investigated a moderator and mediator of the association identified in the first study. The study demonstrated that the type of conflict moderated the effect of CEI on coping behaviors; the CEI effect on intention to exit the relationship was more pronounced when a conflict had directly caused problems for individual consumers (vs. to society as a whole). The results further demonstrated that consumers’ appraisals of a company’s intention in regard to conflicts mediated the association between CEI and coping responses. Specifically, low-CEI consumers were more likely to attribute negative intentions to the company; therefore, they were more likely to exit the relationship than were high-CEI consumers. This research demonstrated that CEI is an important construct in explaining why some consumers react destructively to relationship conflicts whereas others do not. Findings of this research provide a greater understanding of the role of individual differences in the maintenance and dissolution of brand relationships. / text

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.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka socialarbetares position genom deras upplevelser av hur lagstiftning, kommunala riktlinjer samt egna värderingar harmonierar i arbetet med missbruksärenden. I studien besvaras frågor gällande hur socialarbetare upplever att deras värderingar och kompetens harmonierar med lagstiftning och kommunala riktlinjer men även hur socialarbetare hanterar eventuella spänningsförhållanden mellan lagstiftning, kommunala riktlinjer, egna värderingar samt klienters förväntningar. Uppsatsen bygger på sex semistrukturerade intervjuer med socialarbetare som i sitt dagliga arbete handlägger missbruksärenden och det insamlade materialet analyserades med hjälp av en kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Studiens resultat ger inte en lika negativ bild av socialarbetarnas upplevelser som tidigare forskning pekar på. Studien visar att socialarbetare upplever olika situationer där deras värderingar inte överensstämmer med kommunala riktlinjer eller lagstiftning. Exempel på situationer där socialarbetare upplever konflikter är hög arbetsbelastning, begränsat handlingsutrymme samt den rådande tvångslagstiftningen gällande missbruk. Beroende på vilken motstridighet som upplevs varierar hanteringen av denna. Hanteringen av motstridigheterna handlar i denna studie om hur socialarbetaren i situationen väljer att agera genom att exempelvis vara lojal och anpassa sig, protestera i någon form eller det sista alternativet, göra en sorti, vilket innebär att man lämnar organisationen. / The purpose of the study is to examine the position of social workers through their experiences of how legislation, municipal guidelines and their own values ​​harmonize in the work with substance abuse cases. The study answers questions not only regarding how social workers feel about their values ​​and skills harmonizing with legislation and municipal guidelines, but also how social workers handle any tensions between legislation, municipal guidelines, their own values ​​and clients' expectations. The essay is based on six semi-structured interviews with social workers who in their daily work handle substance abuse cases and the collected material was analyzed with the help of a qualitative content analysis. The results of the study do not give us a negative picture of the social workers' experiences as previous research points out. The study shows that social workers experience different situations where their values ​​do not comply with municipal guidelines or legislation. Examples of situations where social workers experience conflicts are a high workload, limited room for maneuver and the current coercive legislation regarding abuse. Depending on the contradiction experienced, the handling of this varies. The management of the contradictions in this study is about how the social worker in the situation chooses to act by, for example, being loyal and adapting, protesting in some form or the last alternative, making a sortie, which means leaving the organization.