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Description
After decades of dormancy, character is re-emerging as an important research topic among organizational leadership researchers in response to the need to better explain the source of certain exemplary and ethical leader performance (Hannah & Avolio, 2011; Leonard, 1997; Thompson & Riggio, 2010; Wright & Goodstein, 2007). However, efforts to operationalize character are criticized for their abstract and idealistic trait-based conceptualizations that fail to capture the reality of leadership and situational dynamics (Conger & Hollenbeck, 2010). The purpose of this study is to develop a more robust theoretical approach to character that is empirically grounded in the real life complexities of leadership. Combat provides the context for this study because the adversity of such an extreme context tends to make character a more salient and readily observable phenomenon than in more conventional organizational contexts (Wright & Quick, 2011; Hannah, Uhl-Bien, Avolio, & Cavarretta, 2009). I employed an ethnographic grounded theory design to gain a unique insider's perspective absent in many studies of leader character (Charmaz, 2009; Parry & Meindl, 2002). Data collection involved (1) physically embedding for six months with U.S. Army small unit infantry leaders operating in combat in Afghanistan; (2) participant observation in the full range of combat activities engaged in by these leaders; and (3) in-depth semi-structured interviews with key informants. An important contribution of this study is that the emergent concept of leader character is fully situated in the leader's social and environmental context represented by the leader's inner struggle to resist the adversity of combat and uphold the standards of leadership. In this dialectical framework, certain agentic resources important to resolving this inner struggle emerge as the locus of leader character. This agency-based concept of character is rooted in the internalization of the standards of leadership through identity-conferring normative commitments and entails particular motivational and volitional capacities. These produce a distinct mode of functioning--a strong form of personal moral agency--characterized by the leader's willingness to sacrifice in upholding standards in the face of adversity. This primacy of leader agency over adversity is the hallmark of leader character--what I call the character to lead.
ContributorsJennings, Peter L. (Author) / Corley, Kevin (Thesis advisor) / Waldman, David (Thesis advisor) / Hannah, Sean T (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This dissertation examines the organizational discourse of business meetings in a Kuwaiti financial organization (Innovative Kuwait Co., pseudonym) and an American non-profit trade organization (Global Phoenix, pseudonym). Specifically, I explore the discourse and social identities, agency, and power used in staff members' task-oriented business meetings (Bargiela-Chiappini & Harris, 1997). The study is based on ethnographic business meetings data collected during eight months of fieldwork in 2010, 2011 and 2012. I used three major qualitative methodologies: observation, audio recording, and feedback focus group. In this study, I propose three research questions: 1) How does agency of staff members reflect membership in the corporate culture of an organization as a whole? 2) How is power used in relation to agency in business meetings? And 3) How are discourse and social identities of staff members enacted in business meetings? The analyses of ethnographic and fieldwork data demonstrate similar and different business linguistic behaviors in the two companies. In Innovative Kuwait Co., male managers are responsible for opening and closing the meetings. They also perform power by using language directives and suggestions directed to staff members. In contrast, female staff members in the Kuwaiti company participated insignificantly in meetings and produce more nonverbal cues. However, in one meeting, a female manager organized the discussion by controlling topics and giving directions. In Global Phoenix, female managers outnumber their male counterparts; therefore, agency, power, discourse, and social identities are performed differently. Female managers are responsible for opening and closing the meetings and for organizing the overall discussions. Additionally, female and male staff members participate equally and they interrupted their colleagues less frequently compared to staff members in Kuwait. Interestingly, American staff members laugh and joke more together than staff members in Kuwait. The findings of this dissertation will contribute to existing linguistic literature on business discourse and the examination of social meanings and structures in organizations, explaining how language shapes the actions and relationships of business staff members. This dissertation will also encourage business people to become mindful of the role of language and language training in developing and maintaining the corporate culture of their organizations.
ContributorsAlHaidari, Fatma M. (Author) / Adams, Karen L (Thesis advisor) / Prior, Matthew (Committee member) / Broome, Benjamin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Multimedia educational technologies have increased their presence in traditional and online classrooms over the course of the previous decade. These tools hold value and can promote positive learning outcomes but are reliant on students’ degree of cognitive engagement and self-regulation. When students are not cognitively engaged or have low self-regulation capabilities, their interaction with the technology becomes less impactful because of decreased learning outcomes. Building or altering technologies to cognitively engage students is costly and timely; the present study investigates if introducing higher agency roles, to change the role of the student, increases learning outcomes. Specifically, this study investigates if higher agency roles of a designer or teacher enhances cognitive engagement and improves learning when compared to the conventional role of a learner. Improved learning outcomes were observed from the pretest to posttest for the learner, designer, and teacher role. Participants engaged with higher agency roles did not demonstrate more growth from pretest to posttest when compared to the control group, but participants in the teacher role outperformed those in the designer role. Additionally, reading ability did not impact learning gains across groups. While students who engaged with higher agency roles did not achieve greater learning outcomes than students in the control group, results indicate a learning effect across groups. Results of this study suggest that it was underpowered. Further research is needed to determine the extent of the impact that higher agency roles have on learning outcomes.
ContributorsNovak, Kyrsten (Author) / Roscoe, Rod (Thesis advisor) / Branaghan, Russell (Committee member) / Craig, Scotty (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Adaptation and transformation have emerged as a key themes for human-environment research, especially in the context of rapid social-ecological changes. The 2008 global financial crisis constitutes a major driver of change with social-ecological ramifications that have yet to be fully explored. Using Greece, the poster child of the euro-crisis as a case-study, this dissertation examines how adaptive capacity is mobilized and even enhanced in times of crisis, paying particular attention to the role played by natural capital. To do so, I focus on the back-to-land trend whereby urbanites seek to engage in food production post-crisis (2008-onwards). In-depth qualitative analysis of back-to-landers’ motivations, experiences, and challenges is integrated with quantitative data about household demographics, incomes and assets, and land management characteristics. The dissertation is organized in three main result papers (chapters). The first seeks to understand why people turn to the land in times of crisis, and the role played by agency. The second analyzes the various assets that people mobilize in order to go back to the land, paying particular attention to the different mobilities necessary for their livelihood transformation. The third examines environmental safety nets in terms of material and non-material benefits that ecosystems provide to people. This research contributes to a wider social-ecological scholarship that seeks to understand how people adapt and transform when confronted with crises, focusing on how land and associated ecosystem services contribute to the resilience of these households, and the role played by agency in this process.
ContributorsBenessaiah, Karina (Author) / Turner II, Billie L. (Thesis advisor) / Eakin, Hallie (Committee member) / Chan, Kai M.A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
How do you convey what’s interesting and important to you as an artist in a digital world of constantly shifting attentions? For many young creatives, the answer is original characters, or OCs. An OC is a character that an artist creates for personal enjoyment, whether based on an already existing story or world, or completely from their own imagination.
As creations made for purely personal interests, OCs are an excellent elevator pitch to talk one creative to another, opening up opportunities for connection in a world where communication is at our fingertips but personal connection is increasingly harder to make. OCs encourage meaningful interaction by offering themselves as muses, avatars, and story pieces, and so much more, where artists can have their characters interact with other creatives through many different avenues such as art-making, table top games, or word of mouth.
In this thesis, I explore the worlds and aesthetics of many creators and their original characters through qualitative research and collaborative art-making. I begin with a short survey of my creative peers, asking general questions about their characters and thoughts on OCs, then move to sketching characters from various creators. I focus my research to a group of seven core creators and their characters, whom I interview and work closely with in order to create a series of seven final paintings of their original characters.
As creations made for purely personal interests, OCs are an excellent elevator pitch to talk one creative to another, opening up opportunities for connection in a world where communication is at our fingertips but personal connection is increasingly harder to make. OCs encourage meaningful interaction by offering themselves as muses, avatars, and story pieces, and so much more, where artists can have their characters interact with other creatives through many different avenues such as art-making, table top games, or word of mouth.
In this thesis, I explore the worlds and aesthetics of many creators and their original characters through qualitative research and collaborative art-making. I begin with a short survey of my creative peers, asking general questions about their characters and thoughts on OCs, then move to sketching characters from various creators. I focus my research to a group of seven core creators and their characters, whom I interview and work closely with in order to create a series of seven final paintings of their original characters.
ContributorsCote, Jacqueline (Author) / Button, Melissa M (Thesis director) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Committee member) / School of Art (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
In the past ten years, the United States’ sound recording industries have experienced significant decreases in employment opportunities for aspiring audio engineers from economic imbalances in the music industry’s digital streaming era and reductions in government funding for career and technical education (CTE). The Recording Industry Association of America reports promises of music industry sustainability based on increasing annual revenues in paid streaming services and artists’ high creative demand. The rate of new audio engineer entries in the sound recording subsection of the music industry is not viable to support streaming artists’ high demand to engineer new music recordings. Offering CTE programs in secondary education is rare for aspiring engineers with insufficient accessibility to pursue a post-secondary or vocational education because of financial and academic limitations. These aspiring engineers seek alternatives for receiving an informal education in audio engineering on the Internet using video sharing services like YouTube to search for tutorials and improve their engineering skills. The shortage of accessible educational materials on the Internet restricts engineers from advancing their own audio engineering education, reducing opportunities to enter a desperate job market in need of independent, home studio-based engineers. Content creators on YouTube take advantage of this situation and commercialize their own video tutorial series for free and selling paid subscriptions to exclusive content. This is misleading for newer engineers because these tutorials omit important understandings of fundamental engineering concepts. Instead, content creators teach inflexible engineering methodologies that are mostly beneficial to their own way of thinking. Content creators do not often assess the incompatibility of teaching their own methodologies to potential entrants in a profession that demands critical thinking skills requiring applied fundamental audio engineering concepts and techniques. This project analyzes potential solutions to resolve the deficiencies in online audio engineering education and experiments with structuring simple, deliverable, accessible educational content and materials to new entries in audio engineering. Designing clear, easy to follow material to these new entries in audio engineering is essential for developing a strong understanding for the application of fundamental concepts in future engineers’ careers. Approaches to creating and designing educational content requires translating complex engineering concepts through simplified mediums that reduce limitations in learning for future audio engineers.
ContributorsBurns, Triston Connor (Author) / Tobias, Evan (Thesis director) / Libman, Jeff (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
There has been a recent push for queer fiction, especially in the young adult genre, whose focus is gay and lesbian relationships. This growth is much needed in terms of visibility and the furthering of acceptance, but there are still subjects within the LGBTQ+ community that need to be addressed, including bisexual, asexual, and non-binary erasure. There are many people who claim that these identities do not exist, are labels used as a stepping stone on one's journey to discovering that they are homosexual, or are invented excuses for overtly promiscuous or prudish behavior. The existence of negative stereotypes, particularly those of non-binary individuals, is largely due to a lack of visibility and respectful representation within media and popular culture. However, there is still a dearth of non-binary content in popular literature outside of young adult fiction. Can You See Me? aims to fill the gap in bisexual, asexual, and non-binary representation in adult literature. Each of the four stories that make up this collection deals with an aspect of gender and/or sexuality that has been erased, ignored, or denied visibility in American popular culture. The first story, "We'll Grow Lemon Trees," examines bisexual erasure through the lens of sociolinguistics. A bisexual Romanian woman emigrates to Los Angeles in 1989 and must navigate a new culture, learn new languages, and try to move on from her past life under a dictatorship where speaking up could mean imprisonment or death. The second story "Up, Down, All Around," is about a young genderqueer child and their parents dealing with microaggressions, examining gender norms, and exploring personal identity through imaginary scenarios, each involving an encounter with an unknown entity and a colander. The third story, "Aces High," follows two asexual characters from the day they're born to when they are 28 years old, as they find themselves in pop culture. The two endure identity crises, gender discrimination, erasure, individual obsessions, and prejudice as they learn to accept themselves and embrace who they are. In the fourth and final story, "Mile Marker 72," a gay Mexican man must hide in plain sight as he deals with the death of his partner and coming out to his best friend, whose brother is his partner's murderer.
ContributorsOchser, Jordyn M. (Author) / Bell, Matt (Thesis director) / Free, Melissa (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Pandora is a play exploring our relationship with gendered technology through the lens of artificial intelligence. Can women be subjective under patriarchy? Do robots who look like women have subjectivity? Hoping to create a better version of ourselves, The Engineer must navigate the loss of her creation, and Pandora must navigate their new world. The original premiere run was March 27-28, 2018, original cast: Caitlin Andelora, Rikki Tremblay, and Michael Tristano Jr.
ContributorsToye, Abigail Elizabeth (Author) / Linde, Jennifer (Thesis director) / Abele, Kelsey (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
After freelancing on my own for the past year and a half, I have realized that one of the biggest obstacles to college entrepreneurs is a fear or apprehension to sales. As a computer science major trying to sell my services, I discovered very quickly that I had not been prepared for the difficulty of learning sales. Sales get a bad rap and very often is the last thing that young entrepreneurs want to try, but the reality is that sales is oxygen to a company and a required skill for an entrepreneur. Due to this, I compiled all of my knowledge into an e-book for young entrepreneurs starting out to learn how to open up a conversation with a prospect all the way to closing them on the phone. Instead of starting from scratch like I did, college entrepreneurs can learn the bare basics of selling their own services, even if they are terrified of sales and what it entails. In this e-book, there are tips that I have learned to deal with my anxiety about sales such as taking the pressure off of yourself and prioritizing listening more than pitching. Instead of trying to teach sales expecting people to be natural sales people, this e-book takes the approach of helping entrepreneurs that are terrified of sales and show them how they can cope with this fear and still close a client. In the future, I hope young entrepreneurs will have access to more resources that handle this fear and make it much easier for them to learn it by themselves. This e-book is the first step.
ContributorsMead, Kevin Tyler (Author) / Sebold, Brent (Thesis director) / Kruse, Gabriel (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
South Korea possesses the only culture to successfully create a transnationality and hybridity formula that is not replicable. So why Korea and why now? The goal of this thesis creative project is to demonstrate the marketing and communications strategies used in the arts and culture industry to drive global awareness and interest in K-Pop. In order to achieve that goal, I created HellotoHallyu.com, a website designed for an audience of Millennials and Generation Z English speakers to increase their awareness of the growth and impact of the Korean Wave in a fun and engaging way. So those who may hear a song by K-Pop idol group BTS on a music awards show in the U.S. can get themselves up-to-speed before diving into the fast-paced world of K-culture gossip sites and forums. Hello to Hallyu delivers consumer-friendly, educational content easily understood by English speakers with no prior knowledge of Korean culture, while still piquing the interest of K-pop connoisseurs. It provides the background necessary for even the most dedicated fans to glean new knowledge of Korea's cultural industry and a new perspective on the content they consume. Hello to Hallyu is based on a combination of secondary and primary research conducted over four semesters beginning Spring 2017 and continuing through Spring 2018. This project is set up as an ever-expanding resource freely available to anyone with internet access. The research required to maintain the site will continue with the Wave. However, the content currently on the site is evergreen, a documentation of the history of the Wave as explained in peer-reviewed articles and by Dr. Ingyu Oh as well as a documentation of my personal experience with Hallyu while in Korea and as a Westerner living in the U.S. The site's goal is to demonstrate the marketing and communications strategies used in the industry to drive global awareness and interest. Through this means, Hello to Hallyu aims to provide fully developed multimedia content intended to increase English speakers' awareness of the growth and impact of the Korean Wave as shown through site visits, content views, and audience engagement.
ContributorsTravis, Lisa Anne (Author) / Hass, Mark (Thesis director) / Shewell, Justin (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05