Matching Items (6)
Description
Since commercial airlines are undergoing shortages and diversity in organizations is beneficial, it is critical to examine representation within industries, specifically aviation, and their quality of work-life balance. This study aims to understand how male and female commercial airline pilots describe and negotiate work stressors through an applied method. Before evaluating the participants of this study, a masculine culture in airline was developed from the image airline organization originally promoted to passengers and the pipeline derived from the military. To collect rigorous data in a traditionally masculine setting, qualitative data in the form of semi-structured interviews and demographic surveys were gathered through a convenient snowball sampling method. Findings indicate that male and female pilots experience and perceive gendered work stressors differently based on these emphasized structures such as competency, flexibility versus rigidity, task stressors, and health stressors. Male pilots perceived they experienced unfair treatment in terms of affirmative action policy, depended on their spouses to manage their home life, exercised self-preservation in stressful situations, and were emotional detached when discussing health concerns. Female pilots appreciated affirmative action but recognized they help fill organizational quotas, resisted and behaved over-competently to prove their capabilities, experienced work-life integration, considered others in the form perspective-taking, and utilized proactive maintenance behaviors to better their health. Even though male and female pilots mainly differed in their descriptions and negotiations, they experienced similarities in memory recall amidst stress and youth perspective-taking from their children. A discussion elaborates how these descriptions and negotiations lend themselves to less stress or more stress in each structure. The discussion will emphasize how the findings build upon previous literature on work-life balance and the unique population of airline pilots.
ContributorsFischer, Marley Rose (Author) / Zanin, Alaina (Thesis director) / Tracy, Sarah (Committee member) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-12
Description
This paper proposes that mindfulness should be integrated into the culture and pedagogy of educational institutions like Barrett, the Honors College. Research suggests that members of the millennial generation experience higher levels of stress due to the conditions of their upbringing. The text explores the author's experience of mindfulness practice both outside of the classroom and as integrated into pedagogy through transformative learning courses. This paper shows that practicing mindfulness, improving self-talk, transformative learning, increasing social connection, and practicing Free Listening will help to cultivate a more mindful culture in Barrett and help to reduce stress-levels in students.
ContributorsHanneman, Lauren Marie (Author) / Eckard, Bonnie (Thesis director) / Tracy, Sarah (Committee member) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
This study examines the distinctions in participation styles of female students in classes where the majority of the students are male as compared to the participation styles of female students in female courses. I utilized metaphor analysis during qualitative interviews to unearth the motivations for female students’ reluctance to participate. Holding back from participating in class can negatively affect the understanding of students, resulting in lower grades and engendering anxiety in a classroom setting. By drawing upon the theories of communication accommodation theory, face threat, and muted group theory, this research was able to come to conclusions about what motivating factors lead female students to participate less than male students and distinguish which classroom behaviors enable them to share their thoughts.
ContributorsPlunkett, Margot (Author) / Tracy, Sarah (Thesis director) / de la Garza, Amira (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2022-05
Description
The purpose of this study is to explore the way mindfulness informs how leaders make sense of and navigate paradoxical tensions that arise in their organizations. This study employs a qualitative research methodology, based on synchronous, semi- structured, in-depth interviews of leaders who hold a personal mindfulness practice. Qualitative interviews illuminate how leaders’ communication about paradoxical tensions (e.g., through metaphorical language) reflects the way they experience those tensions. Findings extend the constitutive approach to paradox by demonstrating the way mindfulness informs awareness, emotion, pausing, and self-care. Specifically, this study (1) empirically illustrates how higher-level, dialogic more-than responses to paradox may be used to accomplish both-and responses to paradox, (2) evidences the way discursive consciousness of emotion may generatively inform paradox management, (3) suggests the appropriateness and use of a new paradox management strategy that I term ‘mindful dis/engagement’, and (4) highlights self-care as an others-centered leadership capability.
ContributorsTown, Sophia (Author) / Tracy, Sarah (Thesis advisor) / Fairhurst, Gail (Committee member) / Adame, Elissa (Committee member) / Brummans, Boris (Committee member) / Lange, Don (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Engineering ethics is preoccupied with technical failure. To ameliorate the risk that engineering works might either blow up or fall down, the engineering code of ethics provides guidance of how engineers should conduct themselves. For example, the Fundamental Canons in the National Society of Professional Engineers code of ethics states that engineers should hold paramount the health, safety and welfare of the public. As a result, engineering designs meet basic human needs such as food, water and shelter -- at risks that are generally considered acceptable. However, even safe designs fail to meet our needs ranked higher in Maslow's hierarchy -- such as belonging, esteem and self-actualization. While these have historically not been ethical priorities, increasing expectations in developed countries now include more complex ethical concepts such as sustainability and social justice. We can expect these trends toward higher and more complex human needs to continue -- although the profession seems ill-prepared. We argue that an empathic approach to engineering design is necessary to meet these higher needs of developed and developing societies. To guide engineers towards this approach, we propose a pluralistic interpretation of empathy grounded in an understanding of the three parts of the mind: cognitive, affective, and conative. In fact, product designers already use empathy in their design processes. However, an exemplar of an empathic design is harder to find in civil engineering disciplines. This paper discusses an example of the Hoover Dam Bypass, which resulted in an award-winning design and construction that improved traffic flow, reduced vulnerability to terrorist attack, and accounted for historical factors and environmental impacts. However, this technical success is an empathic failure. Although project leaders commissioned ethnographic studies to understand the impact the bridge would have on the local Native American populations and their cultural sites, the eventual design showed little consideration of the concerns that were revealed. For engineering designs such as bridges, other infrastructure and systems to meet the needs of the various populations in which they serve, engineers need to incorporate empathy into their designs.
ContributorsVortherms, Kaitlin (Author) / Seager, Thomas (Thesis advisor) / Tracy, Sarah (Committee member) / Spierre/Clark, Susan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This study aims to deepen the understanding of how Third Culture Kids (TCKs) receive and maintain long-term perceptions of positive identity. The literature review surveys bodies of research related to Third Culture Kids, intercultural communication conceptions of identity, and communication strategies of identity management. The research framework is a response to Martin and Nakayama’s (2010) call for a dialectical approach to the study of intercultural communication, and reflects an interpretive/critical/activist dialectic paradigm.
This qualitative multi-method research project gathered survey, interview, and visual data through online platforms. Participants were TCKs over age 40 who self-selected as having a positive identity. A modified grounded analysis revealed several key findings connected to agency development, choice making, communication filters, and framing of positivity. Factors contributing to characteristics of a positive identity included sending organization, total number and frequency of moves, and degrees of difference among their cultural contexts.
This qualitative multi-method research project gathered survey, interview, and visual data through online platforms. Participants were TCKs over age 40 who self-selected as having a positive identity. A modified grounded analysis revealed several key findings connected to agency development, choice making, communication filters, and framing of positivity. Factors contributing to characteristics of a positive identity included sending organization, total number and frequency of moves, and degrees of difference among their cultural contexts.
ContributorsJung, Amy Christine (Author) / Broome, Benjamin (Thesis advisor) / Martin, Judith (Committee member) / Tracy, Sarah (Committee member) / Cottrell, Anna (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016