Subjective fit with organizational culture : an investigation of moderating effects in the work stressor-employee adjustment relationship

Occupational stress has been a concern for human resource managers in light of research investigating the work stressor-employee adjustment relationship. This research has consistently demonstrated many negative effects between stressors in the workplace and employee adjustment. A considerable amount of literature also describes potential moderators of this relationship. Subjective fit with organizational culture has been established as a significant predictor of employee job-related attitudes; however, research has neglected investigation of the potential moderating effect of subjective fit in the work stressor-employee adjustment process. It was predicted that perceptions of subjective fit with the organization’s values and goals would mitigate the negative effect of work stressors on employee adjustment in an employee sample from three organizations (N ¼ 256). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed support for the stress-buffering effects of high subjective fit in the prediction of physical symptoms, job satisfaction, and intentions to leave. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.

Lateral buckling strength of simply supported LiteSteel beams subject to moment gradient effects

The flexural capacity of of a new cold-formed hollow flange channel section known as LiteSteel beam (LSB) is limited by lateral distortional buckling for intermediate spans, which is characterised by simultaneous lateral deflection, twist and web distortion. Recent research has developed suitable design rules for the member capacity of LSBs. However, they are limited to a uniform moment distribution that rarely exists in practice. Many steel design codes have adopted equivalent uniform moment distribution factors to accommodate the effect of non-uniform moment distributions in design. But they were derived mostly based on the data for conventional hot-rolled, doubly symmetric I-beams subject to lateral torsional buckling. The effect of moment distribution for LSBs, and the suitability of the current steel design code rules to include this effect for LSBs are not yet known. This paper presents the details of a research study based on finite element analyses of the lateral buckling strength of simply supported LSBs subject to moment gradient effects. It also presents the details of a number of LSB lateral buckling experiments undertaken to validate the results of finite element analyses. Finally, it discusses the suitability of the current design methods, and provides design recommendations for simply supported LSBs subject to moment gradient effects.

Digital kids, analogue students : a mixed methods study of students' engagement with a school-based Web 2.0 learning innovation

The inquiry documented in this thesis is located at the nexus of technological innovation and traditional schooling. As we enter the second decade of a new century, few would argue against the increasingly urgent need to integrate digital literacies with traditional academic knowledge. Yet, despite substantial investments from governments and businesses, the adoption and diffusion of contemporary digital tools in formal schooling remain sluggish. To date, research on technology adoption in schools tends to take a deficit perspective of schools and teachers, with the lack of resources and teacher ‘technophobia’ most commonly cited as barriers to digital uptake. Corresponding interventions that focus on increasing funding and upskilling teachers, however, have made little difference to adoption trends in the last decade. Empirical evidence that explicates the cultural and pedagogical complexities of innovation diffusion within long-established conventions of mainstream schooling, particularly from the standpoint of students, is wanting. To address this knowledge gap, this thesis inquires into how students evaluate and account for the constraints and affordances of contemporary digital tools when they engage with them as part of their conventional schooling. It documents the attempted integration of a student-led Web 2.0 learning initiative, known as the Student Media Centre (SMC), into the schooling practices of a long-established, high-performing independent senior boys’ school in urban Australia. The study employed an ‘explanatory’ two-phase research design (Creswell, 2003) that combined complementary quantitative and qualitative methods to achieve both breadth of measurement and richness of characterisation. In the initial quantitative phase, a self-reported questionnaire was administered to the senior school student population to determine adoption trends and predictors of SMC usage (N=481). Measurement constructs included individual learning dispositions (learning and performance goals, cognitive playfulness and personal innovativeness), as well as social and technological variables (peer support, perceived usefulness and ease of use). Incremental predictive models of SMC usage were conducted using Classification and Regression Tree (CART) modelling: (i) individual-level predictors, (ii) individual and social predictors, and (iii) individual, social and technological predictors. Peer support emerged as the best predictor of SMC usage. Other salient predictors include perceived ease of use and usefulness, cognitive playfulness and learning goals. On the whole, an overwhelming proportion of students reported low usage levels, low perceived usefulness and a lack of peer support for engaging with the digital learning initiative. The small minority of frequent users reported having high levels of peer support and robust learning goal orientations, rather than being predominantly driven by performance goals. These findings indicate that tensions around social validation, digital learning and academic performance pressures influence students’ engagement with the Web 2.0 learning initiative. The qualitative phase that followed provided insights into these tensions by shifting the analytics from individual attitudes and behaviours to shared social and cultural reasoning practices that explain students’ engagement with the innovation. Six indepth focus groups, comprising 60 students with different levels of SMC usage, were conducted, audio-recorded and transcribed. Textual data were analysed using Membership Categorisation Analysis. Students’ accounts converged around a key proposition. The Web 2.0 learning initiative was useful-in-principle but useless-in-practice. While students endorsed the usefulness of the SMC for enhancing multimodal engagement, extending peer-topeer networks and acquiring real-world skills, they also called attention to a number of constraints that obfuscated the realisation of these design affordances in practice. These constraints were cast in terms of three binary formulations of social and cultural imperatives at play within the school: (i) ‘cool/uncool’, (ii) ‘dominant staff/compliant student’, and (iii) ‘digital learning/academic performance’. The first formulation foregrounds the social stigma of the SMC among peers and its resultant lack of positive network benefits. The second relates to students’ perception of the school culture as authoritarian and punitive with adverse effects on the very student agency required to drive the innovation. The third points to academic performance pressures in a crowded curriculum with tight timelines. Taken together, findings from both phases of the study provide the following key insights. First, students endorsed the learning affordances of contemporary digital tools such as the SMC for enhancing their current schooling practices. For the majority of students, however, these learning affordances were overshadowed by the performative demands of schooling, both social and academic. The student participants saw engagement with the SMC in-school as distinct from, even oppositional to, the conventional social and academic performance indicators of schooling, namely (i) being ‘cool’ (or at least ‘not uncool’), (ii) sufficiently ‘compliant’, and (iii) achieving good academic grades. Their reasoned response therefore, was simply to resist engagement with the digital learning innovation. Second, a small minority of students seemed dispositionally inclined to negotiate the learning affordances and performance constraints of digital learning and traditional schooling more effectively than others. These students were able to engage more frequently and meaningfully with the SMC in school. Their ability to adapt and traverse seemingly incommensurate social and institutional identities and norms is theorised as cultural agility – a dispositional construct that comprises personal innovativeness, cognitive playfulness and learning goals orientation. The logic then is ‘both and’ rather than ‘either or’ for these individuals with a capacity to accommodate both learning and performance in school, whether in terms of digital engagement and academic excellence, or successful brokerage across multiple social identities and institutional affiliations within the school. In sum, this study takes us beyond the familiar terrain of deficit discourses that tend to blame institutional conservatism, lack of resourcing and teacher resistance for low uptake of digital technologies in schools. It does so by providing an empirical base for the development of a ‘third way’ of theorising technological and pedagogical innovation in schools, one which is more informed by students as critical stakeholders and thus more relevant to the lived culture within the school, and its complex relationship to students’ lives outside of school. It is in this relationship that we find an explanation for how these individuals can, at the one time, be digital kids and analogue students.

Choosing to become a 'lost cause': the perverse effects of benefit preconditions

This paper argues that preconditions for welfare benefit entitlements based on labour market prospects can be counterproductive when they create an incentive for individuals to abstain from any investment earlier in life that could improve future prospects. Benefit entitlements based partly on investments made prior to labour market entry are then Pareto-improving.

Online professional communities : understanding the effects of membership on teacher practice

Online communities offer teachers a forum to discuss ideas, seek support, engage in professional discussions and network with a wider peer group. The popularity of online communities for teachers is self-evident by the quantity that has emerged in recent years and they present as opportunities to engage in continued pedagogical growth. The study presented in this paper has focused on the electronic discussions of three online communities for teachers, two Australian-based communities and one UK-based community. The aim was to analyse the content of the messages, via content analysis using the Practical Inquiry Model (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2001) in an attempt to determine if membership had an impact pedagogy. This study will present findings that support the conclusion that membership to online communities provides genuine opportunities for continued pedagogical growth for teachers. It will also show that they are being used as a problem solving resource, provide opportunities for professional discourse and professional support.

The effects of sintering profiles on the resistance and flatness of transparent conducting oxide substrates for DSC

The effects of sintering on several properties of FTO and ITO substates used in DSC have been investigated. FTO & ITO substrates were prepared with a range of sizes and aspect ratios - emulated laboratory style test cells through to prototype modules. Time and temperature of the sintering profiles were varied and sheet resistance and flatness measured. Electrical properties of the substrates were then further characterized by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, and module sized devices were assembled and thickness variations over the device area were determined and related to performance.

Effects of switching time on output voltages of a multilevel inverter used in high frequency applications

Employing multilevel inverters is a proper solution to reduce harmonic content of output voltage and electromagnetic interference in high power electronic applications. In this paper, a new pulse width modulation method for multilevel inverters is proposed in which power devices’ on-off switching times have been considered. This method can be surveyed in order to analyse the effect of switching time on harmonic contents of output voltage in high frequency applications when a switching time is not negligible compared to a switching cycle. Fast Fourier transform calculation and analysis of output voltage waveforms and harmonic contents with regard to switching time variation are presented in this paper for a single phase (3, 5)-level inverters used in high voltage and high frequency converters. Mathematical analysis and MATLAB simulation results have been carried out to validate the proposed method.

A short-term evaluation of a school-based early adolescent injury prevention program

This paper reports on the development of a school-based intervention to reduce risk-taking and associated injuries. There is limited but important evidence that intervention design should ensure participation does not lead to an increase in target risk behaviors with some studies in alcohol and drug prevention finding unexpected negative effects. The short-term evaluation of Skills for Preventing Injury in Youth (SPIY) examined change in interpersonal violence, alcohol and transport-related risks. Intervention (n = 360) and comparison (n = 180) students were surveyed pre/post-intervention. A qualitative analysis based on focus groups (70 students) explored experiences of change. Findings indicate significant positive changes reinforced by students’ reports. A decrease in reported risk-taking for the intervention group and an increase in the comparison group were observed. These findings endorse SPIY as a useful curriculum approach to reducing injuries and lend support to the future conduct of a long-term outcome evaluation.

Effects of pediatric obesity on joint kinematics and kinetics during 2 walking cadences

Objective: To determine whether differences existed in lower-extremity joint biomechanics during self-selected walking cadence (SW) and fast walking cadence (FW) in overweight- and normal-weight children.---------- Design: Survey.---------- Setting: Institutional gait study center.---------- Participants: Participants (N=20; mean age ± SD, 10.4±1.6y) from referred and volunteer samples were classified based on body mass index percentiles and stratified by age and sex. Exclusion criteria were a history of diabetes, neuromuscular disorder, or recent lower-extremity injury.---------- Main Outcome Measures: Sagittal, frontal, and transverse plane angular displacements (degrees) and peak moments (newton meters) at the hip, knee, and ankle joints.---------- Results: The level of significance was set at P less than .008. Compared with normal-weight children, overweight children had greater absolute peak joint moments at the hip (flexor, extensor, abductor, external rotator), the knee (flexor, extensor, abductor, adductor, internal rotator), and the ankle (plantarflexor, inverter, external/internal rotators). After including body weight as a covariate, overweight children had greater peak ankle dorsiflexor moments than normal-weight children. No kinematic differences existed between groups. Greater peak hip extensor moments and less peak ankle inverter moments occurred during FW than SW. There was greater angular displacement during hip flexion as well as less angular displacement at the hip (extension, abduction), knee (flexion, extension), and ankle (plantarflexion, inversion) during FW than SW.---------- Conclusions: Overweight children experienced increased joint moments, which can have long-term orthopedic implications and suggest a need for more nonweight-bearing activities within exercise prescription. The percent of increase in joint moments from SW to FW was not different for overweight and normal-weight children. These findings can be used in developing an exercise prescription that must involve weight-bearing activity.

Stroke education : promising effects on the health beliefs of those at risk

Background: The effect of patient education on reducing stroke has had mixed effects, raising questions about how to achieve optimal benefit. Because past evaluations have typically lacked an appropriate theoretical base, the design of past research may have missed important effects. --------- Method: This study used a social cognitive framework to identify variables that might change in response to education. A mixed design was used to evaluate two approaches to an intervention, both of which included education. Fifty seniors completed a measure of stroke knowledge and beliefs twice: before and after an intervention that was either standard (educational brochure plus activities that were not about stroke) or enhanced (educational brochure plus activities designed to enhance beliefs about stroke). Outcome measures were health beliefs, intention to exercise to reduce stroke, and stroke knowledge. --------- Results: Selected beliefs changed significantly over time but not differentially across conditions. Beliefs that changed were (a) perceived susceptibility to stroke and (b) perceived benefit of exercise to reduce risk. Benefit beliefs, in particular, were strongly and positively associated with intention to exercise. -------- Conclusion: Findings suggest that basic approaches to patient education may influence health beliefs. More effective stroke prevention programs may result from continued consideration of the role of health beliefs in such programs.

Effects of age on peripheral ocular aberrations

On-axis monochromatic higher-order aberrations increase with age. Few studies have been made of peripheral refraction along the horizontal meridian of older eyes, and none of their off-axis higher-order aberrations. We measured wave aberrations over the central 42°x32° visual field for a 5mm pupil in 10 young and 7 older emmetropes. Patterns of peripheral refraction were similar in the two groups. Coma increased linearly with field angle at a significantly higher rate in older than in young emmetropes (−0.018±0.007 versus −0.006±0.002 µm/deg). Spherical aberration was almost constant over the measured field in both age groups and mean values across the field were significantly higher in older than in young emmetropes (+0.08±0.05 versus +0.02±0.04 µm). Total root-mean-square and higher-order aberrations increased more rapidly with field angle in the older emmetropes. However, the limits to monochromatic peripheral retinal image quality are largely determined by the second-order aberrations, which do not change markedly with age, and under normal conditions the relative importance of the increased higher-order aberrations in older eyes is lessened by the reduction in pupil diameter with age. Therefore it is unlikely that peripheral visual performance deficits observed in normal older individuals are primarily attributable to the increased impact of higher-order aberration.

Direct and indirect effects on households’ intentions to replace the old car

With the purpose of testing the hypothesis that households’ intentions to replace their old car have a direct negative relationship to its perceived quality (‘current level’) and a direct positive relationship to their aspirations for a new car (‘aspiration level’), a rotating panel of car owners were interviewed every fourth month during 2 years. In this data set the hypothesis received support. In addition the results showed that the age of the car, the total number of miles driven, and the number of anticipated repairs affected the current level, whereas marital status, the number of children, consumer confidence, and environmental concern affected the aspiration level.

Modeling the effects of strategic flexibility, organisational learning on e-business adoption and competitive advantage : an empirical investigation

The role of intangible firm capabilities as a source of competitive advantage has come into prominence in marketing strategy literature, due to the Resource Based View. This paper applies the Resource Based View and hypothesizes that strategic flexibility and organisation learning, conceptualised as capabilities, positively effect e-business adoption and competitive advantage. Partial Lease Squares analysis suggest that theoretical constructs function as hypothesised and explain a significant variation on e-business adoption and competitive advantage. Firms adopting e-business should develop capabilities such as strategic flexibility and organisation learning and that vendor firms may segment their potential clients based on these capabilities.

Effects of starting strategy on 5-min cycling time-trial performance

The importance of pacing for middle-distance performance is well recognized, yet previous research has produced equivocal results. Twenty-six trained male cyclists (O2peak 62.8 ± 5.9 ml · kg-1 · min-1; maximal aerobic power output 340 ± 43 W; mean ± s) performed three cycling time-trials where the total external work (102.7 ± 13.7 kJ) for each trial was identical to the best of two 5-min habituation trials. Markers of aerobic and anaerobic metabolism were assessed in 12 participants. Power output during the first quarter of the time-trials was fixed to control external mechanical work done (25.7 ± 3.4 kJ) and induce fast-, even-, and slow-starting strategies (60, 75, and 90 s, respectively). Finishing times for the fast-start time-trial (4:53 ± 0:11 min:s) were shorter than for the even-start (5:04 ± 0:11 min:s; 95% CI = 5 to 18 s, effect size = 0.65, P < 0.001) and slow-start time-trial (5:09 ± 0:11 min:s; 95% CI = 7 to 24 s, effect size = 1.00, P < 0.001). Mean O2 during the fast-start trials (4.31 ± 0.51 litres · min-1) was 0.18 ± 0.19 litres · min-1 (95% CI = 0.07 to 0.30 litres · min-1, effect size = 0.94, P = 0.003) higher than the even- and 0.18 ± 0.20 litres · min-1 (95% CI = 0.5 to 0.30 litres · min-1, effect size = 0.86, P = 0.007) higher than the slow-start time-trial. Oxygen deficit was greatest during the first quarter of the fast-start trial but was lower than the even- and slow-start trials during the second quarter of the trial. Blood lactate and pH were similar between the three trials. In conclusion, performance during a 5-min cycling time-trial was improved with the adoption of a fast- rather than an even- or slow-starting strategy.