Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2024, Management

Abstract by RAYMOND TODD DUTKIN As a practitioner, I spent countless hours developing ideas, witnessing firsthand the shortcomings in organizational capacity to create them. In addition to these inadequacies, organizations struggle to keep up with and adapt to change, further exacerbating the situation. Given the rapidity of change, building the capability to create ideas becomes more critical to the competitiveness of organizations. Through my research, I found that awe has the potential to help individuals create new ideas. However, few studies have linked our natural sense of awe or awareness of awe to idea creation. In this dissertation, I develop models across three empirical studies supporting the role of awe in this process. This dissertation demonstrates that a sense of awe can lead to “aha moments,” in which an abductive mode of reasoning, involving the generation of hypotheses joins our more familiar modes of inductive and deductive reasoning resulting in new ideas. I employ a sequential mixed-methods design to explore the relationship between awe and aha moments. My initial study was exploratory and used constructivist grounded theory to tease out the factors influencing idea creation among innovators, entrepreneurs, and founders. I provide evidence that curiosity and awe are instrumental in developing new ideas. xvi Based on the findings from my qualitative study, I pursued a quantitative study to provide deductive empirical support for my initial findings. I developed a structural equation model demonstrating the relationship between curiosity and awe. Using validated instruments, I created a questionnaire with questions I adopted or adapted using talk-aloud and Q-sort methodologies. I conducted a survey (N = 403) of English-speaking adults living in the United States (U.S.), with a sample size of sufficient adequacy to test my constructs. Awe was my dependent variable, curiosity was my mediator, and openmi (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Philip Cola (Committee Chair); David Aron (Committee Member); Yunmei Wang (Committee Member); Richard Boland Jr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Management

Doctor of Organization Development & Change (D.O.D.C.), Bowling Green State University, 2022, Organization Development

Mentoring is a powerful tool used in today's corporate, educational, and social settings. Peer-mentoring groups are a popular and rapidly growing form of mentoring today. Organized as self-directed groups of people who gather for a common purpose of growth and development, they usually meet in regularly scheduled sessions to support each other. These provide opportunities for learning and change, where participants can experience ah-ha moments during these sessions. These ah-ha experiences can be transformative moments for individuals. These groups show promising results but are still the least researched form of mentoring. Through qualitative techniques, ah-ha moments in peer-mentoring groups were examined and uncovered the following four themes: (1) the timing of ah-ha moments can happen during or after the peer-mentoring group session, (2) participants do not always remember what happened before the ah-ha moment, (3) ah-ha moments can occur through active and passive engagement, and (4) sentiments expressed during interviews started as negative and became positive during the session. These findings revealed new and unexpected discoveries and provided insight into how peer-mentoring groups can impact current practice and present opportunities for future research on how ha-ha moments can influence learning and growth.

Committee: Steven Cady Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Jeanelle Sears Ph.D. (Other); Colleen Boff Ed.D. (Committee Member); Sandra Spataro Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Behavioral Sciences; Educational Theory; Organization Theory

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2019, Economics

Medicare and Medicaid are U.S. Federal health insurance programs established in 1965 as an amendment to the Social Security Act of 1935. They provide coverage to the aged population (65+), low-income individuals, and to other subsets of the U.S. population. After reviewing the foundations of Medicare/Medicaid, I analyze the political economy of Members of Congress vote choices on the original 1965 Medicare/Medicaid law. I find evidence that the number of doctors per 100,000 individuals in a state is a strong predictor of vote choice and there is statistically significant interaction between percentage of Black Americans and the South. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that party alignment of constituencies and geographic region played roles in persuading Republicans in party-contested states to defect. The behavior of these defectors is dependent on their party alignment and the party alignment of the majority in Congress. To assess the strength of the model across time and legislation, I run a fully interacted, pooled OLS regression on both the 1965 legislation, and the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. I find the effects of hospitals do not hold across time. However, I find evidence target populations remain insignificant in both datasets, suggesting they are not strong influencers of vote choice.

Committee: Melissa Thomasson (Advisor); Gregory Niemesh (Committee Member); Deborah Fletcher (Committee Member) Subjects: Economic History; Economics; Health Care; Political Science; Public Policy

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2018, Allied Medicine

Background: Effective methods for lowering elevated blood cholesterol include medication and healthy dietary habits. While prescription rates have increased, dietary habits of hyper- and normocholesterolemic Americans remain unknown. Aims: To assess differences in diet quality between groups stratified by cholesterol level and treatment via lipid lowering medication. Methods: Data from 18,952 adults (>20 years) who participated in the 2005-2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey were compared across four groups: normocholesterolemia not taking medication (NC-M), normocholesterolemia taking medication (NC+M), hypercholesterolemia not taking medication (HC-M), and hypercholesterolemia taking medication (HC+M). 24-hour dietary recall data was evaluated using the Healthy Eating Index (HEI)-2015 and an Adjusted American Heart Association (AHA) Healthy Diet Score (HDS). Higher scores indicate better diet quality. Results: Total diet quality scores were not different across the four groups according to the HEI and HDS, with average total scores of 52 and 43, respectively, out of 100 points. Individual diet component scores differed between groups. NC+M scored better than both hypercholesterolemic groups in saturated fat (HEI p=0.032, HDS p=0.020), fatty acids (HEI p<0.001), and whole grains (HEI p=0.016, HDS p=0.001). HC-M scored the poorest of the four groups in saturated fat and fatty acids. NC-M had the highest total diet quality while the HC+M had the worst diet quality. Conclusions: The data demonstrates small strides for heart disease prevention in the NC+M group relative to groups with hypercholesterolemia, yet drastic discrepancies from dietary recommendations. This provides direction for improving heart disease prevention efforts, especially in those with hypercholesterolemia.

Committee: Christopher Taylor PhD, RDN, LD, FAND (Advisor); Krok Jessica PhD (Committee Member); Pratt Keeley PhD, IMFT (Committee Member) Subjects: Health; Health Care; Medicine; Nutrition; Public Health

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2017, Arts and Sciences: Chemistry

Iron is limited in marine environments but is essential for nearly all living organisms. Marine bacteria make organic chelates called siderophores to tightly bind Fe(III) and release it as Fe(II). Many marine siderophores contain an &alpha-hydroxy acid functional group that makes the complex photoactive once it is bound to Fe(III). Marinobactin, a marine bacterium, synthesizes siderophores with &alpha-hydroxy amide functional groups, and these complexes are also photoactive when bound to Fe(III). This dissertation reports the synthesis of two new series of chelates that contain &alpha-hydroxy acid (AHA) and &alpha-hydroxy amide (AHAmide) motifs and their Fe(III) complexes. Chapter 1 introduces the inspiration for this project. In chapter 2, new chelates are synthesized that contain a AHA functional group and a tripodal amine motif. The tripodal amine (TPA) facilitates incorporation of a variety of functional groups commonly used in coordination chemistry. These chelates form metal complexes with different nuclearities, which can also be controlled with the anions present. The quantum yield values and photolysis products for the Fe(III) complexes were determined. Those organic products show these complexes follow the same photochemical mechanism as previously reported Fe(III)-AHA complexes. In chapter 3, the AHA chelate series was expanded by transforming the AHA group to an AHAmide group. These chelates allow for additional metal binding sites and solubility properties, and could be used as photocages or recognition agents. The Fe(III) complexes were characterized, and photochemistry results were compared to the Fe(III)-AHA complexes. The quantum yield values are lower than the AHA-containing complexes, and preliminary results of the photolysis products show a new cleaved organic ligand. These complexes also follow the same photochemical mechanism as the AHA complexes.

Committee: Michael Baldwin Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Hairong Guan Ph.D. (Committee Member); Allan Pinhas Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Chemistry