Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.), Franklin University, 2022, Business Administration

The problem facing organizations is that of high employee turnover and lack of employee engagement. The lack of employee commitment caused by skill shortages and economic growth undermines the organization's ability to survive and compete. Previous work ethic and job satisfaction research have established a statistically significant positive correlation between reduced employee turnover and employee commitment. This quantitative research study uses a purposeful sample of MBA students to examine if and to what extent a relationship exists between work ethic and job satisfaction in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. This population was selected because they are both students and full-time employees across multiple industries. Rather than rely on religious or cultural values, the study is based on Self Determination Theory (SDT), which provides a universal base to explore a possible relationship between an individual's work ethic and job satisfaction. This theoretical perspective shifts the focus of traditional work ethic and job satisfaction values from cultural and religious to individual development as it interacts with the perceived opportunity. This research establishes a universal base that can apply across similar and dissimilar cultures. Finding from this data indicate a strong correlation between Employability Skills Assessment (work ethic) and job satisfaction A moderate correlation was established between the sub-factors of initiative, dependability, and interpersonal skills. Graduating students who master the necessary employability skills will be more successful according to the ESA scores and more likely to achieve job satisfaction.

Committee: Beverly Smith (Committee Chair); Charles Fenner (Committee Member); Daniel Dayton (Committee Member) Subjects: Business Administration

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2021, Health and Rehabilitation Sciences

The health care field continues to expand with an increasing need for health care professionals, however for allied health fields, this need is not being met, resulting in a shortage of professionals. This shortage is amplified in the underrepresented minority population. This issue partially stems from low enrollment into academic majors in the health sciences. To address these needs and investigate low enrollment rates, motivations of students choosing majors in the health sciences need to be understood. Motivation can be categorized as intrinsic (for the enjoyment of a decision) or extrinsic (for an outside goal). Studies have shown that students who are intrinsically motivated are more likely to choose a career in health care and have improved retention and rates of satisfaction. 188 first year students in academic majors in the health sciences were surveyed to determine their dominant motivation mechanism and their self-perceived cognitive competence. These students were, on average, more intrinsically motivated and no significant difference was found between the motivation mechanisms of underrepresented minority and non-underrepresented minority students. It was found most of the participants were influenced by a current health care professional and their major deterrent from a career in health care was the education involved. These findings provide guidance to universities to improve their recruitment methods into the health sciences. Improved recruitment can lead to improved diversity and lessened health disparities.

Committee: Jill Clutter PhD (Advisor); Stefan Czerwinski PhD (Committee Member); Marcia Nahikian-Nelms PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Health Sciences; Rehabilitation

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2019, Curriculum and Instruction: Educational Technology

This study examined the effects of academic motivation on the use of academic support interventions by college students. Many higher education institutions offer academic support interventions, specifically peer-led learning assistance support programs such as tutoring appointments and Supplemental Instruction (SI) sessions, with a goal of improving student outcomes including retention and graduation rates. However, most college students do not access the available interventions. The low participation in academic support interventions indicates that there may be a problem with the design of the interventions. Applying instructional design principles to the problem is an effective method to address the problem of low student participation. An important first step in the instructional design process is to determine the learner characteristics of students who do and do not use the academic support interventions. The Academic Motivation Survey for college students, AMS-C 28, survey instrument with 28 items was used to collect data from 400 undergraduate students at a mid-sized Midwestern public university. A MANOVA analysis revealed that there are differences in academic motivation between students who do and do not use academic support interventions. There are also differences between students who use the interventions frequently and those who do not. Additionally, female students have different academic motivation characteristics than male students. Furthermore, there are academic motivation differences between students with high and low self-reported grade point averages. Lastly, the study indicated that there is an opportunity to revise the design and messaging about the academic support interventions to be more relevant to specific student population groups with the goal of increasing student rates of usage.

Committee: Berhane Teclehaimanot PhD (Committee Chair); Judy Lambert PhD (Committee Member); Gregory Stone PhD (Committee Member); Tony Sanchez PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Educational Technology; Higher Education

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2003, Sociology (Arts and Sciences)

This study aims to explore the types of motivation, social support, and self-talk involved in the social psychological nature of collegiate runners. An exploration of past research paired with a theoretical study will work to illustrate the areas of research that have already been touched on in this field of sport sociology, as well as work to illustrate the areas still untouched by scholarly work. A data analysis and discussion of results will give a new perspective on the role motivations as well as other factors play in the lives of the collegiate runner.

Committee: Debra Henderson (Advisor) Subjects: Education, Sociology of

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2007, Psychology

Self-determination theory (SDT) lacks a self-report instrument to assess its entire taxonomy of situational motivation. This poses several problems for SDT's measurement program, including its standardization of motivational indices and its ability to falsify finer predictions involving specific motivational constructs. We addressed these concerns, beginning by validating a complete measure of situational motivation, the Self-Determination Motivation Inventory (SDMI). The SDMI's subscales – amotivation, external, introjected, identified, integrated, intrinsic – evidenced high reliability, convergent validity with indicators of intrinsic regulation, and predictive validity for problem-solving performance. We used the SDMI subscales to generate a hierarchical regression model of self-determined motivation and problem-solving performance, identifying unprecedented interaction effects among regulatory states. We also demonstrate the utility of a standardized motivational profiling system, used here to predict problem-solving performance. We believe the SDMI reaffirms SDT's central thesis and contributes to SDT's theory-building pursuits by refining theorists' capacities to conceptualize and assess essential constructs.

Committee: Joseph Johnson (Advisor) Subjects: Psychology, Social

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2010, Leadership Studies

This study examined the relationships between undergraduate leaders' self-perceptions of their transformational and transactional leadership behaviors and their sources of work motivation. The sample was comprised of 145 elected and appointed leaders at a mid-west university. The survey included both the Motivation Sources Inventory and the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. Other survey items collected demographic and leadership-experience data. Participants overall scored higher for transformational self-perceived behaviors than for transactional, and higher for intrinsic motivation than extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation related positively to transformational self-perceived behaviors, and extrinsic motivation related positively to transactional self-perceived behaviors. By understanding undergraduates' self-perceptions of their leadership behaviors and motivation, models and methods can be developed to foster and strengthen perspectives that embrace situational application of transformational and transactional behaviors.

Committee: Mark Earley (Advisor); William Arnold (Committee Member); Judith Jackson May (Committee Member); Dafina Lazarus Stewart (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Educational Theory; Gender; Higher Education; Organization Theory; Teaching

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2008, Leadership and Change

NASA is an organization known for pushing the envelope of engineering and scientific achievement. It can be argued that engineers working for NASA are intrinsically highly motivated due to the nature of the work and the mission of NASA. This study explores how supervisor behaviors, both intrinsic and extrinsic and demographic factors influence motivation of NASA Goddard engineers in their current environment. Recent Congressional and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) policies, such as full cost accounting, levy strict oversight of project spending. As a result of these policies, NASA engineers must now focus their attention on getting assigned work on funded projects in addition to pursuing technical innovation and creativity. The literature is replete with previous studies on motivation of engineers and scientists. These studies investigated Maslow (1970), Vroom (1964), Herzberg (1971), and Deci's (1975) theories of motivation. Today, the workplace is much more diverse with regard to race, gender, and age. A web-based survey was used to collect data from a sample of engineers at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. 260 out of 583 engineers responded to the survey. 238 cases provided useable data for analysis. A hierarchical regression analysis revealed the demographic categories of females and non-whites did not significantly predict the level of motivation of engineers. Age was a significant factor influencing motivation. The age group of 39 and under had less of an influence on motivation and the age group of 40 and over had more of an influence. The over 60 age group had a very significant positive influence on motivation. Other significant factors influencing motivation were: supervisor behaviors, intrinsic factors such as feedback and competence, and extrinsic factors such as benefits, rewards and promotions. The results support the argument that NASA engineers are motivated by getting feedback from their immediate project supervisor, that they feel competent (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jon Wergin PhD (Committee Chair); Elizabeth Holloway PhD (Committee Member); Carol Baron PhD (Committee Member); Charles Seashore PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African Americans; Behaviorial Sciences; Engineering; Gender; Management; Organizational Behavior

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2018, Management

Practitioner-scholars continue to search for effective approaches to improve sales performance. This is indicated by the fact that nearly 80% of U.S. companies make significant changes to their salesforce programs every two years or less (Zoltners, Sinha, & Lorimer, 2012). Additionally, the extant literature is limited in its ability to capture true antecedents to explain sales performance (Bolander, Satornino, Hughes, & Ferris, 2015; Plouffe, Sridharan, & Barclay, 2010). Significant variance remains unexplained in the understanding of sales performance, which suggests the behavioral determinants of sales performance are not straightforward nor sufficiently understood. This mixed-methods study provides empirical evidence regarding these gaps in the literature around measuring sales performance and its explanatory antecedents. This dissertation examines alternative explanations to account for sales performance variations. To this end, the salesperson's capability to relate, understand and generate genuine solutions for customers (what is called design attitude) is defined, and its antecedents and effects are explored across three empirical studies. Subsequent integration of these studies provides new insights into how to better explain sales performance grounded in the principle of design attitude. The first qualitative inquiry utilizes constructivist grounded theory to understand better what makes salespeople intrinsically motivated to pursue interpersonal relationships with customers. I find that they foster an identity of helping others by engaging in “systems-savvy selling.” Specifically, the study challenges the dominant logic by revealing that salespeople are not manipulating care and personal relationships to improve business outcomes. The system savvy-selling improves desired relational dynamics and fulfills psychological needs as salespeople view the selling process holistically and systematically. A quantitative study extends this line of inquiry by e (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kalle Lyytinen PhD (Committee Chair); Richard Jr. Boland PhD (Committee Member); Philip Cola PhD (Committee Member); Gary Hunter PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Management; Marketing

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2013, Psychology, General

Perfectionism has been predominantly studied from a clinical perspective, and has only more recently been studied from a normative perspective. Luyckx et al. (2008) studied how personality differences in two facets of perfectionism—adaptive (striving for improvement) and maladaptive (striving for perfect performance)—relate to identity formation and well-being. However, no research has tested adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism experimentally to show how these two facets of perfectionism affect task performance and task motivation (i.e., the subjective experience of the task). In the current study, 78 University of Dayton participants were surveyed for personality characteristics relating to perfectionism and motivation and were then randomly assigned to one of two conditions, one eliciting a motivation for adaptive perfectionism and another for maladaptive perfectionism. Results show that participants primed with adaptive instructions found more solutions than participants primed with maladaptive instructions on the anagram task but no differences were found on the creativity test. Finally, personality did not affect performance; therefore, the interaction between person and situation was not evaluated.

Committee: Jack J. Bauer PhD (Committee Chair); R. Matthew Montoya PhD (Committee Member); Erin M. O'Mara PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Social Psychology