Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Behavior planning'

Credit unions, the cooperatives started by the people to serve the people, have experienced tremendous growth, success, and challenge since their inception in the mid-19^th century. While the overall number of members and assets are growing, the physical number of credit unions is decreasing due to mergers or insolvency, keeping market share stagnant for the past 20 years. As with all organizations, succession planning is essential to ensure a future. Considering a conceptual foundation including stakeholder theory and succession planning, the purpose of this qualitative study was to better understand how succession planning is utilized by CEOs of credit unions today, what impedes credit unions from succession planning and leadership development, as well as what tools or resources are needed within the industry to either build or enhance the succession planning efforts.

Based on in-depth interviews with eight current CEO’s, findings revealed that succession planning is happening more frequently in large credit unions than previous research noted. CEOs are committed to their stakeholders and to the industry and are driving this process in their credit unions, they believe developing leaders is their main role, and they see succession planning as a competitive advantage because of the results it generates. To make the process successful, the CEOs are utilizing consultants, incorporating a variety of activities, focusing on innovation and technology, and challenging the talent management status quo. The CEOs did not believe suggested impediments from previous research were accurate. Rather, they believed that intrinsic factors got in the way including excuses, basic human nature and egos. To truly revolutionize the industry and gain market share, the CEOs shared that many strategies including hiring practices must change.

It is recommended that credit union leaders and directors become knowledgeable on succession planning and its benefits, connect strategic planning with talent management, and remove intrinsic obstacles to most effectively give back to their stakeholders. Additional research on smaller credit unions and their succession planning efforts, recruiting and hiring tactics for credit union CEOs, and the prioritization of succession planning, strategic planning, and financial results is needed.

Spousal communication on issues related to family planning and reproductive health is important in influencing fertility limiting behaviour. In South Africa, studies analyzing the relationship between spousal communication and family planning behaviour are virtually nonexistant. Understanding this relationship is critical for less developed countries where fertility remains at substantially high levels. In most countries, the isolation of men's participation in family planning issues is acknowledged as one of the major causes of poor performance of most family planning programs. In addition, lack of spousal communication about family planning is identified as one of the reasons for low levels of contraceptive use among women. The main objective of this study was to assess spousal communication on contraceptive use and family planning behaviour in three distinct areas in the Richtersveld (Northern Cape) area.

This study examined the impact of involvement in strategic planning initiatives on employee perceptions, change behaviors, and engagement within one federal public health agency. Forty-six staff completed a survey and 12 completed an interview. Both strategy participants and non-participants reported neutral to positive scores for perceived value and benefits of the strategic initiatives, discretionary change behaviors, and engagement factors, with few significant differences. All participants reported strong levels of engagement and that strategy participation would or did increase their levels of engagement. Public agencies should carefully consider when, how, and where to deploy employee-led strategy teams. Specifically, this research indicates that the involvement of employees in strategy for engagement purposes only should be avoided. Additional research is needed to extend and confirm these findings.

The purpose of this study was to create additional research and outcomes on the theory of applying a whole systems approach to strategic planning through a large group intervention in a non-profit organization. This study utilized grounded theory and qualitative analysis. The research focused on the positive whole systems approach to examine the construct of strategic planning in a large group intervention utilizing the strategic planning frameworks of SOAR (Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results; Starvos & Hinrichs, 2009) and appreciative inquiry (AI; Cooperrider, Sorensen, Yaeger, & Whitney, 2005) as outcomes-focused alternatives to strategic planning in organizations. This qualitative study was executed in conjunction with appreciative interviews utilizing SOAR strategic visioning process and a strategic visioning SOAR Summit.

This study provided additional insight into whole systems change approach by utilizing strategic planning methods including: AI, SOAR, large group intervention, positive organization psychology, and World Cafe since such studies were limited that analyzed this approach in the development of public sector organizations. This research study consisted of 63 interviews that were conducted with employees, administrators, trustees, and community residents of the community-funded, non-profit fire protection department. The study timeline was from September 2014 until February 2015. Findings suggested that both non-profit and private sector organizations could drive their missions forward by engaging in a whole systems approach and large group intervention, focusing on appreciative and positive organizational change methodologies.

I begin this dissertation with a historical overview of the demographic, economic, and political trends that have helped shape existing urban form, transportation infrastructure, and travel behavior in Mexico City. Despite an uptick in car ownership and use, most households—both urban and suburban—continue to rely on public transportation. Furthermore, suburban Mexico City has lower rates of car ownership and use than its central areas. In subsequent chapters, I frame, pose, and investigate three interrelated questions about Mexico City's evolving suburban landscape, the nature of households' travel decisions, and the relationship between the built environment and travel behavior. Together, these inquiries tell a story that differs significantly from narratives about US suburbs, and provide insight into the future transportation needs and likely effects of land and transportation policy in these communities and others like them in Mexico and throughout the developing world.

First, how has the influence of the built environment on travel behavior changed as more households have moved into the suburbs and aggregate car use has increased? Using two large metropolitan household travel surveys from 1994 and 2007, I model two related-but-distinct household travel decisions: whether to drive on an average weekday, and if so, how far to drive. After controlling for income and other household attributes, I find that the influence of population and job density on whether a household undertakes any daily car trips is strong and has increased marginally over time. By contrast, high job and population densities have a much smaller influence on the total distance of weekday car travel that a household generates. For the subset of households whose members drive on a given weekday, job and population densities have no statistical effect at all. Contrary to expectations, a household's distance from the urban center is strongly correlated with a lower probability of driving, even after controlling for income. This effect, however, appears to be diminishing over time, and when members of a household drive, they drive significantly more if they live farther from the urban center. The combination of informal transit, public buses, and the Metro has provided sufficient transit service to constrain car use in the densely populated suburban environments of Mexico City. Once suburban residents drive, however, they tend to drive a lot regardless of transit or the features of the built environment.

Second, how much are the recent trends of increased suburbanization, rising car-ownership, and the proliferation of massive commercially-built peripheral housing developments interrelated? To investigate this question, I first disentangle urban growth and car ownership trends by geographic area. The fastest-growing areas tend to be poorer and have had a much smaller impact on the size of the metropolitan car fleet than wealthier, more established neighborhoods in the center and western half of the metropolis. I then zoom in to examine several recent commercial housing developments. These developments, supported by publicly-subsidized mortgages, contain thousands of densely-packed, small, and modestly-priced housing units. Their residents remain highly reliant on public transportation, particularly informal transit, and the neighborhoods become less homogenous over time as homeowners convert units and parking spaces to shops and offices. Finally, I use the 2007 household travel survey to model households' intertwined decisions of where to live and whether to own a car. If housing policy and production cannot adapt to provide more centrally-located housing, growing incomes will tend to increase car ownership but concentrate more of it in areas where car-owning households drive much farther.

Third, how has the Metro's Line B, one of the first and only suburban high-capacity transit investments, influenced local and regional travel behavior and land use? To explore this question, I compare travel behavior and land use measures at six geographic scales, including the investment's immediate catchment area, across two time periods: six years before and seven years after the investment opened. Line B, which opened in stages in 1999 and 2000, significantly expanded Metro coverage into the densely populated and fast-growing suburban municipality of Ecatepec. While the investment sparked a significant increase in local Metro use, most of this increase came from people relying on informal transit, rather than cars. While this shift reduced transit fares and increased transit speeds for local residents, it also increased government subsidies for the Metro and had no apparent effect on road speeds. Furthermore, the Metro remains highly dependent on informal transit to provide feeder service even within Ecatepec. In terms of land use, the investment increased density around the stations but appears to have had little to no effect on downtown commercial development. In short, the effects of Line B demonstrate much of the promise and problem with expanding high capacity transit service into the suburbs. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)