Individual-level explanations of corruption within an intercollegiate context

Understanding why individuals engage in sport corruption is an emerging topic of research. Micro-level accounts of corruption have generally used a single disciplinary approach toward understanding why actors commit corruption (e.g., doping and match-fixing) in specific sports. The purpose of this study was to first examine individual-level explanations of corruption in the context of intercollegiate athletics; and, second, to generate an interdisciplinary framework. A multi-case analysis was conducted of 20 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) major infractions (corruption) reports that occurred between 2005 and 2015. The findings showed that actors’ explanations were based on psychological factors—motivations (social relationship and self-interest) and personal norms, professional factors (abuse of power and failure of responsibilities), and justification factors (rationalizing strategies). This research builds on existing scholarship by generating an interdisciplinary framework of micro-level accounts of sport corruption in intercollegiate athletics

Framing Swedish Sami Policy

An ambiguity characterises Swedish Sami policy. In some regards, Sweden is securing rights for the Sami and receiving praise from international organisations. However, Sweden is also criticised for not supporting Sami interests, as for instance regarding a ratification of the ILO convention No. 169. Thus, Swedish Sami policies have showed to support disparate ends; in some instances strengthening Sami rights, and in others deeming against. Through frame analysis, this thesis aims to determine whether distinct assumptions of theories on multiculturalism can explain the discrepancies between these types of Sami policies. Moreover, the thesis aspires to concretise the challenges inhibiting Sweden’s ratification of ILO 169. The study shows, that conflicting notions of multiculturalism do not explain why Sami policies promote disparate ends, rather, the two types of policies are as conflicted within, as in relation to each other. Instead, the policies seem to differ in terms of interest

Pacific-10 Compliance Officers’ Morality and Moral Reasoning

Critics contend that intercollegiate athletic administrators, including compliance officers who work in highly formalized environments, generally exhibit restricted moral thinking that is defined by organizational rules (Lumpkin, Stoll, & Beller, 1999). Cognitive moral development’s dominance on moral reasoning research has assisted in supporting this argument because investigations are framed from one independent theory (e.g., justice) and measure moral reasoning (Walker, Pitts, Hennig, & Matsuba, 1995). As a result, the interdependent nature between individuals’ morality and moral reasoning in real-life work experiences is unclear. Using contextual practical reasoning as a framework, Pacific-10 compliance officers’ were interviewed to examine their morality and moral reasoning. The findings showed compliance officers engaged in practical reasoning in resolving day-to-day work-related moral problems. Furthermore, the findings highlighted the interdependent relationship among participants’ conceptions of morality, their moral perceptions and sensitivities, and their practical reasoning

Leadership and Facilitating an Intercollegiate Athletic Department Merger

Leadership is an important aspect in facilitating an organizational merger. Research indicates that each merger presents a different objective and thus a variety of challenges that require different forms of leadership. Further, the merger type and merger stage influences leadership required to facilitate the merger process. This study examined merger challenges and leadership employed to assist an intercollegiate athletic department merger. Using a single qualitative case study design (i.e., interviews with 57 stakeholders and documents), the findings showed transition leadership challenges included an absence of leadership and stakeholder uncertainty, and the central integration leadership challenge was strategic planning. Transition leadership consisted of creating a transition structure, and a combination of contextual, communicative, supportive, and emotional acknowledgment, while participatory leadership was demonstrated during integration. Implications of these findings suggested that merger facilitation requires recognizing the merger type and its challenges, which informs the leadership required to assist integration

DoKnowMe: Towards a Domain Knowledgedriven Methodology for Performance Evaluation

Software engineering considers performance evaluation to be one of the key portions of software quality assurance. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of standard methodologies for performance evaluation even in the scope of experimental computer science. Inspired by the concept of “instantiation” in object-oriented programming, we distinguish the generic performance evaluation logic from the distributed and ad-hoc relevant studies, and develop an abstract evaluation methodology (by analogy of “class”) we name Domain Knowledge-driven Methodology (DoKnowMe). By replacing five predefined domain-specific knowledge artefacts, DoKnowMe can be instantiated into specific methodologies (by analogy of “object”) to guide evaluators in performance evaluation of different software and even computing systems. We also propose a generic validation framework with four indicators (i.e. usefulness, feasibility, effectiveness and repeatability), and use it to validate DoKnowMe in the Cloud services evaluation domain. Given the positive and promising validation result, we plan to integrate more common evaluation strategies to improve DoKnowMe and further focus on the performance evaluation of Cloud autoscaler systems