Labor Dispute and Unemployment Compensation: A Reply

Notes and Comments: Labor La

Communication and the Art of Improvisation

Over the last 15 years, improvisational theater has been increasingly applied in organizational contexts to improve the communicative environment of that organization. It is widely held that improv benefits the communicative environment, but the reasons for its effectiveness are illusive in the literature. This study seeks to better understand the reasons for its effectiveness in application in extra-theatrical application. It does this through analyzing significant improv texts and interviews conducted by the author with several highly experienced improvisers in Chicago, the birthplace of modern improv. Through thematic analysis, nine significant topoi were established that provide understanding for what is happening when people engage in improv. Ultimately it was found that when all the topoi are combined in practice improv serves as a communicative method designed for spontaneously solving problems as they arise

Resilience and Heterogeneity Following Fire in the Nebraska Sandhills

The Nebraska Sandhills grassland is an expansive, semi-arid ecosystem characterized by vegetation-stabilized rolling sand dunes. The Sandhills grassland is managed for livestock production by seeking to minimizing disturbances, such as fire, that increase bare ground. The increase in bare ground following fire has contributed to the fear of fire leading to the emergence of a mobile sand dune state. We tracked vegetation response following a growing season wildfire that occurred during extreme drought conditions. In wildfire and drought conditions are when one would expect resilience to be overcome leading to a lack of vegetation recovery and a transition to a mobile sand dune state. However, aboveground herbaceous biomass recovered to unburned levels after two years and resisted a transition to an undesirable plant community. Next, we assessed the potential for focal fire and grazing to create heterogeneity of grassland structure and composition in order to increase biodiversity. Using patch burning, discrete patches were burned annually and grazers were allowed to select between recently burned and unburned areas. We found the Sandhills grassland is spatially homogeneous in vegetation structure and composition with greater structural heterogeneity emerging temporally in the transition from growing to dormant season. However, temporal heterogeneity manifests as an artifact of how vegetation was classified. Although live herbaceous vegetation decreases in the transition to dormant season, grassland vegetation structure is only slightly affected because herbaceous standing dead vegetation increases as a result of herbaceous vegetation senescence. Advisors: Dirac Twidwell and Walter H. Schach

Resilience and Heterogeneity Following Fire in the Nebraska Sandhills

The Nebraska Sandhills grassland is an expansive, semi-arid ecosystem characterized by vegetation-stabilized rolling sand dunes. The Sandhills grassland is managed for livestock production by seeking to minimizing disturbances, such as fire, that increase bare ground. The increase in bare ground following fire has contributed to the fear of fire leading to the emergence of a mobile sand dune state. We tracked vegetation response following a growing season wildfire that occurred during extreme drought conditions. In wildfire and drought conditions are when one would expect resilience to be overcome leading to a lack of vegetation recovery and a transition to a mobile sand dune state. However, aboveground herbaceous biomass recovered to unburned levels after two years and resisted a transition to an undesirable plant community. Next, we assessed the potential for focal fire and grazing to create heterogeneity of grassland structure and composition in order to increase biodiversity. Using patch burning, discrete patches were burned annually and grazers were allowed to select between recently burned and unburned areas. We found the Sandhills grassland is spatially homogeneous in vegetation structure and composition with greater structural heterogeneity emerging temporally in the transition from growing to dormant season. However, temporal heterogeneity manifests as an artifact of how vegetation was classified. Although live herbaceous vegetation decreases in the transition to dormant season, grassland vegetation structure is only slightly affected because herbaceous standing dead vegetation increases as a result of herbaceous vegetation senescence. Advisors: Dirac Twidwell and Walter H. Schach

Labor Dispute and Unemployment Compensation: A Reply

Notes and Comments: Labor La

TRAINING ORGANIZATIONAL TRAINERS TO FRAME FEEDBACK: MITIGATING FACE CONCERNS AND SUPPRESSING EGO DEFENSIVENESS

This dissertation applies Implicit Person Theory (IPT) to the contexts of organizational training and feedback. IPT scholars argue that individuals ascribe to one of two groups regarding perceptions of ability: entity or incremental theorists. Entity theorists believe abilities are fixed, and constant; incremental theorists believe abilities are malleable, and subject to development. This study seeks to demonstrate how organizational feedback processes can be framed strategically to maximize learning, including the skills-based learning needed for successful operation in high-reliability organization (HRO) training and non-HRO training. Data were collected at two sites: an anesthesiology department and a communication department at a large southwestern university. Using an experimental design, the researcher hypothesized that growth mindset training would influence the quality of trainers’ feedback messaging, and subsequently, trainees’ learning outcomes as measured by the following dependent variables: task performance, affective learning (McCroskey, 1994), learner motivation (Richmond, 1990), perceived face threat (Cupach & Carson, 2002), and quality of feedback (Steelman, Levy, & Snell, 2004). This dissertation develops the extant IPT literature in three main ways: First, the study moved IPT training into the organizational training communication domain by emphasizing the social, not just psychological, dynamics of learning. Second, the research identified that framing organizational feedback using incremental language might violate trainees’ expectations and scripts about how feedback interactions should unfold sequentially and have unexpected consequences on learning outcomes as a result. Third, the dissertation illuminated the role that explicit discussion of theory may have on successful IPT manipulations