Bully awareness program

Bullying is a problem and needs to be eliminated. We partnered with Olson Elementary School in Marina to implement a Bully Awareness Program to 4th grade students. Physical, verbal, and relational bullying impact students academically, socially, and individually. Both, bullies and victims, suffer long term effects that can bring them negative outcomes. Our pre and post surveys completed by students, indicated they do encounter bullying incidents at school. To better address bullying issues, schools should adopt and implement our Capstone as part of their curriculum

The Role of Fitbits in Corporate Wellness Programs: Does Step Count Matter?

Striving to promote the health and well-being of their workforce and decrease insurance expenditures, many organizations are incorporating wearable fitness trackers into their corporate wellness programs. Research suggests that these devices encourage individuals to make healthier choices; however, little is known about the drivers and impact of fitness trackers on employee health and well-being. We seek to fill this knowledge gap by investigating the following research questions: (1) what is the impact of wearable fitness device use on employee health and well-being? (2) what is the impact of wearable fitness device use on step count? Our results indicate that extended use has a positive impact on employee well-being and step count, which fully mediates the relationship between feature use and health. These findings have implications for research into wearable fitness trackers and, more specifically, for research on the uses of wearable fitness devices in corporate wellness programs

I Track, Therefore I Am: Exploring the Impact of Wearable Fitness Devices on Employee Identity and Well-being

Corporate wellness programs can help employees improve their health and well-being. There are many advantages to a healthy workforce including increased productivity and lower health insurance premiums. A growing trend in corporate wellness programs is to offer wearable fitness trackers to employees to help them monitor their activity so that they can make better choices about their health. It is estimated that more than 13 million wearable fitness devices will be used in corporate wellness programs by 2018. Our research will explore this phenomena by investigating the effect of wearable fitness devices on employee identity and well-being. We will use a case study about a financial institution that has recently implemented the use of Fitbits as part of its corporate wellness program. Our results will have the potential to shed light on the impacts of wearable fitness device initiatives on employees and organizations

Socioeconomic correlates of global mammalian conservation status

The main causes of biodiversity decline are related to human use of resources, which is ultimately triggered by the socioeconomic decisions made by individuals and nations. Characterizing the socioeconomic attributes of areas in which biodiversity is most threatened can help us identify decisions and conditions that promote the presence or absence of threats and potentially suggest more sustainable strategies. In this study we explored how diverse indicators of social and economic development correlate with the conservation status of terrestrial mammals within countries explicitly exploring hypothesized linear and quadratic relationships. First, comparing countries with and without threatened mammals we found that those without threatened species are a disparate group formed by European countries and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) with little in common besides their slow population growth and a past of human impacts. Second, focusing on countries with threatened mammals we found that those with a more threatened mammalian biota have mainly rural populations, are predominantly exporters of goods and services, receive low to intermediate economic benefits from international tourism, and have medium to high human life expectancy. Overall, these results provide a comprehensive characterization of the socioeconomic profiles linked to mammalian conservation status of the world's nations, highlighting the importance of transborder impacts reflected by the international flux of goods, services and people. Further studies would be necessary to unravel the actual mechanisms and threats that link these socioeconomic profiles and indicators with mammalian conservation. Nevertheless, this study presents a broad and complete characterization that offers testable hypotheses regarding how socioeconomic development associates with biodiversity

Resolving IT-Culture Conflict in Enterprise 2.0 Implementations

Social media technologies have grown from the personal recreation tools of college students to systems that can benefitbusiness. In addition to using social networking to market, sell, and manage external stakeholder relationships, someorganizations are leveraging social networking’s communication and collaboration tools to improve internal operations.However, implementing social networking systems (hereinafter SNSs) within an organization can prove challenging since thevalues associated with SNSs (i.e., having fun and getting to know people personally) may conflict with an organization’sculture (i.e., work, control, and authority). Therefore, the purpose of this case study is to understand how to resolve IT–culture conflict in workplace implementations of internal SNSs, often referred to as Enterprise 2.0

AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF IS STRATEGY AND IS CONTRIBUTION TO FIRM PERFORMANCE

Given the important impact that an IS strategy has on the potential value IS brings to an organization, we develop and test a model of IS Strategy and Performance. Our survey-based study provides strong evidence that firms with defined IS strategies perform better than those without defined IS strategies. Our study also provides evidence that the two IS defined strategies -- IS Innovator and IS Conservative -- contribute in very different ways to firm performance: the IS Innovator strategy contributes to strategic growth whereas the IS Conservative strategy contributes to firm efficiency. Organizations without a clearly defined IS strategy experienced a negative contribution of IS to firm performance. The different types of performance had differing affects on satisfaction with the IS department and satisfaction with the CIO such that CIOs overseeing an Innovator strategy experience lower satisfaction from their organizations than do CIOs overseeing a Conservative strategy. The lowest performance and satisfaction levels were seen in firms with no IS strategy. Firms with no IS strategy should realize the negative outcomes of such a lack of strategy and work to extricate themselves before a consistent pattern of investing in IS without clear organizational benefit develops