The Relationship Between Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment: A Small Business Perspective

This study examined the relationship between perceived job satisfaction and organizational commitment in small business employees. Although extensively researched in large corporations, the relationship between these two variables remains unclear, especially in small businesses. The fastest growing segment in the U.S., small businesses are characterized by non-standard work models, limited human resource management, and vulnerability to productivity loss from turnover. However, small businesses also offer unique opportunities for employees in terms of creativity, growth, flexibility, autonomy, and involvement in decision making. Data collected through surveys from 101 small business employees representing various industries in the Lynchburg area of Virginia were analyzed using a correlational statistical approach. The results showed moderately strong relationships between job satisfaction and organizational commitment as well as between these two variables and five different subscales. Interpretations of the findings are offered, recommendations for further research provided, and practical applications for small business owners and managers proposed

A Quantitative Examination of the Relationship Between Perceived Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment in Small Business Employees in the Lynchburg Metropolitan Statistical Area

The Lynchburg Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) has an average turnover that exceeds the national and regional average. Organizational turnover unfavorably influences productivity and has the potential to adversely affect, not only the Lynchburg MSA, but also the regional, state, and national economy. This quantitative non-experimental, correlational research examined the relationship between perceived job satisfaction and organizational commitment in the Lynchburg MSA. The results of this research supports earlier research and demonstrated a statistically significant positive relationship existed between perceived job satisfaction and organizational commitment in small business employees in the Lynchburg MSA. The results may serve as beneficial to small business leaders for influencing human resource management processes aimed at increasing retention, reducing turnover, and remaining competitive in both the region and state

New Developments at NASA's Instrument Synthesis and Analysis Laboratory

NASA's Instrument Synthesis and Analysis Laboratory (ISAL) has developed new methods to provide an instrument study in one week's engineering time. The final product is recorded in oral presentations, models and the analyses which underlie the models

The application of optical coherence tomography to image subsurface tissue structure of Antarctic krill Euphausia superba

Many small open ocean animals, such as Antarctic krill, are an important part of marine ecosystems. To discover what will happen to animals such as krill in a changing ocean, experiments are run in aquaria where conditions can be controlled to simulate water characteristics predicted to occur in the future. The response of individual animals to changing water conditions can be hard to observe, and with current observation techniques it is very difficult to follow the progress of an individual animal through its life. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an optical imaging technique that allows images at high resolution to be obtained from depths up to a few millimeters inside biological specimens. It is compatible with in vivo imaging and can be used repeatedly on the same specimens. In this work, we show how OCT may be applied to post mortem krill samples and how important physiological data such as shell thickness and estimates of organ volume can be obtained. Using OCT we find an average value for the thickness of krill exoskeleton to be (30±4) µm along a 1 cm length of the animal body. We also show that the technique may be used to provide detailed imagery of the internal structure of a pleopod joint and provide an estimate for the heart volume of (0.73±0.03) mm3

On Convergence of Development Costs and Cost Models for Complex Spaceflight Instrument Electronics

Development costs of a few recent spaceflight instrument electrical and electronics subsystems have diverged from respective heritage cost model predictions. The cost models used are Grass Roots, Price-H and Parametric Model. These cost models originated in the military and industry around 1970 and were successfully adopted and patched by NASA on a mission-by-mission basis for years. However, the complexity of new instruments recently changed rapidly by orders of magnitude. This is most obvious in the complexity of representative spaceflight instrument electronics' data system. It is now required to perform intermediate processing of digitized data apart from conventional processing of science phenomenon signals from multiple detectors. This involves on-board instrument formatting of computational operands from row data for example, images), multi-million operations per second on large volumes of data in reconfigurable hardware (in addition to processing on a general purpose imbedded or standalone instrument flight computer), as well as making decisions for on-board system adaptation and resource reconfiguration. The instrument data system is now tasked to perform more functions, such as forming packets and instrument-level data compression of more than one data stream, which are traditionally performed by the spacecraft command and data handling system. It is furthermore required that the electronics box for new complex instruments is developed for one-digit watt power consumption, small size and that it is light-weight, and delivers super-computing capabilities. The conflict between the actual development cost of newer complex instruments and its electronics components' heritage cost model predictions seems to be irreconcilable. This conflict and an approach to its resolution are addressed in this paper by determining the complexity parameters, complexity index, and their use in enhanced cost model

A Comparison of Association Methods for Cytotoxicity Mapping in Pharmacogenomics

Cytotoxicity assays of immortalized lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) represent a promising new in vitro approach in pharmacogenomics research. However, previous studies employing LCLs in gene mapping have used simple association methods, which may not adequately capture the true differences in non-linear response profiles between genotypes. Two common approaches summarize each dose-response curve with either the IC50 or the slope parameter estimates from a hill slope fit and treat these estimates as the response in a linear model. The current study investigates these two methods, as well as four novel methods, and compares their power to detect differences between the response profiles of genotypes under a variety of different alternatives. The four novel methods include two methods that summarize each dose-response by its area under the curve, one method based off of an analysis of variance (ANOVA) design, and one method that compares hill slope fits for all individuals of each genotype. The power of each method was found to depend not only on the choice of alternative, but also on the choice for the set of dosages used in cytotoxicity measurements. The ANOVA-based method was found to be the most robust across alternatives and dosage sets for power in detecting differences between genotypes

Shared Governance Task Force Report

The VCU Libraries Shared Governance Task Force was convened in September 2019 and charged with reviewing and describing the current VCU Libraries’ governance structure, identifying gaps and areas for improvement, and recommending changes. The task force defined shared governance as a model where decision-making is collaborative, transparent, well-communicated, and informed by the perspectives of all those who are impacted by the decision. The report includes recommendations for specific decision-making groups such as the Administrative Council, Management Council, and Faculty Organization, as well as a recommendation to create an All Staff Organization that represents employees of all job categories within decision-making processes. Other areas of focus in recommendations include decision-making and communication practices within committees, workgroups, and task forces; support, compensation, and recognition for engaging in shared governance; and employee dynamics across job categories

Pedigree Validation Using Genetic Markers in an Intensively-Managed Taonga Species, the Critically Endangered Kakī (\u3cem\u3eHimantopus novaezelandiae\u3c/em\u3e)

Many species recovery programmes use pedigrees to understand the genetic ancestry of individuals to inform conservation management. However, incorrect parentage assignment may limit the accuracy of these pedigrees and subsequent management decisions. This is especially relevant for pedigrees that include wild individuals, where misassignment may not only be attributed to human error, but also promiscuity (i.e. extra-pair parentage) or egg-dumping (i.e. brood parasitism). Here, we evaluate pedigree accuracy in the socially monogamous and critically endangered kakī (black stilt, Himantopus novaezelandiae) using microsatellite allele-exclusion analyses for 56 wild family groups across three breeding seasons (2014–2016, n= 340). We identified 16 offspring where parentage was incorrectly assigned, representing 5.9% of all offspring. Of the 16 misassigned offspring, three can be attributed to non-kakī brood parasitism, one can be assigned to human error, but others cannot be readily distinguished between non-monogamous mating behaviours and human error. In the short term, we advise the continued use of microsatellites to identify misassigned offspring in the kakī pedigree, and to verify non-kakī brood parasitism. We also recommend the Department of Conservation’s Kakī Recovery Programme further evaluate the implications of pedigree error to the management of this critically endangered taonga species