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To understand why some innovation-driven portfolio firms benefit more from venture capital (VC) funding than others, I explore the salient phenomenon of founder CEO exit. Integrating institutional logics and psychological contracts theories, I propose a meso-level theoretical framework that identifies and explains how an institutional logic of new venture professionalization shapes suboptimal founder CEO exit strategy in portfolio firms. Founder CEO exits may enhance institutional legitimacy, while also fostering contentious relational dynamics that undermine trust and cooperation between founders and venture capitalists; spill over to affect observers; and contribute to a negative sociopolitical climate within portfolio firms. I derive and test hypotheses about the paradoxical effects of founder CEO exit on portfolio firm performance over time and likelihood of failure, including how the conditions of exit – namely, the timing and nature of the exit event – influence those outcomes. I use growth modeling and logistic regression to analyze a unique panel data set of 182 high-technology portfolio firms, founded 1990-2010. Despite mixed empirical results, I found overall support for my proposition: Rigid implementation of founder CEO exit strategy in portfolio firms may improve some short-term metrics of performance (i.e., valuation), while imperiling other longer-term outcomes (i.e., profitability and odds of survival).
Although research has been done to explore social media as a safe space for Black girls (Womack, 2013), there is limited research that assesses social media as a counter space for Black girls’ literacies. According to The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (2017), Black teens are the largest users of Instagram and SnapChat. While broader research has looked at Black girls' literacies and digital literacies among this population (Price-Dennis, 2016), there is limited research that has explored the literacy practices of Black girls specifically in the digital space they predominantly use, Instagram. Most importantly, the need to explore the elements of literacy that engage Black girls in non-formal academic spaces in which they utilize excessively may provide context for application in academic curriculum. This research study explores whether Instagram may provide a potential counterspace for Black girls' literacies and the ways in which they practice literacy through the examination of digital posts, online observations, and interviews with two adolescent Black girls.
Keywords: Instagram, Counterspace, Black Girls, Literacy, Social Media
This quantitative study examined the awarding of the Seal of Biliteracy (SoBL) in North Carolina public schools. Specifically, the study explored through a multiple logistic regression if the intersectionality of race, language, and class was related to whether a district did or did not award students the SoBL. The dependent variable of total student enrollment was also included. Additionally, within districts found to award the SoBL, this study examined through a multiple linear regression if the variables of race, language, and class related to the rate of graduating seniors who received the SoBL recognition. Total student enrollment was also included as a dependent variable. Results from the multiple logistic regression revealed that total student enrollment, while controlling for language, race, and class was related to whether a district did or did not award the SoBL. Within districts that awarded the SoBL, results from the multiple linear regression revealed that while controlling for race, class, language, and total student enrollment, class was negatively related to the rate of seniors who received the SoBL while language was positively related. Results are discussed through the theoretical framework of critical race theory, and salient recommendations are provided for the future.
This comparative case study explored the implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) at two of North Carolina’s Global Ready elementary schools. The following research questions guided the study: 1) How do educators and affiliates of Global Ready elementary schools perceive global education, specifically Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)?; 2) What sustainability topics are covered most by educators at Global Ready elementary schools in North Carolina?; 3) How is ESD incorporated within global education at Global Ready elementary schools in North Carolina (i.e. examination at the curricular, campus, and community levels)?; 4) How do Global Ready elementary schools compare in their conceptualization and implementation of global education, specifically ESD? Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory (1976) and Elser et al. 's (2011) Sustainable Schools Framework served as useful lenses for examining the affordances and constraints of sustainability education at the curriculum, campus, and community levels. A school-wide survey was disseminated to all certified educators at each school to obtain a broad view of ESD implementation within each case. To explore ESD implementation at a granular level, interviews were conducted with select educators, administrators, community partners, and members of a State Education Agency. Further, artifact collection and field visits allowed for the triangulation of data sources. The constant-comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) was utilized in the analysis of interviews and artifacts. Findings from both cases suggest that sustainability education was often used as a means for deepening global learning. At the curriculum level, survey results and interviews with participants indicate frequent integration of social sustainability topics into the curriculum with lesser attention given to topics of economic sustainability. Additionally, while there are many challenges to sustainability education at the curriculum and campus levels, findings suggest that community partnerships may play a role in mitigating some of these constraints. To conclude, the researcher discusses the need to complicate frameworks related to Education for Sustainable Development to attend to the complexity of ESD implementation within and across the curriculum, campus, and community.
Establishing peaceful post-conflict communities requires returning and reintegrating those who left during the violence. With the United Nations and other institutions investing substantial resources to rebuild communities that have experienced violence with limited success, there is a need to further examine the dynamics of conflict and displacement.
I use a series of field experiments in northeastern Nigeria to examine the impact of exposure to conflict on the decision-making of those in transition communities. The first and second studies explore how war-induced psychological trauma impacts displaced persons' ability to be persuaded to return voluntarily, or formerly displaced persons' to return sustainably. In the third study, I investigate the determinants of the reintegration of former members of violent groups into their communities. In the first two studies, I find that war-related psychological trauma reduces displaced persons' ability to be persuaded. In the third study, I find that contrary to long-held beliefs, traditional leadership efforts to reintegrate former violent members of the community by making peace with them may be counterproductive. Finally, I discussed the academic and policy implications of my findings.
This quantitative study sought to operationalize academic resilience through social engagement, family support, capacity for tolerance, and commitment to college among African American first year males at a private, urban HBCU in the United States. This study utilized secondary data from Ruffalo Noel Levitz's College Student Inventory Survey (CSI) Form B administered to incoming first year students over a five-year period from 2011 to 2015. The sample included 223 African American first year male participants. Utilizing a binary logistic regression analysis, the researcher examined the relationship between participants' outcomes and various factors, including social engagement, family support, capacity for tolerance, and commitment to college as a manifestation of academic resilience. The key outcome variables of this study were graduation and retention. Binary logistic regression analyses were conducted in SPSS version 27. Recommendations based on findings are provided for HBCU senior administrators, HBCU faculty, families of African American males, and future research.
Co-creation is a form of collaboration in which partners share, improve and blend ideas together to develop a creative product. It helps to share ideas and solve problems in a creative manner. Several co-creativity research works have focused on generating creative artifacts, but there is a limited amount of research in analyzing creative collaborations. Creative collaboration can be evaluated through examining interaction dynamics such as cognitive states, behavior, and the number of ideas generated. This dissertation conducted collaborative experiments to add a new contribution to human-human co-creation by quantifying and evaluating co-creativity using divergent and convergent thinking modes. We conducted 21 dyadic user studies of a turn-based collaborative drawing task to quantify and extract several co-creation patterns and compare co-creativity of users. The results of both studies showed significant differences of creative thinking between high and low creative performance. High co-creativity groups show balanced divergent and convergent thinking compared to other works. The interaction dynamics of different creativity levels were also different in terms of the number of ideas and objects created and modified. The work can be applied to different co-creation applications, and can be the starting point toward designing a computational creative thinking model in the future.
Realizing the next-generation electronic devices with added features, i.e., flexibility, smaller dimension,
higher density (transistors per unit area), lightweight, and low-power consumption would require extensive
work to optimize the processing conditions that would yield high-quality Si wires (microwire/nanowire)
with optimum device performance at an affordable price. To this end, we employed a cost-effective
lithography-free de-wetting technique to fabricate the seed layer for the growth of highly ordered Si
microwires (Si MWs). A quantitative analysis of the impact of various growth parameters on Si MW size
has been reported. This has important implications since the optoelectronic properties of a wire
configuration are strongly dependent on its size and the quality of the as-grown wires, thereby affecting the
device performance. An exponential dependence of MW growth rate has been reported, and the rate-
limiting step has been determined. The electrical transport properties of as-grown Si MWs have been
extracted via two-probe and three-probe measurements. Temperature-dependent IV measurements have
been done to determine the trap state density and trap energy level in the as-grown and passivated Si MWs.
Lastly, we demonstrate an easily constructed, single wire near-infrared (NIR) photodetector device with an
enhancement observed in responsivity, detectivity, and % EQE of low-powered Si MW by a factor of 44.8,
6.8, and 46.7 at the lowest applied voltage.
Diet diversification has been shown both to improve nutritional health outcomes and to promote greater enjoyment in food consumption. Conversational Recommender Systems (CRS) has a rich history in direct recommendation of recipes and meal planning, as well as conversational exploration of the possibilities for new food items. But more limited attention has been given to incorporating diversity outcomes as a primary factor in conversational critique for exploration. Critiquing as a method of feedback has proven effective for conversational interactions, and diversifying recommended items during the exploration can help users broaden their food options, which critiquing alone may not achieve. All of these aspects together are important elements for recommender applications in the food domain.
\par This dissertation explores incorporating diversity in a critique based conversational recommender system to support diet diversification. Recommender systems are known to support the task of exploitation while diversity supports the task of exploration. Using a conversational recommender, this dissertation maintains this balance by enabling the exploration through critiquing, and maintains the exploitation by selecting the closest recommendation to the user profile. To enable this balance this dissertation introduces an interactive critique based conversational recipe recommender system called \textit{DiversityBite}, a novel way of dynamically generating critique during recipe recommendation.
\par The contributions of this dissertation are: (i) Development of a novel approach of dynamic diversity-focused critique for conversational recommender system, (ii) Applying dynamic diversity-focused critique in recipes domain to support diet diversification while exploring, and (iii) Identification of recipe features that are helpful in finding diverse recipes using dynamic critique. This study reports on three studies to show the potential of using dynamic critique in increasing diversity. The user studies considered for this dissertation are simulation study, and two user studies. These studies investigate if \textit{DiversityBite} can improve diversity in recipe recommendation.
In this thesis, we introduce a methodology for the simulation and parameter estimation of multivariate tempered stable distributions. Using the fact that tempered stable distributions can be specified indirectly by a Lévy measure, our approach is based on an approximation due to a discretization of the Lévy measure. We derive this discretization in general and give an explicit construction of the discretization in the bivariate case. Also, our approximation results hold for a wide class of multivariate infinitely divisible distributions.
Based on our main approximation, we develop a method for simulations, which we call the discretization and simulation (DS) method. To demonstrate how well the method works, we perform a series of simulations in the bivariate cases and compare it with another approximate simulation method developed by Rosiński's. Further, we use our discretization for parameter estimation by minimizing the distance between the characteristic function of the multivariate tempered stable distribution and the empirical characteristic function. We then apply our methodology to two bivariate financial datasets related to exchange rates. The first is comprised of exchange rates between standard currencies, while the second is based on exchange rates related to cryptocurrencies. We also perform goodness-of-fit tests to show that the multivariate tempered stable model does a good job fitting the model.
Further, we apply our model for the pricing of the bivariate basket option. Toward this end, we provide theoretical results on the existence of equivalent martingale measures. Then combing this with our model for parameter estimation and the DS method for simulation, we develop a Monte Carlo based method for option pricing. We apply it to the pricing of European call options with different strikes and the pricing of the Multi-asset rainbow option.
