UMD Theses and Dissertations
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Item AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF THE PHENOMENA: GLOBALIZATION AND SCHOOL VIOLENCE, AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THEM AS PERCEIVED BY VARIOUS STAKEHOLDERS FROM A SUBURBAN COMMUNITY IN TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO(2020) James, Veronica; Ginsburg, Mark; Klees, Steven; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The present study is an exploratory one which investigates the perceptions of the members of a suburban community, Sanaata, in Trinidad and Tobago, regarding the phenomena, school violence, globalization, and the relationship between them. It seeks to answer the questions: 1. How does the community of Sanaata in Trinidad and Tobago perceive the phenomenon of school violence in the country? 2. How does the community of Sanaata perceive the phenomenon of globalization? 3. How does the community of Sanaata view the relationship between the two phenomena, globalization, and school violence? 4. What other factors (besides globalization) do various stakeholders in Sanaata perceive as contributing to school violence? Apart from the theoretical concepts of the local and global, colonialism and postcolonialism, and dominance and subordination, the study is also based on discourses and theories of macro-social development, ecological perspectives, and developmental behavior. I used qualitative methodology inquiry for the study, employing methods of open-ended interviews, questionnaires, (limited) participant observation and document analysis to collect data for the study. Students, teachers, parents, and community members living or working in the vicinity of School S and School U communicated their perspectives via interviews or self-administered questionnaires. The findings of the study reveal that the respondents of Sanaata perceive that globalization can influence children to engage in school violence. In addition to globalization, it was found that other factors can also act as triggers for school violence. These include home socialization of children, teasing and rough playing in school, verbal abuse, abuse in the home, drugs and crime in the community, lack of good role models and lack of social services in the neighborhoods.Item The Global Invention of Art: Race and Visual Sovereignty in the Colonial Baltic World, 1860-1920(2019) Pushaw, Bart; Mansbach, Steven A; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examines the role of art and visual culture in the Baltic Provinces of Imperial Russia, present-day Estonia and Latvia, between roughly 1860 and 1920. This period witnessed the unraveling of a strict social hierarchy that for centuries had long incubated a Baltic German elite, while suppressing the lives and aesthetic expressions of Estonians and Latvians. After the abolition of serfdom, dramatic social, political, and cultural gains transformed possibilities for indigenous Balts, yet most scholars suggest that art and visual culture were not concomitant with the rapid progress of the era. I reveal instead how images and the ability to assume the power of image-making—what one scholar has called “visual sovereignty”—were pivotal to changing these social stratifications. The dissertation examines the ramifications of the necessity to invent “art” when native languages possessed no word to designate “artist” or “painting” as late as 1900. Since Eurocentric models of art history have preconditioned us to accept the fine arts as intrinsically natural to society, we have no model to grapple with the reality that art could be epistemologically novel, as it was for Latvians and Estonians. Working at the intersection of art history’s global turn, postcolonial studies, and critical race theory, I extrapolate the discourses of seemingly disparate but simultaneous happenings across the globe to reveal that the art world of the colonial Baltic was a microcosm of global nineteenth-century debates about race, medium, and modernity. At its core, the study investigates how art assumes significance for disenfranchised populations. The first chapter reveals how indigenous thinkers invented “art” in relation to their spatial experiences, from public monuments to intimate wooden chests. The second explores why photography became the most valued of all visual media, while the third contextualizes how painting, once deemed foreign and culturally irrelevant, could suddenly assume viability by the 1890s. The fourth chapter examines how native artists deployed the conventional genre of landscape painting to transcend the contingency of race in cultural production after 1905. The conclusion offers directions for global art history, revealing the planetary ramifications of Baltic coloniality.Item RESPONSES TO GLOBALIZATION: INTERNATIONALIZATION AND INSTITUTIONAL REFORM IN TWO DIFFERENT TYPES OF UNIVERSITIES IN KOREA(2015) Cho, Joohee; Stromquist, Nelly; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study explores the internationalization dynamics and institutional shifts in Korean universities in response to globalization trends. It investigates what forces are pushing universities to move toward internationalization and which strategies are being pursued by universities to accomplish that end. My motivation is to better understand how neoliberal ideology may be impacting higher education and how universities have responded to globalization while pursuing internationalization. It has also been important to consider how and whether these changes have altered the educational environment at universities and to investigate the impact of various reforms on academics. For its methodology, this study adopts a qualitative multiple-case study approach, employing as its primary methods document analysis and interviews with academicians and administrators. Case studies are produced involving two universities: Seoul National University was chosen to represent a research-focused university and another university was chosen to represent a teaching-focused university. As students are major stakeholders in higher education, this study also explores their engagement in international higher education. In the name of internationalization, the notions of competitiveness and efficiency have been incorporated in academic environments. Academic disciplines are now driven by external accountability, and academic governance is shaped by powerful decision-makers. Thus, many academic fields have become more strongly linked to industries. Academicians often criticize this type of globalization by citing concern about the nature of universities where the search for knowledge for its own sake was once given the highest value. Both case universities are reforming their institutions while pursuing diverse internationalization strategies. In doing so, the universities are slowly but certainly moving toward an entrepreneurial culture. This is manifested in overseas student recruitment and increasing university-industrial ties that secure further funding. This study demonstrates that internationalization and institutional reforms in Korea have taken a path that is very similar to global trends. At the same time, the phenomenon of local action, whether in Korea or elsewhere, continues to be distinct in many ways.Item PERCEPTIONS OF GLOBAL MINDEDNESS IN THE INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE MIDDLE YEARS PROGRAMME: THE RELATIONSHIP TO STUDENT ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AND TEACHER CHARACTERISTICS(2014) Lope, Marjorie Dana; Klees, Steve; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate student perceptions of global mindedness between students who participate in the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme (MYP) compared to students who do not participate in the MYP or who are new to the MYP in the 9th grade. The study further analyzes the relationship between these students' perceptions of global mindedness and academic performance and course enrollment. It also explores teacher perceptions of global mindedness and relates the findings to specific teacher characteristics. There are mixed findings on student acquisition of global mindedness when comparing MYP students to non-MYP students suggesting that student development of global mindedness could evolve over time and is not significantly impacted by one experience, as previous research also suggests. Teacher and student understanding of global mindedness in the MYP could be underdeveloped and focused on global centrism and cultural pluralism. Findings from this research suggest that students participating in the MYP score highest on the global mindedness subscales of global centrism and cultural pluralism. The MYP could unintentionally be more explicitly focused on academics compared to explicitly teaching, learning, and assessing global mindedness because there was a significant relationship between participation in the MYP and academic performance and course enrollment over time. There are specific teacher characteristics that predict global mindedness and vice versa and these findings are aligned with previous research. The participant sample was from one school district and the survey was done at one point in time, which created certain limitations. The mixed findings of this exploration suggest that more research is needed to better understand the relevance and development of global mindedness on student and teacher perceptions in the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme.Item The Political Economy of Social Markets: How Voluntary Standards Emerge, Compete, and Segment International Policy-making.(2014) Helou, Rabih; Haufler, Virginia A; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)How do we make sense of the tangled web of voluntary standards that have recently proliferated across the globe? There are over 430 different social and environmental voluntary standards in the world today. Prior to 1990 there were twelve. Most of these voluntary standards exist within industries that contain several other standards and ecolabels. Behind the scenes of this veritable industry of industry standards, we observe a vibrant and yet faintly understood political landscape. In some markets, as in the forest industry, industry actors revolt against NGO-initiated standards to form competing standards. In other markets, as in the diamonds industry, industry actors, advocacy groups and even states align to create the dominant voluntary standard system for the planet. While still in others, as in the coffee industry, there is such a diversity of standards originating from a variety of actors that few patterns have yet to be discovered. This research explores the logic behind voluntary standards, and proposes a framework to explain and predict the pattern of emergence and competition of standards within an industry. Drawing from existing research in norms evolution, non-state market drive governance, voluntary clubs and corporate social responsibility, I develop two principle arguments. The first, the logic of market integration, suggests that when social movement norms are increasingly institutionalized within markets, the movement itself will gradually take on the forms, character and procedures of market actors. The second extends this logic in order to understand how, why and when multiple voluntary standards emerge, and seemingly compete, within the same industries. Based on the in-depth case analysis of the coffee market, as well as an extended analysis of ten other markets, I highlight how this phenomenon of multiple standards may be understood by examining change along two factors: Industry Political Centralization and Differentiation. The overarching thesis is that standards proliferate where power is more decentralized, and opportunities for differentiation along market segments are highest. Further, that differentiation also follows a pattern: higher, more stringent standards, will occupy higher end market segments, while lower, less stringent standards occupy mainstream market segments.Item Globalization and Ethnic Identity in the Art of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Yong Soon Min, and Nikki S. Lee(2012) Choi, Yookyoung; Shannon, Joshua A.; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation offers a comparative study of the work of three Korean American women artists: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982), Yong Soon Min (1953-), and Nikki S. Lee (1970-). While the works by these three artists have garnered some critical attention, they have never been the subject of in-depth art historical research. Embracing the artistic media of photography, film, and video in their work these three artists express a common concern about their identities as simultaneously Koreans, Americans, and women. By looking at these artists' work together, this dissertation explores how the three artists negotiate their hybrid cultural identities in a globalized contemporary America. This dissertation also examines the role of photography, film, and video as their major artistic media following the art practice of the 1970s' Conceptualism. Cha's subtle and allusive film and video installation, Exilée (1980), for example, features images associated with the colonial history of her home country along with images and text about trans-pacific passage. Min's work from the 1990s includes photographs of writing on her own body, and images referring to historical events in both Korea and the United States. In her performative series of photographs entitled Projects (1997-2001), Lee disguises herself as a member of various social and cultural groups, trying to assimilate into them. Together, the three artists offer an intensive comparative case study of the ways in which hybrid cultural identity can be figured in the contemporary world. Focusing on the interpretive analysis of selected art works, the dissertation will show the unique intensity of the visual arts as a tool to communicate concepts of cultural identities, while also bringing needed specificity to the theoretical debates on the issues of cultural and ethnic identities.Item GLOBAL ASSIMILATION AND GLOBAL ALIENATION: LIVES OF PROFESSIONAL WOMEN IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA(2012) Song, Jing; Kim, Seung-Kyung; Women's Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the careers and family lives of "professional, white-collar women" in contemporary China in order to understand the ways in which labor markets, state policies, and gender expectations affect these women's lives in an era of rapid globalization. Drawing on multidisciplinary methods including in-depth interviews with twenty women, content analyses of the biweekly, pop-culture magazine Zhiyin, and the literary analyses of two feminist novels, Wei Hui's Shanghai Baby (2001), and Mian Mian's Candy (2003), I discuss how professional women articulate the meaning of their careers and their family lives, and make sense of their experiences as part of China's path to globalization. Analyzing the ways that professional women construct themselves as "women,"--complying with traditional ideologies of womanhood that historically devalued their achievements in the workplace--I interrogate a category of identity, "professional white-collar women." Thus, I present how these "professional white-collar" women's experiences in their multinational workplaces show that their lives are intricately intertwined with the simultaneous process of being assimilated and alienated as a result of the globalization of China. By arguing that, for these women, instead of increasing their personal agency as independent individuals, their careers serve to develop their desire for materialism and capitalist modernity, I present the irony of China's participation in globalization.Item Constructing Private Social Responsibility Standards: A Social Movement's Struggle to Regulate Global Capitalism(2012) Dean, Paul; Collins, Patricia H; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the last several decades, increasing corporate abuses against labor, human rights, and the environment have sparked an explosion in the discourse around what corporations' responsibilities are to society. One form of this discourse has been the production of specific sets of standards by the social responsibility movement to hold businesses accountable to society. While many in the movement continue to target the state to advocate for laws and regulations, the movement has also increasingly targeted corporations directly in an effort to create private standards to which they expect businesses to adhere. Relying on contentious outsider pressure against corporations, advocates work through institutional channels and with corporations to promote social change in a way that traditional social movement theories have largely ignored. This study examines socially responsible investing and social certifications as two particularly important sites for the development of private standards that function outside of the state. Each of these sites are conceptualized as social movement fields in which actors compete to define standards, and which have their own unique rules, opportunities, and constraints. Specifically, I ask: how are private social responsibility standards constructed? Within each field, I draw upon qualitative, in-depth interviews to examine multiple cases, or sets of standards, to understand how advocates translate their expectations into specific standards and what field-level mechanisms shape the standard-setting process. I compare standards across time, and within and across fields to identify causal mechanisms that shape standards in similarly patterned ways. My findings show how power, culture, and institutions shape standards by including or excluding certain criteria and raising or lowering thresholds of socially responsible practices. By examining standard-setting within these fields, we can better understand how meanings are assigned to the different claims of social responsibility, the opportunities and constraints of these fields for the global governance of capitalism, and the relationship between outsider and insider strategies within social movement theory.Item INTERNATIONALIZATION POLICIES OF JESUIT UNIVERSITIES: A CASE STUDY OF JAPAN AND THE U.S.(2009) Jung, S.J., Kang-Yup; Lin, Jing; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the wake of globalization, higher education institutions almost inevitably have adopted and implemented internationalization policies as their primary strategy for responding to the challenges and opportunities brought about by globalization. This study concerns the comparison of the motivations, program strategies, and organization strategies of the internationalization policies of two Jesuit universities: Sophia University in Japan and Georgetown University in the United States. This study focuses on understanding internationalization policies at the two universities and developing a conceptual framework that might be useful in the expansion of scholarship of internationalization theory. There are three key research questions: (a) Is the noticeable shift from social and cultural rationales for internationalization to for-profit rationale ubiquitous?; (b) How do the policies of internationalization of the two universities resonate with the particular contexts surrounding them?; and (c) To what extent do the programs of internationalization reflect the core value of the Jesuit philosophy of education which is to prepare men and women for others? Qualitative comparative case study was conducted at both research sites through semi-structured interviews with senior administrators, deans, faculty, and administrative staff members. On-site materials are collected and analyzed. Cross-case analysis is used to compare and synthesize the findings of the two single case studies. This study found that no noticeable shift from socio-cultural rationale to for-profit rationale has taken place at the two universities. Despite financial constraints, the two universities' internationalization polices are affected most strongly by the socio-cultural rationale and the academic rationale. Sophia puts an emphasis on the motivation for intercultural understanding stemming from its history and origin, while Georgetown gives its highest attention to the motivation for human development. The two universities are able to appropriate their contexts and surroundings so that the universities' idiosyncratic features of local contexts play a significant role in defining their specific responses to the challenges of globalization which are inscribed in their international programs and projects. Finally, the Jesuit philosophy of education, "men and women for others," plays a crucial role as a bedrock on which the direction of internationalization policies is defined. However, despite the strong relationship between the Jesuit philosophy of education and policy, there is only a weak correlation between the philosophy of education and programs. This research will contribute to a wider perspective on internationalization policies through cross-cultural comparative research at an institutional level, an expansion of literature about a global university, and a re-visioning of internationalization for the sake of conscientizing internationalization at an individual level and responsible internationalization at an institutional level.Item The Impact of Globalization on Inventory and Financial Performance: A Firm-Level and Industry-Level Analysis(2009) Han, Chaodong; Dresner, Martin E; Dong, Yan; Business and Management: Logistics, Business & Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates how globalization affects inventory and financial performance from both firm and industry perspectives. Drawing upon elements from classic inventory models, transaction costs, geographic economics, and international business and strategy literatures, this dissertation aims to contribute to the construction of a theory of global supply chain management through an empirical testing of hypotheses on the effects of global sourcing, exports and manufacturing offshoring (i.e., foreign subsidiaries) on inventory performance and financial performance, using data from multinational firms and U.S. manufacturing industries. Motivated by the lack of empirical research on inventory management in a global context, and an uncertain relationship between globalization and financial performance reported in the international business and strategy literature, the first essay examines how globalization affects firm financial performance directly and indirectly through inventory management. Globalization is further examined by a two-dimensional measure: global intensity and extensity. Due to increased uncertainties associated with global supply chains, globalization may significantly increase firm inventory levels. Even though manufacturing offshoring may benefit multinational firms through economies of scale and geographic diversification, escalating transaction costs and shrinking arbitrage opportunities may overwhelm benefits and lead to reduced financial performance. This direct-indirect effect model is tested using a large panel dataset of thousands of multinational firms over 1987-2007, collected from the COMPUSTAT global and segment databases. Essay 1 contributes to the supply chain management literature by providing a two-dimensional measure of globalization: foreign market penetration (depth) and geographic expansion (breadth), and may enhance our understanding of global supply chains. The second essay analyzes the impact of global inbound and outbound supply chains on inventory performance within the U.S. economy. This research argues that global activity (i.e., global sourcing and exports) has offsetting effects on domestic inventory levels: an increasing impact due to risk considerations and a decreasing impact due to cost pressure from rising inventory costs. According to location theory, rooted in geographic economics, and "new trade theory" on intra-firm trade, firms may be able to efficiently allocate inventories to low cost regions along their global supply chains. To the extent that allocative efficiency may only be realized once a certain level of global activity is reached, it is hypothesized that the impact of international trade on domestic inventory is inverted-U shaped. i.e., as globalization increases, inventory levels first increase due to the longer and more complex supply chains, then decrease as firms determine how to more efficiently allocate their inventory across borders. The hypotheses are tested using inventories at all three stages (raw materials, finished goods and work-in-process inventory) and industry operating data from U.S. manufacturers over the period 1997-2005. Regression results indicate a strong invert-U shaped relationships existing between import intensity (measured by imported raw materials as a percentage of industry total cost of materials) and raw materials inventory in days of supply, and between export intensity (measured by exported finished goods as a percentage of total value of industry shipments) and finished goods inventory in days of supply. Essay 2 makes two contributions: theoretically, it is the first effort to connect international trade with inventory performance; empirically, results based on all U.S. manufacturers over a recent nine-year period may provide a benchmark for management when designing global inventory strategy. In summary, this dissertation comprehensively investigates the impact of global supply chains on inventory performance and financial performance in the context of multinational firms and U.S. domestic manufacturers and hence is expected to enhance our understanding of global supply chain management theory and practices.