Candidate: Peter Cornelius Dams

Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy

Department: Psychology

Title: A Systems Approach to Designing an Internship Model That Benefits the Sponsoring Organization

Date: Friday, March 23, 2001, 9:00a.m.-11:00a.m.,  3715 Wood Hall

Committee:
Dr. Dale Brethower, Chair
Dr. Robert O. Brinkerhoff
Dr. Alyce M. Dickinson
Dr. Richard W. Malott

Abstract:
Internships provide important learning experiences for students in a variety of scientific and professional areas.  They allow interns to link academic theory and actual practice before embarking on their professional careers.  Many internships benefit sponsoring organizations in the area of recruitment, productivity, and cost.  The internship literature, however, neglects to a large degree the possibility that interns may also contribute to improving organizational performance by providing expertise otherwise not extant in the sponsoring organization.  Consulting interns could provide a third option to performance improvement in addition to utilizing outside consultants or internal staff.  A behavioral systems approach guided the design of a progressive consultative internship system (PCIS) with the purpose to connect individual HPT internships into a progressive learning and performance consulting system for county governments.  Using this novel approach to internship as a foundation, the present study attempted to evaluate whether HPT interns can consult effectively in county government and whether the proposed internship system has utility and feasibility.  A two-tiered evaluation approach involved a seventeen-months long consulting internship in county government and an expert review of the internship system's design.  Findings from these evaluations suggest that it is possible for interns to conduct effective performance consulting internships in county government and that the design is both useful and feasible.  Future research should involve the development and implementation of the progressive consultative internship system and assess its long-term impact on organizational performance improvement.  Limitations of the present study include the absence of an experimental research paradigm and subjective judgments of the proposed internship system's design.  Generalizations of the present findings have to be couched in terms of these limitations.

Related Topics

Main List of Archives:
Dissertation Defenses

Current Dissertation Defenses