Building on strategic human resource management (SHRM) literature, we investigate the effect of human resource development (HRD) on the operational and financial performance of manufacturing organizations. We identify four different approaches to HRD that reflect management-driven or employee-focused HRD efforts with either quantitative or qualitative focus. We further propose that HRD practices predict organizational performance by shaping the competence and commitment of employees that reflect the prevailing, untested assumption in the SHRM literature. Multi-source data collected from 207 manufacturing companies at three time points over a five-year period largely support our theoretical propositions. Financial investment and managerial support for HRD show positive effects on employee commitment but not on competence. Perceived benefits of HRD enhance both employee competence and commitment, whereas the amount of participation in HRD is not a meaningful predictor of those employee outcomes. A series of structural equation models confirms that HRD practices improve employee competence and commitment that have direct effects on operational performance of the organization, which ultimately shapes its financial performance. The present study elaborates distinct values of different HRD practices, and highlights the significance of employee outcomes as the mediating mechanism between HRD and organizational performance.

My dissertation looks at narratives that capture the mobility of Korean language and culture in Latin American contexts. It addresses a wide range of materials in Korean, Spanish, Japanese, and Portuguese, including: literary magazines published by Korean minority writers’ groups in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay; documentary films by directors who self-identify as 1.5 generation immigrants; and novels and autobiographical essays published and circulated across South Korea, the Southern Cone region of South America, and the U.S. in the twentieth century. In examining texts that are by definition cross-national and cross-lingual and in which languages, literary traditions, and media cultures congregate, my work acknowledges and challenges the exclusionary processes that shape human consciousness and knowledge.Conventional literary epistemology considers the border-crossing narrative as an "atypical" case that conflicts with the authority of the nation-state as a measuring unit for language, literature, and culture. Yet what I am calling hyphenated literature has far greater potential when read outside the still-dominant monolingual-monocultural paradigm that frames and limits literary texts by insisting on an overlap between geographic, ethnic, and lingual origins. By rethinking how "atypicality" is managed in literary interpretation and history, and questioning how "inherently different" bodies, objects, and ideas are dealt with in existing classificatory systems, my work proposes moving beyond this paradigm. In my reading, hyphenated literature deconstructs conventional literary forms, giving us footing to critique current disciplinary approaches on non-canonical or marginalized narratives and to rethink the diversity inherent in the language of literature. With this approach, I reframe literature as a complex site for the articulation of a politicized positionality and agency rather than an evidentiary document used for the indication or substantiation of ethnic-lingual-cultural homogeneity.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a promising microorganism for the production of ethanol for fuel, and the synthesis of precursors to industrial chemicals and natural products. The goal of this research was to engineer S. cerevisiae strains for the enhanced synthesis of these products. For the economical production of bioethanol, complete use of hemicellulosic sugars is necessary. Thus, the fungal arabinose pathway was imported and evaluated. The NADH-dependent L-xylulose reductase (ALX1) from Ambrosiozyma monospora was introduced to balance the use of redox cofactors. Three fungal arabinose pathway genes (XYL1, lad1, and lxr1 or ALX1) were codon and codon pair optimized for expression in S. cerevisiae. Various combinations and copy numbers of the three required genes were evaluated by measuring growth and xylitol production; use of ALX1 resulted in up to 9-fold higher xylitol titers relative to LXR1. Arabinose uptake, the rate-limiting step for arabinose utilization in S. cerevisiae, was also addressed by creating a chimeric protein of Gal2 and Hxt1. Polyketides are versatile molecules that can be industrial chemical precursors as well as drug precursors. Five different thioesterases were compared for the release of dihydromonacolin L (DML), the precursor to the cholesterol lowering agent lovastatin, from LovB in S. cerevisiae, and AptB was identified to be the best candidate. Most polyketides use acetate as starter unit and malonate or other malonate-based molecules as extender units. 6-methylsalicylic acid synthase (6-MSAS) was chosen as the model system for the engineering of S. cerevisiae to increase the intracellular availability of acetate and malonate. 6-MSA titer showed improvement by 50% via deletion of PYC1, by 3-fold via engineering of Acc1 (9-fold in activity), and by 90% via combined use of N-degron tagged URA3 and autoselection for the expression of 6-MSAS in complex medium. The strategies developed in this research contribute to the metabolic engineering of S. cerevisiae for the synthesis of ethanol, and biochemical and drug precursors.

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