The primary purpose of this study was to explore the impact of various forms of pressure and support experienced by teachers in an intentionally designed learning community on teacher learning and teacher sense of efficacy. Eleven Grade 6 teachers in a middle school in Southern Ontario were interviewed and a complex systems approach was adopted to analyze their experiences. The results suggested three key implications: (1) teachers’ experiences of pressures and supports are variable and influenced by teacher sense of efficacy and administrative decisions about the implementation of those pressure and support mechanisms; (2) a coherent, cohesive and balanced system of formal and informal structures of pressure and support is important to support teacher learning; and (3) structures, mechanisms and culture must facilitate transfer of learning in meaningful ways between the subsystems operating in a school in order to support teacher learning and teacher sense of efficacy.

This research seeks to identify what accountability frameworks were in place for the home and community care sector in the Canadian province of Ontario, how home and community care agencies in Ontario responded to accountability demands attached to government service funding (specifically through Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) contracts and Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) Multi-Service Accountability Agreements (MSAAs) and what, if any, effect accountability frameworks had on service delivery. This study uses a multi-phase parallel mixed methods approach. First, an environmental scan and document analysis was conducted to identify accountability frameworks and identify key characteristics of accountability demands. Next, 114 home and community care agencies in Ontario were surveyed and 20 key informant interviews were conducted with executives from 13 home and community care agencies, two CCACs and two LHINs. Data from these different methods were combined in the analysis phase. Home and community care agencies face multiple accountability requirements from a variety of stakeholders. We found that government agencies relied most heavily on regulatory and expenditure policy instruments to hold home and community care organizations to account. Organizational size and financial dependence were significantly related to organizational compliance to accountability demands attached to CCAC contracts and MSAAs. In addition to the theorized potential organizational responses to external demands (compliance, compromise, avoidance and defiance), this study found that organizations engaged in internal modification where internal practices are changed to meet accountability requirements. Smaller, more poorly resourced organizations that were highly dependent on LHINs or CCACs were more likely to internally modify organizational practice to meet accountability demands. Although MSAAs and CCAC contracts supported a quality culture amongst organizations, internal organizational changes, such as redirecting time towards reporting requirements and away from care, and cutting innovative practices and programs, were reported to have a negative impact on the quality of service delivery. Government reliance on contract-based accountability for funded home and community care services, while politically advantageous, has the potential to seriously and negatively affect the quality of home and community services delivered. Policy makers need to carefully consider the potential impact on quality of service delivery when developing and implementing accountability policy.

The primary purpose of this study was to explore the impact of various forms of pressure and support experienced by teachers in an intentionally designed learning community on teacher learning and teacher sense of efficacy. Eleven Grade 6 teachers in a middle school in Southern Ontario were interviewed and a complex systems approach was adopted to analyze their experiences. The results suggested three key implications: (1) teachers’ experiences of pressures and supports are variable and influenced by teacher sense of efficacy and administrative decisions about the implementation of those pressure and support mechanisms; (2) a coherent, cohesive and balanced system of formal and informal structures of pressure and support is important to support teacher learning; and (3) structures, mechanisms and culture must facilitate transfer of learning in meaningful ways between the subsystems operating in a school in order to support teacher learning and teacher sense of efficacy.

Priority setting for expensive biopharmaceuticals is one of the most important challenges for publicly funded health systems. One of the drivers of rising healthcare expenditures is pharmaceuticals (i.e., drugs). Moreover, people are living longer and their expectation of, and demand for, health care, drugs, and services are continually increasing. The overall aim of this research was to describe and evaluate reimbursement decisions for six expensive biopharmaceuticals across five countries in order to ascertain if the processes were legitimate and fair. I conducted qualitative case studies of six expensive biopharmaceuticals in order to describe and evaluate the priority setting activities of eight committees across five countries, including Canada, England and Wales, Australia, Israel and the United States. Data sources included: 1) 32 documents and 2) 56 interviews with informants. The recommendations process of each committee partially met the four conditions of ‘accountability for reasonableness’. My main finding is that, while a number of values were considered by committees when making reimbursement decisions, committees tended to focus on values of evidence, effectiveness and efficiency, but not the full range of relevant values. Thus, these contexts did not fully meet the conditions of legitimacy and fairness. I have provided an in-depth description of the eight committees’ priority setting activities regarding the study drugs, as well as committee members’, patients’ and industry representatives’ views regarding the process. I developed practical guidance for leaders for improving reimbursement decisions for expensive biopharmaceuticals, the implementation of which would enhance the fairness and legitimacy of priority setting. This study has demonstrated that in order to create a fair and legitimate drug reimbursement process, we need to ensure the incorporation of a wide range of values, and the involvement of multiple stakeholder groups within the deliberative and appeals/revisions processes.

An Indigenous wholistic framework is used to examine the question "what makes a university a successful place for Aboriginal students?" This study moves away from a student deficit discourse by critiquing universities from an Indigenous methodological and theoretical approach in terms of (a) how Indigenous knowledges were defined and found in universities and (b) how Indigenous understandings of success, responsibility, and accountability resonated in three universities in British Columbia, Canada. This research is grounded in Indigenous theory; however, social reproduction theory was used to explain power structures inherent in the mainstream educational system. The Indigenous research process involved a mixed methods approach. Approximately 60 interviews and four sharing circles were held with a total of 92 participants representing various stakeholders across the institution. In addition, the Undergraduate Baccalaureate Graduate Surveys (UBGS) were analyzed to contextualize Aboriginal undergraduate student experiences over the last 10 years. A major finding is that respectful relationships between Aboriginal stakeholders and university faculty and leaders are key to universities becoming more successful places for Aboriginal peoples. This study shows how Indigenous knowledges were present, as pockets of presence, in the academy in programs and through Indigenous faculty, staff, and students. As sites of Indigenous knowledges, First Nations Centres played a critical role by wholistically supporting the cultural integrity of Aboriginal students and being agents of change across the institution. Indigenous wholistic understandings of success challenged hegemonic definitions that emphasized intellectual capital to include the physical, emotional, and spiritual realms. Kirkness and Barnhardt's (1991) 4Rs were used to critically examine the responsibilities of universities to Aboriginal higher education. The following institutional responsibilities were presented: relationships, such as the seen face through Aboriginal presence, having authentic allies, involving Aboriginal communities, and enacting agency; reciprocity and relevance, which addresses issues of limited financial resources, increasing retention and recruitment, and putting words into action; and respect for Indigenous knowledges. Institutional accountability from the Indigenous framework went beyond neo-liberal discourses, to include making policy public, surveillance from inside and outside the institution, and the need for metrics and benchmarks.

Charities are important in modern Australian society because they provide a substantial proportion of the health, community welfare, education and religious services available in the community (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2002). Yet despite their social and economic importance, charities are often characterised in the media as being less accountable than either for-profit entities or government sector organisations. Annual reports are widely regarded as an important means of acquitting accountability in the corporate and government sectors and may be one of the means by which charities can improve stakeholders' perceptions of their accountability. Yet little is known of the annual reporting behaviours of charities or whether annual reports have the potential for improving perceptions of accountability among their stakeholders and the wider community. This research focuses on a class of charities termed &quotpublic fundraising charities" (those that raise funds from the public rather than just their members), and the role that annual reports play in acquitting accountability and improving perceptions. The research uses a new combination of theories that have previously been used separately to explain accountability and annual reports in other sectors, and using the insights from these theories, examines the role of annual reports in a population of public fundraising charities in Queensland. The major findings of this research are that annual reports have both functional and symbolic roles in the system of accountability of public fundraising charities. Functionally, annual reports are a useful and generally valued means by which public fundraising charities communicate a wide range of types of information about their activities and their performance to interested parties. Symbolically, annual reports also serve as an important signal of assurance to those who receive them. For those who prepare them, annual reports serve as useful signals of managerial and governance competence to those whose opinion is salient to preparers. Annual reports also have a role in the system of accountability for the maintenance of the mission of these organisations, in ways that statutory reports and returns do not. This research makes three original contributions to the literature. First, it provides for the first time a detailed analysis of the role of annual reports in a system of accountability for public fundraising charities in Australia. Second, a new theoretical lens is proposed and tested for its descriptive and explanatory power in the examination the accountability of nonprofit organisations. Third, it makes an original contribution to accountability theory by identifying the importance of the annual report as a quality signaling device. The results of this research will be of use to public fundraising charities, regulators and policy makers, as they respond to the calls for charities to demonstrate that they are accountable.

Risk has now become part of the common forensic vocabulary used in the new global culture to hold persons (such as principals) and institutions (such as schools) accountable. Thus, in a risk society (Giddens 2000; Beck1992), the nature of a principal's work is changing. Risk and its management have become integral parts of a principal's professional repertoire as the commonplace activities of schooling have become framed as risks to be managed. Tensions arise for school principals when external and internal pressures to measure performance threaten to overwhelm their responsibility for paying attention to the learning that is, or should be, occurring in their schools. A problem that emerges out of all this is the extent to which the nature and scope of contemporary accountability and audit regimes are underpinned by a negative logic that impacts directly on choices made by school leaders about the learning environment of their school. This dissertation addresses this problem by examining the impact of risk management on the nature of a principal's work and the implications of this impact for secondary school leadership. It does so through a series of nested publications and an empirical study, beginning with the testing of conceptual understandings through international and national journals, and moving to dissemination of key findings through professional journals and conference and workshop delivery. The strategy was one of moving from global feedback on a locally experienced problem, to national feedback and then to engagement with professional colleagues. This approach was chosen to verify the quality of the analysis and to target the dissemination of findings to professional colleagues, facilitating professional dialogue on the core issues both during and subsequent to the dissertation process, and, in so doing, contributing to improved professional practice of the principalship. The dissertation begins by addressing risk and its minimisation as a powerful rationality and organisational logic driving leadership practices in contemporary schools. It explores the impact of risk-consciousness on the work of school leaders with particular reference to the impact such risk-consciousness can have on their role in fostering a learning culture within schools. It then moves to examine how this risk-consciousness has fostered a new 'attentional economy' (Taylor, 2005) in which schools must be seen to perform, and to perform in ways that are measurable and rendered visible for all. Rationalities of risk now require principals as school managers to pay attention to, and require of others, the forensic work of making schools calculable (that is, auditable on pre-determined risk minimisation metrics). Such forensic work has its place in schools and, indeed, has improved professional practice in some areas, particularly related to student safety. The dissertation raises questions about the extent to which this calculability is becoming the dominant, even the only, leaderly imperative for school principals. The dissertation positions the school as a risk organisation, and the strengths and limitations of that positioning are carefully examined. Carol Dweck's (1999) work on performance and learning goals provides a basis for an empirical analysis of the demands of school leadership. This analysis reveals the dominance of performance goals and the struggle experienced by the author, a school leader, in maintaining a balance between learning and performance, between being a risk-taker and a risk-minimiser, between being both appropriately accountable and socially responsible. It provides further evidence for the view developed through the dissertation that the dominant and prevailing negative logic of risk can overwhelm broader ethical responsibilities. The author argues strongly that proactive engagement with risk management underpinned by a positive logic of risk and focused, not on the imposition of ever-increasing controls, but on refining and improving judgement, offers new and more promising possibilities. A model for risk management is then presented which has a robust, flexible and systematic approach to risk management built on informed trust in professional human judgement. Such an approach, it is argued, may not only make the school safer but it may also provide a greater capacity to respond to opportunities to dare and to grow. School leaders are encouraged to move beyond risk minimisation to an educative approach to risk management in the interests of a dynamic learning environment.

This research engages critically with major public sector accountability theories in relation to the development of law centres in Aotearoa/New Zealand (and comparative international examples) focusing on the two centres in Otago, the Ngai Tahu Maori Law Centre and the Dunedin Community Law Centre. Definitions of accountability are argued to be embedded within theoretical discourses which produce definable models of accountability corresponding to these theoretical statements. Case studies of the discourses of both law centres and their funding bodies are described and contrasted in terms of their views of the role of law centres, interaction with various interest groups and their accountability relationships. The data identifies a desire of both community law centres to engage with a communitarian, �bottom-up�, model of accountability, in contrast to the former social democratic-bureaucratic and current liberal �stakeholder� and �contract� models of the official funding agencies. The current dominance of the liberal �stakeholder� discourse is seen as based on professional power, hierarchical legal structure and control of funding. It is argued that any shift in the dominance of power relationships surrounding community law centres in Aotearoa/New Zealand would entail a strengthening of ties and links with the community, through seeking alternative power supports, a participatory structure and locally controlled funding. Keywords: accountability; power relationships; community law centres; dominance; community.

The aim of this thesis is to propose and defend a maxim to serve as a foundation and guideline for professional ethics in nursing. The thesis is informed by philosophical ethics and by first-hand knowledge of professional nursing practice.

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