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171	An exploration into the conditions enabling and constraining the implementation of quality assurance in higher education: the case of a small comprehensive university in South Africa Masehela, Langutani Meriam January 2015 (has links) At an international level, demands for accountability in respect of the quality of teaching and learning in higher education are increasing. This is also the case in South Africa. The response to these demands has taken the form of the introduction of quality assurance systems to higher education. In South Africa, a formal national external quality assurance was introduced to the higher education system in 2001 as a result of the establishment of the Higher Education Quality Committee. The Higher Education Quality Committee is a standing committee of the South African Council on Higher Education. Like other quality assurance agencies across the world, the Higher Education Quality Committee has the responsibility for i) auditing institutions of higher education and ii) accrediting learning programmes. The first cycle of institutional audits ran from 2004 until 2011. As quality assurance was introduced to the higher education system and the first cycle of institutional audits began, universities in South Africa developed policies and procedures intended to assure quality in three areas of their core functioning: research, teaching and learning and community engagement. The University of Venda, which is the focus of the study on which this thesis is based, was no exception. As a practitioner in the Centre for Higher Education Teaching and Learning at The University of Venda, it was my observation that the policies and procedures intended to assure quality in teaching and learning were not always implemented by academic staff members. This was in spite of poor student performance data which raised questions about the quality of the teaching and learning processes in place. The study underpinning this thesis was designed to explore this phenomenon. More specifically, it aimed to identify the conditions enabling and constraining the implementation of policies and procedures in two Schools in the University: the School of Health Sciences and the School of Human and Social Sciences. In order to explore these conditions, I adopted Roy Bhaskar’s Critical Realism as an under-labouring philosophy for the study. Critical realism posits a view of reality comprising three strata, none of which can be reducible to the other. The first of these strata is termed the level of the Empirical and consists of the experiences and observations which become apparent to us through the senses. The second layer, the Actual, consists of events from which these experiences and observations emerge. Underpinning both of these layers is a further layer, the Real, which is not accessible by empirical means and which consists of structures and mechanisms which generate both events at the level of the Actual and experiences and observation at the level of the Empirical. The design of my study sought to reach this deepest layer of reality to identify these mechanisms. Bhaskar’s critical realism is philosophy which needs to be operationalized using substantive, or explanatory, theory. For this purpose, I drew on Margaret Archer’s social realism. The design on my study drew on case study methodology and involved in-depth interviews with members of the two Schools which each formed cases within the more overarching case of the University itself. In addition to these interviews, I analysed a range of institutional documents related to the assurance of quality in teaching and learning. The exploration of enabling and constraining conditions at the level of the Real allow me to make a series of recommendations in the final Chapter of my thesis intended to enhance the quality assurance system introduced to the University. University of Venda -- Evaluation Quality assurance -- South Africa Educational evaluation -- South Africa Critical realism Social realism
172	Understanding the poverty-reducing livelihoods of child support grant caregivers in Riebeeck East, South Africa Chikukwa, Vimbainashe January 2015 (has links) In 1994, racial domination in the form of apartheid ended in South Africa and the first postapartheid government was elected through a non-racial and democratic franchise. The new government inherited an entrenched system of racial inequality as well as widespread poverty amongst the formerly oppressed population, and it sought to address these challenges through policies of redistribution based on a new progressive constitution which emphasised the realisation of socio-economic rights. At the same time, and despite its redistributive measures, the post-apartheid government has pursued a macro-economic strategy with pronounced neoliberal dimensions. One of its critical redistributive measures focuses on social assistance to poor blacks, and this has entailed the construction and expansion of a massive social grant system including the child support grant which is received by millions of black South Africans on a monthly basis. The objective of this thesis is to examine and understand the livelihoods of child support grant recipients (or caregivers) in the context of conditions of extreme vulnerability marked by poverty. It does so by focusing on the small town of Riebeek East located in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Though undoubtedly child support grant caregivers are victims of poverty, the thesis demonstrates that they are not without agency. They exist in structural conditions of vulnerability and poverty, but they nevertheless seek to manoeuvre and negotiate their way in and through their conditions of existence. This does not necessarily alleviate their poverty in any significant manner but it does show evidence of reflexivity, decision-making and responsibility in the pursuit of livelihood practices and outcomes. In making this argument, I draw upon the mega-theory of Margaret Archer (specifically, her morphogenetic approach) and the more middle-level perspective of the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework. Beyond contributing to the prevailing academic literature on the child support grant in South Africa, this thesis also hopefully makes a small contribution to controversies about structure and agency within sociology. Poverty -- South Africa -- Riebeek-Oos Critical realism
173	Ledarskapandet i korstrycket : Mellancheferna inom sektionen för barn och unga och deras ledarskapsprocess Öberg, Tanja, Alkner-Timner, Lina January 2019 (has links) Mellanchefer inom socialtjänstens sektion för barn och unga arbetar i en motstridig organisation. Mellancheferna blir länken som fogar samman politiskt fattade beslut med förvaltningens krav och förväntningar, personalgruppens behov och klienternas rätt till hjälp och stöd. Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur mellanchefernas ledarskap skapas utifrån de förutsättningar som ges och den komplexitet som rollen innebär. Sex kvalitativa intervjuer med mellanchefer inom sektionen för barn och unga i fem mellanstora kommuner har genomförts. Genom att undersöka hur mellancheferna navigerar mellan domänerna politik, förvaltning och profession och med hjälp av begreppet parallellprocesser kan mekanismer som utgör viktiga faktorer för ledarskapandet synliggöras. Tydligt är att socionomernas starka professionsidentitet präglar ledarskapet i alla led och att prioriteringar och val många gånger motiveras mot bakgrund av den starka professionstillhörigheten. Resultatet visar också att mellancheferna i studien främst ser sig som socionomer och identifierar sig mer med sin profession än med sin funktion som chef. Professionsidentifikationen utgör många gånger en legitimerande grund för hur ledarskapet bedrivs i sin operativa form. / Middle-managers leaders in the social services´ department for children and young people work in a conflicting organisation. These middle-managers become the link which joins together political decisions with requirements and expectations from the management, the needs of personnel and the clients´ right to aid and support. The aim of this study has been to investigate how middle-management leadership is created within given conditions and the complexity that their role entails. Six qualitative interviews with middle- managers in the department for children and young people in five intermediate municipalities have been realized. By investigating how these middle-managers navigate between the political, management and professional domains and, with the aid of the concept of parallel processes, mechanisms, which can constitute important factors for leadership, have been made visible. It is clear that the professions identity of social workers influence their leadership at all levels and that priorities and choices are often motivated because of this strong professions identity. The result also shows that the middle-managers in this study regard themselves as social workers and identify themselves more with their profession than with their function as managers. Professions identification often constitutes a legitimizing basis for how leadership is conducted in its operative form. Leadership management constructing leadership social services child welfare decision making priorities domain theory critical realism parallel process social worker code of ethics professions identification. Ledare chef skapa ledarskap socialtjänst individ- och familjeomsorg sektionen för barn och unga val prioriteringar domänteori kritisk realism parallellprocesser socionom etisk kod professionsidentifikation. Social Sciences Samhällsvetenskap
174	Développement d’une théorie réaliste critique sur la rétroaction de données de la performance de services infirmiers aux équipes interprofessionnelles Rapin, Joachim 08 1900 (has links) Problématique : La rétroaction, qui s’inscrit dans un système d’amélioration de la performance des services infirmiers (SAPSI), vise à restituer des données aux équipes interprofessionnelles pour qu’elles les analysent et réalisent un plan d’action pour améliorer leur performance. La rétroaction pose deux problèmes aux organisations de santé : ses issues présentent une variabilité marquée qui demeure en partie inexpliquée; et, la conception et la mise en œuvre actuelle des systèmes de rétroaction ne prennent pas en compte sa dynamique complexe, en particulier la dimension sociale, les interactions sociotechniques, et leurs transformations liées au contexte. Nous postulons que la compréhension de cette dynamique permettrait d’expliquer différentes configurations de ces systèmes et leurs issues variées. Le but de cette thèse est de développer une théorie explicative et critique de la rétroaction aux équipes interprofessionnelles qui présente sa dynamique et les interrelations avec le SAPSI. Les questionnements formulés pour atteindre ce but ont été établis sur la base d’une revue rapide réaliste critique de la littérature. Méthode : Cette étude de cas multiples qualitative réaliste critique comporte trois cas hétérogènes et 98 professionnels d’un hôpital universitaire. Cinq méthodes de collecte de données ont été réalisées, incluant 120 heures d’observation participante, 82 documents, 4 focus groupes, 26 entretiens semi-dirigés et 15 questionnaires. L’analyse intra et inter cas, menée durant la collecte de données, a procédé selon une approche comparative et chronologique par analyse thématique, questionnement analytique et modélisation systémique pour produire une théorie explicative. Résultats : La théorie explicative modélise l’interaction récursive des structures décisionnelles, de mécanismes sociotechniques et de stratégies émergentes de médiation qui ont (re)positionné les soins infirmiers, mobilisé des ressources et priorisé une vision et des objectifs infirmiers complémentaires au niveau des unités cliniques et de la Direction des soins dès la conception du SAPSI et en continu. Selon les structures décisionnelles, centralisées ou distribuées, les issues de la rétroaction étaient conformes aux attentes et maintenaient leur contexte ; ou, présentaient l’émergence de solutions originales et transformaient leur contexte. Trois mécanismes sociotechniques ont été identifiés : (1) certains acteurs s’adaptaient aux controverses alors que d’autres les adressaient ; (2) certains acteurs empilaient les impératifs et d’autres tendaient à transformer leur contexte et leurs pratiques cliniques ; (3) certains acteurs ajoutaient des intermédiaires techniques qui maintenaient leurs interrelations et d’autres ajoutaient des intermédiaires hybrides qui les transformaient. Les issues de la rétroaction ont transformé le contexte et les mécanismes de la rétroaction et du SAPSI, et inversement. Conclusion : La rétroaction aux équipes interprofessionnelles est un système sociotechnique complexe. Le projet d’améliorer la performance implique que des acteurs déploient des stratégies pour en déplacer d’autres. Ces acteurs et leurs pratiques ont été rendus invisibles dans de nombreuses théories d’Audit & Feedback contemporaines, au profit du domaine technique. À travers l’identification et la critique de valeurs, d’hypothèses et de conception implicites de la rétroaction aux équipes interprofessionnelles et d’un SAPSI, cette thèse met en lumière des dimensions centrales qui sont sociales, liées aux interactions sociotechniques et aux transformations. / Issue: Feedback, as part of a nursing performance improvement system (NPIS), aims to return data to interprofessional teams for subsequent analysis and action planning to improve their performance. Feedback poses two problems for healthcare organizations: its outcomes present a marked variability that remains partly unexplained; and current design and implementation of feedback systems does not consider its complex dynamics, including its varied social processes, socio-technical interactions, and context-related transformations. We postulate that understanding these dynamics would help explain different feedback-related configurations and their varied outcomes. The purpose of this thesis is to develop an explanatory and critical theory of feedback to interprofessional teams that describes its dynamics and interrelations with an NPIS. To achieve this goal, a rapid critical realist review of the literature substantiated the articulation of three research questions. Method: A critical realist qualitative multiple-case study was conducted with three heterogeneous cases and 98 professionals in a university-affiliated hospital. Five methods of data collection were deployed, comprising 120 hours of participant observation, 82 documents, four focus groups, 26 semi-structured interviews and 15 questionnaires. Intra- and inter-case analysis, concurrent with data collection, and from a comparative and chronological perspective, combined qualitative thematic analysis, analytical questioning and systemic modelling to produce an explanatory theory. Results: The resultant explanatory theory presents a recursive interaction of decision-making structures, socio-technical mechanisms, and emerging mediation strategies that (re)positioned nursing care, mobilized resources, and prioritized a nursing vision and objectives, both within clinical units and with management, from the initial creation of the NPIS and onwards. Depending on whether decision-making structures were centralized or distributed, feedback outcomes were either in line with expectations and maintained their context; or gave rise to original solutions and transformed their context. Three socio-technical mechanisms are central to the theory: (1) some actors adapted to controversies, while others addressed them; (2) some actors responded directly to imperatives, while others tended to transform their context and clinical practices; and (3) some actors added technical intermediaries that maintained their interrelationships, while others added hybrid intermediaries that transformed them. The outcomes of feedback transformed its context, feedback mechanisms and NPIS, and vice versa. Conclusion: Feedback to interprofessional teams is a complex socio-technical system. Nursing performance improvement involves actors deploying strategies to displace others. Contemporary Audit & Feedback theories tend to conceal some social actors and their practices and to emphasize technical aspects of feedback systems. The identification and critique of values, assumptions and unspoken design issues that are inherent to feedback practices with interprofessional teams and NPIS highlight central dimensions that are social, linked to socio-technical interactions and transformative. Infirmières et infirmiers Audit clinique Rétroaction Amélioration de la qualité Qualité des soins de santé Recherche qualitative Théories des systèmes Systèmes de soins apprenant Étude de cas Réalisme critique Nurses Clinical audit Feedback Quality improvement Quality of health care Qualitative research Systems Theory Learning health system Case Study Critical Realism
175	The Social Construction of Economic Man: The Genesis, Spread, Impact and Institutionalisation of Economic Ideas Mackinnon, Lauchlan A. K. Unknown Date (has links) The present thesis is concerned with the genesis, diffusion, impact and institutionalisation of economic ideas. Despite Keynes's oft-cited comments to the effect that 'the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood'(Keynes 1936: 383), and the highly visible impact of economic ideas (for example Keynesian economics, Monetarism, or economic ideas regarding deregulation and antitrust issues) on the economic system, economists have done little to systematically explore the spread and impact of economic ideas. In fact, with only a few notable exceptions, the majority of scholarly work concerning the spread and impact of economic ideas has been developed outside of the economics literature, for example in the political institutionalist literature in the social sciences. The present thesis addresses the current lack of attention to the spread and impact of economic ideas by economists by drawing on the political institutionalist, sociological, and psychology of creativity literatures to develop a framework in which the genesis, spread, impact and institutionalisation of economic ideas may be understood. To articulate the dissemination and impact of economic ideas within economics, I consider as a case study the evolution of economists' conception of the economic agent - "homo oeconomicus." I argue that the intellectual milieu or paradigm of economics is 'socially constructed' in a specific sense, namely: (i) economic ideas are created or modified by particular individuals; (ii) economic ideas are disseminated (iii) certain economic ideas are accepted by economists and (iv) economic ideas become institutionalised into the paradigm or milieu of economics. Economic ideas are, of course, disseminated not only within economics to fellow economists, but are also disseminated externally to economic policy makers and business leaders who can - and often do - take economic ideas into account when formulating policy and building economic institutions. Important economic institutions are thereby socially constructed, in the general sense proposed by Berger and Luckmann (1966). But how exactly do economic ideas enter into this process of social construction of economic institutions? Drawing from and building on structure/agency theory (e.g. Berger and Luckmann 1966; Bourdieu 1977; Bhaskar 1979/1998, 1989; Bourdieu 1990; Lawson 1997, 2003) in the wider social sciences, I provide a framework for understanding how economic ideas enter into the process of social construction of economic institutions. Finally, I take up a methodological question: if economic ideas are disseminated, and if economic ideas have a real and constitutive impact on the economic system being modelled, does 'economic science' then accurately and objectively model an independently existing economic reality, unchanged by economic theory, or does economic theory have an interdependent and 'reflexive' relationship with economic reality, as economic reality co-exists with, is shaped by, and also shapes economic theory? I argue the latter, and consider the implications for evaluating in what sense economic science is, in fact, a science in the classical sense. The thesis makes original contributions to understanding the genesis of economic ideas in the psychological creative work processes of economists; understanding the ontological location of economic ideas in the economic system; articulating the social construction of economic ideas; and highlighting the importance of the spread of economic ideas to economic practice and economic methodology. 410401 Design Theory 349901 Political Economy 370000 Studies in Human Society 340302 History of Economic Thought 349900 Other Economics 410402 Design Innovation 360201 Public Policy 360000 Policy and Political Science 380100 Psychology 360100 Political Science 360200 Policy and Administration 370101 Social Theory 370102 Social Policy and Planning 340100 Economic Theory genesis spread diffusion impact institutionalisation economic ideas idea ideation psychology of creativity Wallas Wertheimer stage model productive thinking creative creativity process economic economics sociology social methodology methodological self-altering self-fulfilling self-denying prophecy belief reflexive reflexivity institution institutionalise institutionalised social construction Berger Luckmann Bhaskar critical realism Lawson Bordieu habitus field spread impact ideation ideational structure social structure action creativity creative economists sociology philosophy of science homo economicus homo oeconomicus economic man economic agent rational economic man man lucas critique Goodhart's law Keynes Marx Mill Hayek Hicks Samuelson Walras Jevons Arrow Debreu Samuelson Merton sociology of economics sociology of scientific knowledge SSK Holton prediction control reflexive prediction reflexivity Whitley Mackie canonization Henshel Grunberg Modigliani Morgenstern Lucas Muth Simon Blyth Hall Sikkink Hira Hood institutionalize institutionalized socialise socialisation internalise internalisation internalization socialization behaviour behavior Thomas theorem expectations stage model productive thinking evolution

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