Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Los Angeles, 1992. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 288-300).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Robert Martello. / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 207-218). / In recent years, coaching has become a major form of personal and professional development service offered to executives to help develop leadership skills, enhance performance, and remediate patterns of problematic workplace behavior. This dissertation examines the emergence and development of executive coaching in the United States as a new form of professional expertise. Drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic research, the majority of which took place in New York City, this study analyzes the ways in which executive coaching brings together theories of individual psychology and of organizational efficiency in order to increase functionality and productivity at work. Executive coaching is: a) a new form of professional expertise, b) a management tool to increase productivity and efficiency at work, c) a window to changing notions of the self and personhood in America and, finally d) an access point to the corporate world. This study explores these four dimensions of executive coaching. I argue that the emergence of coaching is a product of and a response to a fast changing business environment where continuous improvement is required to adapt to the volatility of changes. Change in the larger context (corporate settings and business environments) is not to be resisted or criticized but to be enabled through the change of the self. This dissertation illustrates and explains the grounds of a shift away from systemic approaches and systemic criticism towards individualistic approaches. Coaching emerges in and becomes an illustration of a neo-liberal economy that emphasizes constant retraining of a self that is versatile, pragmatic and fragmented. / by Esra Ozkan. / Ph.D.in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2008. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 358-368). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (D.B.A.)--Victoria University (Melbourne, Vic.), 2009. / Includes bibliographical references: leaves 204-222.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2010. / "Graduate Program in Communication, Information and Library Studies." Includes bibliographical references (p. 245-264).

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 122-124).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available via the Internet.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This thesis turns to Martin Heidegger to develop an interpretive framework to answer the question that has increasingly been thrust to the fore of 21st century society: what is the nature of the relationship between technology and society? And related to this central question is the matter of how society and social being is altered by technology and its modalities of vision? The basic argument that has been advanced to address this question revolves around the fact that in as much as we use technology as a means to serve practical ends, it displaces certain tasks and functions, which would otherwise be necessary, and thus truncates or reduces the scope of social practices in our everyday social routines. However, it does not simply end there as we illustrate that social practices encompass, to varying degrees, a different range and scope of social relationships which are instantiated in their wake. Considered together we found that these relations constitute a nexus of social connections, which we take up as the quality of sociality. The implications for our argument that sociabilities and sociality converge to produce an understanding of social being means that any technological encroachments which displace our social practices and social connectives alters our understanding of social being and thus how we understand ourselves, the world and others. We take up this theme of the displacement of our social being, sociality and sociabilities by considering two outcomes that modern technology seems to open up: equipmentality and curiosity.Firstly, as regards equipmentality we have noted that it connect us to our sociality and sociabilities and thus inures our understanding of social being, however, by contrast Heidegger finds in (idle) curiosity a second outcome that dooms us to the dystopian fate of nihilism. There is thus no fait accompli as regards modern technology’s nihilistic tendencies. This does not mean that we can be complacent about our future. But it does mean, on a positive note, that we human beings do have a responsibility to recognize technology’s efficacious ontological dimension for disclosing our being and the world.By contrast, on the negative task, our responsibility does extend to resisting modern technology’s nihilistic ontological wasteland, which does not admit objects, things or for that matter human beings, but only the flattened insubstantial being of resources as standing reserve for the technological system, bereft of sociality, humanity and an understanding of social be-ing.

This dissertation is a study of groundwork in Engaged Science, Technology, and Society (STS) research. Engaged STS scholars reframe STS knowledge and move it beyond the traditional scope and boundaries of the field. They use various methods such as critical participation, making and doing, situated interventions, and experimentation to critically engage with their fields of study. These scholars have evaluated their work within the context of the disciplinary outsider, described their use of high-level pragmatic frameworks, and used the arts to bring critical social issues to the public eye. Yet, when I decided to use STS engagement methods to bring visibility to the lesser-known communities in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Virginia Tech, I found a lack of work documenting the groundwork and experience of engagement. I could not locate groundwork regarding negotiation, designing the most appropriate intervention, collaboration strategies, or confronting my fears and doubts about being in the field. Therefore, in this dissertation, I identify and examine my engagement experience in three interventions within the ECE department to bring visibility to the groundwork of STS engagement. The limited-series podcast Engineering Visibility was a platform to bring visibility to the less dominant communities in the ECE department. Highlighting the experiences of women in engineering, the first-generation student, inclusion and diversity, and the non-traditional student fostered a shared identity and sense of belonging within the ECE department. On the ground, this project examined the need to protect participants' visibility through invisibility. Interventionist Protectivity conceptualizes how I combined trust, accountability, and social awareness to protect my participants' from social scrutiny. The second project was a seminar titled "Expand Your ECE Career." The seminar exposed students to a "broader range of careers" by challenging the traditional ideas of success. The seminar featured four ECE alumni with successful careers in law, finance, and fashion entrepreneurship. Additionally, this intervention pointed out the inadequacies of traditional forms of project assessment. I describe how I measured intervention success through other assessment methods such as "assessment per mobility." The last project was a data-driven white paper that translated the care work of the undergraduate academic career advisors and framed it to be understood by the ECE faculty. The care work done by the academic advisors was underappreciated in its connection to undergraduate student success. On the ground, I discussed the importance of identifying the advisors and the faculty's social construction to create an intervention that translated the advisors' work to be valued by the faculty. Lastly, I conclude with a discussion summarizing the overall lessons learned from the three interventions and discussing my experience of engagement. My engaged STS experience is discussed through my framing of the concept of self-confrontation and the work of avoiding the term of STS being deemed as useful. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation is a study of groundwork in engaged Science, Technology, and Society (STS) research. Recent advances such as critical participation, making and doing, and situated intervention are reframing boundaries between knowledge and action in STS, offering scholars new approaches for improving scientific and technological communities. When I attempted to utilize these theories and methods in a culture change project, however, I found a lack of scholarship documenting the experience of engagement. How does one design the most appropriate intervention? What strategies are required to collaborate and negotiate? How do engaged scholars confront their fears and doubts in their communities and concerning the knowledge they bring back to STS? These groundwork questions confront both novice and seasoned STS scholars and are crucial to successful engaged scholarship, but they rarely are documented and analyzed. Utilizing a matters-of-care framework and self-reflective methods, I describe how and why I sought to change the culture of a large engineering department by making visible unseen and sometimes under-appreciated stakeholders. To do so, I created three interventions: a limited-series podcast to showcase the diversity of experiences in the department, an alternative-career seminar to redefine what counted as success in engineering, and a data-driven white paper to showcase the indispensable care work of academic advisors. I analyzed these projects' construction, application, and outcomes to highlight the complexities and significance of groundwork for STS engagement.