Master of Science / Department of Psychological Sciences / Clive J. Fullagar / The current study examines how leaders craft conditions of the workplace to make it more conducive for flow to occur in their followers and what beneficial effects this has on employee well-being and performance. Data from 43 employees surveyed daily over two work weeks suggested that transformational leaders and leader-member exchange relationships impact several workplace conditions that in turn impact flow. Also, daily flow experiences were related to daily psychological well-being and daily performance.

Based on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, this dissertation shows how the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario (OCC) – whose object is to speak for the dead to protect the living – is shaped by risk management priorities. It illustrates how the OCC, like many contemporary organizations, has altered its operations and decision making to manage threats to its reputation. The result of these moves has been the privatization of public safety decision making with bereaved families, the general public, and even front line coroners, increasingly excluded from speaking for the dead. This is to say, policy recommendations that shape how life in Ontario is lived tend to be generated in private sessions by OCC managers. While much of this can be attributed to the OCC’s focus on reputational risk management, there are other important factors affecting the privatization of public safety. Drawing on research in the sociology of culture, the dissertation finds that the OCC’s experience of risk management is moderated by other, layered institutional structures. These ‘institutional structures’ are analytic constructs with moral and methodological dimensions that inform the way work in the OCC is carried out. The dissertation demonstrates that the moral priorities and method preferences of doctors, lawyers, managers, families, and modern governments are layered over and under risk management. These layers augment or diminish risk management’s impact on the way death is determined and public safety regimes are developed. In addition to offering a window on death investigators and their work, the dissertation proposes a theoretical toolset for better understanding how contemporary organizations are organized and run.

Based on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, this dissertation shows how the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario (OCC) – whose object is to speak for the dead to protect the living – is shaped by risk management priorities. It illustrates how the OCC, like many contemporary organizations, has altered its operations and decision making to manage threats to its reputation. The result of these moves has been the privatization of public safety decision making with bereaved families, the general public, and even front line coroners, increasingly excluded from speaking for the dead. This is to say, policy recommendations that shape how life in Ontario is lived tend to be generated in private sessions by OCC managers. While much of this can be attributed to the OCC’s focus on reputational risk management, there are other important factors affecting the privatization of public safety. Drawing on research in the sociology of culture, the dissertation finds that the OCC’s experience of risk management is moderated by other, layered institutional structures. These ‘institutional structures’ are analytic constructs with moral and methodological dimensions that inform the way work in the OCC is carried out. The dissertation demonstrates that the moral priorities and method preferences of doctors, lawyers, managers, families, and modern governments are layered over and under risk management. These layers augment or diminish risk management’s impact on the way death is determined and public safety regimes are developed. In addition to offering a window on death investigators and their work, the dissertation proposes a theoretical toolset for better understanding how contemporary organizations are organized and run.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Psychological Sciences / Clive Fullagar / Within the literature on engagement at work there has traditionally been a focus on overall work engagement. However, in recent years there has been increasing research on applying a specific form of task engagement, called flow, to the world of work. The current project details two studies that serve to differentiate and understand the relationship between overall work engagement and flow. The first study collected data on engagement and flow from several hundred working adults and used confirmatory factor analysis to explore the factor structure of the two concepts. Results indicated that flow and engagement are separate constructs, albeit related. The second study again collected data from working adults, however, the goal was to show the differential relationships both flow and engagement have with the work outcomes of job satisfaction, commitment, citizenship behaviors, and burnout. Results indicated that both flow and engagement were significant predictors of these outcomes with engagement being the stronger predictor of the two. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are also discussed in full.

An inquiry was made as to the cause for the alienated gender relations between men and women leaders at the Cathedral Of Faith Church Of God In Christ. Cathedral is a large church located in the West End section of Atlanta, Georgia. Its members are black. The church is surrounded by Fort McPherson---(a United States Army base), A U C (the Atlanta University Center), and Cascade Heights, the most prominent black neighborhood in the city. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center For Social Change is also near by. The church sits in the midst of a lower-class to low middle-class community. The Pastor's charismatic style of ministry attracts a diverse membership. This setting was ideal for the inquiry. The purpose for the study was to reduce the alienation and to promote reconciliation between some of the leaders of the church. Women and men are presently face to face with the challenges brought on by contemporary role reversals, in the home, in the church, and in the work place. These role reversals have prompted hierarchical social systems to retaliate against these changes in an abusive fashion. Alienated relationships are the result. The Christian Tradition, established through the coming of Jesus Christ, has enabled us to meet these gender role challenges. Relationships can be reconciled through Christ. A doctoral project was designed to get at the root of the alienation which the Cathedral members were experiencing. It was grounded in clinical pastoral educational methodology. Biblical, psychological, and Christian educational content and theories were foundational to the model. Principles of theology, sociology, and church administration were integrated with the basic structure of the project. The multi-disciplinary approach promoted objectivity and helped the group to view the conflictual issues in new ways. A group of eighteen leaders, all members of Cathedral, agreed to wrestle with the issues surrounding their alienated relationships. Six lively sessions were filled with: dialogue, role plays, a story, a movie, a game, and a live presentation by other administrative persons in the church. Dialogue related to issues of: abuse, social justice, sexism, reverse sexism, and hierarchical systems created turmoil at different times. Discussions and exercises related to family life, marital conflict, team work and fair play, created an atmosphere which was usually exciting, and educational. The pastoral model which was assumed, confronted the alienation between the group members with empathy. The empathetic approach was instrumental in beginning a process of reconciliation between the Christian 'Women of Power' and 'Men of Power' at the Cathedral Of Faith Church.

As contemporary health care organizations struggle to control costs, yet deliver quality patient-centred care, the concept of care becomes socially transformed through the use of quality improvement models (i.e., Lean methodology) and quality assurance documentation. This research investigates how nurses’ care work is socially organized in a system that defines care through quality management practices. I use Dorothy E. Smith’s Institutional Ethnography as a feminist mode of inquiry and as a guiding framework for my interviews with nurse participants as I explore the complex social relations within the health care system from the vantage point of nurses undertaking care work. I argue that the social reorganization of care work has affected the emotional lives of nurses as they try to balance actual patient-centred care with their reporting obligations under quality management.

As contemporary health care organizations struggle to control costs, yet deliver quality patient-centred care, the concept of care becomes socially transformed through the use of quality improvement models (i.e., Lean methodology) and quality assurance documentation. This research investigates how nurses’ care work is socially organized in a system that defines care through quality management practices. I use Dorothy E. Smith’s Institutional Ethnography as a feminist mode of inquiry and as a guiding framework for my interviews with nurse participants as I explore the complex social relations within the health care system from the vantage point of nurses undertaking care work. I argue that the social reorganization of care work has affected the emotional lives of nurses as they try to balance actual patient-centred care with their reporting obligations under quality management.

This dissertation explores the claim that, in advanced capitalist countries like Canada, a powerful knowledge class is assuming increasing dominance within the social relations of production. Attached to such theories are claims of trends toward post-bureaucratic organizations, rising job complexity and autonomy, and increased power within operational and strategic decision-making processes. In my study I focus on Canadian “specialist” employees (professionals and semi-professionals) and managers. I present aggregated and disaggregated data from two Canadian surveys conducted in 1983 and 2004 and complement this with original interviews with information technology (IT) workers and engineers. I find a seeming paradox within the labour process of specialists and managers, with task-level autonomy declining even as job complexity and involvement in organizational decisions are rising. I provide evidence that imperatives for profit/cost effectiveness are leading to efforts to make specialist and managerial labour and knowledge more transparent, integrated, and manageable, but this is not the same as degradation or proletarianization. In contrast to my expectation, I find boundaries in the division of labour are durable despite this “socialization” of many labour processes. I argue that a specialist-and-managerial class (SMC) exists in Canada, and will continue to exist, though it is subordinate to and exploited by the capitalist elite even as it excludes and exploits the working class through occupational closure and credential barriers. The SMC is thus contradictory, internally heterogeneous and fraying at its borders, but simultaneously resilient. The resiliency comes via possession of specific strategic knowledge and consequent ability to secure rents and/or control specific organization assets via delegated authority. Resiliency is also structural, with management in many organizations retaining an interest in separating planning and design (“conception”), on the one hand, from process and completion (“execution”), on the other, in order to maximize efficiency and productivity through more centralized control.

This dissertation explores the claim that, in advanced capitalist countries like Canada, a powerful knowledge class is assuming increasing dominance within the social relations of production. Attached to such theories are claims of trends toward post-bureaucratic organizations, rising job complexity and autonomy, and increased power within operational and strategic decision-making processes. In my study I focus on Canadian “specialist” employees (professionals and semi-professionals) and managers. I present aggregated and disaggregated data from two Canadian surveys conducted in 1983 and 2004 and complement this with original interviews with information technology (IT) workers and engineers. I find a seeming paradox within the labour process of specialists and managers, with task-level autonomy declining even as job complexity and involvement in organizational decisions are rising. I provide evidence that imperatives for profit/cost effectiveness are leading to efforts to make specialist and managerial labour and knowledge more transparent, integrated, and manageable, but this is not the same as degradation or proletarianization. In contrast to my expectation, I find boundaries in the division of labour are durable despite this “socialization” of many labour processes. I argue that a specialist-and-managerial class (SMC) exists in Canada, and will continue to exist, though it is subordinate to and exploited by the capitalist elite even as it excludes and exploits the working class through occupational closure and credential barriers. The SMC is thus contradictory, internally heterogeneous and fraying at its borders, but simultaneously resilient. The resiliency comes via possession of specific strategic knowledge and consequent ability to secure rents and/or control specific organization assets via delegated authority. Resiliency is also structural, with management in many organizations retaining an interest in separating planning and design (“conception”), on the one hand, from process and completion (“execution”), on the other, in order to maximize efficiency and productivity through more centralized control.

The effect of continuous monoculture of sorghum, mungbean, oats, greenpanic and luceren on the nitrogen status of a brown clay soil from Narayen, South East Queensland was studied using biological and chemical methods. the soil nitrogen status was estimated by using indices of nitrogen availability i.e. waterlogged incubation method as the biological method and 2 M KCL, phosphate-borate buffer and 0.01 M CaCl_2 as rapid chemical methods. Total soil nitrogen and organic carbon were also included as estimates of soil nitrogen status. The results obtained by the waterlogged (WL) method were used to evaluate the results obtained by the three rapid chemical methods. The results show that of the three rapid chemical methods 2 M KCL was the most closely correlated with the waterlogged incubation method. Total N and organic C were also highly correlated with the WL method and they may have value as indices of nitrogen availability. The available N, total N and organic C contents in the 0-5 cm and 5-15cm layer soils were consistently higher under greenpanic and lucerne than for the annual crop treatments. The available N contents as determined by the WL method in the 0-5 cm and 5-15 cm soil layers under greenpanic and lucerne ranged from 75.6 to 126.5 ug N/g soil and 53.2 to 106.7 ug N/g soil, respectively, whereas the values under the annual crop treatments ranged from 13.2 to 75.3 ug N/g soil and 25.6 to 66.1 ug N/g soil, respectively. The total N contents in the 0-5 cm and 5-15 cm layer soils under the greenpanic and lucerne ranged from 0.29 to 0.38 % and 0.20 to 0.33 %, respectively, whereas the values under the annual crop treatments ranged from 0.17 to 0.31 % and 0.17 to 0.25 %, respectively. The availability of the total N as indicated by the available N as a percentage of the total N in the 0-5 cm and 5-15 cm layer soils under the greenpanic and lucerne ranged from 2.6 to 4.0 % and 2.1 to 3.2 %, respectively, whereas the values under the annual crop treatments ranged from 0.8 to 3.8 % and 1.5 to 2.4 %, respectively. In addition the organic C contents in the 0.5 cm and 5-15 cm layer soils under the greenpanic and lucerne range from 2.4 to 4.0 % and 2.0 to 3.5 %, respectively, whereas the values under the annual crop treatments ranged from 1.4 to 3.3 % and 1.7 to 2.7 %, respectively.