Il est aujourd’hui accepté que le bruit de parole représente la principale source de gêne pour les employés des bureaux ouverts. L’objectif de ce travail est d’évaluer les effets psychophysiologiques de la parole intelligible sur les salariés effectuant une ou plusieurs tâches. Pour répondre à cet objectif, deux expériences ont été réalisées. La première a pour but d’évaluer le décrément de performance (DP) lors d’une tâche de sériation pour de fortes valeurs d’intelligibilité. L’indicateur acoustique choisi est le STI (« Speech Transmission Index »). Les résultats de l’étude menée auprès de cinquante-cinq participants montrent un effet du STI sur le DP. Cependant, cette expérience a une validité écologique réduite puisqu’elle est de courte durée et qu’elle est limitée à une tâche très spécifique. La deuxième expérience a donc pour but d’élaborer des tests en laboratoire plus proches des conditions de travail en bureau ouvert et d’étudier l’effet de la parole intelligible sur des indicateurs psychologiques. Trente-neuf participants ont participé à cette expérimentation. Plusieurs mesures telles que la fatigue psychologique, la gêne sonore et la charge mentale de travail ont été réalisées. Les participants ont été soumis à trois conditions sonores différentes (bruit stationnaire, bruit modulé et parole) durant trois journées. Chaque jour, les participants ont réalisé leur travail en étant exposés à la même condition sonore pendant 6h45min. Les résultats montrent un effet de la parole sur l’état psychologique des participants. La parole semble être la source de bruit la plus fatigante et la plus gênante. Elle entraine également une charge mentale supplémentaire. Au-delà des résultats de ces expériences, les modèles psychologiques mobilisés lors de cette thèse peuvent être adaptés pour mener des enquêtes in-situ afin d’évaluer et prévenir les risques psychologiques liés aux bruits dans les bureaux ouverts. / It seems now accepted that speech noise in open-plan offices is the main source of annoyance for employees. This work aims to evaluate the psychophysiological effects of intelligible speech on the employees performing one or multiple tasks. For this purpose, two experiments were conducted. The first experiment evaluates the decrease in performance (DP) during a serial recall task for high values of speech intelligibility. The chosen acoustical indicator is the Speech Transmission Index (STI). Fifty-five subjects participated during this experiment. The results show a significant effect of the STI on the DP. However, this experiment does not reflect the reality of an open-plan office because of the specificity of the task performed during a brief period of time. The second experiment aims to elaborate on laboratory tests which are closer to work conditions in an open-plan office and to evaluate the effect of intelligible speech on the psychological indicators. Thirty-nine subjects participated to the experiment. Different measurements such as psychological fatigue, sound annoyance and the cognitive workload were performed. The subjects were subdued to three different sound conditions (stationary noise, ‘speech-like’ amplitude-modulated noise and intelligible speech) during three days. For each day, the subjects did their work while being exposed to the same sound condition during six hours and forty-five minutes. The results show a significant effect of the speech condition on the psychological state of the subjects. The speech seems to be the most tiring and the most annoying sound source out of the three conditions. It also induces a supplementary cognitive workload. Hereafter the results of these two experiments, the psychological models applied during this thesis could be adopted to conduct in-situ surveys for purposes of preventing the psychological hazards due to noise in open-plan offices.

Wild free-roaming horses in the American West continue to exist in tension with the land they inhabit, the government that “manages” them, and the people that are impacted by them. The problem, argued here, is the result of the ideological construction of mustangs in American culture, and it calls forth questions about human-nature relationships as well as contemporary understandings of Environmentalism. This research follows in the theoretical foundations of Raymond Geuss and Tommie Shelby to unpack the epistemic properties (empirical evidence of the contexts from which ideologies are formed), functional properties (consequences of suffering and benefits as a result of ideologies), and genetic histories (historical contexts the construct the ideologies in a culture) of ideologies relating to wild horses in the West; by doing so it also provides insight into nature identification, the borders and barriers of human creations, and the limitations of access for performing environmentalism. This text focuses primarily on the life and experiences of Velma Bronn Johnston as an exemplar of environmental change in unexpected ways. Her narrative culminates in the passing of the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971 that created material changes for the lives of mustangs in the West as well as long-term consequences for citizens of the United States of America. Consequentially, mustangs of the West face a population “problem” that costs the United States more than $80 million annually with almost no signs of decreasing.

On October 3rd, 2015, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau changed the presentation of information within mortgage disclosures such that monthly payments and upfront costs are more salient. Using proprietary bank account data, I document that after closing on the mortgage, treated consumers receiving the re-designed disclosures log in more into their liquid checking accounts, spend less on debit cards and cash, but spend more on credit cards. I argue that the more salient disclosures caused consumers to prioritize having funds to make monthly obligations. Accordingly, I find that liquidity constrained consumers reallocate more of their debit card and cash spending to credit card spending. Other channels related to underestimation of mortgage costs, financial advice, and regulatory enforcement cannot fully explain the results. The reform benefits consumers as they do not accumulate credit card charges despite making more timely mortgage payments. The results collectively demonstrate that modifying information presentation is a low-cost way to change consumers’ behaviors.

La thèse donne à voir et à comprendre en quoi consistent les organisations et l’expérience du travail dans les organisations à partir de l’analyse d’interactions verbales, corporelles et matérielles filmées dans des bureaux. Développant une approche praxéologique originale du côté de la recherche sur les organisations, nous contribuons en outre aux travaux sur les interactions en interrogeant la présence de l’institution dans des formats interactionnels, dans une démarche comparative que permet le corpus. L’exposition de notre ancrage théorique au croisement de ces courants nous conduit à une question épistémologique : est-il possible d’extraire des interactions en coprésence le Quoi du travail d’organisation, tel que l’ethnométhodologie a pu le formuler pour le travail professionnel ? Les résultats empiriques de l’enquête sont ensuite présentés dans cinq chapitres, chacun consacré à un phénomène ou moment de la vie dans les bureaux : les ouvertures des visites, les clôtures des visites, les appels téléphoniques pendant une interaction en coprésence, la mobilisation dans l’interaction du dispositif vidéo, et enfin les réajustements du cadre de participation. La comparaison des différents environnements de travail, des régularités au sein de chacun et entre eux, permet certaines découvertes. / The thesis endeavours to show and understand the very stuff of organisations and the experience of work in organisations, starting from the analysis of verbal, embodied and material interactions filmed in offices. Developing a praxeological, original approach within theories of organisation, we also aim to contribute to research on interactions by putting to question the relevance of institution within interactional patterns, through the comparative approach enabled by our corpus. A theoretical anchorage at the crossroads of these currents being set, we are lead to an epistemological question: is it possible to extract out of copresent interactions the What of organizing work, the way ethnomethodology did with studies of work? We present in the next five chapters our empirical results, each concerning one phenomenon or sequence of work in offices: opening a visit, closing a visit, answering an incoming phonecall during a copresent interaction, formulating the video cameras in interaction, and finally reajusting participation frame. Comparison of various work settings, of regularities between and within them, leads to some discoveries.

Four research questions guided this documentation and assessment of the Portland Police Bureau's conversion to community policing. These questions generated a description of the events and circumstances that created the perceived need for change in the Bureau's role and function; a search for justification for selecting community policing as an alternative policing approach; a comparative analysis of past attempts to implement innovative change of a similar dimension in police organizations; and an assessment of the process by which the Bureau implemented this new policing strategy. The findings indicate that the prominent factors driving this change are first, the limitations of conventional policing tactics against emerging new patterns of crime and disorder; second, an intensification of public interest in quality-of-life issues; and third, an increase in the numbers of progressive police officers that are influencing change in the traditional police culture. The process by which the Bureau effected changes in its organizational structure and design to accommodate community policing strategies was assessed using theoretical guidelines abstracted from the organizational change literature. This assessment led to a hypothesis that innovative change which is incongruent with organizational traditions and culture must be implemented organization-wide, in an "all-or-none" fashion, to maximize the probability that the change will become institutionalized. The Bureau's inadvertent adherence to most of the guidelines suggests that a pattern may exist to guide the implementation of innovative organizational change. It was also found that the traditional bureaucratic policing structure has been relaxed, but remains quasi-bureaucratic in character, as a function of retaining the traditional military rank structure.

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Lecture Series on Abraham Lincoln at the Reece Museum

This presentation explores the role the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (commonly referred to as the Freedmen’s Bureau) played in western North Carolina’s reconstruction. It may seem ironic that an agency tasked with aiding the adjustment from slavery to free labor was in the southern mountains, but the irony dissipates in light of the evidence. The Conservative Party’s resumption of local control in 1865 led white Unionists to embrace the Republican Party and black political cooperation two years later, a move that would have been impossible without the Freedmen’s Bureau. Its agents represented the most tangible source of federal power in the mountain counties, and as such helped build relationships between black and white mountaineers that allowed the Republicans to sweep the pivotal local and state elections of 1868.

American Civil War officer preparation activities were rooted in the broader practices of antebellum military education as applied at West Point, other military academies, and the state militia system. The arrival of black troops in the Union Army led to a radical, if temporary, transformation in the Army's process for the selection and preparation of officers—but only for the white officers who served with black regiments. Overtly political or casual processes of the early Civil War were replaced in many cases by formal examinations and the centralized review of results, operating in parallel with more traditional political patronage systems of appointment. This study uses the experiences of officers from several black infantry regiments, and particularly the 41st U.S. Colored Infantry from the East and the 100th U.S.C.I. from the West, to illustrate how leaders for black units were chosen, prepared, examined, commissioned, and continued their military education. It focuses on the experiences of the officers, along with the contextual environments of antebellum education, slavery, racism, tactics, and bureaucracy in which they served. / Ph. D.