Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis uses narrative analysis to explore the ways by which consultants seek to improve their perceived trustworthiness in initial client-consultant interactions. It is argued that consultants rely on identity-based trust perceptions by the clients and that this basis for trust can be favourably presented, within certain constraints, through narrative positioning. This narrative positioning, in the service of identity construction, is called identity positioning in the thesis. The thesis is situated in the literature on management consulting aimed at micro-level high-contact client-consultant interactions. These kinds of interactions trade on trust and identity. The various bases for trust are described, namely identity, structural, and dispositional based trust. Amongst these three bases, identity trust is highlighted as the most dominant in the context of clientconsultant interactions, especially in initial interactions where the consultant is unknown to the participants. It is to be expected in initial interactions that there will be a lot of scope for identity construction. A framework is then developed to relate identity construction and trust, which can be used as the basis for narrative positioning analysis. The framework consists of two dimensions along which identities can be positioned: social obligations and relational positioning latitude. It is argued that dispositional trust relates to relational positioning latitude, whereas structural bases of trust relates to social obligations. Identity based trust therefore indicates where the consultant fits within the structural or dispositional bases of trust. It is then shown how context moderates which of the trust bases will be dominant, and how this might manifest in the narrative of the consultant. It provides three general contexts, each leading to the emergence of a particular dominant basis for trustworthiness perceptions by the clients. The particular case analysed in this thesis correlates to a specific contexts within the framework. This context is where the consultant is unknown. The last part of the thesis illustrates the use of the framework and context as it guides the analysis of a particular consultant’s personal narrative during an initial interaction with clients. The analysis is then repeated for the consultant's software product narrative. The structures of the two narratives are then compared to show how the consultant also attempted to extend the identity-based trust to his software product. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis maak gebruik van narratiewe analise om die maniere te verken waarop konsultante die persepsies van hul betroubaarheid probeer verbeter in die aanvang fase van kliënt-konsultant interaksies. Daar word aangevoer dat konsultante staatmaak op identiteit-gebaseerde vertroue persepsies deur die kliënte en dat dié basis van vertroue gunstig aangebied kan word, binne sekere beperkings, deur middel van narratiewe posisionering. Hierdie narratiewe plasing, wat in die diens van die konstruksie van identiteit is, word identiteit posisionering genoem in die tesis. Die tesis is geleë in die literatuur oor bestuurs konsultering met die oogmerk op mikrovlak hoëkontak kliënt-konsultant interaksies. Hierdie soort interaksies handel in vertroue en identiteit. Die verskillende basisse vir vertroue word beskryf, naamlik identiteit, strukturele, en disposisionele gebaseerde vertroue. Onder hierdie drie basisse, word identiteit gebaseerde vertroue as die mees dominante in die konteks van die kliënt-konsultant interaksies uitgelig, veral in die eerste interaksies waar die konsultant onbekend is aan die deelnemers. Dit is verwag, in die aanvangs fase van sulke interaksies, dat daar baie ruimte vir die konstruksie van identiteit is. 'n Raamwerk word dan ontwikkel om die konstruksie van identiteit en vertroue in verband te bring, wat dan kan gebruik word as die basis vir die analise van narratiewe posisionering. Die raamwerk bestaan uit twee dimensies waarlangs identiteite kan geplaas word: sosiale verpligtinge en relasionele posisionering omvang. Daar word aangevoer dat disposisionele vertroue betrekking het tot relasionele posisionering omvang, terwyl die strukturele basis van vertroue verband hou met sosiale verpligtinge. Identiteit gebaseerde vertroue dui dus waar die konsultant pas binne die strukturele of disposisionele basisse van die trust. Daar word dan getoon hoe konteks modereer welke van die vertroue basisse oorheersend sal wees, en hoe hierdie kan manifesteer in die narratief van die konsultant. Dit bied drie algemene kontekste, wat elk lei tot die opkoms van 'n bepaalde dominante basis vir betroubaarheid persepsies deur die kliënte. Die besondere geval geanaliseer in die tesis korreleer met 'n spesifieke kontekste binne die raamwerk. Hierdie konteks is waar die konsultant onbekend is aan die kliënte. Die laaste deel van die tesis illustreer die gebruik van die raamwerk en konteks waar dit die ontleding van 'n spesifieke konsultant se persoonlike narratief tydens 'n aanvanklike interaksie met kliënte lei. Die analise word dan vir die konsultant se sagteware produk narratief herhaal. Die strukture van die twee verhale word dan vergelyk om te wys hoe die konsultant ook probeer het om die identiteit-gebaseerde vertroue uit te brei na sy sagteware produk.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1976 / Bibliography: leaves 292-296. / Ph. D. / Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Thesis (MBA (Business Management))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010.

This dissertation explores ways in which “capacity-building” might contribute to processes of social change in complex environments. This exploration emerged as part of a personal journey as a capacity-building practitioner to help make sense out of my prior work experience. In my experience, I learned first-hand how many of the “capacity” challenges that my colleagues and I were trying to address in different organizations were complex, “messy” and uncertain. At the same time, many of the capacity-building tools and methodological processes I commonly used assumed a world that was predictable, neat and controllable. These assumptions led to many occasions in which capacity-building processes and methods did not make sense in specific situations, or did not generate expected significant changes. I saw my PhD as a way of addressing many unanswered questions and developing capacity-building methodology that would be relevant to the complex realities in which I worked. At the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), I became much more aware not only of the complexity of my prior capacity-building work in development, but also of its apolitical nature. I was well aware of the contested nature of social change, both from my prior studies and my previous life and work experiences. However, after nine years working as a capacity-building process designer and facilitator for a large American Non-governmental Organization (NGO), I had come to use methodology without considering whether it might even be compatible with concepts of social change. I mostly assumed methodology to be neutral and apolitical, but did not see this as a problem. In my PhD process, I was fortunate to see first-hand how methodology that practitioners assume to be apolitical actually lacks a theory capable of explaining change, and thereby may reproduce the status quo. This is a strong political position indeed. My research starts from the assumption that the way people and organizations change in relation to economic, social and environmental concerns is complex and contested. Complex, in that multiple actors and factors—many of them unknowable—combine to affect how social change actually emerges in real life. Contested, in that power relations enable and constrain the fields of possibility for positive change for all people, and thereby generate winners and losers in the process. Indeed, the contested nature of social change is one of its primary sources of complexity. Methodologically, I conducted two action-research processes over 18 months; one with a progressive organization that supports social movements in Perú, and the other with a private environmental conservation organization in Ecuador. I used an emergent, learning-based action-research (AR) approach strongly influenced by systemic theories, with a particular focus on Peter Checkland's Soft Systems Thinking (SST). Different methodological principles emerged in each organizational AR process, providing important insights into how capacity-building can support social (and socio-environmental) change processes in complex environments. Whereas SST and AR prominently informed my methodology, Ralph Stacey, Patricia Shaw, and Douglas Griffin's “Complex Responsive Processes” (CRP) was the main theory I used to connect methodological capacity-building intervention to complexity theory. CRP is a theory that explains how complex adaptive systems (CAS) emergently self-organize from local, communicative interaction. Drawing on these different sources and based on my empirical data, my dissertation explores the following themes: – How organizational learning and change occur through the shifting interacting dynamics of conversations and other forms of communicative interaction, and how organizational capacity emerges in these shifting dynamics. – How capacity-building methodology can help surface—via communicative interaction—the complexity of social change that organizations face. Particularly: o How methodology that engages multiple ways of knowing is helpful in accessing doorways to diverse thought, feelings, and identity, and how this diversity plays a key role in influencing the patterns of communicative interaction that emerge. o How the intentional contrasting of multiple, diverse perspectives, and worldviews (i.e.—SST focus) charges conversations with meaning and is capable of shifting patterns and generating learning in communicative interaction. o How two ostensibly oppositional forms of methodology—methodological redundancy and unstructured reflection—enable and constrain how patterns of communicative interaction emerge and support learning, when diversity is also present. – How all communicative interaction enacts power relationships that generate dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, and how these dynamics affect the patterns of communicative interaction—i.e. learning and change—that emerge. These methodological findings lead to some interesting implications for how CB is conceived and practiced. If capacity as learning emerges in complex environments via shifts communicative interaction, then a core purpose of CB becomes strengthening the ability of organizational participants—“within” an organization and in relation to key “system” stakeholders—to actively relate and interact with each other in organic (i.e. uncontrived) ways. This active relating is situational and as such implies looking for opportunities to “add” systemic methodological support to real-life situations and experiences. My research has contributed new knowledge by helping explain how systemic capacity-building methodology can support processes of social change in complex environments. Systems thinking is often used anecdotally in capacity-building, without making explicit connections between theory and practice. Complexity theory, when referenced at all in capacity-building literature, is limited to claims about the need to act differently in a complex world. My research has made the following important contributions: 1) Provides empirical cases that connect systemic capacity-building methodology to Complex Responsive Processes theory in a plausible manner, and thus, make these connections more explicit. 2) Develops plausible connections between concepts of extended epistemologies (as a source of diversity) and complexity theory 3) Demonstrates the relative importance of critical reflection alongside the use of more-structured methods to generate organizational capacity 4) Offers—as a conversation starter—an alternative interactive communication understanding of capacity development, which asks critical questions of much dominant CD theory and practice. I believe that the findings and learning from this research can help generate critical, non-linear approaches to capacity-building methodology that serve the needs of complex, contested social change in a more meaningful manner.

The focus of this study was the unconscious dynamics in the consultant-client relationship as industrial and organisational psychologists seek to achieve change in client organisational systems. Twelve psychodynamic themes were used to interpret a journal maintained by the consultant throughout one consulting assignment, in an effort to understand the unconscious processes influencing the effectiveness of the consulting relationship. Analysis found that the client system imported the consultant to carry nurturing and healing on behalf of the system, but projected onto and into him the confusion, pain, hostility and incompetence in the system, stripped him of authority and manipulated him out of his role as change agent. The consultant unconsciously accepted the projections, failed to contain the system’s anxiety, gravitated towards the paranoid-schizoid position and was unable to effect meaningful change. Recommendations where made for the use of this form of psychodynamic analysis as a self-evaluative tool in the consulting context. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M.A.

The focus of this study was the unconscious dynamics in the consultant-client relationship as industrial and organisational psychologists seek to achieve change in client organisational systems. Twelve psychodynamic themes were used to interpret a journal maintained by the consultant throughout one consulting assignment, in an effort to understand the unconscious processes influencing the effectiveness of the consulting relationship. Analysis found that the client system imported the consultant to carry nurturing and healing on behalf of the system, but projected onto and into him the confusion, pain, hostility and incompetence in the system, stripped him of authority and manipulated him out of his role as change agent. The consultant unconsciously accepted the projections, failed to contain the system’s anxiety, gravitated towards the paranoid-schizoid position and was unable to effect meaningful change. Recommendations where made for the use of this form of psychodynamic analysis as a self-evaluative tool in the consulting context. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M.A.

The study of the Clackamas Small Business Development Center's Small Business Management Programs (SBM) had three research objectives: to ascertain what information should be transferred to small business owners and how best to transfer that information; to ascertain what information is presently being transferred to clients and what methods are used in transferring the information; and to survey clients in order to develop a current demographic profile, measure their level of satisfaction with the assistance received, and ascertain what they perceived were the benefits of the program to their companies. Prior to the study, there had been little systematic research of what information should be transferred to SBDC clients and the most effective methods for transferring that information. The small business growth stage literature was used to develop the recommended body of information. The adult learning literature was used to develop the recommended methods for transferring that information to clients. The majority of respondents were women, well educated, middle-aged, and from companies in service related industries that employed few workers. The findings suggest that clients desire an increase in both the appropriateness of the program's informational content and the level of their involvement in tailoring the SBM program to the needs of their organizations. As suggested by the Small Business Growth Stage Models, a statistically significant decline in client satisfaction of the program's informational content was found to exist between stage two and stage three business owners. The study found that instructors did not utilize specific business factors (such as sales levels, numbers of employees, etc.) in developing the informational content of the SBM programs. Instructors also did not utilize client preferred learning styles, or formal client involvement in developing the instructional design of the SBM program. The study found that clients and center personnel appear to differ in their perceptions regarding the role of the instructor and the purpose of the SBM program. Clients appear to envision the role of the instructor as more of a consultant, while instructors view their role as preparing clients to solve their own problems.