This study reports managers' accounts of conflict between their personal values and the values they perceived in the demands their organizations made on them. The purpose of the study was to identify and describe the characteristics of such experiences, including how the conflicts were resolved, impact on the managers, and impact on their organizational commitment. Twenty senior middle-level public sector managers were interviewed using a semi-structured interview procedure. The interviews provided 66 conflict accounts for analysis. Six major sources of conflict were identified, relationships to staff or people external to the organization accounting for 75% of the conflicts. Five major value orientations were identified: Public Service; Management; Professional; Personal; and, Political. More pervasive and underlying source lay in the shifting value orientations in the public sector, principally between an orientation to career service and professional management. Managers have a complex organizational relationship, identifying more with the ethos of the public service than with their particular Ministry, agency, or department. Three ways of resolving value conflicts were proposed and investigated: Conforming, Principled, and Integrative. Managers sought to achieve preferred outcomes rather than resolve the value dilemmas. On occasions when demands involved legal, public interest issues, or professional standards, managers conformed. Principled resolutions prevailed only in a few more subjective situations such as the extent of personal caring for staff. Eight strategies for managing for preferred outcomes were identified: using integrating values and superordinate values; seeking alternatives; delaying; relocating responsibility; protesting; and, leaving. Conflicts impact significantly on managers. Negative impacts include frustration and anger; unethical behavior; poor health; and interrupted career movement. If successfully resolved or managed they may lead to senses of confidence and well-being, and developmental change. Conflict impacts negatively on the relationship with the organization through loss of commitment. Social literacy theory (Freire, 1972), psychological contract theory (Schein, 1970), and faith development theory (Fowler, 1981) are useful theoretical perspectives with implications for management practice. Issues for management education and for further research are considered and the significance of the study is placed in the broader contexts of promoting personal growth and responding to major crises.

The dominant paradigm used in the literature to describe Organization Development (OD) has had limited success in fully representing OD-in-practice. The widespread reliance upon functionalist conventions to describe OD practice limits opportunities for insights and understanding obtainable through the use of alternative ontologies. Attempts to offer alternative conceptualizations are discouraged by the need of academicians to publish articles consistent with dominant perspectives and the lack of incentive for practitioners to publish at all. However, some initial efforts have been made to identify this problem and offer different ways of thinking about OD. The purpose of this study was to add to these efforts by offering a metaphor for considering organization and OD practice which reflects the more subjective assumptions of an interpretive paradigm. This study first reviewed the four most often used texts in OD graduate training programs across the continental United States. Texts were viewed as the repositories of conventional thinking, and Burrell and Morgan's (1979) multiparadigmatic framework served as a foil to explicate the assumptions of traditional views. This review suggested some oscillation between the image of organization invoked and descriptions of OD practice and practitioner role. Secondly, an elaboration of the interpretive perspective was offered, and examples of applications to organization theory reviewed. This served as a foundation for re-thinking organization and organization development as sense-making. Once a rudimentary framework of OD as sense-making was developed, seven practitioners were interviewed to ascertain whether the offered perspective either reflected or informed their descriptions of practice. Interestingly, practitioners offered perspectives along a continuum, with some consultants describing their work in fashions highly consistent with conventional views, and other invoking the more precarious notions of the social world consistent with interpretive assumptions. A final contrasting of conventional and alternative views of OD was developed, informed by insights gained as a result of the views practitioners shared.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1959. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation analyzes the utilization of two distinct modes of thinking, divergent and convergent, in the problem solving process. The concept for this study was developed from seminal work done by J. P. Guilford, Alex Osborn, and Sidney Parnes. Based on the assumption that problem solving requires these two distinct modes of thinking, it was hypothesized that a relationship exists between the modes and certain personality types. Two instruments, the Kolb Learning Style Inventory (LSI) and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), were used to gather quantitative data from 177 volunteer subjects. The LSI determined Converger/Diverger styles and the MBTI indicated personality type preferences of Sensing/Intuition (S/N) and Judging/Perceiving (J/P). The responses were analyzed by means of the Pearson chi-square test for significance. As predicted, a significant relationship between LSI Converger/Diverger styles and MBTI personality type preferences for Judging/Perceiving (J/P) was demonstrated. No significant relationship was demonstrated between the Converger/Diverger styles and the personality preferences of Sensing/Intuition (S/N). However, a relationship was shown to exist between Converger/Diverger styles and the combinations of Intuition-Perceiving (NP) and Sensing-Judging (SJ).

With the release of Workforce 2000: Work and workers for the twenty-first century (Johnson & Packer, 1987) which projected increased cultural diversity in the workforce; more and more organizations and organizational consultants have become interested in methods to insure that all people are respected and their talents are fully utilized in organizations. Organizational change strategies are being employed to this end. The purpose of this study is to explore and describe how a group of practitioners conceptualize the nature of their diversity work and describe the change strategies they use. Diversity work in this study is a generic term used to describe the variety of approaches commonly labeled managing diversity, valuing diversity, multicultural organization development, etc. Approaches which include as their goals, respect for all people, the removal of advantages and disadvantages in the workplace based on social group identity, and the re-creation of organizations to reflect diverse perspectives. Through a qualitative case study approach using in-depth interviews the perspectives of four practitioners are explored and shared. The practitioners were chosen through a review of the literature so as to represent approaches that have been documented in writing, and to include people with differing perspectives on the use of individual and systems focused strategies. The four participants are Asherah Cinnamon, Judith Katz, Roosevelt Thomas, and Barbara Walker. Through the interview process three areas were explored with the participants: the practitioners' personal and professional background; their philosophies of change; and their approaches to diversity work. Results of the study indicate that each of the four cases was unique in and of itself. Through each description the theory and assumptions behind the work are made more explicit. At the same time common threads are revealed that provide connections among the approaches. While each practitioner has specific goals, focus, language, and ways of thinking about the work which are articulated through the case descriptions; themes which emerge from the cross-case analysis shed light on the overall practice and also have implications for the future of this work.