This study focused on whether empowerment at individual, organisational and community levels was evident in the context of a school development planning programme. A contextualist, multi-method approach to the study was used, combining quantitative and qualitative data. A School Development Planning Evaluation Scale was developed to assess organisational empowerment in a school context. Quantitative data measuring variables associated with empowerment were also examined to establish whether involvement in the programme was associated with empowerment at the individual (locus of control and general and specific efficacy) and organisational (participation and leadership) levels. An ex post facto analysis based on a post-test only comparison group evaluation design was conducted to explore the impact of the programme. Focus groups and interviews were conducted to establish whether school staff reported that involvement in the programme had led to their personal empowerment and the empowerment of their schools. Archival data relating to the schools were also examined. Relationships between the variables were explored using multiple regression and structural equation modelling. A model of school development was developed and tested. The results indicated that extent of involvement in the programme was not a significant influence on level of empowerment. More important was the influence of school leadership, and in particular the leadership style exercised by the principal. Impact and relationship matrices, integrating the quantitative and qualitative analyses, indicated that the programme had effects on both individuals and schools, and that the process of school development planning was related to aspects of organisational empowerment. Issues of organisational internal capacity and contextual support, however, influenced implementation of school development planning. The study suggests that school development planning is a process which is contextually related, and confirms and refines the nomological network of II organisational empowerment. The results indicate that a variety of individual, organisational and contextual factors impact on individual and organisational empowerment and that a multi-level perspective is necessary for understanding the school development process. The study also suggests that community psychology, and empowerment theory in particular, offer useful frameworks for theorising and researching school development issues at individual, organisational and community levels.

A Contextualist Approach to Telehealth Innovations By Sunyoung Cho Abstract Healthcare is considered one of the most important social issues in the U.S. as well as in other societies with ever-increasing costs of medical service provision. The information-intensive nature of the healthcare industry and the perception of information technology (IT) as a way to ease up healthcare costs and improve quality have lead to increased use of and experiments with IT-based innovations. These activities present interesting research opportunities for IS researchers and they have led to an increasing body of knowledge on healthcare information systems. This research aims at contributing to this line of research by adopting a contextualist approach to examine the adoption, use, and further diffusion of telehealth innovations. A contextualist approach provides a particularly interesting and relevant perspective to study adoption and diffusion processes of healthcare innovations. The adopted contextualist approach is process-oriented, it applies multiple levels of analysis, and it accommodates different theoretical lenses to make sense of the two telehealth innovations under investigation. A key assumption is that innovations should be understood as ongoing processes of change, not just technologies, or isolated change events with clear boundaries. Healthcare innovations have in this view much broader connotations, including development of IT-based applications, their adoption and diffusion over time, and the interactions between many stakeholders and organizations that shape the innovation in a specific context. The contextualist approach suggested by Pettigrew is adopted as an overarching framework for multiple studies based on empirical investigation of two telehealth innovations; the main focus is on a telestroke innovation in the U.S. while a radiology innovation in Sweden serves as a complementary case. Each study is documented as an independent research publication with its own theoretical perspective and contributions. The overall contextualist approach and the related findings are then summarized across the individual studies. Telehealth innovations are particularly interesting examples of healthcare information systems. They leverage contemporary network infrastructures and interaction devices to allow provision of healthcare services, clinical information, and education over distance, thereby reducing the costs and improving the availability of medical services. The two telehealth innovations are investigated through in-depth case studies. This theses summary presents the theoretical background for the studies; it motivates and details how the qualitative case studies based on critical realist assumptions were designed and conducted; it outlines the resulting research publications; and it discusses the contributions of investigating telehealth innovations from a contextualist approach.

The purpose of this dissertation was to understand how radical organizational change impacts the effectiveness of national-level sport organizations, during the process of change, through the perceptions and experiences of internal and external stakeholders. Four research questions were addressed: (1) What success factors and challenges do national-level sport organizations face while undergoing radical change? (2) How does radical change impact the goals, internal processes, resources, and multiple constituents of the focal organization? (3) How does radical change impact external stakeholders? (4) How does radical change impact the effectiveness of external stakeholders’ own organizations? A single case study was built using 32 semi-structured interviews and 61 documents, and data were thematically analyzed. Results showed an initial decline in overall organizational effectiveness in the early stages of the change process followed by an increase. Findings highlight similarities and differences between internal and external stakeholder perspectives, demonstrating the importance of obtaining both perspectives when studying organizational effectiveness during radical change.

This thesis attempts to reconcile a feminist with a contextualist approach. It enquires into the historical origins of the emergence of women as writers in the seventeenth century. At the same time, it places this women's movement in the context of a profoundly complex revolution in thought, thereby discovering that women's intellectual contributions to the destruction of the hierarchical world view and to the search for new, just alternatives were as diverse and as problematic as men's were. The women who wrote in the seventeenth century were all preoccupied, implicitly or explicitly, with the question: By what authority do I cast off the traditional silence of women and dare to speak out? They gave different answers. Part One uses the lives of Gertrude More and Mary Ward to illustrate the subtle ways in which the Catholic Church's concept of grace required the submission of women despite their conflicting inner voices. In contrast, Part Two explores the challenge of the seventeenth-century chariasmatic movement to the traditional notion of grace. The radical female Protestants made a significant step towards modern feminism both because they appealed to their own experience as a source for truth and because they initiated an autobiographical form which dramatizes the convinced woman in revolt against patriarchal structures. Part Three demonstrates that, despite the decline in the authority of the prophet's experience which came with the trliumph of the perspective and methods of science, Jane Lead's writings continued a mystical counter-tradition which would nourish the Romantic alternative to scientific reductionism. Part IV analyzes the views of Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn who argued the natural right of a woman to write. Both challenged neoclassical aesthetic ideals--Cavendish by writing to delight herself, Behn by writing to delight her audience. Part V concludes by contrasting the approaches of two women who appealed to the authority of rational argument to justify their views. Mary Astell emerges as an early theorist for enlightenment feminism, Anne Conway as a theorist for holistic feminism. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis explores the extent to which the doxastic ‘should' is information-sensitive and the implications of this for a number of debates in normative epistemology. The doxastic ‘should' is a special case of the deontic modal ‘should' and occurs in sentences such as ‘You shouldn't believe everything you read online'. In the recent semantics literature, it has been suggested that the deontic ‘should' is information-sensitive, meaning that sentences of the form ‘S should do A' are relativized to information-states. After a short introductory chapter, I survey the relevant semantics literature in chapter 2 and provide a simplified contextualist semantics for the doxastic ‘should', according to which the truth-conditions of sentences containing the doxastic ‘should' vary with the information-state provided by their context of utterance. In chapters 3 to 6, I discuss the different kinds of information-states the doxastic ‘should' can be relativized to and how the respective relativization matters for normative epistemology. Chapter 3 argues that the doxastic ‘should' has a subjective and an objective sense and that this distinction solves the apparent conflict between subjective epistemic norms and the truth norm for belief. Chapter 4 addresses the question of how one should react to misleading higher-order evidence. I propose that two seemingly opposing views on this issue, Steadfastness and Concilliationism, are both correct. In a sense of ‘should' that is relativized to one's first-order evidence, one should remain steadfast in the face of misleading higher-order evidence, but in another sense, which is relativized to one's higher-order evidence, one shouldn't. In chapters 5 and 6, I argue that when we advise others on what they should believe, we talk about what they should believe in light of their and our joint evidence. Chapter 7 concludes this thesis with a defence of contextualist semantics for the doxastic ‘should' against truth-relativist challenges.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-01T19:18:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 114859.pdf: 398342 bytes, checksum: a3a8576172f5c3b189ff416c8974e9c0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-12-12 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The objective of this study was to analyze how the process of professionalization occurred in family businesses Metallurgical Riosulense S / A and Pamplona Foods S / A in the municipality of South River/ S.C., considering the context, content and process (Pettigrew, 1987). Organizations go through phases and cycles of life during its trajectory (Adizes, 1990), and the transitions from one stage to another contribute to organizational changes that occur and consequently emerges during the course of the company, the need for professionalization. The professionalization of family businesses consists in the conduct of business by competent and adequately trained professionals for management positions, for persons of family or non-family persons in the family owning the organization (LODI, 1978; BERNHOEFT, 1989; MIRANDA; GRZYBOVSKI, 2012; VEGA LÓPEZ ET AL.,2013). For such was made a qualitative multicase study (Godoy, 2006), exploratory and descriptive (Richardson, 1999; Yin, 2005). The collection of data encompassed with semi-structured interviews with the founders, successors, directors, officers and managers the surveyed companies, and documentary research in the minutes, records, and other historical documents provided by the organizations. After, there was a content analysis of the data collected and systematized, in a thematic framework from the analysis model. As the survey results, it was found that the company Pamplona, from its context, was proactive attitude change, in which members of the second generation searched training in other family businesses, so that the succession occurred in a professionalized manner, resulting in the currently conduct of business by familiar and unfamiliar professional members. It emphasize that the majority of family members of the second generation act directly in company management. The company Riosulense was punctuated in context by changes in their activities and during the process of professionalization, there have been external crises that directly affected the market in which the company operates. Therefore, the professionalization that began because of the growth of the company and internal management challenges, was consolidated later when the need emerged for perpetuating the company and adapt-the precepts of corporate governance (IBGC, 2010). As management practices used by the two companies studied was identified that there was hiring an external consultant to assist in the professionalization process, there was the legalization of equity and the clear distinction of the roles Family, ownership and management (Gersick et al, 1997) and was the constitution and / or operationalized the Management Board. The two organizations also had the consolidation of the professionalization process when the process of succession happened (OLIVEIRA; ALBUQUERQUE, PEREIRA, 2012). / O objetivo deste estudo foi analisar como ocorreu o processo de profissionalização nas empresas familiares Metalúrgica Riosulense S/A e Pamplona Alimentos S/A do município de Rio do Sul/SC, considerando o contexto, conteúdo e processo (PETTIGREW, 1987). As organizações passam por fases e ciclos de vida durante sua trajetória (ADIZES, 1990), e as transições de uma fase para outra contribuem para que ocorram mudanças organizacionais e consequentemente emerge no decorrer da trajetória da empresa, a necessidade de profissionalização. A profissionalização de empresas familiares consiste na condução da empresa por profissionais competentes e devidamente capacitados para os cargos de gestão, podendo ser ou não membros da família proprietária da organização (LODI, 1978; BERNHOEFT, 1989; MIRANDA; GRZYBOVSKI, 2012; VEGA LÓPEZ et al.,2013). Para tal, foi efetuado um estudo multicasos qualitativo (GODOY, 2006), de caráter exploratório e descritivo (RICHARDSON, 1999; YIN, 2005). A coleta de dados abarcou entrevistas com roteiro semiestruturado junto aos fundadores, sucessores, conselheiros, diretores e gerentes das empresas pesquisadas e, pesquisa documental em atas, registros, históricos e demais documentos disponibilizados pelas organizações. Após, fez-se a análise do conteúdo dos dados coletados e sistematizados, em um quadro temático definido a partir do modelo de análise. Como resultados da pesquisa, identificou-se que a empresa Pamplona, a partir do seu contexto, teve atitude proativa a mudança e os membros da segunda geração buscaram treinamento em outras empresas familiares, para que a sucessão ocorresse de maneira profissionalizada, resultando atualmente na condução da empresa por membros familiares e não familiares profissionais. Cabe destacar que a maioria dos membros da família da segunda geração atuam diretamente na gestão da empresa. A empresa Riosulense foi pontuada em seu contexto por mudanças em suas atividades e, durante o processo de profissionalização, ocorreram crises externas que afetaram diretamente o mercado em que a empresa atua. Diante disso, a profissionalização que se iniciou em função do crescimento da empresa e desafios internos de gestão, consolidou-se posteriormente quando emergiu a necessidade de perpetuar a empresa e adequar-se aos preceitos da governança corporativa (IBGC, 2010). Como práticas de gestão utilizadas pelas duas empresas estudadas foi identificado que houve contratação de consultoria externa para auxiliar no processo de profissionalização; houve a legalização do patrimônio bem como a separação clara dos papeis família, propriedade e gestão (GERSICK et al, 1997) e também foi constituído e/ou operacionalizado o conselho de administração. As duas organizações também tiveram a consolidação do processo de profissionalização quando ocorreu o processo de sucessão (OLIVEIRA; ALBUQUERQUE; PEREIRA, 2012).

L’objectif de cette recherche doctorale est de contextualiser et d’analyser les raisons de l’intégration du coaching prescrit aux politiques de GRH de grandes entreprises en France dans les années 2000, en lien avec ses apports au management et à l’organisation. Sur cette base, la thèse que nous défendons consiste à montrer que, par son processus et sa finalité axés sur les relations interpersonnelles et les interactions sociales, le coaching peut être considéré commeun dispositif qui contribue à la régulation sociale en entreprise. Cette recherche, de nature qualitative, est structurée autour du cadre méthodologique contextualiste d’A. Pettigrew, dans lequel nous avons "enchâssé" la théorie de la régulation conjointe de J.D. Reynaud, afin d’analyser en quoi le coaching prescrit constitue une pratique RH vecteur de régulation sociale. Une première phase exploratoire de recherche a consisté à objectiver les pratiques de coaching, au-delà des discours des coachs véhiculés dans leur littérature, à travers une étude menée auprès des sociétés du CAC 40. A l’issue de cette première approche du terrain, nous avons mené quatre études de cas, dans de grandes entreprises en France, dans une perspective ethnographique et en situation d’observation participante complète. Elles ont consisté àtravailler sur sept missions de coaching au total, qui sont représentatives des différentes formes de coaching pratiquées aujourd’hui en entreprise. A l’issue de cette immersion, nous avons pu mettre en évidence la contribution du coaching àla mise en place d’espaces de régulation autonome et sa contribution à la régulation conjointe, par sa dimension médiatrice. Au-delà, nous avons mis en évidence les impacts spécifiques et innovants de ces régulations sur le management et la gestion des RH, ainsi que sur l’organisation. / The aim of this doctoral research is to contextualize and analyze the reasons for the integration of prescribed coaching practices to HRM policies of major companies in France in the 2000’s, in connection with its contributions to the management processes and organization. On this basis, the thesis that we defend is that, trough its processes and its focus on interpersonal relationships and social interactions, coaching can be considered as a practise that contribute to social regulation within corporate organizations. This qualitative research is structured around the methodological framework of contextualist research of A. Pettigrew, in which we have "embedded" the theory of social regulation of J.D.Reynaud, to analyze how prescribed coaching is an HR practice, vector of social regulation. A first exploratory phase of research was carried out, through a survey in CAC 40 companies, to highlight the real practices of coaching, beyond the coaches’ rhetoric carried in their literature. At the end of this first approach, we have conducted four case studies in majorcompanies in France, in an ethnographic approach and in a situation of full participant observation. We have been working on seven coaching missions as an all, which represent the different forms of coaching practiced today in big companies.At the end of this immersion, we highlighted the contribution of coaching to the establishment of autonomous areas of regulation and its contribution to the "Joint Regulation", through a process of mediation. In addition, we identified the specific and innovative impacts of these regulations on HR management and the organization.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-01T19:18:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Givanildo Silva.pdf: 353095 bytes, checksum: eaf883f55409360bde2e6e08f157011d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-08-31 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This search contributed to analyze the strategic changes at the Faculdade Ação for the period 1986 to 2010 in relation to context, process and content. The nature of qualitative research is based on the contextualist approach (PETTIGREW, 1987), the research is exploratory and descriptive in the diachronic perspective and cross sectional method was used and the historical-interpretative method combined with the strategic periods (MILES; HUBERMAN, 1994). The way the investigation was configured as a case study of historical and organizational type. The literature review looked at the external environment of organizations, elements of direct and indirect action, strategy with emphasis on concepts, design and implementation, and changes in organizations with the main topics: population ecology of organizational, contingencie, institutional, economic organizations , contextualist, life cycle and resource-based view. The strategic changes were classified into five strategic periods: (1) constitution of the Associação Blumenauense de Ensino e Cultura (ABEC), (2) constitution of the Faculdade de Ciência e Tecnologia do Vale (FCTVale), (3) expansion, (4) crisis and (5) revitalization. The main conclusions are that the leader had a key role in strategic change; the success of colleges in Blumenau was an incentive for the birth of the Faculdade de Ciência e Tecnologia do Vale (FCTVale); FCTVale of the constitution was influenced by environment; it was obtained FCTVale the accreditation and approval of courses; the environment contributed to reproduction of the sequential higher education; the environment and the strategy helped to determine the new size of the institution; the leader was unable to continue and structure the new business complex model; a change strategy - opening of several types of courses - not successful due to the relationship between input and inefficiency of many students in developing academic and administrative structure; the former shareholders of the Sociedade Blumenauense de Ensino e Cultura (SBEC) sought new partners in order to obtain new financial contributions and, especially, to cause changes in academic and management; Faculdade Ação sought internal and external legitimacy through changes in his philosophy of teaching, integration between the teams of Colégio Energia and the Faculdade Ação, as announced an intensive campaign of marketing; leadership fulfill their role in achieving the previewed goals for the changes implemented / Esta dissertação teve por objetivo analisar as mudanças estratégicas na Faculdade Ação no período de 1986 a 2010 no que se refere a contexto, processo e conteúdo. A natureza da pesquisa é qualitativa, com base na abordagem contextualista (PETTIGREW, 1987), a pesquisa é exploratória e descritiva sob a perspectiva diacrônica e cross sectional, e o método utilizado foi o histórico-interpretativo, combinado com o método de períodos estratégicos (MILES; HUBERMAN, 1994). O modo de investigação configura-se como um estudo de caso do tipo históricoorganizacional. A revisão de literatura contemplou o ambiente externo das organizações, seus elementos de ação direta e indireta, estratégia com ênfase nos conceitos, formulação e implementação, e mudanças nas organizações com suas principais abordagens: ecologia da população organizacional, contingencial, institucional, economia das organizações, contextualista, ciclo de vida e visão baseada em recursos. As mudanças estratégicas foram classificadas em cinco períodos estratégicos: (1) constituição da Associação Blumenauense de Ensino e Cultura (ABEC), (2) constituição da Faculdade de Ciência e Tecnologia do Vale (FCTVale), (3) expansão, (4) crise e (5) revitalização. As principais conclusões são: o líder teve papel fundamental nas mudanças estratégicas; o sucesso das faculdades em Blumenau foi um incentivo para o nascimento da Faculdade de Ciência e Tecnologia do Vale (FCTVale); a constituição da FCTVale sofreu influências do ambiente; obteve-se o credenciamento da FCTVale e a autorização dos cursos; o ambiente colaborou para a reprodução dos cursos superiores sequenciais; o ambiente e a estratégia contribuíram para determinar o novo porte da instituição; o líder foi incapaz de prosseguir e estruturar o novo modelo complexo de negócio; a mudança estratégica abertura de diversas modalidades de cursos não obteve sucesso devido à relação entre a entrada de muitos alunos e a ineficiência em desenvolver estrutura acadêmica e administrativa; os antigos acionistas da Sociedade Blumenauense de Ensino e Cultura (SBEC) buscaram novos sócios com o objetivo de obter novos aportes financeiros e, principalmente, de provocar mudanças acadêmicas e na gestão; a Faculdade Ação buscou legitimidade interna e externa por meio da mudança em sua filosofia de ensino, integração entre as equipes da IES e do Colégio Energia bem como divulgou intensa campanha de marketing; a liderança cumpriu seu papel no alcance dos objetivos delineados para as mudanças implantadas

Notre recherche doctorale se propose d’analyser la mise en place de la Gestion Prévisionnelle des Emplois et des Compétences (GPEC) dans le cadre d’un regroupement de cliniques privées appartenant à un même opérateur de santé. Organisée en trois temps, notre thèse vise à se démarquer de l’approche fonctionnaliste qui domine les écrits sur la GPEC en Sciences de Gestion et qui traite principalement du contenu de la démarche. Elle tente, en ce sens, d’ouvrir la « boîte noire » que constitue la GPEC à l’aune de la dimension humaine et du processus de construction. Dans un premier temps, nous mobilisons l’approche contextualiste de Pettigrew (1985, 1987, 1990) qui rend compte des interrelations entre trois grandes dimensions : un contenu de changement, le contexte interne et externe dans lequel il se développe et le processus de son déploiement. Ce cadre d’étude contextualiste initial ne suffit pas à lui-seul pour étudier un phénomène. Dès lors, nous proposons de le faire évoluer par l’introduction de variables explicatives dans ses trois dimensions. Cette modélisation systémique particulière est réalisée dans une logique abductive alternant des allers et retours entre les observations théoriques et les observations réalisées sur le terrain d’étude mobilisé, CAPIO BAYONNE. Dans un second temps, nous mettons à l’épreuve notre modèle contextualiste de recherche sur le terrain d’étude en question. La déclinaison empirique obtenue révèle de nombreux enseignements qui inscrivent la GPEC dans une vision multi-paradigmatique et intégrée combinant l’approche contingente, l’approche incrémentale et l’approche fonctionnaliste. Enfin, dans un troisième et dernier temps, la recherche cherche à établir, à partir de notre modèle contextualiste et de ses enseignements issus du terrain, un mode de gestion « générique » de GPEC pour les managers qui souhaitent se doter d’une telle démarche dans le cadre d’un regroupement de cliniques privées. / This doctoral research work proposes to analyse the implementation of Provisional Management of Employment and Skills practices (“GPEC” in French) within the framework of a regrouping of several private French clinics belonging to a common health care provider. Our thesis is organised in three parts, and aims to distinguish itself from the functionalist approach which currently dominates the literature on “GPEC” in Management Sciences and which limits itself mainly to studying the content of the approach. We thereby try to continue the work of opening up the "black box" of the “GPEC” in terms of the human dimension and the construction process involved. Firstly, we mobilise Pettigrew's contextualist approach (1985, 1987, 1990), which describes the interrelationships between three major dimensions : a content of change, the internal and external context in which this develops, and its deployment process. This initial contextualist framework is not in itself sufficient for studying a phenomenon.We therefore propose to further develop it by introducing explanatory variables into each of its three dimensions. This specific systemic modeling is performed using abductive logic to frequently alternate between the theoretical findings on the one hand and the observations conducted on the study site, CAPIO BAYONNE, on the other. Secondly, we test our contextualist research model on the study site in question. The empirical declination thus obtained teaches many lessons which set the “GPEC” in a multi-paradigm, integrated view of things, combining the contingency approach, the incremental approach and the functionalist approach. Finally, in a third and final part, our research seeks to establish, on the basis of our contextualist model and the lessons learnt from the field, a "generic" GPEC management mode for managers who wish to develop such an approach as part of a regrouping of private clinics.