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Diagnostic des forces et des faiblesses, traitements, bilans, perspectives et prédictions, les institutions financières internationales conditionnent les prêts octroyés aux États financés à une série d’ajustements et de mesures auxquelles leurs économies devraient être soumises. Leurs documentations en matière de développement économique prennent un ton qui n’est pas sans rappeler les écrits religieux. Naturalisé, simplifié et dépolitisé, le discours de ces institutions se veut une sorte de catéchisme de l’orthodoxie économique, des commandements (censés représenter la culmination du savoir économique et le consensus de ses savants) dont la stricte obéissance mènerait vers la terre promise du développement et de la prospérité et dont le rejet représenterait une hérésie démagogique. Les auteurs critiques des politiques de développement de ces bailleurs de fonds arguent que les États receveurs de l’aide financière sont en train de perdre le contrôle sur leurs économies et que leurs populations, en plus du coût social auquel elles sont soumises, voient le pouvoir décisionnel leur échapper pour devenir l’apanage d’une élite d’experts. Grâce à la place hégémonique du savoir économique dont ils se prévalent, ils occuperaient un poids de plus en plus prépondérant dans le processus de prise de décisions politiques. Conçu et prescrit via l’angle de l’expertise, le développement serait réduit à ces éléments techniques et contribuerait ainsi à la dépolitisation du politique et à asseoir le pouvoir des bailleurs de fonds, détenteurs du monopole de l’expertise du développement, sur les politiques économiques de l’État financé. Toutefois, les disparités régionales en matière d’applications des politiques néolibérales des institutions financières et les difficultés éprouvées par l’élite économique dans certains pays à imposer leur savoir comme savoir hégémonique et à s’installer dans les rouages clés de la prise de décision politique nous poussent à considérer l’importance des dynamiques locales du pouvoir. Mais encore, ils nous contraignent à rejeter toute velléité de comprendre l’économie de l’État financé via uniquement le prisme d’une domination d’institutions toutes puissantes qui imposeraient un savoir-faire hégémonique à des États soumis et sans recours. Dans cette thèse, nous défendrons l’idée que si le développement est bel et bien une manifestation de rapports de pouvoir, il faudrait plutôt chercher à le comprendre via les pratiques qui le composent. Ce que nous proposons c’est une lecture de l’entreprise du développement via ses contraintes bureaucratiques, via les différentes stratégies de contournement des exigences des institutions financières et les mécanismes de leur interprétation, mais également à travers les différentes luttes internes qui définissent le polity et les limites du pouvoir de l’État. Cette approche, nous l’espérons, permettrait de mieux saisir les dynamiques qui sous-tendent les politiques économiques de l’État financé, de mieux dégager le rôle des institutions financières et de situer la place de l’idéologie néolibérale dans le processus décisionnel.

Information system development (ISD) project is a knowledge-intensive teamwork process which requires members to coordinate their expertise to generate the final outcome. Breakdown or coordination and insufficient knowledge integration have been reported as critical factors which lead to ISD project failure. Most existing coordination literature focus on the effect of administrative coordination mechanisms toward project performance which hints that more efforts are needed to understand expertise coordination and explore ways to improve it. Addressing the above issues, two studies in this dissertation attempt to understand expertise coordination within the IS development team based on social capital perspective. The first study, based on intention-behavior literature, knowledge management research, and Gerwin's (2004) coordination model, investigates relationships among willingness, competence, and actual expertise coordination. The relationships between expertise coordination and teamwork outcomes are also examined. The second study incorporates social capital theory and examines (1) dependencies among three dimensions of social capital and (2) linkage between social capital and expertise coordination. Data collected from more than five hundred information systems project team members was used to test the proposed hypotheses. The analysis results confirmed most of the hypotheses. This dissertation contributes to coordination, project management, and team mental model research through many perspectives. In each study, directions for management practice and future research are discussed.

Organizations with multiple operating requirements require support functions to assist in execution of strategic goals. This effort, in turn, requires management of engineering activities in control of projects and in sustaining facilities. High level strategies include employing engineering support that consists of a project management function encompassing technical and managerial disciplines. The architecture/engineering, and construction office (AEC) is the subject of this research. Engineering and construction oriented organizations have experienced challenges to their abilities to learn and grow. This has potential detrimental implications for these organizations if support functions cannot keep pace with changing objectives and strategy. The competitive nature and low industry margins as well as uniqueness of projects as challenges facing engineering and construction. The differentiated nature of projects tasks also creates a need for temporary and dedicated modes of operation and thereby tends to promote highly dispersed management practices that do not dovetail very well with other organizational processes. Organizational learning is a means to enhance and support knowledge management for improving performance. The problem addressed through this research is the gap between desired and achieved individual and group learning by members of the AEC, and the members' abilities to distinguish between the need for adaptive learning or innovation. This research addresses learning by individuals and groups, and the strategies employed through an empirical study (survey). A conceptual model for organizational learning contributions by individuals and groups is presented and tested for confirmation of exploitive or explorative learning strategies for individuals, and directions composed of depth and breadth of learning. Strategies for groups are tested for internal or external search orientations and directions toward the single or multi-discipline unit. The survey is analyzed by method of principal components extraction and further interpreted to reveal factors that are correlated by Pearson product moment coefficients and tested for significance for potential relationships to factors for outcomes. Correlation across dependent variables prevented interpretation of the most significant factors for group learning strategies. However, results provide possible support for direction in supporting processes that promote networking among individuals and group structures that recognize the dual nature of knowledge - that required for technical competency and that required for success in the organization. Recommendations for practitioners include adjustments to knowledge acquisition direction, promoting external collaboration among firms, and provision of dual succession pathways through technical expertise or organizational processes for senior staff.

In the last five years, the world has experienced unexpected tragic events and natural disasters. However, international tourism is expected to grow continually and tourists are therefore becoming more concerned with safety and security during their international travel. This dissertation investigated individuals' risk perception of vacationing at two scenario international destinations, Australia and Japan. While ten dimensions of perceived risk in international leisure travel were identified in the literature and one additional dimension of "Communication Risk" was proposed for this study, only seven dimensions were found in this study: "Health Risk," "Value Risk," "Psychological Risk," "Social Risk," "Terrorism Risk," "Equipment Risk," and "Communication Risk." The other four dimensions — "Financial Risk," "Time Risk," "Satisfaction Risk," and "Political Instability Risk" — were either merged into other dimensions or did not appear as an independent dimension in this study. The "Communication Risk" which was proposed in this study was found to be a valid dimension of perceived risk in vacationing at international destinations. The relationships of perceived risk to other factors were also examined. Individuals' characteristics of novelty seeking were negatively related to their risk perception, as were individuals' proficiency of the destination's native language. Those who have experience visiting the destination tended to perceive less risk in vacationing at the destination; the more familiarity/expertise with the destination, the less risk was perceived. When an individual perceived a higher level of risk towards a destination, s/he was less likely to vacation at the destination. Individuals were more likely to choose a packaged tour than independent travel when they had a higher level of risk perception towards vacationing at a particular international destination. / Ph. D.

This study is designed to identify traits that enable the novice professional to advance toward expertise in fundraising in higher education. The goal was to develop a conceptual framework that explains how the novice professional can advance toward expertise in fundraising in the higher education sector. This study found that CFREs employed in higher education tend to be Caucasian females between 41 and 60 years of age who move between jobs more commonly and tend to have less formal education than the older males now heading toward retirement. Male or female, younger or more mature, CFREs in this study tended to have fallen into their current careers by accident or without formal training for the profession. CFREs tend to rely upon annual conferences and informal networking for professional development rather than formal education. CFREs in this study identified several traits requisite for expertise in the field, even if they did not exhibit some of those traits themselves. Based upon these findings, a model for skill acquisition in higher education fundraising is proposed, and based upon that model a set of recommendations is offered for revisions to the current qualification and testing of CFREs and for the development of curriculum that will foster expertise. This curriculum is both replicable at multiple sites and expandable to other institutions and to online delivery, providing the industry with a means by which to prepare more fundraising professionals to meet the growing need in the sector.

The theoretical conflict between democracy and technocracy (rule by those with knowledge or skill) is an issue of ever-present interest in political science and democratic theory. In recent decades, much scholarship has shown that the influence of science and scientists over politics has grown more and more significant, in different ways. However, what seems to be an overlooked and understudied aspect of this relationship is how the scientific community, theoretically integral to technocratic forms of power due to their role as producers and first-hand disseminators of knowledge, themselves think and feel about their role in society and in relation to politics. This thesis seeks to remedy this perceived gap in the literature using a qualitative interview study with a number of professors from different fields at one Swedish university. It finds that the respondents are clearly sceptical about the feasibility of advancing scientists to positions of authority (i.e., technocracy), while at the same time emphasising scientific knowledge as an important or the pre-eminent basis for policy-making. In an attempt to remedy a priori theoretical insufficiencies and capture respondents’ expressed attitudes, the analysis culminated in two propositional theoretic models of decision making.

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This dissertation is an examination of trust in vaccine science, with a focus on ideas about vaccination outside the scientific consensus. It is grounded in empirical research, including 35 interviews and a review of publicly available documents, books, and academic articles. Theoretically, it is informed by theories in the sociology of science, social movements, and the sociology of expertise. In substantive chapters, it investigates the origins of the modern ‘anti-vaccine’ movement, the spread of the movement's ideas in different sociocultural and political contexts, and the perspectives and personal experiences of those who are part of the movement. Overall, it contributes to a growing body of literature that aims to change the conversation around vaccine hesitancy from an information-deficit problem to an issue about trust in institutions. The dissertation is organized into three main papers. The first is an analysis of a specific historic episode, namely the 1998 MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine-autism controversy. I find that institutional incentive structures unintentionally circulated misinformation about the MMR vaccine by former medical doctor Andrew Wakefield and posit the role that academic reward structures have in fostering public trust. The second paper examines vaccine hesitancy with a social movement lens, specifically focusing on the strategies used by the anti-vaccine movement to organize and frame their message. I introduce the concept of an ‘anti-scientific intellectual movement’ to understand the increasing trend of social groups opposing science as a set of institutions. The third paper is a study of the lived experiences of participants who were interviewed in 2019 about their views on vaccination and how their individual experiences and meaning-making activities impacted their trust in vaccine science. I find strong distrust in scientific institutions, a desire for open dialogue and debate, and dissatisfaction with the ‘anti-vaccine’ label which participants felt erased the nuance in their perspectives. Altogether, this dissertation makes significant contributions to ongoing discussions about the public face of science and how to effectively engage with public audiences to build trust. / Dissertation / Candidate in Philosophy

There is much debate on the best way to educate students on how to generate hypotheses to enhance clinical reasoning in nursing education. To increase opportunities for nursing programs to promote the discovery of accurate and broad-level hypotheses, scholars recommend abductive reasoning which offers an alternative approach to hypothetico-deductive reasoning. This study explored the effects of abductive reasoning training on hypothesis generation abilities (accuracy, expertise, breadth) of first and second year baccalaureate nursing students in a problem-based learning curriculum. A quasi-experiment with 64 participants (29 control, 35 experimental) was conducted. Based on their allocation, study participants either took part in abductive reasoning training or informal group discussion. Three different test questionnaires, each with a unique care scenario, were used to assess participants’ hypothesis generation abilities at baseline, immediate post-test and one-week follow-up. Content validity for care scenarios and other study materials was obtained from content academic experts. Compared to control participants, experimental participants showed significant improvements at follow-up on hypothesis accuracy (p=0.05), expertise (p=0.006), and breadth (p=0.003). While control participants’ hypotheses displayed a superficial understanding of care situations, experimental participants’ hypotheses reflected increased accuracy, expertise and breadth. This study shows that abductive reasoning, as a scaffolding teaching and learning strategy, can allow nursing students to discover underlying salient patterns in order to better understand and explain the complex realities of care situations. Educating nursing students in abductive reasoning could enable them to adapt existing competencies when trying to accurately and holistically understand newer complex care situations. This could lead to a more holistic, person-based approach to care which will allow nursing students to see various health-related issues as integrated rather than separate. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This study explored the effects of a training program on hypothesis generation abilities of nursing students. The training program aimed to teach students how to think more broadly about care situations. Student’s hypothesis generation abilities were measured through the use of three care scenarios, each of which was presented before, immediately after and one-week after the training program. Only first and second year nursing students were included in the study. About half of the students were provided with the training while the other half were provided with informal discussion about hypothesis generation. After one-week, it was discovered that students who received the training had improved significantly in their ability to generate broad hypotheses. These students also generated hypotheses that were more accurate than the other group of students who did not receive the training. Due to the training, students’ abilities in discovering the important aspects of the care situation also improved.