Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 1993. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:25:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Denise de Freitas Mendonca.pdf: 989423 bytes, checksum: cdd0a85fdef25175b638d9f790282463 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-02-05 / Fundo Mackenzie de Pesquisa / The present study aimed to seize and analyze narratives that reflect managerial concerns with the development of competence and ethical values in their daily management, identifying experiences that materialize such purposes into competent actions. The theoretical framework of interpretative skills left from the perspective offered by Sandberg and Tamarga (2007), Le Boterf (2003) and Zarifian (2001). A review of national and international literature on skills beyond the maximization of profits associated the term to a set of constructs such as ethics, values, social responsibility, environment, social justice, among others. This search revealed that these studies focus mainly on the environment of the classroom courses in business administration at the expense of organizational field and theoretical work. With the aim of contributing to an empirical study in this field, a survey of seven executives of different areas of five companies in the retail segment was developed. The study was supported by the proposed thematic analysis of narratives Riessman (2008). The results showed not only a difficulty for managers in dealing with the issue and telling stories that relate to examples of materialization of the skills that were not aimed at making a profit for shareholders and performance, as the examples outsourced were mostly negative, illustrating, above all, the lack of ethical competence. Skills and ethical values were associated, especially: to the company's ability to maintain a coherent attitude on unethical behavior by imposing consequences for deviations; respect to others; coherence between discourse and practice, the sense of justice, the ability to cope and assume errors, the achievement of organizational ethical standards, honesty and transparency. The narratives revealed the belief that ethical competence and values are inherent to human beings, and because of that, it is not up to them reinforcing that they encourage their development. There are few indications in their speeches of the existence of stimulus for reflection on this kind of organizational competence in the universe, which imposes clear limits to its development. At the end, the narratives give us clues about the relevance and urgency of discussing ethics and values in studies of human competence at work. / O presente trabalho teve por objetivo apreender e analisar narrativas gerenciais que refletem preocupações com o desenvolvimento das competências éticas e de valores no cotidiano de sua gestão, identificando experiências que materializam tais propósitos em ações competentes. O arcabouço teórico de competências partiu da perspectiva interpretativa oferecida por Sandberg e Tamarga (2007), Le Boterf (2003) e Zarifian (2001). A revisão da literatura nacional e internacional sobre competências para além da maximização de lucros associou o termo a um conjunto de construtos como ética, valores, responsabilidade social, meio ambiente, justiça social entre outros. Esta busca revelou que esses estudos se concentram, sobretudo, no ambiente das salas de aulas dos cursos de administração de empresas, em detrimento do campo organizacional, e trabalhos de natureza teórica. Com o propósito de contribuir com um estudo empírico nesse campo, desenvolveu-se uma pesquisa com sete executivos de diferentes áreas de atuação de cinco empresas do segmento varejista. O estudo baseou-se na proposta de análise temática de narrativas de Riessman (2008). Os resultados revelaram não só uma dificuldade dos gestores em tratar do tema e contar histórias que remetessem a exemplos de materialização de competências que não fossem as voltadas para obtenção de lucro para acionistas e desempenho, como os exemplos externalizados foram em sua maioria negativos, ilustrando, sobretudo, a falta de competência ética. Competências éticas e de valores foram associadas, especialmente: à capacidade da empresa manter uma postura coerente diante de comportamentos antiéticos, impondo consequências aos desvios; ao respeito ao próximo; à coerência entre o discurso e a prática; ao senso de justiça; à capacidade de lidar e assumir erros; ao cumprimento dos padrões éticos organizacionais, à honestidade e transparência. As narrativas revelaram a crença de que competência ética e de valores são inerentes ao ser humano e, em virtude disso, reforçam que não cabe a eles fomentarem o seu desenvolvimento. Há poucas indicações em seus discursos da existência de estímulos para a reflexão sobre esta natureza de competência no universo organizacional, o que impõe claros limites ao seu desenvolvimento. Ao final, as narrativas nos dão pistas sobre a pertinência e urgência de se discutirem éticas e valores em estudos sobre a competência humana no trabalho.

This study examined the emerging debate on spirituality in the workplace. As spirituality gains impetus, organisations have proactively accommodated the needs of their multi-ethnic and multi-faith workforce and have started integrating spirituality into their policies. The study sought to gauge the employees and managers’ perceptions of the importance of spirituality in the workplace. Spirituality represents a complex phenomenon that embraces an awareness of others, coupled with a sense of fulfilment and values, which add meaning to life. Overall, a lack of clear policy and acknowledgment regarding spirituality within organisations is apparent. The extant literature suggests that spirituality as a research topic suffers from fragmentation, dearth, and confusion which sometimes makes it difficult to propose a comprehensive theory. The complexity and ambiguity of spirituality as a concept means it is often confused with religious rituals. Spirituality is not the same as religion, although religion can be the focus of an individual’s spirituality or the way in which an individual’s spirituality is recognised and expressed. Both spirituality and religion can operate independently from each other. As a result, many scholars have realised the need for a more unified interpretation of the term spirituality. Adopting a predominantly positivist stance, two organisations in England were surveyed. Using a purpose-designed questionnaire, a return of 628 was achieved, with a reliability of 0.87 (Cronbach Alpha). Analysis was undertaken as a data set using independent variables which related to biographical factors, including a person’s faith and their organisation. This was supported by qualitative data using semi-structured interviews with senior management in both organisations. Findings and analysis highlighted that employees did not feel comfortable discussing spirituality; nor did they feel it was appropriate to practise spirituality within the workplace. In their perceptions of spirituality policies, both organisations proffered initiatives that, in the absence of a coherent policy, employees struggled to accommodate employee spiritual needs. Overall, the findings revealed that the limited policies or procedures that were in place often left the employees ambivalent as to whether the organisation had any genuine interest in their spiritual well-being. Since employee spirituality is under-researched, this study investigated the nature of workplace spirituality to benefit academic research through expanding the knowledge in this area, to produce a model of spirituality. The study findings will led to new knowledge on spirituality that can assist in the formulation of suitable strategies to enhance employee spiritual well-being. This study is pertinent in the current economic recession, whereby employees of different ethnic backgrounds may feel vulnerable, with the possibility of spirituality manifesting itself in the workplace as a source of conflict. To address the issue of potential spiritual conflict, organisations will need to build high-trust relationships in the workplace.

The aim of this paper was to explore how teachers perceive Christian ethics. All swedish schools are affected by the values Skolverket phrase as the values all school´s must follow. These values are displayed throughout the teachers profession. This paper addresses the following content: ...the ethics which have been managed by the Christian tradition...”. This paper is based on seven interviews, made with teachers, where they describe their views on what a christian ethics might contain, if they want the content to remain and how a potential reformulation could be designed. One of the results is that all respondents want a reformulation that does not have a religious attitude. The majority of the teachers had a positiv view on what a Christian ethics includes, but would still prefer a reformulation. The result was analyzed by Max Weber's theory of rationalization and the area's previous research where the thoughts of Anders Piltz and Ola Sigurdson gained additional space. The interviews have been processed in agreement with grounded theory.

<div>As part of an increasing interest in a "Turn to Practice," HCI scholars have investigated the felt design complexities and ethical concerns in everyday technology practice, calling for practice-led research approaches. Given the ethical nature of technology design work, practitioners have to often negotiate and mediate their personal values, disciplinary notions of ethics, organizational policies and values, and societal impact of their design work. To tease apart and describe practitioner accounts of ethical aspects of their design work, I used three different approaches to investigate what practitioners from different professional roles communicate about and participate in (potentially) strengthening their ethical engagement in their everyday design work within and across role boundaries: survey, design of co-creation activities, and deployment/pilot of these co-creation activities. </div><div><br></div><div>In the survey study, I identify and describe the differences in disciplinary values, responsibilities, commitments, and alignment in relation to ethics and social responsibility through captured data from 256 technology and design practitioners from a range of professional roles.</div><div><br></div><div>As a part of the design phase of co-creation activities, I design, iterate, and prototype three co-creation activities (A: Tracing the Complexity; B: Dilemma Postcards; and C: Method Heuristics) and sequences of these activities to engage a range of different professional roles to communicate about their ethical action and (potentially) strengthen their ethical engagement in everyday design work. I define design vocabulary/Schemas: 1) <i>A.E.I.O.YOU model</i> to investigate the landscape of ethics in practice and 2) <i>Classifiers</i> to codify the activities and potential variants.</div><div><br></div><div>As a part of the deployment phase of these designed co-creation activities, I piloted four sequences of these activities with twelve practitioners with three different professional roles per sequence, engaging in approx. 23 hours of facilitation, artifact creation, and conversation. I present the results of deployment of the co-creation sessions where practitioners articulated that the co-creation activities helped <i>expand</i> their ethical horizons through self-awareness, <i>learn</i> new approaches to ethics vocabulary, <i>become (re-)aware </i>of their current practice, and <i>imagine</i> trajectories of change in their practice. Practitioners also identified a preliminary set of ethics-related practices that could be better supported such as tools for performance, leadership support, ethics education, and resources for ethical decision making. </div><div><br></div><div>Based on the results from these three approaches, I propose contributions to HCI and design audiences. For HCI researchers, practitioners, and educators, the survey results describe differences in professional notions and valence of ethics, framing the need for translation and transdisciplinary approach to ethics in a practice context. For design researchers, the designing of the co-creation activities is a methodological contribution where I propose and illustrate opportunities for creating novel ways to engage practitioners in co-creation work as a means of communicating their felt ethical concerns and practices. For co-creation researchers and professional ethicists, the engagement of practitioners in the co-creation reveal: 1) complexities to facilitate different disciplinary roles and design a space for ``representing'' a range of practitioners; and 2) gaps and potential synergies in supporting practitioners through practice-resonant ethics-focused methods. </div>

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Initially founded in 1955 as a platform for Dutch photojournalists to increase international exposure, the World Press Photo competition has grown into the most prestigious contest of photojournalism worldwide, making it an important arena for journalism research. Using qualitative and quantitative content analyses, this study examines all photos shown in the competitions from 1960 to 2020 (N = 11,789) considering the origin of jury members (N = 686), participants (N = 132,800), placements (N = 2347) and the Human Development Index (HDI) of the countries. The topics displayed on the photos, their degree of negativity, and potential power structures in the photos are analysed over time both in terms of continental and HDI-related differences. Significant results show that Africa, Asia, and South America are more frequently depicted by the topic conflict and characterised by negative images than continents with industrialised nations (Australia/Oceania, Europe, North America). Participating European countries have a significantly higher average number of jury members, participants, and placements than participating countries from Africa, Asia, and South America, which seems to account for a dominant Eurocentric view. Implications and critical discussions are summarized in three interim conclusions at the end of this extended paper.

This thesis addresses the objective of formulating a moral-philosophically credible media ethics by encompassing two main dimensions: the examination of existing media-ethical models and the integration of sustainable arguments through utilizing eco-religious epistemology to overcome identified challenges. By incorporating eco-critical perspectives within the Media ecology tradition, which studies media as environments, the thesis proposes a creative intersection between established media theories and a theological tradition that tackles profound questions about humanity's place in the world. The initial section of the thesis analyzes moral-philosophical concepts within the media ethics frameworks proposed by three ethicists; Susanne Wigorts Yngvesson; Clifford G. Christians and Sandra L. Borden. While all three endorse universal values, they offer distinct frameworks for both understanding the ontology of universals and how these are contextualized in the journalistic community. Christians' moral epistemological theories,particularly regarding the ethics of being and Proto-norms have generated significant controversy and scholarly debate on the necessity and intellectual credibility of defending universal values in media ethics. Critical perspectives from this discourse are presented and evaluated as a complement to the analysis of Christians' media-ethical model. In exploring sustainable moral-philosophical arguments, the thesis suggests that moral claims can exhibit both universal and contextual characteristics. It suggests that a media-ethical model should integrate universal values with a communitarian perspective on journalists'moral responsibility. However, understanding the interplay between the contextual and universal dimensions of ethical values requires engaging in critical moral-philosophical theory. In addition, critical perspectives on technology and ideas of space and time need to be addressed in new ways. Thus, eco-religious epistemology, as advocated by ethicist and theologian Whitney Bauman, is proposed as a creative means to understand moral-philosophical questions regarding space/time, contextualism/universalism, and technology within media ethics.

Present work deals with the solution of the strain between Jewish-Christian picture of good and loving God and a tragic reality of AIDS phenomenon. The work looks for answers to questions such as: Is a human being able to influence their health by an ethical way of life? To what extend are we responsible for our diseases and difficulties? Is a disease God´s punishment?{\crqq} What is (can be) the sense of a disease? How can we explain the suffering of the innocent? The work looks for the connections between a disease and a sin, between AIDS and an immoral life. The work presents the HIV/AIDS issue as a phenomenon concerning all people without a difference. It solves if it is possible to perceive AIDS as a kind of God punishment for sinful and immoral behaviour of people, as a consequence of structural maleficence or a personal carelessness of a human person. It points out the methods of primary prevention and reminds the task of a Christian to bring Christian values into a human society. The way out is found in the change of thinking and behaviour of people: in the appreciation and acquirement of ethical demands and opening to God blessing for the assumption of belief.