Wenn durch Politiken Familien zur ‚freien Schulwahl‘ einer spezifischen Einzelschule aufgefordert werden und Einzelschulen sich dafür als Optionen anzubieten haben, entstehen schulwahlbezogene Wettbewerbssituationen. Diese sind in einer Vielzahl internationaler Kontexte beobachtbar und gewinnen sowohl im Primar- als auch im Sekundarbereich in Deutschland an Bedeutung. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde die schulwahlbezogene Wettbewerbssituation in einem von Armut geprägten Berliner Bezirk nach der zum Schuljahr 2010/11 erfolgten Berliner Schulstrukturreform untersucht und im Kontext einschlägiger deutschsprachiger und internationaler Forschung analysiert. Insgesamt lassen vielfältigen Forschungsergebnisse, die mit dem Phänomen schulwahlbezogener Wettbewerbssituationen in Verbindung zu bringen sind, daran zweifeln, dass die mit einer zunehmenden Wettbewerbsorientierung im Bereich schulischer Bildung verbundenen Hoffnungen auf Qualitätssteigerung und verbesserte Chancengleichheit erfüllt werden. Darauf deuten auch die Ergebnisse des in dieser Arbeit dargestellten ethnographischen Forschungsprojektes hin. Die Arbeit erweitert die bisher in Deutschland nur in sehr geringem Umfang vorliegenden qualitativ arbeitenden Fallstudien zu schulwahlbezogenen Wettbewerbssituationen um eine bisher noch fehlende, die Folgen einer aktuellen Schulstrukturreform in den Blick nehmende Studie. Mit dem in dieser Forschungsarbeit entwickelten Konzept der Passungs-Distanz-Konstruktion liegt der Fokus auf der Sozialität der Schulwahl. Das Konzept dient zur Analyse eines zentralen sozialen Mechanismus, der in der untersuchten schulwahlbezogenen Wettbewerbssituation in Berlin erkennbar ist und Anknüpfungspunkte bietet für weitere lokale Fallstudien und Analysen ähnlicher Schwerpunktsetzung. / When choice policies are used to encourage families to choose a specific school and individual schools have to offer themselves as options for this, school choice related competitive situations arise. These can be observed in a variety of international contexts and are now gaining importance in Germany both in primary and secondary education. This thesis examines the competitive situation of school choice in an underprivileged Berlin district following the 2010/11 Berlin school structure reform and analyses it in the context of relevant German language and international research. All in all, the diverse research results that can be associated with the phenomenon of competitive situations related to school choice raise doubts as to whether the educational policy objectives of improvement in quality and equal opportunities associated with an increased competitive orientation in the field of school education will be fulfilled. This is also indicated by the results of the ethnographic research project, the course and results of which were presented in this paper. This work augments the qualitative case studies on school choice related competitive situations that have so far been available in Germany to only a very limited extent, using the example of a Berlin district, to include a study in the most populous German city that has not previously been carried out and that focuses on the consequences of a current school structure reform. With the concept of the fit-distance construction developed on the basis of this example as a central social mechanism recognisable in the school choice related competitive situation under study, it also offers starting points for further local case studies and analysis of similar focal points.

The purpose of this three-essay dissertation was to expand knowledge and theory regarding soft systems methodologies (SSMs) and data visualization approaches in business, engineering, and other social sciences. The first essay depicts a bibliometric analysis study of the historic impacts of SSM from 1980-2018 on business, engineering, and other social sciences fields. This study found 285 articles that described or employed SSM for research and included outcomes such as top SSM authors, author citation impacts, common dissemination outlets, time-bound distribution of publications, and other relevant findings. This study provided a picture of who, what, why, when, and where SSM has had the greatest impact on academic thought and practice. The second essay presents research on the academic impact of Systemigrams, an associated data visualization approach, finding examples of conceptual or research development that employed Systemigrams to depict complex problem situations. Recommendations for improvement of designing these data visualizations to increase their field use resulted from this study. The final essay leverages a selection of the articles as use cases to produce a grounded theory study to identify phenomena that arose from the use of SSM for operations and firm strategy research. This study identified two broad themes including (i) scope, structure, and process challenges and (ii) performance and evaluation limitations. These themes were explained by six patterns that emerged from the publications. Each produced change recommendations for SSM process, practice, and reporting to support its continued viability and adoption in business and operations research.

Sex education in Britain is poorly practised, in schools as well as in the home. British so called ‘Puritanism’ has been seen as one of the reasons. At a time and age when teenage pregnancy, Sexual Transmitted Infections (STIs) and viruses (AIDS/HIV) are on the increase more attention to the education of sexual behaviour is needed. Government initiatives are leading in that direction for schools as well as families, but it is unclear how these are materialised. Especially, how families discuss sexual matters is underresearched and poorly understood. Therefore, the aims of this study were to explore the potential facilitators and barriers of the communication of sexual topics, with and without the use of a Sex and Relationship Education (SRE) multimedia program, and to explore the impact of this program on the knowledge of sexual issues and concerns. A mixed-method design was employed by using Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) modified grounded theory to develop a model reflecting the findings. Knowledge was assessed on data gathered from twenty British families over a ten-month period. Using semi-structured interviews, observational field notes and quantitative measures, it was found that trust, respect, spending (leisure) time together and children’s perception of their parents’ sexual knowledge were facilitators for sexual communications. Older siblings and other family members who were regarded as role models also facilitated the discussion of sexual matters. The barriers for discussing sexual issues openly within families included authoritative parenting, lack of parental sexual knowledge, presence of younger siblings and parents’ direct questioning of children’s personal relationships. In light of this, the multimedia program could be beneficial in many more families when initiating and communicating sexual matters.

A successful Customer Relationships Management (CRM) implementation helps organisations to obtain competitive advantages over others by improving customer satisfaction and loyalty, increasing revenue and reducing operating costs. Effective CRM implementation has become more and more important owing to the huge percentage of failures that occur. This year, organisations are expected to spend about $13billion on implementing CRM. While a significant amount of research has been conducted into CRM implementations, particularly with respect to Critical Success Factors (CSFs), only a minority of the implementations have been successful. Culture plays a major role in CRM implementation. It is ranked one of the top three factors involved in CRM's CSFs. Culture, therefore, become significant issues when planning to implement CRM within the developing countries, such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) due to its existing cultural differences. Very limited research into CSFs for CRM implementation in the KSA exists. This research, therefore, focuses on identifying the CSFs and their interrelationships for CRM implementation in the KSA with the ultimate aim of developing an integrated model that includes these factors and their interrelationships to support effective implementation of CRM solutions within the private sector of the KSA from both organisations' and customers' perspectives. It adopts an integrated mix of case study and Grounded Theory as a research strategy. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and documentation, which was then analysed using Grounded Theory data analysis. The findings showed that adoption of CRM in the KSA revealed some additional CSFs to those found within other studies, such as customer culture and the country's policies and procedures. The interrelationships between the CSFs of CRM were identified and shown to be vital for successful CRM implementation. The results identified the relationships between CRM's CSFs and their key development stages. The findings were interpreted by using Institutional Theory. It was found that implementing a CRM solution as a response to institutional isomorphism pressures could lead to a conflict and mismatch of institutional logics among customers and CRM solutions. Organisations subjected to these pressures implemented CRM without the advantage of a cost-benefit analysis. This increased the failure of CRM adoption. This research makes six major contributions. Firstly, a theoretical contribution was made by applying Institutional Theory to enrich the understanding and interpretation of the research's findings. This provided useful insight into the main factors that affect the adoption of CRM and extended the line of research on the use of this theory to study Information Systems (IS) in organisations. Secondly, the development of the research model presented the CSFs that affected the adoption of CRM solutions and their interrelationships from both the organisations and customers' perspectives within KSA. Thirdly, the research identified thirty-one cause-and-effect relationships between CSFs that need to occur in a dependency mode for the success of CRM implementation. Fourthly, it identified that each CSF needs to be executed in certain stages during the CRM's development life cycle. Fifthly, this research provides organisations within the private sector in the KSA (those that intend to implement CRM solutions) with an extensive way of thinking about its CRM implementation. Finally, this research is one part of the very limited research focusing on the implementation of CRM solutions within the private sector in the KSA.

This research project aims to explore service user and mental health social workers’ (MHSW) perspectives and experiences of practice in the area of personality disorder. It seeks to answer three research questions: how service users and MHSWs understand personality disorder, how they understand MHSW practice and how practice in this area might be better informed. The study’s attention to the experiences and perspectives of both groups sets the research within the interpretivist paradigm and relies on a relativist ontology, subjectivist epistemology and inductive, qualitative methodology. The involvement of both groups means that this project makes an original contribution to MHSW research and practice. Constructivist grounded theory (CGT) has been used to generate a conceptual, theoretical analysis. The research was divided into two phases. Phase 1 involved ten semi-structured interviews with ten service users from a community service for people with personality disorder. This data was analysed before Phase 2 began, comprising twelve semi-structured interviews with twelve MHSWs from three regions of England. NVivo 7 was used to analyse the data in and across case. The analysis identified participants’ understanding of personality disorder, mental health social work practice and how this practice might be better informed. The analysis was supplemented by documentary analysis of policies relevant to personality disorder and MHSW. The findings suggest that traumatic experience impacts on the lens through which the person views self and others. Distress can be overwhelming, lead to extreme and unsafe behaviours, which reinforce disconnection from self and others. In supporting a relationship between personality disorder and traumatic experience, this study suggests the relevance of mental health social work (MHSW) to personality disorder. The findings suggest that more humane, empathic responses are required. Practice founded on understanding the impact of traumatic experience and the ways in which the individual might be trying to cope with their distress. The findings reveal the importance of MHSWs’ relational skills and interventions that offer practical support, encouragement and effective liaison with others. Through more caring, protective bonds and broad social supports MHSW might empower individuals’ response to traumatic experience. The findings raise implications for MHSW and mental health professionals more generally. The findings also indicate that practice would be better informed by greater knowledge and understanding of the person and the diagnosis; the provision of feedback to the person; modelling; greater transparency and consistency; support for the person’s social and family network, and more practical support. This project makes an original contribution to knowledge about personality disorder and to MHSW knowledge and practice in this area.

The contribution of small firms towards the creation of economic value in a country’s Gross Domestic Product, employment and innovation is widely acknowledged. Relatively little is known on how small firms are adopting IT strategically to acheive business-IT alignment and how alignment changes over time. This study examines from a dynamic perspective IT adoption actions undertaken by owner-managers, in relation to business-IT alignment in small firms in the island state of Malta. To attain its research objectives, the methodological stance adopted in this research study is that of grounded theory. Moving away from a deductive approach, this study embraces a constructivist approach using a combination of inductive and abductive thought. No fewer than thirty-one in-depth interviews are conducted with owner-managers to observe alignment patterns of IT adoption behaviour in their respective small firms operating in Malta and employing up to 49 employees. Four business-IT alignment equilibrium states are identified, serving as markers to map out the common IT alignment paths that each firm pursued, not necessarily in linear form, during their operational years. A substantive model, which identifies four distinct IT alignment patterns, denotes each common path that a group of firms took in their movement from one alignment equilibrium state to another, throughout their life-cycle stages. This study has substantive application and comprises several implications for the development of IT adoption behaviour when small firms endeavour to strategically align business with IT. It provides policy-makers, academic researchers and small firms’ owner-managers with a theoretical framework that can provide them with factors that can predict the kind of alignment patterns that are likely to occur. Findings indicate that the quality of IT related technological solutions that are taken up by each small firm are reliant on the owner-manager’s characteristics that focus mainly on the knowledge of internal IT expertise and the project management capabilities to manage IT outsourcers. Given that few studies have been conducted to study and establish patterns of IT alignment in small firms, this research provides an important contribution to knowledge and to the existing academic literature.

Using a grounded theory approach, two case studies were carried out in large organisations which have recently implemented family-friendly policies. The studies asked whether or not cultural change has taken place as a result of the implementation of these policies. Using Shein's (1992) three level model and definition of culture, attention was focused on underlying assumptions or 'root' facets of organisational culture (and conceptual distinctions made between culture, image and identity). After establishing which facets are present and how they exist in combination with each other, shifts which have taken place as a direct or indirect result of the introduction of policies were identified. Especial interest was taken in the way the primacy of work was expressed through the ideal worker type and the extent to which this type has been replaced by the integrated worker type (Rapoport et al 2002), which acknowledges that family and other commitments are as legitimate as occupational demands. Both studies conclude that, as yet, there have been only slight adjustments in the construction of this ideal worker type and that employees do not make a permanent shift towards the integrated worker type but `toggle' between these two types. Explanations are developed for shifts in other cultural facets, such as the importance of autonomy, emphases on equality or individuation, sense of entitlement and attitudes to change. The utility of the notion of purposive cultural change is considered, given that high levels of anxiety are released when unconscious and shared mental structures are destabilised in such processes of organizational learning. The merits of a more evolutionary model are explored.

Using Grounded theory this thesis analyses the forms of support that are present on two online anorexia forums. Data was collected through non-participant observation and online interviews with members of two online anorexia forums, one pro-anorexic in orientation, one pro-recovery. Despite the clear differences that exist between the two communities, continuities are strongly apparent, especially when looking at these forums as support environments. This thesis illustrates that support is conditional, that is takes on a variety of forms in any one environment and highlights the role of offline discourses in shaping online support. It also provides an in-depth comparison of two online anorexia forums.

The extent to which the knowledge mobilisation potential of public health networks is actually achieved in their functioning has not been previously studied. There are prescriptions from policy documents and from research literature as to the form networks in health should take and the way they should operate. However, there has been little research connecting the nature of the networks and the manner in which they function to their knowledge mobilising ability. Constituted in 2006, the Scottish Public Health Network (ScotPHN), which is the primary vehicle in Scotland for mobilising public health knowledge and informing policy and practice, constitutes the location for this study investigating this knowledge mobilisation and how networks function in public health. Feedback from the consultation conducted prior to the formation of ScotPHN was obtained. Interviews were conducted with the members of the ScotPHN steering group, a project group and the stakeholder group. Two ScotPHN steering group meetings were also attended by the author as an observer. The consultation feedback, transcripts of the interviews and those of steering group meetings were analysed using the constructivist version of the grounded theory approach. The process involved coding and abstracting codes to categories and themes. The emerging themes were reviewed in the light of existing literature on networks and knowledge mobilisation. These themes were then used to develop a model to understand how the network operates and consequently mobilises knowledge. The study shows that prior to its formation ScotPHN was expected to address the fragmentation of the public health workforce; significantly enhance links amongst existing public health networks; support ground level knowledge exchange amongst practitioners and significantly enhance multisectorial working. None of these expectations appear to have been met. ScotPHN has, however, managed to fill the gap left by the demise of the Scottish Needs Assessment Programme (SNAP). ScotPHN’s structure and the manner in which it is controlled lead to it being akin to a policy community rather than an issue network. The generic public health concerns of the steering group and the selective nature of the project group prevent it from functioning as an issue network. The dominance of people from the medical profession also causes a social closedness in the ScotPHN steering group. The limited multisectorial participation in its activities results in: a lack of constructionist learning; limited inclusion of the social context of knowledge; and a deficit of Mode 2 knowledge mobilisation. In the context of knowledge conversion there is some evidence of externalisation but no socialisation. ScotPHN is not a network that can be classed as a community of practice. This study highlights how health policies, which have advocated the establishment of networks, could derive considerable guidance from research into how networks actually function. With respect to the knowledge mobilisation activity of these networks the study finds that top-down and prescribed structures are unable to capture the transdisciplinarity and diverse intellectual frameworks that contribute to public health knowledge. It is seen that the hierarchical network structures can undermine the engagement of actors from the less represented sectors. Additionally the study finds that the established patterns of professional power and control further hinder multisectorial engagement.

The original purpose of this study was to answer the following research question: How do women and girls navigate the HIV/AIDS situation in Mozambique? I used constructivist grounded theory, combined with the African philosophy of Ubuntu, as the approach to guide this study. I sensitized myself theoretically with the critical feminist theory of intersectionality to ensure I recognized important data during my collection process. Because grounded theory studies are developed inductively from a corpus of data, and evolve as data collection takes place, I discovered that participants’ concerns went beyond HIV/AIDS and involved a bundle of oppressions. Therefore the problem that participants faced, at a broad conceptual level, was gender oppression. As a result, my study shifted slightly in that I aimed to understand how women and girls managed their lives in relation to gender oppression, how they become socialized into a context that systematically makes room for social and political dominance over them, how they cope with the manifestations of dominance, and how, if ever, they control the situational and characteristic realities of gender oppression. Consequently, I developed a grounded theory about how women and girls manage gender oppression in Mozambique. The basic social process in this theory is called Putting On and Taking Off the Capulana, which can be understood as how women and girls become socialized into gender oppression in Mozambique and how they inch their way out. The four main categories that comprise this theory include: (a) Putting On the Capulana, (b) Turning a Blind Eye, (c) Playing the Game, and (d) Taking Off the Capulana. Second level processes under Putting On the Capulana, for example, include processes such as Adapting to Patriarchy and Living with Violence, which demonstrate how women and girls navigate a context saturated in oppressions. Third level processes, such as being robbed of sexual self-determination and accepting inferiority, explain the consequences of these processes that women and girls are forced to live through. This is a theory, grounded in the data and privileging the voices of women and girls in Mozambique, that is reflective of a constructivist feminist approach and Ubuntu philosophy. I argue that this study provides a nuanced understanding of the complexity of gender oppression in Mozambique, which can assist in developing relevant and meaningful policy. / Graduate / 0569 / 0573 / 0733 / lntomm@uvic.ca