Over the past decade, Integral Theory has been an emerging focus of academic scholarship in nursing and other fields. At this nascent period, it is evident that nursing scholars are using Integral Theory in ways that depart from an approach seen in some other disciplines, where Integral Theory is used as a metatheoretical framework for organizing disciplinary knowledge to inform professional practice. The purpose of this paper-based dissertation is to clarify how Integral Theory is being used by the discipline and profession of nursing in relation to the metatheoretical approach used by other disciplines, and to conduct research that contributes a practice-based perspective on Integral Theory in nursing. This has been achieved using the following three approaches, which are presented in three separate papers in this dissertation: 1. The first paper introduces Integral Theory to the nursing community as a metatheory, capable of providing an integrated, coherent view of multiple disciplinary perspectives within nursing and, using a case example, demonstrates Integral Theory’s application in nursing practice. 2. The second paper examines Dossey’s Theory of Integral Nursing from Integral Theory’s metatheoretical perspective. Although aspects of Integral Theory are incorporated into the Theory of Integral Nursing, this paper demonstrates how Dossey’s approach differs from the metatheoretical intent of Integral Theory. 3. The third paper reports on research findings from a qualitative study conducted using an Interpretive Descriptive Research Methodology to investigate how nurses use Integral Theory in their professional work. Findings indicate that nurses in this study used Integral Theory as a map that gave structure to an inquiry process in their nursing practice, while also identifying factors that constrained their use of Integral Theory. The presentation of this dissertation is organized in the following manner. The introductory chapter includes a description of Integral Theory in academic scholarship, its potential usefulness in nursing as a metatheory, and a review of literature on Integral Theory in the professional practice fields of nursing and psychology. The three papers are then presented in three separate chapters, followed by a final chapter outlining implications of this dissertation for the practice discipline of nursing. / Graduate / 0569 / lshea@uvic.ca

While outdoor recreation resources may be developed as infrastructure to benefit the tourist economy, through community-based planning efforts such developments can achieve a wider range of community benefits. This research project examines the role of outdoor recreation development in urban and regional planning strategies enabling a deeper understanding about how these amenities can enhance our communities and make them more resilient, diverse, and healthy. Stakeholder interviews and user surveys focusing on the implications of the ongoing development of the City of Revelstoke BC bicycle network were conducted to further inform this study. The Integral framework adopted in the analysis proved to be valuable for the inclusion of a broad range of perspectives. Nine recommendations are identified with relevance for the planning profession, suggesting that outdoor recreation can play a significant role in community building, enhancing social equity, and providing a means of urban enhancement. The research findings indicate that collaborative partnerships are vital to the planning process towards creating valued outdoor recreation amenities that align with local community perceptions, while creating a unique community-based experience attractive to tourists.

While outdoor recreation resources may be developed as infrastructure to benefit the tourist economy, through community-based planning efforts such developments can achieve a wider range of community benefits. This research project examines the role of outdoor recreation development in urban and regional planning strategies enabling a deeper understanding about how these amenities can enhance our communities and make them more resilient, diverse, and healthy. Stakeholder interviews and user surveys focusing on the implications of the ongoing development of the City of Revelstoke BC bicycle network were conducted to further inform this study. The Integral framework adopted in the analysis proved to be valuable for the inclusion of a broad range of perspectives. Nine recommendations are identified with relevance for the planning profession, suggesting that outdoor recreation can play a significant role in community building, enhancing social equity, and providing a means of urban enhancement. The research findings indicate that collaborative partnerships are vital to the planning process towards creating valued outdoor recreation amenities that align with local community perceptions, while creating a unique community-based experience attractive to tourists.

In the past decade the extent and the complexity of socio-economic challenges the modernsocieties are facing has grown dramatically. Balancing often on the brink of crisis, these globalchallenges force organizations to overthink their approaches and look for new ways to respond toexternal changes. Thus, research on organizational transformation needs to focus on models thatprovide a big-picture lens, offering holistic and integral solutions to modern challenges. AnIntegral theory makes an important contribution to the research of organizational transformationby suggesting a metatheoretical AQAL model (all-quadrants, all levels) that integrates four-dimensional perspective of objective, interobjective, subjective and intersubjective reality in itsanalysis. The AQAL model is a comprehensive view to the reality, accommodating multipletheoretical perspectives and methodological pluralism. Against this backdrop this master thesisaims to explore an Integral Approach, focusing on leadership and organizational transformationin one public sector organization addressing individual or microlevel perspectives. The keyquestions, which are driving this research are: how do values and worldviews impactorganizational transformation in public sector environment? How can organizational capacity todevelop an agile response to external changes be improved in public sector organizations? Whatrole leadership plays in the process of public sector transformation? The main findings of thiswork suggest that organizational capacity to successfully overcome changes is paired with themind-set of its employees and in particularly leadership. Structural changes introduced due toteleworking and digitalization impact organizations on a deeper level, bringing shifts towardsnew culture of work, re-definition of processes and strategies, resulting in global shifts in thewhole organization. These new practices and emerging new organizational cultures require alsonew models of leadership and new skill-set for leaders, who will need to meet the task of“walking” the organizations through modern challenges.

This study is a theoretical inquiry into the meaning potentials of rhythm in improvisation, with implications for improvisational music therapy. A review of music therapy literature regarding assessment and treatment reveals that improvisation is a widely applied music therapy method, but that rhythm--found universally in all forms of clinical improvisational processes--has received little attention. Theories from the areas of music philosophy, psychology of music, social psychology of music, musicological studies of jazz, and music therapy are explicated and implications for potential meanings of rhythm for improvisation and improvisational music therapy are described. Concepts that are foundational to the ways that the various theories find meaning in music include symbolism, metaphorical conceptualization, and interpersonal interactions. Theoretical foci for analysis include improvised rhythm (i.e., the rhythmic products), an improviser or co-improviser's processes while playing, and the perspective of a listener. Differences between solo improvisation and co-improvisation processes are considered. An integral theory of rhythm in improvisation is proposed along with clinical implications. Potential benefits of the study for music therapy and musicology are proposed and considerations for future investigations regarding the topics of rhythm and improvisation are articulated. / Music Therapy

Thesis advisor: Patrick J. McQuillan / This dissertation presents two case studies of educational leadership, followed by an extensive discussion of methodological, historical, and philosophical issues that pertain to education research, policy, and leadership development. The case studies utilize qualitative research methods and the theoretical framework of complex systems to ascertain how and to what extent principals fostered cultural and educational change at their schools, with attention to how principals leveraged distributed leadership, instructional leadership, and the generation of cultural norms. Findings from the study were consistent with literature on systems leadership, and reinforce the significance of history and path dependence in school systems, the need to limit disequilibrium and turbulence within sustainable ranges, the importance of trust within social networks to facilitate productive change processes, and the importance of shared cultural norms to align staff values and behavior. Following the explication of the two cases, a meta- analysis is presented to address the methodological and interpretive limits of the study. The role of human development and the influence of cultural ideology and social infrastructures are highlighted as crucial dimensions of reality that warrant integration in educational research. Integral Theory is utilized as a means to explore the cultural, social, and psychological factors involved in achieving more comprehensive interpretations of social reality. Key topics include: complex systems, Integral Theory, modernity, postmodernity, education reform, neoliberalism, and developmental psychology. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

This thesis proposes a metatheory for the study of organisational transformation. A metatheory is a coherent conceptual system that analyses and accommodates the insights of other theory. In a time of rapidly changing organisational, societal and global environments there is a strong imperative for developing integrative conceptual frameworks that contribute to our understanding and explanation of transformational change. Like other areas of social science, the field of organisational transformation is made up of a multitude of diverse theories that offer useful and valid insights into aspects of transformational phenomena. These theories come from many different theoretical schools and research paradigms and they employ a wide range of explanatory concepts. There are however, no overarching theoretical frameworks specifically developed from metatheory building techniques that might give an overall coherency to the field. Consequently, there is no way of deciding on the relative conceptual merits of particular theories and there is often little justification for adopting one theory over another to explore some aspect of organisational transformation. To fill this gap, this thesis uses conceptual research methods to i) review extant literature, ii) develop a metatheory for organisational transformation and iii) apply this metatheory to the exemplar topic of organisational sustainability. The initial chapters introduce the topics of organisational transformation and metatheory building and provide a rationale for an overarching approach to radical organisational change. Following this, a method for metatheory building is developed and its application in this study is described. A rationale for the sampling procedure and organisational of data is also presented. The metatheory building method involves the use of conceptual theme analysis for identifying the core themes theorists use in describing and explaining organisational transformation. In subsequent chapters, core themes are analysed using the techniques of bridging and bracketing to derive a number of conceptual lenses. These lenses, and the relationships between them, form the central components for the integral metatheory. Having identified and described the basic set of conceptual lenses for transformation, the exemplar topic of organisational sustainability is used to show how the metatheory can be applied to a specific area of research. The final chapter evaluates the integral metatheory with some commonly used criteria for judging the results of conceptual research. A brief evaluation of the chief metatheoretical resource used in the study, i.e., AQAL metatheory, is also carried out. This thesis endeavours to contribute to the field of organisational, transformational and sustainability studies by i) developing a metatheoretical framework for the study of radical organisational change, ii) offering a comprehensive review of paradigms and theories of organisational transformation and their core explanatory concepts, and iii) proposing a more detailed metatheory building method which can make a significant contribution to the conceptual development of many fields within organisational studies.

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This dissertation takes a sharp methodological turn from prior research on religiousness, spirituality, and culture in organizations by making advances in the study of the structure and role of workplace religio-spiritual beliefs, combining a critical review, theory building, and two empirical sections. The research is based on the premise that the study of individual psychology has yet to address the cross-cultural and domain-specific nature of religio-spiritual beliefs that come to mind naturally in everyday work situations. First, after a case is made for the study of religio-spiritual beliefs, a critical review of the literature provides a comparison of 90 content-based measurement models, and is followed by implications for improving future measurement and research. Second, a conceptual discussion recommends a way forward for a domain-specific conceptualization of religiousness and spirituality and sets a framework for improving methodology, drawing from grounded theory, integral theory, and sense-making methodology. Third, a bottom-up exploration of the religio-spiritual beliefs induced by a variety of workplace situations is conducted through interviews of informants from six major faith traditions, plus the spiritual-but-not-religious. From the analysis, workplace situations, associated beliefs, and mental modules are structured according to the four quadrants of the Workplace Integral Model, each quadrant typified by a different workplace-grounded existential dilemma. Fourth, a higher level of religio-spiritual cognition is accessed through a sense-making methodology, revealing why and how work-related thoughts, self-concepts, and experiences become imbued with religio-spiritual significance, as illustrated in eight modes arranged on a Religio-Spiritual Sense-Making Circumplex. It is hoped that these findings can help set a foundation for future progress with research methods, measurement models, and theory building focused on the religio-spiritual thoughts of a diversity of people in the workplace. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (MPhil (Sustainable Development Planning and Management))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Given the complexities facing humanity in the light of impending social and environmental collapse, it is the design of sustainable communities at all levels of our society that must be achieved to limit this potential outcome. Attaining such a goal, it is known, requires that humanity ‘consciously evolve’. Furthermore I suggest that Integral Theory, because it is grounded in the evolution of consciousness, provides an important map to help navigate this tremendous journey. In this thesis I use Integral Theory as a lens through which to understand and reflect on my experiences over the past eighteen years of the design and development of the Tlholego Village, one of the early experimental Permaculture and Ecovillage communities developed in South Africa. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Gegewe die kompleksiteite wat die samelewing in die gesig staar as gevolg van die dreigende sosiale en omgewings verval, is die ontwikkeling van volhoubare gemeenskappe op alle vlakke van ons samelewing noodsaaklik om so ‘n uitkoms te verhoed. Om hierdie doel te bereik word dit voorgestel dat die samelewing bewustelik moet ontwikkel (‘consciously evolve’). Verder stel ek voor dat Integraal Teorie (‘Integral Theory’), gegrond in die evolusie van bewustheid, ‘n belangrike roetekaart verskaf om die geweldige reis te navigeer. In hierdie tesis gebruik ek Integraal Teorie as ‘n lens waardeur my ervarings tydens die ontwerp en ontwikkeling van die Tlholego Village (een van die vroee eksperimentele Permakultuur en Eko-dorp gemeenskappe wat ontwikkel is in Suid Afrika oor die afgelope agtien jaar) verstaan en nabetrag kan word.