This thesis is intended as a self-contained, expository introduction to material found in Chapter IV of Bourbaki’s Theorie des Ensembles. With a minimum of external reference, it presents all relevant logical and set-theoretic background material and then develops and extends the notions of "species of structure", "intrinsic terms", "canonical mappings", "processes of deduction", "morphism", etc. found in this work. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)

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Complex systems are naturally understood as combinations of their distinguishing characteristics or \definit{features}. Distinct features differentiate between variations of configurable systems and also identify the novelties of extensions. The implementation of a conceptual feature is often scattered throughout an artifact, forcing designers to understand the entire artifact in order to reason about the behavior of a single feature. It is particularly challenging to independently develop novel extensions to complex systems as a result. This dissertation shows how to modularly reason about the implementation of conceptual features in both the formalizations of programming languages and object-oriented software product lines. In both domains, modular verification of features can be leveraged to reason about the behavior of artifacts in which they are included: fully mechanized metatheory proofs for programming languages can be synthesized from independently developed proofs, and programs built from well-formed feature modules are guaranteed to be well-formed without needing to be typechecked. Modular reasoning about individual features can furthermore be used to efficiently reason about families of languages and programs which share a common set of features. / text

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

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.

Anti-theorists claim that moral theories do not deliver all the goods we want and that consequently such theorizing is not a philosophically worthy pursuit. We suffer from certain misconceptions about the point and purpose of such theorizing and the theories it produces. In this essay, I treat moral theorizing as a genuinely theoretical enterprise that produces abstract knowledge about the general structure of morality.Moral theories should be understood as tools--intellectual and practical tools with importantly different uses. Just as with hand tools where it is useful to have hammers for one sort of job and screwdrivers for another, it can be rational to accept multiple moral theories at the same time. The idea here is that all good theories illuminate some truths about morality, but are also misleading at times. A theory that is good at solving one moral problem may be bad at solving another; a theory that is illuminating in one place may be distorting in another.Chapter one outlines the differences between moral theory, metaethics, moral metatheory, and morality itself. It argues that disagreement about moral theory need not reflect moral disagreement, and vice versa. Chapter two argues that even if moral theory turned out to be practically useless, it would still accomplish certain theoretical tasks. Chapters three and four explain how and why one might adopt different incompatible moral theories at the same time. Chapter five defends moral principles from various particularists and shows how the imperfections of moral principles mirror the imperfections of laws in other fields. Chapter six explains why philosophical inquiry is worthwhile despite the overwhelming disagreement displayed by philosophers. Chapter seven shows that moral intuitions serve as a check on philosophical methodology just as much as methodology helps us verify our intuitions. It explains why a certain sort of psychology-based argument against deontological intuitions will not work. Finally, chapter eight explores the various ways in which moral theory is and is not practical. It concludes that the practical usefulness of theory is a matter of empirical contingency that philosophers have done little to investigate.

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.

The current trend among theorists in counseling and psychotherapy is toward the development of metatheoretical models that can be used to organize, systematically and comprehensively, existing theories and techniques within the discipline. Some models also provide behavior adaptation guidelines for practitioners who wish to adapt their behavior to client behavior patterns. Hutchins created the metatheoretical TFA System to accomplish the above goals. He also created the Hutchins Behavior Inventory (HBI) to complement the TFA System. The HBI purportedly measures the thinking, feeling, and acting dimensions of behavior upon which the TFA System is built; it thus enables a practitioner to assess the unique, situationally specific, TFA behavior pattern of a client. At the time of this study, the only evidence concerning the measurement properties of the HBI was for a form that produces ipsative scores (the HBI-I) . But ipsative scores possess inherent psychometric properties that cause problems when they are subjected to certain types of statistical analyses. Thus, in this study, a normative form of the HBI (the HBI-N) was designed. The measurement properties of the HBI-I and HBI-N were then investigated and compared. Reliability was investigated using test-retest and internal consistency procedures. Construct-related validity was investigated using four procedures: internal consistency analysis of HBI-N scores; factor analysis of the items comprising the scales of the HBI-N; an analysis of a multitrait-multimethod validity matrix containing scores from the HBI-I, HBI-N, Strong Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII), and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI); and a factorial validity analysis of scores from the HBI-N, SCII, and MBTI. Results indicated that the HBI-I possesses a high degree of reliability. Prior evidence of content-related validity suggested that the three constructs measured by the HBI are the thinking, feeling, and acting dimensions of behavior hypothesized by Hutchins. Some of the construct-related validity results obtained in this study supported this conclusion, while the main body of results supported the more limited conclusion that the HBI scales measure different, yet to be more clearly identified, constructs. Based on the evidence in this study, the HBI-I seems appropriate for research and clinical use. / Ph. D.

Answers to the question of what works best for what persons under what conditions have given rise to a new wave of metatheoretical approaches to counseling and psychotherapy that are situationally specific and tailored to meet the needs of individual clients. Such questions have only begun to be raised in the field of counselor education. Hence, the education and supervision of counseling students has remained largely an amorphous undertaking. In this study the researcher sought to examine how Master's level counseling students differed on measures of behavior, personality and theoretical orientation. Behavior patterns were assessed using Hutchins' metatheoretical model, called the T-F-A system, and the Hutchins Behavior Inventory (H.B.I.) that measures thinking, feeling and acting dimensions of human behavior. Personality characteristics were assessed using the Adjective Check List (A.C.L.). Theoretical orientations were assessed using a modified Smith Questionnaire. The students were divided into groups on the basis of behavior patterns, theoretical orientations, and gender. The issue of differences across these groups on measures of personality and behavior was then investigated. Results indicated that the H.B.I. works very well in assessing a) different personality orientations, b) responses to specific situations and c) theoretical preferences of counseling students. The existence of significant differences across theoretical orientation, behavior pattern, and gender groups on measures of behavior and personality calls for the development of a prescriptive approach to the training of counseling students. Results clearly suggest how counselors need to adapt to the specific client situations to maximize the possibility of behavior change. Implications for counselor education programs are discussed. / Ed. D.

This thesis investigates in three parts the role played by metatheory in the discipline of International Relations (IR). Part one defines metatheory as 'systematic discourse about theory' and classifies it in a typology combining elements internal or external to the discipline with intellectual or contextual aspects of theorising. Each combination has particular functions. They also add to the roles played by several modes of metatheoretical inquiry (hermeneutical, evaluative, corrective, critical and historical). The typology offered in part one clarifies the general roles of metatheory as a constraining and enabling discursive mechanism. This is also discussed in part two, addressing how IR scholars portray metatheory's role in the discipline. Arguments against and in favour of metatheory are scrutinised, leading to a qualified defence of metatheoretical research in IR. Some of the negative impact of metatheorising in IR is acknowledged, but ultimately a stronger case attempting to eliminate it from the field cannot be sustained for analytical reasons. The merits of metatheory, therefore, will depend on how it operates in particular instances. A selection of illustration cases in part three further develops the argument. The first case stresses how metatheoretical directives shaped 17th century views of the Holy Roman Empire. It indicates that metatheory can frame theoretical claims even in a weak disciplinary context. A stronger disciplinary environment frames the second case, analysing a number of IR theories on the impact of the Peace of Westphalia in the European states-system. This discussion often alludes to the notion of hierarchy. The third case examines the interaction between metatheoretical directives and theories of hierarchy. These arguments are not necessarily compatible with the metatheoretical principles argued by their authors. As a mechanism, therefore, metatheory does not relate to theory in a deterministic way. Part three itself is, of course, a metatheoretical study that further illustrates the thesis.