This practice doctorate study addresses the question of succession in family business, and whether it is possible to facilitate the succession process and enhance family relations by working in a systemic, conversational and dialogical way. The high percentage of successions in family businesses which fail and result in closed down businesses has led to extensive research and caused public debate in Sweden. This study contains of four sections. The first section gives an introduction to my felt need of developing the facilitation of the succession process in business families. It also contains a philosophical background to the systemic way of working and a presents my ontology, epistemology and methods for my study and its ethical considerations. The second section puts my study in a wider perspective of this study with a short presentation of the field of family business research; there are interviews with mainstream consultants that are elaborated on and lastly there is a gender perspective on family business consultations. The eight essays in the third section portray my action research into my facilitation of the succession process in the Bjärges family. The succession process began at the end of 2006 and lasted almost five years. Facilitation was performed during the first two and a half years and the last follow-up conversation was held in the beginning of 2011. The Bjärges essays are written in a generative and reflexive way by means of radical, social poetics thus allowing personal involvement in the text. Some of the essays study the succession process from the perspective of dialogical moments; a couple of them reflect on the succession process in a longer perspective and finally there are follow-up conversations with the family members. The fourth section deals with knowledge gained from working with this study, knowledge I have taken into my practice where I facilitate family members to make their own decisions. It also includes my reflections on theory and on differences in consultancy to family business. Accountants and legal advisors focus on what is best for business, while facilitators working in the dialogical way have family relations at heart. This work proposes a 3rd Way, a new way of facilitating and supporting business families by collaboration of different competences in multi-professional teams. Thus both business and family relations would be addressed.

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This project entails a critical examination of the race/culture divide in human services from the vantage point of middle women non-professional grassroots advocates who emerged in the 1990s to address inequities that minoritized immigrants experience with main stream human services in Canada. The race/culture divide denotes critical race theorists' critique of a focus on cultural difference that obscures racism. Shaped by critical race theory and critical research methods, and drawing on interviews and participant observation involving 25 middle women, my findings reveal that the middle women's articulations of barriers and gaps as systemic inequities are at odds with main stream services' tendencies to focus on cultural challenges. This tension results in the discursive production of a cultural niche, a gendered space of exploitation of a culturally defined Middle Woman, who is thus rendered perpetually immigrant. The study illuminates how the Middle Woman navigates a complex and perilous tension between jeopardizing relationships with main stream organizations and simultaneously resisting what she experiences as disrespectful, unacceptable, unethical and overtly racist interfaces with human services. Although the middle women recounted numerous, visceral and detailed culturalist-racist interfaces in systemically racialized human service systems, they were equivocal about naming racism until I raised it directly. They gave meaning to "in Canada" experiences through their particular pre-migration realities in a process of continuous comparison between "back home" and "here," positioning them differentially in relation to Canada, and therefore also to the possibility of naming racism in Canada. The middle women engage in a continuous process of discerning racism, always weighing it against other explanations for inequitable treatment. The project thus draws attention to the toll that navigating the race/culture divide takes in embodying the sensed and draining the spirit. It draws attention to the process through which I, as a white researcher, came to see the workings of our racialized society. My research contributes to the literature on the race/culture divide and whiteness studies, and has implications for research on racism, dialogue about cultural competence and anti-racist practice, and conceptualizing settlement and responsive human services.

With advances in neonatal, medical and surgical care there are an increasing number of infants and young children surviving with medical conditions. Many of these children have associated complex feeding difficulties as a result of the disruption to early oral feeding experiences and periods of restricted or non-oral feeding. These children are at risk of developing long-term feeding difficulties associated with sub-optimal nutrition and poor appetite regulation, delays in mastering skills that lead to eating and mealtime independence, and disruptive mealtime behaviours. Managing the extraordinary demands associated with feeding and ensuring nutrition for these children can present significant challenges for parents as well as health care professionals involved in their care. Occupational therapists are often core members of multidisciplinary teams providing hospital-based services to these children and their families. Embracing an occupation-centred perspective, participation in feeding and mealtimes are considered important co-occupations for infants, children and their parents and carers that occur within the context of parenting and family life. Understanding these contextual influences and the occupational needs of parents are essential but have been understated in the occupational therapy literature and clinical practice. This thesis describes a qualitative study using a phenomenological perspective to explore the lived experiences of parents of children with complex medical and feeding difficulties. Parents from fourteen families participated in the study. Data collection involved in-depth interviews, family mealtime observations and demographic questionnaires. Key findings indicated that parents experienced a high degree of stress in their everyday lives as a result of their children’s feeding difficulties, especially in relation to tube-feeding. Mothers’ self-image was devastated because they believed that it was their ultimate responsibility to feed and nourish their children. Differences in how parents identified with and fulfilled their parenting roles and responsibilities emerged, not just in relation to feeding but also for other childcare and domestic activities. Overwhelmingly, it was mothers who assumed the greater share of these parenting responsibilities, and in addition, expressed a sense of responsibility for preserving family unity and the need to get on with family life despite the chronic nature of their children’s problems. These findings contribute to our understanding of the occupational challenges for parents of these children, especially mothers who have a primary role in feeding, and the impact of feeding disruptions on the lives of their families. This knowledge will assist clinicians providing feeding interventions to be more sensitive and responsive to the needs of both parents and other family members. Recommendations for clinical practice are proposed. Limitations of the study are presented along with suggestions for future research.

With advances in neonatal, medical and surgical care there are an increasing number of infants and young children surviving with medical conditions. Many of these children have associated complex feeding difficulties as a result of the disruption to early oral feeding experiences and periods of restricted or non-oral feeding. These children are at risk of developing long-term feeding difficulties associated with sub-optimal nutrition and poor appetite regulation, delays in mastering skills that lead to eating and mealtime independence, and disruptive mealtime behaviours. Managing the extraordinary demands associated with feeding and ensuring nutrition for these children can present significant challenges for parents as well as health care professionals involved in their care. Occupational therapists are often core members of multidisciplinary teams providing hospital-based services to these children and their families. Embracing an occupation-centred perspective, participation in feeding and mealtimes are considered important co-occupations for infants, children and their parents and carers that occur within the context of parenting and family life. Understanding these contextual influences and the occupational needs of parents are essential but have been understated in the occupational therapy literature and clinical practice. This thesis describes a qualitative study using a phenomenological perspective to explore the lived experiences of parents of children with complex medical and feeding difficulties. Parents from fourteen families participated in the study. Data collection involved in-depth interviews, family mealtime observations and demographic questionnaires. Key findings indicated that parents experienced a high degree of stress in their everyday lives as a result of their children’s feeding difficulties, especially in relation to tube-feeding. Mothers’ self-image was devastated because they believed that it was their ultimate responsibility to feed and nourish their children. Differences in how parents identified with and fulfilled their parenting roles and responsibilities emerged, not just in relation to feeding but also for other childcare and domestic activities. Overwhelmingly, it was mothers who assumed the greater share of these parenting responsibilities, and in addition, expressed a sense of responsibility for preserving family unity and the need to get on with family life despite the chronic nature of their children’s problems. These findings contribute to our understanding of the occupational challenges for parents of these children, especially mothers who have a primary role in feeding, and the impact of feeding disruptions on the lives of their families. This knowledge will assist clinicians providing feeding interventions to be more sensitive and responsive to the needs of both parents and other family members. Recommendations for clinical practice are proposed. Limitations of the study are presented along with suggestions for future research.

With advances in neonatal, medical and surgical care there are an increasing number of infants and young children surviving with medical conditions. Many of these children have associated complex feeding difficulties as a result of the disruption to early oral feeding experiences and periods of restricted or non-oral feeding. These children are at risk of developing long-term feeding difficulties associated with sub-optimal nutrition and poor appetite regulation, delays in mastering skills that lead to eating and mealtime independence, and disruptive mealtime behaviours. Managing the extraordinary demands associated with feeding and ensuring nutrition for these children can present significant challenges for parents as well as health care professionals involved in their care. Occupational therapists are often core members of multidisciplinary teams providing hospital-based services to these children and their families. Embracing an occupation-centred perspective, participation in feeding and mealtimes are considered important co-occupations for infants, children and their parents and carers that occur within the context of parenting and family life. Understanding these contextual influences and the occupational needs of parents are essential but have been understated in the occupational therapy literature and clinical practice. This thesis describes a qualitative study using a phenomenological perspective to explore the lived experiences of parents of children with complex medical and feeding difficulties. Parents from fourteen families participated in the study. Data collection involved in-depth interviews, family mealtime observations and demographic questionnaires. Key findings indicated that parents experienced a high degree of stress in their everyday lives as a result of their children’s feeding difficulties, especially in relation to tube-feeding. Mothers’ self-image was devastated because they believed that it was their ultimate responsibility to feed and nourish their children. Differences in how parents identified with and fulfilled their parenting roles and responsibilities emerged, not just in relation to feeding but also for other childcare and domestic activities. Overwhelmingly, it was mothers who assumed the greater share of these parenting responsibilities, and in addition, expressed a sense of responsibility for preserving family unity and the need to get on with family life despite the chronic nature of their children’s problems. These findings contribute to our understanding of the occupational challenges for parents of these children, especially mothers who have a primary role in feeding, and the impact of feeding disruptions on the lives of their families. This knowledge will assist clinicians providing feeding interventions to be more sensitive and responsive to the needs of both parents and other family members. Recommendations for clinical practice are proposed. Limitations of the study are presented along with suggestions for future research.

Narrative inquiry provides an opportunity to humanize the human sciences, placing people, meaning, and personal identity at the center of research, inviting the development of reflexive, relational, dialogic, and interpretive methodologies, and drawing attention to the need to focus not only on the actual but also on the possible and the good. In this chapter, we focus on the intellectual, existential, empirical, and pragmatic development of the turn toward narrative. We trace the rise of narrative inquiry as it evolved in the aftermath of the crisis of representation in the social sciences. The chapter synthesizes the changing methodological orientations of qualitative researchers associated with narrative inquiry as well as their ethical commitments. In the second half of the chapter, our focus shifts to the divergent standpoints of small-story and big-story researchers; the differences between narrative analysis and narratives under analysis; and narrative practices that seek to help people form better relationships, overcome oppressive canonical identities, amplify or reclaim moral agency, and cope better with contingencies and difficulties experienced over the life course. We anticipate that narrative inquiry will continue to situate itself within an intermediate zone between art and science, healing and research, self and others, subjectivity and objectivity, and theories and stories.

According to the 2022 IPCC report on mitigation of climate change, a transformational change is necessary in every aspect of society, industry and commerce by 2030 in order to keep global temperatures within safe limits. What would this transformation look like and how do we begin? I argue that applying Bruno Latour’s concept of the Terrestrial can help lead us towards the path of transformation. More specifically how the multispecies management of ecological farming in Puerto Rico can help us understand how to reorient management practices in what he calls The New Climatic Regime. I explore what it means to land in the critical zone and situate ourselves within what Haraway calls the Plantationocene. I situate Puerto Rico as a microcosm of the living wholeness of the Earth. I approached uncovering stories of the earthbound as a way to discover a world where colonialism, neoliberalism and racism have led to environmental degradation, food insecurity, and poverty. By placing Bruno Latour’s arguments for a new political landscape in dialogue with post-qualitative inquiry, I hope to gain insight into the world in a different way, one that acknowledges the intricate nature of the connections between the social and the ecological. Connections that cannot be unravelled into neat and easy to follow strands of cause and effect but are tangled and knotted, allowing for multiple entry points into ideas of becoming Terrestrial. I approach stories as a way of being in continuous dialogue with the self and the surrounding world. What stories do ecological farms tell us about collaborative engagement in a multi-species organisation? Not as an attempt to provide solutions or definitive answers for how organisations should orient themselves but rather as an uncovering of the possibility of exploring new ways of thinking and doing.

<p>The aim of this investigation was to elucidate and describe those patients who had discontinued their participation and/or paticipated infrequently in physiotherapy treatment based on their own activity and responsibility. The ambition was to understand the phenomenon of compliance/adherence from various perspectives in behavioural as well as social science.</p><p>In study I the phenomenon compliance/adherence was studied in relation to Health Locus of Control and Health Belief variables. This study was based on a questionnaire that was answered by all patients before beginning of treatment. Questions concerning the patients´conceptions about both health locus of control and health beliefs were the focus.The definitions of compliance/adherence were completed treatment period and exercise frequency, respectively. Those patients who completed the treatment were also studied regarded exercise frequency.</p><p>The results of study I showed that those who discontinued their treatment reported a higher perceived threat from their health condition (higher level of dysfunction (higher pain intensity) and a higher perceived severity of their health condition (higher level of dysfunction, worse general health) than those who completed treatment. The results also showed that those who exercised once a week or less often valued the significance of the caring situation as lower (HLC), perceived a higher threat from their health condition (higher pain intensity), a higher severity of their health condition (higher level of dysfunction, worse general health, greater distrution of impairment), more barriers to treatment (lower expectations), and had certain differences in demographic variables (younger individuals, more women) than those who exercised more often (HB).</p><p>Study II investigated patients´descriptions of their reasons for discontinuing the treatment, whether those reasons varied, and if so how they varied. Sixteen patients who had discontinued their treatment were interviewed with open-ended questions. The inteviews began with a question about the background to the physiotherapy treatment. There were questions concerning carrying out the treatment as well as concerning what they thought about their impairment. The patients were also asked about their priotities in daily life, as these wre presumed to be anobstacle to the treatment over a shorter or longer period of time. The third domain concerned how they experiebced the patient/physiotherapist relationship. The interviews were anlysed qualitatively.</p><p>Analysis of study II resulted in four different descriptions of reasons for treatment discontinuation. A) It was about time to end treatment and continue on alone. B) The treatment was not the most important activity to spend time on. C) An agreement with the physiothreapist to discontinue treatment due to lack of effect. D) No viewpoint as to why they discontinued the treatment. In further analysis of category D, this group appeared to experience varoius forms of powerlessness. They felt their trustworthiness was often questioned. They experienced frustration in their life situation as others made the important descisions and they themselves had little to say.They defended themselves by talking about their own conceptions of the reasons for their impairment and what should be done about them. In comparing category D with categories A, B, C it was found that those in the latter three categories experienced varying degrees of control in different situations, whereas those in category D did not experience a feeling of control.</p><p>Conclusion: The concept of compliance in physiotherapy is ambiguous. The concept involves one part defining what will concern the other part. It is clear that the physiotherapist and the patient do not always agree about the aim of the treatment. Instead, we should develop the concept of concordance in encounters with the patients and abandon the reasoning of compliance.</p>

Ce travail de thèse en Géographie Humaine a pour objectif d’identifier et d’analyser les valeurs qui font entrer le massif forestier des Landes de Gascogne dans un processus dit de patrimonialisation au travers des discours et actions de ses acteurs. Affecter des valeurs à un espace forestier, le patrimonialiser ne correspond plus simplement à la mise en place d’espaces protégés où le « exceptionnel » est adoubé. Le processus ne se définit plus par la simple protection officielle qui soustrait à l’action humaine des éléments jugés remarquables : des objets et des espaces de plus en plus communs et quotidiens sont également appropriés par des groupes sociaux variés tout autant spécialistes qu’ « amateurs ». Le massif forestier des Landes de Gascogne constitue, selon nous, un espace exemplaire pour traiter de cette appropriation d’un espace forestier « ordinaire », qui n’a, a priori, rien de « remarquable », du moins, selon les critères de la patrimonialisation institutionnelle. Forêt d’origine artificielle à vocation de production en grande majorité privée, le massif forestier landais a toujours été plus ou moins décrié pour sa gestion intensive remettant en cause sa capacité à être porteuse de valeurs autres qu’économique et pouvant aller jusqu’à remettre en question son statut de forêt. Pour autant, bien que la vocation productive de ce massif soit sa raison d’être, la forêt landaise est aussi porteuse de valeurs culturelles, naturalistes et sensibles qui la font entrer dans une volonté de préservation qui dépasse, et parfois se confronte, à sa simple importance économique. La dernière tempête Klaus de Janvier 2009, a permis d’à la fois révéler et catalyser ses valeurs qui, face à un tel bouleversement, s’exacerbent. Aborder la patrimonialisation de cet objet forestier à part entière, partagé entre nature et culture, permet ainsi de questionner l’idée même de patrimoine naturel et le processus qui le sous-tend. La thèse s’appuie sur l’analyse d’une centaine d’entretiens semi-directifs effectués auprès de différents acteurs du massif (sphère forestière privée et publique, élus, collectivités territoriale, Parc Naturel Régional, milieu associatif) et menés selon une double échelle d’analyse (de l’échelle « massif » à l’analyse plus localisée de quatre terrains d’étude). / This thesis in Human Geography aims to identify and analyze the values which imply an heritage process through the words and actions of its actors. To associate a forest with values, to launch an heritage process does not mean only to set it as a protected area where the exceptional character of this area is acknowledged. This process cannot be reduced to official protection, preserving from human activities some elements considered as remarkable: more and more common areas and elements are equally owned by different social groups, specialists just as much as amateurs. With this regards, the forest of Landes de Gascogne constitutes a good example of heritage process of a common and ordinary forest, with nothing “remarkable” at first sight, at least according to the usual criteria of institutional natural heritage. This artificial forest has a production purpose and is privatized for its vast majority. Therefore, this forest has always been more or less pointed out for its intensive exploitation, questioning its ability to circulate values outside economic ones, and even the legitimacy of its status as a forest. Nevertheless, and however its production purpose is its first determination, this forest is also carrying cultural, natural and sensible values which generate a willingness of preservation going beyond, or even confronting the simple economic concern. The last storm in January 2009, Klaus, enabled to unveil and catalyze those valued, which, in front of such an event, became clearer. To consider the heritage process of this forest as a whole, shared between nature and culture, also allows pondering over the idea of natural heritage in itself and the process behind. This thesis has been written thanks to the analysis of a hundred of semi-structured interviews of different actors of the forest (private and public areas, elected representatives, local communities, Regional Natural Parc, associations) and realized according to a double-scale analysis (from the whole forest scale to the more localized analysis of four different field studies).