The fundamental sociological problem of social order finds a somewhat ”unorthodox” solution in the ethnomethodological program, the main responsibility of which is ascribed to Harold Garfinkel. The current thesis rests on the view that the program offers insights that have not been sufficiently recognized, and that it bears a message to sociology that has been somewhat lost. The study aims to investigate and uncover the ethnomethodological conception of social order in a comprehensible way. Comparisons are made to “formal analytical” perspectives, notably that advocated by Talcott Parsons. The result suggests that the ethnomethodological conception of order is closer related to intersubjectivity than to action theory, and that the ethnomethodological view completes rather than opposes that of formal analysis. The deeper ontological and epistemological implications of ethnomethodology are discussed, partly by invocation of the notion of radical reflexivity.

Previous research showed teamwork with diversity experts¡¦ members can deal with changing rapidly and complicated external environment in which organizations face. Coach can help individual to build knowledge and skill for career development. Previous research foused on individual coach. Teamwork is quite different from individual work, so individual coach should be revised for teamwork application. This study targets at 167 R&D teams from high-tech industry in Taiwan using SEM and regression to test ¡§Team Coaching Theory¡¨ posited by Hackman & Wageman and the moderating effect of Team Reflexivity. The results show: 1. Team coaching positively influences team performance processes and then ehance team effectiveness. 2. Team reflexivity will positively moderate the relationship between team coaching and team performance processes, which means the relationship between team coaching and team performance processes will be higher in teams when team reflexivity is higher than lower. 3. Team performance processes will mediate team coaching and team effectiveness. Team coaching fosters team performance processes and then team effectiveness. Reflexivity of whole team members¡¦ also enhance the effect of team coaching on team performance processes. The results are consistent with shared leadership. Training team members manage themselves to foster R&D team effectiveness. The results of this study will discuss the implications for academy and practice application.

This thesis analyzes the prevailing formats of writing in sociology or anthropology that are considered scientific. For whom are sociology and anthropology texts written, and who are the readers of these texts? How does this format of writing that constitutes a text as scientific influence the text-reader relationship? In discussing this, the legitimate ways of writing of sociology and anthropology are presented together with what scientificity brings. the reflexive critique that looks at sociology and anthropology with the very methods of these disciplines is explained in its main lines. within this debate, the importance of the question &quot / whom the texts produced in these sciences are intended for?&quot / is analyzed. This is followed by a discussion of the conditions that enabled the constitution of the conventional forms of expression in sciences. The concept of paradigm as proposed by Thomas Kuhn is used to explain the formation of these conditions.

How can we understand the innovativeness of firms or organizations in general, and how should we assess it in terms of nontechnological innovation? My paper deals with these two questions. The “ability” of companies to adapt to new circumstances, to create new products, processes and new knowledge, has been conceptualized in many approaches. Some of them simply define a list of “(critical) success factors” or “(key) performance indica-tors”, as tools for ranking and evaluation, without any theoretical reference. Others, like the resource-based or capability-based approach(es), work with theoretical references, but are still very weak in operationalizing of what they call “capability”. My paper gives a critical description of this situation and offers a new proposal to classify and to measure the “inclination” of organizations to innovate in all dimensions. This proposal roots in pragmatistic thinking as represented in the theory of reflexive modernization and in the pragmatist version of organizational learning theory. Empirically, it has been applied merely in case studies yet. A survey project is in preparation.

This study examines the ways in which frequency and reflexivity affect student engagement with the peer feedback process. I study the peer e-feedback sessions conducted via My Reviewers in a pilot model of Composition 2 at a large research university in the southeast in order to determine if an increased focus on the peer feedback activity might enhance the effectiveness of the process. Through textual analysis and survey results, I determine that an increased focus on electronic peer feedback along with an increase in frequency and reflexivity helps to minimize some common criticisms of the peer feedback process. In this pilot model, the instructor plays an increased role in the peer feedback process and students are also asked to create a detailed revision plan. These elements of the process help to address the criticism that students have difficulty addressing the validity of peer feedback and minimizes the likelihood that students will incorporate incorrect feedback into their revision plans (Ferris; Stanley). Additionally, students in this study demonstrate an increased understanding of the purpose of the feedback process through an increase in revision-oriented comments as they gain more experience with the activity.

This project explores how musical improvisational processes come into being through interacting discursive power relationships that are embodied and enacted through performance. By utilizing the concepts of framing and performativity I am able to show how discursive power constitutes the performance of improvisational music. To exemplify this theory, the project presents a case study examining a Grateful Dead cover band named Uncle John's Band that performs at Skipper's Smokehouse in Tampa, FL. Using an ethnographic methodology, the project articulates the dominant discursive power relationships that constitute Uncle John's Band's improvisational performances. The dominant discursive power relationships revolve around the lived philosophies and performance style of the Grateful Dead as embodied and communicated through performance by the members of Uncle John's Band. Dominant discursive power relationships also form among audience members as well as the staff at Skipper's Smokehouse. All of these power relationships constitute the performance of improvisational music. In a reflexive turn, the project also offers a re-articulation of ethnography through the tenets of improvisation. Finally, the project presents conclusions concerning the nature of researching improvisational music performance and some future directions for this study.

This thesis explores a dialogical approach – in relation to supervision, therapy and research. I have as supervisor inquired into my relationship with groups of supervisees who were training to become family therapists or systemic practitioners. Through my doctoral portfolio, I speak from within my practice and I show in some detail the micro processes in relational encounters which help dialogue to evolve. I also address grand narratives about what it means to be a human being, and show how perceiving a human being as dialogical has extensive and governing consequences for how we think about a person’s movements in the world, how we think about them as person, in relation to other people, and how we understand problems, and approach problem solving. My research has been a doing, an experiencing and a creation of knowing in a reflexive flow. My research philosophy, mode of approaching my practice as therapist and supervisor (and as a person in the world) has reflexively been created through my being in practice. I show how an embodied belief in fluidity and complexity, enables me as supervisor to contribute to a space in the context of supervision which welcomes the freedom of a kind of orientation which is open towards situated, emerging, novel and provisional understanding. By attending to here-and-now interactions, becoming answerable in the moment and by embracing intuition, ambiguity and relational compassion, we have been able to welcome risk-taking and improvisation. This mode of dialogical supervision demonstrates a willingness to spontaneously dive into the uniqueness of every new encounter and every new movement. I see this as the poetics of the dialogical meeting. I have experienced how this space has opened up quite unexpected aspects of the supervisees’ experiences and has served as an incitement for them to question different aspects of their relationship to life. This has reflexively created a certain spirit and atmosphere that has invited us all to be bolder in our sharing and exploration of our lives, practice and our ideas. This thesis makes a contribution concerning: how we can be with people in ways that opens up more understanding and creates a sense of belonging and liberation; challenging and transgressively exploring discursive boundaries which attempt to define and fix what research is, what therapy is, what supervision is, and welcomes the infinity of opportunities and possibilities life may offer us. Thus I suggest that it may become significant for the profession to review the usefulness and legitimacy of distinct categorization between therapy and supervision. Through my choice of genre I offer the reader a possibility to respond emotionally as well as intellectually to my writing. I believe the way I have chosen to re-present my research through a mix of genre and evocative texts not ‘frozen’ findings, permits and anticipates novel ways of going on in relation to research in a manner that I don’t believe have been described in this way before within the community of family therapy and systemic practice.

This doctoral portfolio is a collection of papers and pieces of creative writing arising out of therapeutic, supervisory and training conversations and in relation to a wide range of texts. I have wanted to find ways of writing ethically so as to avoid objectifying people and appropriating their words, their life stories. I find ways of writing in which the values and practices of a collaborative, dialogical and reflexive ways of being with people are echoed in the texts. I show how writing and reading are relational practices in that I speak with the participants in the texts as well as with the reader and also with other writers. To do this, I experiment with a variety of written forms and employ literary devices so as to speak from within a range of practice relationships, from within inner dialogue, with real and fictitious characters. Technically and ethically, I try to write in a way which not only captures the sound of talk but which also speaks with the reader who would be reading, and perhaps hearing these accounts of conversation. By sharing a rich level of detail from my polyvocal inner dialogue, I invite the reader into a unique and privileged alongside position as a participant-observer in my work. Inspirational research methodologies include: writing as a method of inquiry, reflexivity, autoethnography, performance ethnography and transgression interpreted by many areas of systemic theory and practice. To support this innovative work, I offer several theoretical and practical papers offering novel developments on systemic practice theory. I situate systemic practice as a research method and demonstrate many family resemblances between systemic inquiry and qualitative inquiry. I offer a reflexive model for systemic practice and practice research which I call Praction Research which regards therapy and research as political acts requiring an activist agenda. Linked to this I politicise ideas of reflexivity by introducing local and global reflexivity and create a political connection with a concept of theorethical choices in theory and ethics in practice research. I propose a new form of ethnography suited to systemic practice, Relational Ethnography in which I draw attention to reflexive relationships between writer and readers, between the voices of inner and outer dialogue in research texts.

This thesis researches how the consultant can participate in the creation of successful processes in organizations using multiple theoretical and practical traditions and a pragmatic reflexivity. The research shows how the consultant can do this using a heuristic model developed in the thesis called the consultancy room consisting of three dimensions: distinctions of position, distinctions of system, and distinctions of time. The thesis shows 6 different and distinct positions that the consultant can use in practice: the OD, systemic, solution-focused, appreciative, narrative and strategic position. To show their practical usefulness multiple examples of developing teams are described. The research shows that positions are firstly to be understood as theories that the consultant knows from experience and literature and brings to the organization and secondly the research also shows how such positions are created and coordinated with the customer before and during the consultancy process. The thesis further shows how the consultant can work with multiple distinctions of system. Three prototypical distinctions of system are introduced: the individual, the group, and the organization as part of the consultancy room to help the consultant increase his orientational abilities in practice. And a further distinction between the conversational and the linguistic system is made to help the consultant reflect in and on practice. The conversational system addresses the design of the process by reflecting with the customer about who should talk to whom in order to develop the situation. The linguistic system addresses how the system in focus is being talked about. The thesis shows how the different positions look at and give different possibilities for action in relation to the different distinctions of system. Finally the thesis shows how the consultant can work with multiple distinctions of time. Three prototypical distinctions of time are introduced: the moment, the meeting, and the process as part of the consultancy room to help the consultant navigate in practice. Again the different positions give different ideas of how to act in the moment and how to design meetings and longer processes. The research is done using the researchers own practice as data. A pragmatic research method is created and based in particular on the work of John Dewey (Dewey 1916 1938, Brinkmann 2006) and Gregory Bateson (Bateson 1972 1984)looking at similarities and differences between multiple examples from the researchers practice.

The present paper focuses on the problem of reflexivization in Lithuanian and English. The study is based on a corpus of 6718 instances of reflexive constructions in the novel “Sodybų Tuštėjimo Metas” by Jonas Avyžius and their equivalents in the English variant of the text translated by Olga Shartse. The aim of the paper is to describe the semantic patterns that can be expressed by reflexive constructions in Lithuanian and English, and to determine the basic similarities and differences in the employment of reflexivization in the two languages. The analysis is carried out by means of the descriptive method. The results show that both in Lithuanian and English the greatest number of reflexive constructions are used in their primary function, i.e. to mark the coreference of two semantic roles. In both the languages reflexives can be used to mark other meanings than that of semantic reflexivity, but Lithuanian reflexive constructions are in a position to express more meanings. The analysis of the data shows that, in contrast to Lithuanian, in English there is a strong preference for the use of unmarked reflexive constructions rather than for the marked ones in all the semantic patterns. The differences in the use of reflexive constructions in the two languages can be accounted for by the peculiarities of the morphological structure of the languages. In English the reflexive marker is a pronoun with a relatively independent syntactical status, which can be omitted if the context... [to full text]