On the 8th of January 2005, two deep technical cave divers entered Bushman’s Hole, a water filled cave system in the Northern Cape in South Africa. One did not return, the other, fighting the elements for over 12 hours, narrated the event the very next day. This exploration into the narratives of a technical cave diver, is an interpretive journey into the various constructions informing the process of making sense of the death of a fellow dive partner. Exploration of the unknown within the wombs of the earth uncompromisingly challenges society’s dominant views on death and the safekeeping imperative. This exploration of the culture within death and survival in water filled cave systems is situated within the narrative ontology. Subsequently this exploration is aimed at continuously integrating the historical and cultural messages within this dangerous pastime in attempt to find meaning within the narratives of one such individual who ventured into this darkness. Ultimately this exploration is aimed at understanding narratives of sense making employed by a technical cave diver after the loss of a fellow diver amidst the passion that summoned them to explore the darkness within water filled cave systems; a pastime that has been labelled by some as the most dangerous sporting pursuit available to humankind. The journey starts with a literature exploration on death, moving through various researched understandings of the bereavement experience. From there it continues into the nature of interpretive methodology, with an in-depth focus on the historical and cultural situated nature of the narratives we employ in making sense of our world. This qualitative approach is based on the subjective experienced and interpreted meaning that I discovered while moving through the narrated text, hence this journey is also reflective of the co-construction of meaning that implicitly takes place between individuals when making sense of their own experiences. As the receiver of this narrative exploration, you too will find meaning within this journey, meaning co-constructed with the multitude of narratives and experiences that have historically and culturally entered your interpretive process. Implicit within this exploration is the unique nature of the death and bereavement experience within the specific context of deep technical cave diving. This journey places the emphasis on the uniqueness of the bereavement experience, and ultimately challenges the objective approach to dealing with bereavement as a psychologist. Copyright / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Psychology / Unrestricted

Covid-19-pandemin påminner oss om att vi lever i en föränderlig värld, en enhet som verkar för att ge invånarna ett gott liv och som var dag arbetar nära pandemin är Serviceresor på Region Kronoberg. Något som är av intresse i denna uppsats är hur chefers beslutsfattande ser ut under en så unik situation. Det är på detta vis vår studie skiljer sig eftersom vi undersöker en krissituation som tidigare inte existerat och önskar därmed sammanfläta tidigare teori med nyfunna erfarenheter genom intervjuer vid enheten Serviceresor. Vårt arbete syftar till att få en ökad förståelse för hur beslutsfattande och meningsskapande i chefsposition ser ut. Så vi ställer oss frågan, hur ter sig beslutsfattande under Covid-19-pandemin? Utifrån tolkning av empiriskt material faller slutsats ut i att det formella ansvar en chef bär är densamma. Nya typer av problem en krissituation för med sig gör beslutsprocessen mer detaljorienterad där beslut kretsar kring införande av lämpliga medel. För effektiv hantering eftersträvas en större analytisk förmåga av beslutsfattaren, men också mod att våga fatta beslut. En komplex struktur underlättar beslutsfattarens uppgift genom att vägar för kunskapsdelande redan är etablerade och ett gott samarbete genom samordning och kommunikation skapar en känsla av kontroll. Beslutsfattandet blir reaktivt och en snabb beslutsprocess möjliggör ett flexibelt handlande där mening kan skapas i takt med en föränderlig värld.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

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)

Les politiques de régulation menées en France ces dernières années conduisent l’hôpital à des transformations en profondeur pour améliorer sa performance. Les individus et les groupes doivent s'organiser pour atteindre des objectifs en commun. Disposer d’un système d’information décisionnel (SID) approprié pour mieux décider devient plus que jamais un enjeu majeur. L’appui des processus de décision de gestion est rendu possible par l’utilisation d’outils et de procédures d’aide à la décision assurant un partage et une diffusion plus importante de l’information. La compréhension de ces mécanismes appuie la thèse que l’appropriation de tels dispositifs n’est possible que par la prise en compte d’un triptyque formé de trois dimensions : la conception, l’usage et le sens. Pour illustrer ce modèle d'analyse, une étude d’un cas unique est réalisée au sein d’un hôpital pendant quatre années, et porte sur l'analyse des mécanismes d'appropriation du SID pendant la transformation de l’organisation engagée dans l’établissement. Trois résultats principaux se dégagent. Concernant l'usage, l’élargissement des parties prenantes des décisions aux pôles cliniques montre à la fois l'effet de la structure organisationnelle sur les besoins en information décisionnelle et la difficulté pour les concepteurs à gérer la pluralité des usages. Concernant la conception, l'étude met en lumière le rôle capital d’un prescripteur bien identifié, l’observatoire médico-économique, qui assigne les objectifs de création et garantie l'équilibre entre les prescriptions et les stratégies individuelles de l'ensemble des acteurs inclus dans le projet de transformation. Enfin, le résultat le plus marquant concerne le double effet de la variable « création de sens » sur les usages : effet direct à travers l'engagement des décideurs des pôles dans l’élaboration du plan stratégique de l’hôpital et indirect via le processus de conception du système coopératif d’aide à la décision. / Alongside increasing regulatory requirements in France, hospitals are conducting in-depth transformation programs in order to improve their performance. Groups and individuals need to organize themselves to achieve common goals and shared objectives. With this respect, having the right information systems to manage and steer performance has become, more than ever before, a major issue. By enabling wider information sharing and dissemination, dedicated tools and procedures are allowing hospitals making the right decisions at the right time. However, the key to an effective usage and adoption of those systems lies in a global approach that encapsulates three core dimensions: the design, the usage and the meaning. To illustrate this model, a study has been carried on a single case in a hospital for four years, focusing on the analysis of the adoption mechanisms during the transformation program conducted in the organization. Three major conclusions can be drawn. First of all, focusing on usage, the expansion of the stakeholders involved in decision-making to the clinical centers demonstrates both the impact of the organizational structure on the information needs and the challenge for designers to manage the diversity of the usage styles. About design, the study highlights the crucial role of a well-identified prescriber, the medico-economic observatory, which assigns the creation targets and ensures the balance between the requirements and the individual strategies of all actors involved in the transformation project. Finally, the most striking outcome affects the dual impact of the sense-making variable on usages: direct impact through leveraged engagement of the clinical centers directors to the strategic agenda, and indirect impact through the design process of the collaborative decision-making system itself.

Denna uppsats utgångspunkt är att undersöka intranätets möjliga påverkan på anställdas identitetsskapande där syftet är att undersöka den roll intranätet har i form av vidmakthållande och/eller upprättande av organisationsidentiteten. Detta görs genom att studera hur innehållet på intranätet genom olika kommunikationsaktiviteter och tolkningsprocesser medarbetare emellan bidrar till formningen av identiteten inom organisationen. Genom att betrakta organisationsidentitet som ett kommunikationsfenomen appliceras ett kommunikationsperspektiv på organisationer där CCO-perspektivet, genom konceptet om metakonversationer, utgör det centrala teoretiska ramverket. För denna undersökning tillämpas kvalitativa metoder. Detta görs med empiriunderlag från en fallorganisation, Försäkringskassan, där den huvudsakliga datainsamlingen består av fokusgruppsdiskussioner med medarbetare på handläggarnivå där två olika grupper undersöks. Resultaten har analyserats utifrån underliggande, kognitiva koncept och funnit att grupperna genom att agera utifrån olika synsätt på sin organisationsidentitet också väljer att ta del av olika typer av innehåll från organisationens intranät, vilket i sin tur avgör vilken roll intranätet kan anses fylla. / This thesis intends to investigate an intranet's possible impact on employee identity creation, where the aim is to study the role of the intranet in the maintenance and/or establishment of organizational identity. This is carried out by studying how published content on the intranet through various communication activities and processes of interpretation contributes to the formation of the employees’ identity within the organization. By considering organizational identity as a communication phenomenon, a communication perspective is applied to organizations where the CCO-perspective, through the concept of meta-conversations, has come to form the central theoretical framework. Qualitative methods are used for this study. The empirical findings are gathered from a case organization, Försäkringskassan, and consist of focus group discussions with administrative officials from two different groups. The results have been analyzed based on underlying cognitive concepts and indicate that the groups act based on different perceptions of their organizational identity, which have impact on what type of content they choose to take part in, something that further determines the role that the intranet can be considered to fill.

La question de la qualité des programmes de télévision est une problématique récurrente tant pour les producteurs de contenu que pour le législateur, qui en a confié le contrôle dans la loi a une institution publique, le CSA. Cependant, la notion même de qualité dans ce contexte est ambiguë, et les outils permettant de l’évaluer sont souvent réduits à la vérification du respect d’obligations contractuelles avec les diffuseurs de contenus. Le seul outil universellement utilisé reste la mesure d’audience, souvent remise en cause depuis sa première utilisation en France dans les années 80. Le téléspectateur, principal intéressé de cette démarche qualité, n’est donc considéré que dans son nombre par cette démarche statistique. Cette étude propose de changer de paradigme pour placer le téléspectateur au cœur de l’évaluation des produits audiovisuels. A partir d’une perspective aux confluents de l’énaction de Francisco Varela et de la méthode de conception relativisée de Mioara Mugur-Schächter, l’étude de l’expérience émotionnelle apporte un regard nouveau et original sur la conception de spectateur dans un cadre d’évaluation des programmes. En s’intéressant a la façon dont le téléspectateur guide sa propre perception en fonction de son histoire personnelle, de sa façon d’interpréter son environnement et de l’influence des émotions dans la construction de sa relation à l’audiovisuel, les travaux menés permettent de replacer le téléspectateur comme acteur de l’évaluation. Les entretiens réalisés démontrent ainsi l’individualité de chaque spectateur dans son approche de l’audiovisuel et la construction de critères d’évaluations qui lui sont propres, mais permettant de définir un protocole a multiples niveaux utilisable comme indicateur de la qualité de la relation à l’audiovisuel dans un contexte plus large. / The quality of television programs is a running problem for the content producers as well as the legislator in France, whom gave monitoring in the law to a public institution, the CSA. However, the very concept of quality in that context is ambiguous, and tools allowing oversight are often reduiced to the verification of owed legal duties with the content providers. The only tool universally used is the audience rating, yet often challenged since its first usage in France in the 1980s. The viewer, having a leading interest in this quality process, is only considered in its numbers by such a statistic approch. This study proposes to initiate a paradigm shift in order to place the viewer in the heart of the audiovisual product’s evaluation. Around the theories of enaction by Francisco Varela and the method of relativized conceptualization of Mioara Mugur-Schachter, the study of the emotionnal experience casts a new and original light on the conception of the viewer in a program evaluation setup. By focusing on the way the viewer guides its own perception through its personal history, its manner to interpret its environment and the influence of emotion in the construction of its relation to audiovisual products, the work exposed in this dissertation allows to place the viewer as an actor of the evaluation. The interviews carried out proove the individuality of each viewer in its personnal approach of audiovisual and the construction of criterias of its own, yet allows to define a multi-layered protocol usable as an indicator of the relation’s quality to audiovisual content in a broader context.

Redes eletrônicas e necessidades informacionais, integradas para evidenciar comportamento de busca e uso da informação e compreender o papel dessa tecnologia no ambiente universitário, são os objetivos desta tese. Dividida em três partes, enfoca primeiro o plano metodológico. A seguir, dois estudos de revisão fundamentam o trabalho: (1) rastreando a evolução de redes eletrônicas internacional e nacionalmente para sistematizar a matéria; (2) evidenciando pontos tradicionais de estudos de necessidades de informação para alcançar aqueles centrados no usuário. Na terceira parte apresenta pesquisa peculiar, em ambiente da USP cujo Instituto de Física constitui o universo de observação. Por meio do correio eletrônico é perscrutada a conduta de busca e uso da informação de 87 usuários da rede local do IFUSP, no período outubro / novembro de 1994. A abordagem metodológica utilizada é adaptada do Sense-Making de Brenda Dervin, uma abordagem alternativa ou da percepção, que tem o usuário como objeto de pesquisa. Submetidos a três tipos de análise, os resultados obtidos assim se configuram: (a) utilização das redes: tempo de experiência, freqüência, propósitos, barreiras e dificuldades, treinamentos; (b) busca e uso de informação: contexto de uso, natureza e foco das necessidades de informação, estratégias empregadas para solucionar problemas, esforço dependido para localizar respostas as necessidades, expectativa de uso da informação, recursos informacionais utilizados, completeza e satisfação com as respostas obtidas e fontes efetivas de auxílio e (c) necessidades de informação não solucionadas: contexto de uso, natureza e foco das necessidades, expectativa de uso e estratégias para solução. Ponto significativo da pesquisa foi à categorização de usuários em 4 grupos, conforme as etapas gradativas do seu desempenho no uso das redes: fase 1 descobrindo a existência das redes eletrônicas e seus benefícios; fase 2 - já utilizando as três funções básicas da rede (correio eletrônico, ftp e telnet), porém de modo restrito, apenas usufruindo mais agilmente os recursos computacionais locais; fase 3 - buscas de solução a questões imediatistas, pontuais e de caráter variado; fase 4 - uso denotando experiência, segurança nas várias funções das RE. Dessa categorização e pelas VÍ solução a questões imediatistas, pontuais e de caráter variado; fase 4 - uso denotando experiência, segurança nas várias funções das RE. \"Dessa categorização e pelas freqüências observadas em cada fase, infere-se que as redes eletrônicas têm sido utilizadas mais como um instrumento de comunicação do que real fonte de informação. Similaridades nos procedimentos de busca e uso da informação entre os grupos estudados contribuíram também para delinear o perfil de necessidades informacionais de comunidade acadêmica que utiliza redes eletrônicas. Para otimizar o uso das RE, sugere-se o desenvolvimento de estudos específicos das necessidades dos usuários; serviços pertinentes a essas necessidades; programas de capacitação de profissionais intermediários entre serviços e usuários finais, de formação em serviços e treinamento de usuários. / Electronic Networks and Information Needs are integrated in order to search information seeking behavior of the academic community and to understand the impact of this technology in the university activities. Those are the issues of this dissertation, which is presented in 3 parts. First - the methodology. Second - review studies which contain the fundamentation of this work: (1) electronic networking evolution; and (b) traditional versus oriented approach to study the user needs. Third - information seeking behavior research of the electronic networking users at the Physics Institute of the University of São Paulo based in Brenda Dervin\'s Sense-Making Approach. The electronic mail was used in order to get information from 87 users of IFUSP local network. The results were submitted to three types of analysis: (a) use of the electronic network: amount of experience, frequency and purpose of use, barriers and difficulties, amount of training and context of use; (b) search and use of information: nature and entity focus, strategy used, amount of effort, resource used, user expectation and actual uses, completeness of the answers obtained, usefulness of the answers, sources that effectível y helped to find the information; (c) unsolved information needs: failure, analysis of user\'s problems when their information needs remained unsolved was performed. Users were classified in 4 groups, according their performance in networking: (1) those in discovering electronic networks benefits stage; (2) those using basic functions (email, ftp and telnet) but only locally; (3) those seeking for solutions or immediate issues; (4) expert users. From this characterization and due to the user\'s frequencies in each of these stages, an inference of IFUSP net is done: most users are just at the communication stage, not using networks as an information source. Similarities in the information seeking behavior of those IFUSPnet users contribute to outline the community user needs characterization. As suggestions in order to improve the electronic networks use, it should develop specific studies of user needs, offer users competence program and professional in service training.