This study examines public housing authority employees' perceptions of readiness, climate and process of change and employee status. Sixty-six (66) survey participants were selected for this study utilizing convenience sampling. The survey participants were current public housing authority employees who underwent organizational change. The survey in this study, Organizational Change Questionnaire- Climate of Change, Processes and Readiness (OCQ-CPR), utilized a four-point continuum Likert scale. Frequency distribution, cross tabulations and the statistical test of chi-square were used to analyze the relationship between the variables. The findings of the study indicated that there was no statistical relationship between the variables.

No description available.

The research problem that this study addresses is two-fold. First, the persistance of poverty gives rise to a real world concern for improving the effectiveness of international development efforts. To address the link between the alleviation of poverty, adult education, and a grass-roots approach, this study focuses on planning within an organization that offers adult education programs overseas, specifically a nongovernmental organization (NGO). An understanding of the dynamics of planning in such an NGO will help in articulating more effective approaches to planning practice in international development. The second aspect of the research problem is that the relationship between the planning process and the planning context seems not to have been fully explored in the literature on adult education program planning. There is a need for a more complete set of analytical tools that captures the complexities of planning and sheds light on the relationship between the planning context and the planning process. The purpose of this dissertation is to address the main theoretical question raised by the research problem: How do nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) plan so as to maintain themselves and be effective given the pressures on them? This theoretical question was investigated through a case study method, specifically ethnography. Ethnographic fieldwork, which included seventeen months of participant observation, twenty-five interviews, and document analysis, was carried out at an NGO, refered to here by the pseudonym of "Global Faith." The conceptual framework developed in this dissertation builds on the negotiation approach to planning. The first part of the conceptual framework links two strands of research: leadership theory and negotiation theory. Through this juxtaposition, I was able to examine the process of planning in a new light - as the negotiation of meaning. The second part of the framework shows how a deeper understanding of the context of planning is accomplished by applying a subjectivist, multi- perspective approach to analyzing cultures in organizations. This approach - which incorporates the integration perspective, the differentiation perspective, and the fragmentation perspective was used to see Global Faith cultures in three different ways. These same ways of viewing culture at Global Faith were matched with the varying interpretations held by staff members in order to characterize the cultural contexts for specific episodes of planning involving the negotiation of meaning. The findings show that by including the negotiation of meaning in planning activities, Global Faith is able to motivate staff and deal effectively with confusing requirements, conflicting expectations, and diverse demands that they face in their interactions with CIDA, general public donors, the Board of Directors, and overseas partner organizations. There is a recursive relationship between planning processes involving the negotiation of meaning and Global Faith cultures whereby the cultures are both precursors and products of negotiation of meaning episodes.

Studien undersökte vilka ledarbeteenden och organisatoriska förutsättningar som upplevs vara viktiga för att ett ledarskap ska kunna skapa hälsa och effektivitet i en arbetsorganisation utifrån både ledare och medarbetarperspektiv. Metoden för studien bestod av gruppintervjuer. Deltagare var nio personal ledare, varav två kvinnor och tio medarbetare, varav tre kvinnor på en svensk tillverkningsindustri och underlaget bestod av fyra gruppintervjuer, varav två med personal ledare och två med medarbetare. Resultatet visade att ledarbeteenden som upplevdes viktiga för att skapa hälsa och effektivitet var tydlighet, regelbundna medarbetarkontakter, lyssnande och personalvård. Organisatoriska förutsättningar som ansågs viktiga var personalgruppens storlek och tid för medarbetarkontakter. Resultatet visade samstämmighet mellan ledarskapsperspektiv präglade av att visa stöd och omtanke och att ge medarbetarna möjlighet att arbeta självständigt.

This dissertation examines how people use information technologies to generate transparency in organizations. Transparency has long been considered a core feature of the contemporary digital workplace (Zuboff, 1988). Transparency is defined here as a functional affordance provided by information technologies which, once appropriated, contribute to solve three types of problems faced by organizations: mobilizing the workforce, pooling work artefacts among occupational communities, and reporting accountability. An inductive theory building case study of four similar high-growth ventures from the business and entertainment software industries was conducted. The findings indicate that appropriations of information technology compete with alternative practices to fulfill transparency functions and a set of coherent contextual conditions have been found to influence the type of appropriations that will emerge and be selected in a given organization. Appropriations of information technology also exhibit functional equivalence, as distinct appropriations of technology were observed to fulfill the same transparency function with the same level of adequacy. This research contributes to information systems and social informatics theory by synthesizing and extending previously disparate studies to develop a theoretical explanation of how information technology appropriations fulfill transparency functions within an organization. Because of the nature of the cases studied in this research, this research also has implications for researchers and practitioners interested in how information technology gets appropriated by high-growth ventures in the “creative” and “new media” industries. / Thesis (Ph.D, Management) -- Queen's University, 2010-09-01 21:11:13.187

Microcredit has been considered one of the most significant innovations in the field of development in the last thirty years. It provides collateral free financial resources to the poor worldwide. It plays an important role in poverty eradication, socio-economic development, livelihood diversification and women empowerment especially in the developing and under-developed nations. It has contributed positively to the natural resources management by forming social capital, creating alternate income and diversifying livelihoods of the resource dependent rural people. Natural resource management, in general, and fisheries resources management in particular, are currently undergoing a major paradigm shift. In recent years, the notion of government as the only decision-making authority has been replaced by multi-scale, polycentric governance, which recognizes that a large number of stakeholders in different institutional settings contribute to overall management of resources. Improving the management of natural or common pool resources and empowering local communities, community-based management has become a common strategy in the last two decades. Community-Based Organizations are grassroots institutions that involve rural communities in co-management. Several factors influence the functioning and sustainability of these CBOs which contribute to the management of common-pool resources in Bangladesh. To address the complexities of socio-cultural systems and sustainable natural resource management, managers, practitioners, and theoreticians widely rely on social learning. The evidence of social learning is apparent in collaborative participation and group actions where individuals meet, interact, share ideas, learn collectively and take collective decisions. They adjust the management approaches and change their perceptions according to their social learning in natural resources management. The purpose of the research was to assess the role of microcredit in improving rural livelihoods (mainly fishing households), identify the challenges faced by microcredit institutions, and to explore the process of organizations and obstacles involved in the sustainability of Community-Based Organizations developed by CBFM-2 project in Hakaluki haor area. It was intended to explore the evidence of social learning and capacity building efforts related to microcredit and CBFM-2 project intervention in the study area. The main objective of this research was: to assess the roles of microcredit in improving rural livelihoods with a focus on fishing households and institutional capacity-building. The secondary objectives were: (i) to understand the processes of organization and the challenges that Community Based Organizations (CBOs) face, and (ii) to explore the evidence of social learning pertaining to microcredit and involving CBOs under CBFM-2 project, other local institutions, and fisher households. A qualitative research approach was followed in this case which was supplemented by quantitative data. Several Participatory Rural Appraisal tools, such as interviews (households) by administering semi-structured questionnaires, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, in-depth case studies, and mini-workshops were used at different stages of the research to attain the objective of the study. Together with local communities and other relevant stakeholders the research purposively selected three CBOs and three microcredit women groups in three different villages of Hakaluki haor. The research findings revealed that microcredit played a significant role in socio-economic development of Hakaluki haor, especially household income increment, livelihood diversification, creation of self-employment, poverty reduction and women empowerment though it entrapped few households in vicious cycle of poverty. The research established that CBOs are instrumental and essential for community-based natural resources management through empowering the local communities, and NGOs are important for mobilizing local people, capacity building and providing legal services to the community. It was evident that CBOs faced challenges towards its sustainability due to limited resources and wetland policy changes by the government. The study also revealed the evidence of social learning through microcredit operation and project intervention which changed their perceptions and fisheries management practices. Reforming operational mechanism of microcredit, national wetland leasing policy and legitimating CBOs can remove the challenges of microcredit and help the CBOs to be sustainable. Future research is encouraged to reveal the other issues of microcredit and community-based organizations sustainability.

Microcredit has been considered one of the most significant innovations in the field of development in the last thirty years. It provides collateral free financial resources to the poor worldwide. It plays an important role in poverty eradication, socio-economic development, livelihood diversification and women empowerment especially in the developing and under-developed nations. It has contributed positively to the natural resources management by forming social capital, creating alternate income and diversifying livelihoods of the resource dependent rural people. Natural resource management, in general, and fisheries resources management in particular, are currently undergoing a major paradigm shift. In recent years, the notion of government as the only decision-making authority has been replaced by multi-scale, polycentric governance, which recognizes that a large number of stakeholders in different institutional settings contribute to overall management of resources. Improving the management of natural or common pool resources and empowering local communities, community-based management has become a common strategy in the last two decades. Community-Based Organizations are grassroots institutions that involve rural communities in co-management. Several factors influence the functioning and sustainability of these CBOs which contribute to the management of common-pool resources in Bangladesh. To address the complexities of socio-cultural systems and sustainable natural resource management, managers, practitioners, and theoreticians widely rely on social learning. The evidence of social learning is apparent in collaborative participation and group actions where individuals meet, interact, share ideas, learn collectively and take collective decisions. They adjust the management approaches and change their perceptions according to their social learning in natural resources management. The purpose of the research was to assess the role of microcredit in improving rural livelihoods (mainly fishing households), identify the challenges faced by microcredit institutions, and to explore the process of organizations and obstacles involved in the sustainability of Community-Based Organizations developed by CBFM-2 project in Hakaluki haor area. It was intended to explore the evidence of social learning and capacity building efforts related to microcredit and CBFM-2 project intervention in the study area. The main objective of this research was: to assess the roles of microcredit in improving rural livelihoods with a focus on fishing households and institutional capacity-building. The secondary objectives were: (i) to understand the processes of organization and the challenges that Community Based Organizations (CBOs) face, and (ii) to explore the evidence of social learning pertaining to microcredit and involving CBOs under CBFM-2 project, other local institutions, and fisher households. A qualitative research approach was followed in this case which was supplemented by quantitative data. Several Participatory Rural Appraisal tools, such as interviews (households) by administering semi-structured questionnaires, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, in-depth case studies, and mini-workshops were used at different stages of the research to attain the objective of the study. Together with local communities and other relevant stakeholders the research purposively selected three CBOs and three microcredit women groups in three different villages of Hakaluki haor. The research findings revealed that microcredit played a significant role in socio-economic development of Hakaluki haor, especially household income increment, livelihood diversification, creation of self-employment, poverty reduction and women empowerment though it entrapped few households in vicious cycle of poverty. The research established that CBOs are instrumental and essential for community-based natural resources management through empowering the local communities, and NGOs are important for mobilizing local people, capacity building and providing legal services to the community. It was evident that CBOs faced challenges towards its sustainability due to limited resources and wetland policy changes by the government. The study also revealed the evidence of social learning through microcredit operation and project intervention which changed their perceptions and fisheries management practices. Reforming operational mechanism of microcredit, national wetland leasing policy and legitimating CBOs can remove the challenges of microcredit and help the CBOs to be sustainable. Future research is encouraged to reveal the other issues of microcredit and community-based organizations sustainability.

No description available.

People make all sorts of judgements of their life experiences. Some include perceptions of fairness, often about negative events. One such event is organisational downsizing, personally experienced or observed. / Downsizing includes retrenchment, redundancy and redeployment. Its use has become a widespread practice in workplace change. Research into downsizing and fairness has shown that judgements of distributive, procedural and interactional fairness have significant effects on individuals and on the productivity of organisations. Most research into these matters originates in the United States private sector, and is predominantly positivist. Interpretive approaches may give a wider perspective on people's judgements. This study complements and extends the findings of the earlier positivist research. / Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 44 private and public sector individuals. Some of them had themselves been retrenched, made redundant or redeployed; others included their colleagues, managers and union officials. Interviewees were drawn from a bank and a supermarket in the private sector and a government business enterprise (GBE) and 6 government departments in the private sector. There were 25 public sector interviewees who participated with 18 from departments and seven from the GBE. / The results of the interviews give evidence about the importance of several different factors in people's judgements of their downsizing experiences and particularly suggest that a comprehensive management approach that addresses employees' whole of experience fairness judgements is more likely to achieve results that are beneficial to the organisation and the people involved in the downsizing, compared to approaches that refer to stereotyped processes or preconceived principles. The results can also inform employees and their representatives about what might be reasonable expectations of fair treatment at times of organisational change, and can inform policies relating to human resource management standards across government and major corporations. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2006.

While the importance of sound communication for achieving excellent research and development (R&D) performance is widely recognised, previous research has not identified which aspects of team communication are most important for effective project performance. The thesis examined dimensions of team communication, drawing upon a five factor team model of communication, in order to determine the key communication factors for effective R&D project team performance. The model comprised the following factors: supportive leadership; team boundary spanning; adaptive problem solving; team reflexivity and project clarity. (For complete abstract open document)