Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore organizational identity as a potential process.   Design/Methodology/Approach: We applied a qualitative method and followed an inductive approach that was applied to a multiple-in-depth-case study for which we conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 members of two organizations, the Swedish consulting company REACH and the Swiss digital agency WONDROUS. Following a narrative approach, both for structuring the empirical findings, as well as conducting the analysis, we used over 16 hours of interviews to create company narratives and subsequently analyzed them in multiple steps in the fashion of a narrative analysis.   Findings: Based on our empirical findings and the empirical analysis, we developed a conceptualization, the Flux Model. We contribute to the existing body of literature by proposing that the Flux Model visualizes the dynamics of how organizational members socially construct organizational identity on the premise of their own (self-)perceptions. By presenting the different parts of the model and their multiple layers, the process of how organizational identity is continuously becoming is illustrated.   Research Limitations/Implications: The scope of our study is restricted to the two case companies in question. If our abstractions from the cases in form of the Flux Model help to better understand the process of organizing, managers become liberated to make deliberate choices about their organizations’ identities. For research this means an even tighter connection to individual psychology and a deepening of the perspective that organizational identity can not only be viewed as something companies have.   Originality/Value: Out of skepticism towards the usefulness of viewing organizational identity as a process, we applied a symbolic interpretivist perspective and allowed for the possibility that we might not find a process after all. The primary value of this study we believe to be found in the extensive presentation of empirical data, together with our narrative analysis and our conceptual contribution (the Flux Model).

This study explores trainee psychotherapists' experiences of double bind situations and inconsistency between explicit and implicit contexts of training. The epistemological foundations of this text are postmodern, social constructionist and ecosystemic. A review of the relevant literature is presented, which includes aspects such as explicit and implicit contexts, double bind and experiences of trainees in training. This is followed by an account of the qualitative research approach adopted, namely, discourse analysis. Themes that are extracted from the text of the transcribed interviews are assumed to reflect discourses in training and the broader societal contexts in which trainees find themselves. These discourses are seen to inform trainees' constructions of their experiences in training. The findings of the analysis are found to concur with the initial hypotheses of this dissertation, as well as with findings in the literature. Recommendations for future research are offered. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

This Social Constructionist study originated from the researcher’s exposure to a significant loss and her unanswered questions about other cultures’ experience of grief. Literature is scarce from a social constructionist framework that focuses on the cultural experiences on death and bereavement from a South African perspective. The researcher’s aim was to provide three culturally diverse South African women constructed as ‘bereaved’ the opportunity to tell their stories of the death of a loved one and their bereavement thereof. The three diverse cultures were Tswana, Islamic Muslim and Afrikaans. A qualitative research method was employed. Unstructured, in-depth interviews were conducted with each of the three participants and the method used to analyze the collected data was thematic content analysis. The study allowed rich and valuable information about death and bereavement from three culturally diverse women to emerge. The themes of ‘mourning procedures and practices’, ‘bereavement behaviour’ ‘socio-political context’ and ‘private and public display of grief’ were identified as valuable areas for clinical practice and future research. Lay people, schools and the work environment too, will gain a better understanding of cultural differences on death and bereavement. / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology)

Considering the high incidence of suicide in the South African context, the fact that suicide is considered an occupational hazard for psychologists, with more than half experiencing the suicide of a patient in their career and the dearth of post-suicide qualitative research among psychologists, the purpose of this study is to explore and describe the experience of psychologists after the suicide of their patient, and to develop guidelines as a framework of reference to assist psychologists in dealing with the suicide of their patient. In keeping with a social constructionist ontological and ecosystemic epistemological theoretical framework, data was collected by means of meaning-making conversations with six purposively selected psychologists, with a minimum of five years‟ experience and at least one year having passed after the suicide of their patient. The data was analysed independently by the researcher and an independent coder using Tesch‟s open and descriptive method. The present study found that, following the suicide of their patient, the participants were propelled into a myriad of acutely distressing emotions. They often described a suffocating sense of responsibility for the suicide and the lingering presence of their patient. The participants experienced feelings of guilt and self-doubt, often questioning their own professional competence. The post-suicide process was described as being both a personally and professionally isolating event, due to the sense of having to carry the burden of the suicide alone for ethical reasons and fear of social stigmatisation. The participants appeared to grapple with the paradoxical dance between their personal emotional realities and what they perceived to be “clinically” or “professionally” acceptable. Having gone through the traumatic experience of losing a patient to suicide, most of the participants eventually found new wisdom, which helped them become wounded healers. Based on these findings, post-vention guidelines with practical actions were developed to assist psychologists in dealing with the suicide of their patient. Recommendations are made with regard to suicidology research, suicide education and psychologists‟ practice. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

This study explores trainee psychotherapists' experiences of double bind situations and inconsistency between explicit and implicit contexts of training. The epistemological foundations of this text are postmodern, social constructionist and ecosystemic. A review of the relevant literature is presented, which includes aspects such as explicit and implicit contexts, double bind and experiences of trainees in training. This is followed by an account of the qualitative research approach adopted, namely, discourse analysis. Themes that are extracted from the text of the transcribed interviews are assumed to reflect discourses in training and the broader societal contexts in which trainees find themselves. These discourses are seen to inform trainees' constructions of their experiences in training. The findings of the analysis are found to concur with the initial hypotheses of this dissertation, as well as with findings in the literature. Recommendations for future research are offered. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

This Social Constructionist study originated from the researcher’s exposure to a significant loss and her unanswered questions about other cultures’ experience of grief. Literature is scarce from a social constructionist framework that focuses on the cultural experiences on death and bereavement from a South African perspective. The researcher’s aim was to provide three culturally diverse South African women constructed as ‘bereaved’ the opportunity to tell their stories of the death of a loved one and their bereavement thereof. The three diverse cultures were Tswana, Islamic Muslim and Afrikaans. A qualitative research method was employed. Unstructured, in-depth interviews were conducted with each of the three participants and the method used to analyze the collected data was thematic content analysis. The study allowed rich and valuable information about death and bereavement from three culturally diverse women to emerge. The themes of ‘mourning procedures and practices’, ‘bereavement behaviour’ ‘socio-political context’ and ‘private and public display of grief’ were identified as valuable areas for clinical practice and future research. Lay people, schools and the work environment too, will gain a better understanding of cultural differences on death and bereavement. / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology)

Considering the high incidence of suicide in the South African context, the fact that suicide is considered an occupational hazard for psychologists, with more than half experiencing the suicide of a patient in their career and the dearth of post-suicide qualitative research among psychologists, the purpose of this study is to explore and describe the experience of psychologists after the suicide of their patient, and to develop guidelines as a framework of reference to assist psychologists in dealing with the suicide of their patient. In keeping with a social constructionist ontological and ecosystemic epistemological theoretical framework, data was collected by means of meaning-making conversations with six purposively selected psychologists, with a minimum of five years‟ experience and at least one year having passed after the suicide of their patient. The data was analysed independently by the researcher and an independent coder using Tesch‟s open and descriptive method. The present study found that, following the suicide of their patient, the participants were propelled into a myriad of acutely distressing emotions. They often described a suffocating sense of responsibility for the suicide and the lingering presence of their patient. The participants experienced feelings of guilt and self-doubt, often questioning their own professional competence. The post-suicide process was described as being both a personally and professionally isolating event, due to the sense of having to carry the burden of the suicide alone for ethical reasons and fear of social stigmatisation. The participants appeared to grapple with the paradoxical dance between their personal emotional realities and what they perceived to be “clinically” or “professionally” acceptable. Having gone through the traumatic experience of losing a patient to suicide, most of the participants eventually found new wisdom, which helped them become wounded healers. Based on these findings, post-vention guidelines with practical actions were developed to assist psychologists in dealing with the suicide of their patient. Recommendations are made with regard to suicidology research, suicide education and psychologists‟ practice. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

In his thesis, Re-authoring life narratives of trauma survivors in KwaZulu-Natal: Spiritual perspective, the researcher investigates a holistic understanding of the effects of trauma on surviving individuals and communities historically affected by political violence in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Traditionally, the exploration of the impact of trauma on survivors in South Africa has been focused mainly on the bio-psycho-social aspects. The Bio-psycho-social approach recognises that trauma affects people on several dimensions- biological, social and psychological. However, Nevid (et al 2006:19) and Kaminer (et al 2012) acknowledge that these bio-psychosocial factors are incomplete for us to understand the effects of trauma on the individual and call for consideration of all possible pathways and account for multiple factors, influences, and interactions. Using qualitative and narrative approach, personal life narratives were listened to with the aim of looking in depth at the effects of traumatic experiences on the research participants, and specifically investigate whether, and how trauma affected their spirituality. The findings show that the research participants sustained psychological, moral and spiritual injuries during and after traumatic experiences. The results concur with Buckenham’s (1999:7-8) argument that trauma wreaks its toll in the life of a person emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, in our relationships with ourselves, others and with God. The study also established that regardless of religious affiliation, research participants turned to spiritual resources for answers, healing and recovery in traumatic situations. Therefore, the study recommends the integration of the spiritual perspective to reach a holistic model of understanding and treating traumatized individuals and communities. Although the study is localised in the South African context, the results have a much wider relevance in understanding the role of ‘posttraumatic spirituality’ in the re-authoring of life narratives shattered by trauma. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Practical Theology / unrestricted

The purpose of this research was to investigate how members of the Tshwane Metropolitan Police Department (TMPD) perceive crime prevention within the context of metropolitan policing. Based on the social constructionist paradigm, the researcher collected data relating to the crime-prevention phenomenon from all rank groups within the organisation by making use of various focus-group and in-depth interviews. Collected data were transcribed, coded, analysed and arranged into themes, subthemes and categories. This analysis indicated that various opinions as to how the crime-prevention phenomenon applies to a metropolitan police department (MPD) currently exist within the Tshwane Metropolitan Police Department. Various opinions were identified as to why a MPD was created, what the focal point of a MPD should be and what the current focal point of the TMPD is. Participants had different views on how a MPD should participate in functions like road-traffic and by-law policing, and how these functions contribute to crime prevention. Crime prevention proved to be an ambiguous term indeed, as no common understanding of this complicated phenomenon could have been identified amongst participants. It seemed that participants were not familiar with the crime-prevention capabilities of the organisation as they advocated a comprehensive participation in crime-prevention models like situational crime prevention, social crime prevention, crime prevention through environmental design, and crime prevention through effective criminal justice, while the organisation can actually participate in these crime-prevention models only to a very limited extent. The lack of a central philosophy or strategy that describes how the TMPD should conduct its business became evident during the study, and resulted in an organisation with no uniform understanding of crime prevention. Consequently, crime prevention means different things to different members of the TMPD. / Police Practice / M. Tech. (Policing)

The diploma thesis "Media terrorism via bacteria E.coli" puts the so-called cucumber affair from Summer 2011 into wider context and aims to discover the main attributes of contemporary risks and define the way they are presented in the media. Misguiding media releases and the inability to identify the source of the bloody diarrhea outbreak in Germany caused by E.coli bacteria have collectively had a significant impact on consumer behavior and economic stability on a global level. Most people are dependent on government and expert authorities due to the fact that they cannot recognize what represents a realistic threat and what serves as a basis for media sensation. This is why this thesis studies the social constructionist theory, basic media routines and practices as well as theoretical concepts that support the production of pseudo-events. A content analysis of selected Czech dailies and weeklies was executed in order to enable a comparison of the language that has been common for all "pandemics" in the 21st century.