Nous nous intéresserons dans cette étude au lien entre la décroissance — mouvement pluriforme qui tire ses racines de l’écologie radicale — et cinq romans de fantasy contemporains : The Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkien 1954-55), The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin 1969), His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman 1995-2000), Enchantment (Orson Scott Card 1999) et Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling 1997-2007). Nous nous concentrerons sur ce qui nous semble être l’essence de la décroissance, à savoir, d’une part, le refus de considérer la surenchère comme une solution aux problèmes ou l’accumulation comme seule forme de bonheur, et, d’autre part, la diminution volontaire comme moyen d’améliorer la condition humaine.Plus précisément, nous étudierons la diminution de pouvoir, d’autorité et de savoir. Nous nous intéresserons à la représentation de ces trois concepts au travers des procédés narratifs et stylistiques, ainsi que des différentes icônes et figures qui les incarnent, et nous étudierons la façon dont ils mettent en scène une tension constante entre croissance et décroissance. Dans cette optique, le rôle du narrateur et du lecteur dans la création du monde fantastique aura une importance particulière, car il est le cœur même de l’interaction fertile entre savoir et autorité, qui reflète l’accession du protagoniste au pouvoir. C’est la spécificité du traitement de ces concepts par les outils propres à la fantasy et à la science fiction que nous nous attacherons à mettre en lumière. / This study will focus on the relation between degrowth — a multifaceted movement which takes its roots in deep ecology — and five fantasy novels, The Lord of the Rings (J. R.R. Tolkien 1954-55), The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin 1969), His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman 1995-2000), Enchantment (Orson Scott Card 1999) et Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling 1997-2007). The focus will be on the essence of degrowth, viz., on the one hand, a denial of escalation as a solution and of hoarding as the only form of happiness,and on the other hand, a willing diminishing as a means to improve human condition. More specifically, it is the decrease in power, authority and knowledge that will be studied. The emphasis will be on the representation of these three notions through narrative and stylistic devices, as well as on the various icons and figures embodying them, in order to show the way they set up a constant tension between growth and degrowth. To that effect, the role of both narrator and reader in the creation of the fantastic world will be given due consideration, for it is at the very heart of the fruitful interaction between knowledge and authority, which reflects the protagonist’s rise to power. Thus, the specificity of the fantasy and science fiction approach to these notions will be highlighted.

The status of persons placing public contracts in specific sectors Abstract The topic of the thesis is the position of the utilities contracting authority. Although the new regulation, ie Act No. 134/2016 Coll., On Public Procurement, as amended (the "Act") does not explicitly include the term "utilities contracting authority", the concept of public procurement regarding utilities has remained de facto preserved. To emphasize not only this but also some other vital facts, the thesis compares the contemporary legislation with the previous legal regulation of the matter. At the same time, the thesis attempts to take a comprehensive approach to the area of public sector (utilities) procurement and its specifics, in particular through comparisons of legislation affecting the award of utilities public procurement and oteher public procurement in general. In the first part of the thesis I define concepts that are fundamental to the subject of this thesis, ie terms such as "contracting authority", "public contract", "dominant influence", "special or exclusive rights"or "relevant activity. Other parts of the thesis are devoted mainly to utilitis specifics and "reliefs". Gradually, I first draw attention to the obligation of the contracting authority to award only an above the treshold utilities public procurement...

African American men between the ages of 18-35 years are increasingly likely to die during arrests by police under the purview of procedural practices. Using procedural justice and critical race theory as the foundation, the purpose of this correlational study was to evaluate the statistical relationship between procedural justice, consent to police authority, and certain demographic characteristics including socioeconomic status and age in a large Metropolitan area in the southern United States. Survey data utilizing the Procedural Justice Inventory and Willingness to Submit to Police Authority Survey were collected from African American adult males (n = 69) and analyzed using least-squares regression. Regression analyses revealed a significant relationship between procedural justice and consent to police authority (p < .05). In addition, socioeconomic status and age did not affect the relationship between procedural justice and consent to police authority (p < .05). Implementation of recommendations for training may provide police practitioners with the basis to develop training programs to affect behavioral outcomes of police. Following these recommendations may change the systemic relationship between the community and police. The findings of this study may also serve African American males by allowing them to take an introspective look at how they may react in certain statutory situations and taking positive actions as opposed to being reactive; thereby, possibly mitigating deaths during police interaction. The implications for positive social change afford community practitioners an opportunity to develop community programs that support individuals and communities to change systemic practices that foster procedural injustice.

Using national data from the Survey of the Status of Social Studies (S4), this study examined the associations between teacher-level and school-level factors as well as testing policy, and the self-reported levels of authority and control over key classroom tasks among secondary school social studies teachers in the context of high-stakes accountability. This research sought to identify the importance of teacher authority in the classroom and how 6-12 social studies educators' professional authority is associated with teachers' professional characteristics (their degree background, teaching experience, and licensure paths), school-related factors (school types, school context, school poverty levels, and minority enrollment levels), and state testing policy. A conceptual framework was developed to guide the selection of specific predictor and control variables and to examine the three theoretically based models through hierarchical multiple regression analysis techniques. The analytic sample included grades 6-12 social studies teachers (N=6,703). Key findings from this study indicated that, as hypothesized, teacher-level characteristics significantly predicted secondary social studies teachers' classroom authority. Self-reported levels of teacher authority were maldistributed across the types of school, school context, school poverty levels, and minority enrollment levels. Greater minority and low-income student enrollments were associated with less authority and control in the classroom. Also, state testing policy significantly predicted social studies teacher authority. Specifically, middle and junior high school teachers who gave state mandated social studies tests reported significantly lower levels of authority and control than those who did not. On the other hand, high school teachers who gave state mandated social studies tests reported significantly higher levels of authority and control than those who did not. Also, teachers who believed that state test results impacted their job security reported lower levels of authority and control than those who did not feel such pressure.

This study used a theoretical framework to explore the leadership of three schoolbased instructional technology coaches (ITCs). The researcher employed typical qualitative fieldwork methods by compiling observation notes, interview transcripts, and archival documents for data analysis. This research and dissertation were also placed in context with the tenets of diffusion research. The collected evidence was analyzed with a theory that proposes five sources of authority for leadership: bureaucratic, psychological, technical rational, professional, and moral. The study presents four major findings: First, ITCs do not use bureaucratic or moral sources of authority for leadership. Second, the coaches are aware of and use technical rational and professional sources of authority. Third, the participants may use some of the characteristics of psychological sources of authority for leadership. Finally, this study verifies that all five theoretical sources of authority are discernible in the participants' school district. The author recommends that educators combine their respective sources of authority in diffusion of innovation. Schools should recognize and use in combination their administrators’ bureaucratic, coaches’ technical rational, and teachers’ professional sources of authority for leadership. This study suggests future research in applying the theoretical framework: for tests of the consequences of each source of authority for leadership; to the use of diffusion; for leadership in the diffusion of professional learning communities; to analyze the 2014 Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards for school leaders.

Although water is considered a renewable resource, there is only a fixed amount of water available. No additional water can be made, and we cannot easily control how fast water is recycled or in what form it will appear and where. With expected growth in the world’s population and economy, the same amount of water must supply more needs. Taking into account climate change projections and water-related environmental stresses, even less water might be available for human uses. People will need to decide how to serve a multitude of water needs. This dissertation uses the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s (SNWA) Groundwater Development Project to investigate how water policy designs handle the challenges of meeting urban and rural as well as human and ecological water needs when allocating scarce water supplies. The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) plans to build a pipeline to transfer groundwater from five rural basins in northeastern Nevada 300 miles south to the Las Vegas metropolitan area in Southern Nevada. SNWA has asked the Nevada State Engineer to approve its water right applications to develop and use groundwater from these rural basins. One of the basins, Snake Valley, straddles the border between Nevada and Utah. An interstate agreement allocating the groundwater between the two states is required before the State Engineer can approve water rights that would be diverted from Snake Valley. We found that policy debates and people’s rationales for how water should be allocated revolved around disagreements over beneficial use. In addition, water agreements need to be designed so that the risks from hydrologic uncertainties and impacts from other users are also apportioned clearly and equitably. Policy designs are purposefully crafted and have enormous impact, yet analysis of the actual contents of policies and their societal impacts has not received adequate attention within the policy sciences. The significance of this research is that it focuses on the foundational principles and rules for the allocation of scarce water resources that must necessarily balance urban and rural interests as well as human and environmental needs.

No description available.

This dissertation profiles the children's television industry in Australia; examines the relationship between government cultural policy objectives and television industry production practices; and explores the complexities of regulating and producing cultural content for child audiences. The research conducted between 1997 and 2002 confirms that children's television is a highly competitive business dependent on government regulatory mechanisms and support for its existence. For example, the Australian Broadcasting Authority's retaining of mandatory program standards for children's programs to date, is evidence of the government's continued recognition of the conflict between broadcasters' commercial imperatives and the public-interest. As a consequence, the industry is on the one hand insistent on the government continuing to play a role in ensuring and sustaining CTV - however, on the other hand, CTV producers resent the restrictions on creativity and innovation they believe result from the use of regulatory instruments such as the Children's Television Standards (CTS). In fact, as this dissertation details, the ABA's intended policy outcomes are inevitably coupled with unintended outcomes and little new or innovative policy development has occurred. The dissertation begins with an investigation into the social, cultural and ideological construction of childhood within an historical and institutional context. I do this in order to explore how children have been defined, constructed and managed as a cultural group and television audience. From this investigation, I then map the development of children television policy and provide examples of how 'the child' is a consistent and controversial site of tension within policy debate. I then introduce and analyse a selection of established, establishing and aspiring CTV production companies and producers. Drawing on interviews conducted, production companies profiled and policy documents analysed, I conclude by identit~'ing ten key issues that have impacted, and continue to impact, on the production of children's television programming in Australia. In addressing issues of industry development, the question this dissertation confronts is not whether to continue to regulate or not, but rather, how best to regulate. That is, it explores the complexities of supporting, sustaining and developing the CTV industry in ways which also allows innovative and creative programming. This exploration is done within the context of a broadcasting industry currently in transition from analogue to digital. As communications and broadcasting technologies converge, instruments of regulation - such as quotas designed around the characteristics of analogue systems of broadcasting - are being compromised. The ways in which children use television, and the ways in which the CTV producers create content, are being transformed. The ten key issues identified in this dissertation, I propose, are crucial to industry development and policy debate about the future of children's television in Australia. In integrating the study of policy with the study of production, I have given prominence to the opinions and experiences of those working in the industry. In doing so, this dissertation contributes to the growing body of work in Australia which incorporates industry with cultural analysis, and which includes the voices of the content providers.

This thesis uses institutional ethnography to explore the text-based regulatory framework of the Australian Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector. Training Packages are national competency standards used to assess local workplace practice. The Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF) is a national compliance framework used to audit local learning and assessment practice. These texts operate in a ‘symbiotic relationship’ to achieve a policy goal of national consistency. The researcher explicates the social relations of VET starting from her disquiet as a practitioner. The thesis argues that Training Packages and the AQTF socially organise the content and delivery of local learning and assessment activities. VET practitioners struggle to use these texts to support good practice, and their hidden work maintains an unstable VET system. Yet the extralocal mode of ruling offers no room to challenge VET policy. The thesis explicates three themes. Interview data is used to explore the contrast between the institutional language of Training Packages and the vernacular of workplaces in which these texts are activated. Many practitioners and participants simply do not understand Training Package competency standards. Using these texts to judge employee performance shifts the policing of workplace practice from local sites to external VET authorities. A second theme emerges as the analysis explores why VET practitioners use this excluding language in their work with participants. Interview data reveals that local training organisations achieve different readings as they engage with ruling VET texts. Some organisations use the national texts as broad frameworks, allowing practitioners to create spaces for meaningful learning. Other organisations adopt a narrow and rule-bound reading of national texts, displacing practitioners’ authority over their own practice. A third theme is explored through examination of a sequence of VET texts. The review and redevelopment of the mandatory qualifications for VET practitioners identified the language of the competency standards as a significant accessibility issue. These concerns were reshaped and subsumed in an official response that established the use of this language as a compulsory assessable requirement and a language and literacy benchmark. The thesis presents a new understanding of VET as a regulatory framework established through multiple levels of ruling texts that connect local sites to national government agendas. While some individual practitioners are able to navigate through this system, there is an urgent need for practitioners as a profession to challenge national hegemony.

The focus of this doctoral research study is making the most what a person knows and can do, as an outcome from their lifelong learning, so as to better contribute to organisational achievement. This has been motivated by a perceived gap in the extensive literature linking knowledge with organisational achievement. Whereas there is a rich body of literature addressing the meta-philosophies giving rise to the emergence of learning organisations there is, as yet, scant attention paid to the detail of planning and implementing action which would reveal individual/organisational opportunities of mutual advantage and motivate, and sustain, participation at the day-to-day level of the individual. It is in this space that this dissertation seeks to contribute by offering a mechanism for bringing the, hindsight informed, response “but that’s obvious” into the abiding explicit realm at the level of the individual. In moving beyond the obvious which is prone to be overlooked, the emphasis on “better” in the introductory sentence, is very deliberately made and has a link to awakening latent individual, and hence organisational, capabilities that would otherwise languish. The evolved LCM Model – a purposeful integration valuing the outcomes from lifelong learning (the L) with nurturing a culture supporting this outcome (the C) and with responsiveness to potentially diverse motivations (the M) – is a reflective device for bringing otherwise tacit, and latent, logic into the explicit realm of action. In the course of the development of the model, a number of supplementary models included in this dissertation have evolved from the research. They form a suite of devices which inform action and lead to making the most of what an individual knows and can do within the formal requirements of a job and within the informal influences of a frequently invisible community of practice. The initial inquiry drew upon the views and experiences of water industry engineering personnel and training facilitators associated with the contract cleaning and waste management industries. However, the major research occurred as an Emergency Management Australia (EMA) project with the Country Fire Authority (CFA) as the host organisation. This EMA/CFA research project explored the influence of making the most of what a CFA volunteer knows and can do upon retention of that volunteer. In its aggregate, across the CFA volunteer body, retention is a critical community safety objective. A qualitative research, ethnographic in character, approach was adopted. Data was collected through interviews, workshops and outcomes from attempts at action research projects. Following an initial thirteen month scoping study including respondents other than from the CFA, the research study moved into an exploration of the efficacy of an indicative model with four contextual foci – i.e. the manner of welcoming new members to the CFA, embracing training, strengthening brigade sustainability and leadership. Interestingly, the research environment which forced a truncated implementation of action research projects was, in itself, an informing experience indicative of inhibitors to making the most of what people know and can do. Competition for interest, time and commitment were factors governing the manner in which CFA respondents could be called upon to explore the efficacy of the model, and were a harbinger of the influences shaping the more general environment of drawing upon what CFA volunteers know and can do. Subsequent to the development of the indicative model, a further 16 month period was utilised in the ethnographic exploration of the relevance of the model within the CFA as the host organisation. As a consequence, the model is a more fully developed tool (framework) to aid reflection, planning and action. Importantly, the later phase of the research study has, through application of the model to specific goals within the CFA, yielded operational insight into its effective use, and in which activity systems have an important place. The model – now confidently styled as the LCM Model – has three elements that when enmeshed strengthen the likelihood of organisational achievement ; and the degree of this meshing, as relevant to the target outcome, determines the strength of outcome. i.e. - • Valuing outcomes from learning: When a person recognises and values (appropriately to achievement by the organisation) what they know and can do, and associated others recognise and value what this person knows and can do, then there is increased likelihood of these outcomes from learning being applied to organisational achievement. • Valuing a culture that is conducive to learning: When a person, and associated others, are further developing and drawing upon what they know and can do within the context of a culture that is conducive to learning, then there is increased likelihood that outcomes from learning will be applied to organisational achievement. • Valuing motivation of the individual: When a person’s motivation to apply what they know and can do is valued by them, and associated others, as appropriate to organisational achievement then there is increased likelihood that appropriately drawing upon outcomes from learning will occur. Activity theory was employed as a device to scope and explore understanding of the issues as they emerged in the course of the research study. Viewing the data through the prism of activity theory led not only to the development of the LCM Model but also to an enhanced understanding of the role of leadership as a foundation for acting upon the model. Both formal and informal leadership were found to be germane in asserting influence on empowering engagement with learning and drawing upon its outcomes. It is apparent that a “leaderful organisation”, as postulated by Raelin (2003), is an environment which supports drawing upon the LCM model; and it may be the case that the act of drawing upon the model will move a narrowly leadership focused organisation toward leaderful attributes. As foreshadowed at the beginning of this synopsis, nurturing individual and organisational capability is the guiding mantra for this dissertation - “Capability embraces competence but is also forward-looking, concerned with the realisation of potential” (Stephenson 1998, p. 3). Although the inquiry focussed upon a need for CFA volunteer retention, it began with a broader investigation as part of the scoping foundation and the expanded usefulness of the LCM Model invites further investigation. The dissertation concludes with the encapsulating sentiment that “You have really got to want to”. With this predisposition in mind, this dissertation contributes to knowledge through the development and discussion of the LCM model as a reflective device informing transformative learning (Mezirow and Associates 1990). A leaderful environment (Raelin 2003) aids transformative learning – accruing to the individual and the organisation - through engendering and maintaining making the most of knowledge and skill – motivating and sustaining “the will”. The outcomes from this research study are a strong assertion that wanting to make the most of what is known and can be done is a hallmark of capability. Accordingly, this dissertation is a contribution to the “how” of strengthening the capability, and the commitment to applying that capability, of an individual and an organisation.