It is increasingly being recognised that global natural resource consumption levels exceed planetary limits and that the present trajectory of industrial development is not sustainable. To achieve a more viable existence necessitates a fundamental shift in priorities from the prevailing economic growth-centred, consumer driven philosophy to one that marries aspirations for economic growth with long-term environmental and social considerations. This shift in priorities requires significant contributions and action at the global, national and local levels by the primary 'wheels' of sustainability: government, corporations and civil society. Over the past 100 years, corporations have become the most powerful institution on the planet with both the financial resources and institutional capacity to take the lead role in shaping a sustainable future for humankind. Yet, within and between industry sectors and across geographic locations there has been great diversity in the extent and level of corporate commitment and engagement in societal efforts relating to planetary sustainability. Hence, greater understanding of what drives corporate interest and involvement in ecological sustainability will become increasingly critical to promoting corporate engagement in processes and practices to secure a long-term future for humanity. However, there has been limited explanatory research oriented upon developing an understanding of the processes and factors associated with corporate 'eco-change'. In recognition of this shortcoming in the literature, the present study utilised the case of the non-renewable resource extractive sector of Australia to examine corporate engagement with processes and practices for planetary sustainability. Specifically, it sought to construct and evidence an explanation of the external and internal factors that have promoted and/or retarded corporate engagement with planetary sustainability in the non-renewable resource extractive sector (NRRES) of Australia. Guided by grounded theory methodology, an instrumental case study of the NRRES in Australia was undertaken. The NRRES was chosen as this sector's profile, visibility and activities over the past twenty years have meant it has come under mounting pressure to incorporate the concept and principles of planetary sustainability into its ethos and operations. As such, the sector represents the opportunity to study this phenomenon within a dynamic context of sectoral and corporate responses to evolving societal expectations. The research was undertaken in three phases and the principal research method was in-depth key informant interviews with purposively sampled members of the sector's stakeholder groups. Each NRRES corporation is situated at the centre of a web of interconnected interests or 'stakes' necessitating efforts to balance the various stakeholder interests to maintain the institution's license-to-operate and secure a long-term existence. The thesis constructs an explanation of the societal drivers of NRRES corporate engagement with planetary sustainability, organised as the three categories of government, civil society and the corporate sector. These three groupings of stakeholders have been clustered into the broad category or theme of Activating Engagement, which recognises their collective role as the stimuli for NRRES corporation engagement in processes and practices for planetary sustainability. While the theme of Activating Engagement emphasises the importance and interrelatedness of the roles and actions within and between the three primary wheels of sustainability, of particular note is the evident rise of civil society as a more active societal stakeholder and more salient driver of corporate uptake of social and environmental issues. As the identified external drivers play a critical role in motivating NRRES corporation engagement, it is a corporation's particular characteristics that ultimately determine the extent and level of uptake of strategies to demonstrate corporate social responsibility. The thesis develops an explanation of the internal factors mediating NRRES corporate engagement comprising the factors of leadership, resources, structures, culture and understanding. These factors are conceptualised as the theme of Capacity for Engagement, which identifies their collective importance in a NRRES corporation's preparedness, impetus and capability relating to interest and participation in planetary sustainability. While all of the five factors are seen as essential to meaningful NRRES corporate engagement, the thesis identifies leadership as the most critical factor in Capacity for Engagement. Based on the findings of the research, several explanatory frameworks are developed. These frameworks aid in deepening our understanding of the NRRES corporate engagement process, in particular, the interconnections between the factors impeding and facilitating corporate interest and engagement with processes and practices for planetary sustainability. As such, these frameworks will make a substantial contribution to building our understanding of how the various factors and their components or 'pieces of the puzzle' interact and interrelate with each other to generate corporate engagement. The frameworks are the culmination of the research and, coupled with the more detailed explanations of their constituent factors, enhance our knowledge and understanding of the dynamics of NRRES corporation engagement with planetary sustainability. This enhanced understanding is significant and could be of considerable value in informing and targeting efforts to advance the depth and breadth of NRRES corporation engagement with processes and practices for planetary sustainability. To advance the standing of the study's findings, a series of case studies could be undertaken targeting the investigation of NRRES corporate engagement in other geographic locations and within different industry sectors.

Cette recherche porte sur les formes et pratiques de l'engagement au sein du mouvement de justice globale. Basée sur une série d'entrevues effectuées auprès de seize personnes engagées dans des collectifs montréalais, elle se donne pour objectif d'interroger directement les militant-e-s afin de comprendre qui s'engage, comment, pourquoi et dans quel but. On a questionné les personnes sur leur milieu d'origine, leur parcours d'engagement, leur conception du changement social, leur rapport aux idéologies et à l'utopie, les actions posées, l'imbrication entre vie privée et vie militante...Ceci afin de tenter de mieux comprendre qui sont ceux et celles qui participent à un mouvement présent sur la scène politique depuis une dizaine d'années et pourtant souvent encore méconnu. On constate dans un premier temps des différences entre le militantisme «traditionnel», notamment celui au sein des partis politiques et des syndicats, et l'engagement au sein des collectifs du mouvement de justice globale : différences dans la composition sociale du mouvement, mais aussi ses objectifs, ses thématiques, ses analyses de la réalité sociale, ses modes d'organisation, les types d'actions posées...Différences aussi par rapport à la conception de ce qu'est la politique et les champs possibles de la contestation: il y a chez les personnes interrogées un rejet des formes traditionnelles du politique qui ne semble pas tant lié à une apolitisation qu'à un désir de faire une autre politique. Comment expliquer ces changements ? Par la modification du contexte social, politique et économique certainement, mais aussi par une modification de l'imaginaire politique des militant-e-s que l'on constate au cours de la recherche. Tou-te-s conçoivent leur action politique résolument au présent, sans espoir de révolution ou de changement social radical à court-moyen terme. De cette modification de l'imaginaire militant par rapport aux modèles passés, de la perte de l'idéal révolutionnaire découlent de nouvelles façon de s'engager, de s'organiser, de vivre sa politique. L'engagement apparaît comme un moyen de créer dès maintenant un monde différent, de dépasser la tristesse et la colère dans l'action collective, de se réapproprier le présent, et ce faisant d'inventer d'autres futurs possibles. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Action collective, Activisme, Engagement, Militantisme, Mouvement altermondialiste, Mouvement de justice globale, Révolution, Utopie.

Youth councils are an increasingly popular tool that both government and non-governmental organizations use to inform policy and program development, to increase the participation of young people, and to improve the connection of youth to their communities and to civic life more broadly. In this thesis, the youth engagement experiences of local governments in Amherst, Nova Scotia, and Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia are examined. Both municipalities initiated youth councils in recent years in an attempt to consult on issues affecting youth in their communities. The two communities have experienced varied degrees of success in implementing these strategies. In broad terms, youth councils operated more successfully in the smaller, more self-contained community of Amherst than in the more sprawling urban municipality of the Halifax area. The divergent experiences of these two municipalities inform a discussion about the merits of youth councils as a tool for engagement for local governments. It is concluded that while youth councils can be both effective in terms of achieving immediate objectives, success is not easily reproduced in all scenarios and depends to a large extent on the characteristics of the community itself, the level of support from adults and facilitators, and the ability of the councils to meet their objectives and thus achieve legitimacy among stakeholders, creating a positive feedback look which engenders further effectiveness.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

This thesis explores the effects of new media, specifically the Internet and the popular social networking site Facebook, on alumni engagement among Millennials in the University of Kentucky College of Health Sciences. Millennials are defined as those born in or after 1982. Alumni engagement is defined as part of the larger social science term of social capital and is defined here as consisting of volunteerism and financial giving. To explore this topic, a survey was constructed and sent electronically to all Millennial alumni from the UK College of Health Sciences. Data reveal Millennial alumni from the College of Health Sciences are not particularly engaged through volunteerism or financial giving. Survey responses, however, indicated that most young alumni are recommending the college to prospective students and plan to give financially in the future. Practical implications from this study may prove beneficial for advancement practitioners and administrators in the University of Kentucky College of Health Sciences.

Political engagement has an established body of research. However, one key area that has not been investigated in the field is the relationship between political engagement and type of community lived in. This study explores this relationship between type of community, past political engagement, perceptions of community leaders, attitude about political engagement, and socieodemographic characteristics. A conceptual model was developed based on existing literature. Utilizing a statewide survey conducted in 2009 that yielded 1,154 respondents with a response rate of 30.2% was used to explore these relationships. Using statistical procedures that test correlation were utilized to investigate the relationship between the key study variables. In addition, a regression model was created to be able to predict an individual’s political engagement. The result concluded that type of community does not significantly play a role in determining an individual’s political engagement. However other insights were revealed that showcase the complexity of political engagement and raise other questions about the role an individual’s attitude towards political engagement, and perception of community leaders affects their political engagement.

The purpose is to increase awareness of the importance of staff engagement in the work environment and how the organization works to engage employees to want to participate actively in the work environment. The questions we seek answers to in this study is the following: What affects the staff to engage in the work environment from a management perspective Are there external factors that affect the organization and the individual's engagement to work with the working environment? We have create a model that is based on recent research to define our definition of engagement. The model contains four factors : Clarity, Advocacy opportunities, resources and feedback. The method we have used to answer the purpose in this study is ten qualitative interviews with persons with work environment responsibilities. The result shows that the engagement regarding work environment is important to get the employees to actively participate. To get the engagement from the employees the organizations need to provide, clarrity, advocacy opportunities, resources and give mutual feedback. External factors such as high and low season affect the organization's work environment, but not the individual engagement regarding work environment.

This study is an investigation of the correlation between Grade 9 students’ self-theories of their intelligence and their tendency for intellectual engagement. Individuals have been shown to self-identify, with respect to their self-theories of intelligence as either entity theorists (who think of their own intelligence as fixed and fairly unchangeable), or incremental theorists (who think of their intelligence as malleable and able to be increased over time). Previous research has shown that individuals have a strong tendency to self-select one or the other of these theoretical frameworks. This study examined the correlation of this identification with individuals’ tendency to become intellectually engaged in their learning. Other demographic factors were also explored. A moderate correlation between students’ self-theory of their intelligence and their tendency for intellectual engagement was demonstrated. In this study, female students showed a higher proportion of an incremental self-theory of intelligence than males. Implications for educational leadership and classroom planning and instruction were explored

Stakeholder engagement, and specifically employee engagement has proven to have an influence on how companies perform and how value is created in organisations. Within the competitive world where Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) are functioning, employee engagement can be the master key that unlocks better organisational performance. The objective of this study is to research the influence of stakeholder engagement on business performance and value creation, and to identify factors that impact on stakeholder engagement. The processes that are in place to engage with employees and how value are created through employee engagement, are also investigated. Studies have proven that successful employee engagement can have a positive influence on how businesses perform. The various factors that have an influence on employee engagement, are identified, including: • People. • Communication. • Work. • Rewards. • Opportunities. • Quality of life; and • Company practices. The study found that engagement levels in selected SMEs in Gauteng are high and the results, as discussed in Chapter 3, are positive. It proves that a significant percentage of employees are engaged on the following levels: 1. Rational - this indicates how well employees understand their roles and responsibilities in their various companies. 2. Emotional - this level indicates with how much passion employees work and how passionate they are about their organisation. 3. Motivational - this indicates how willing employees are to give more than is expected of them, and how hard they work to perform well on their roles and responsibilities. The results of the study can be used by companies to improve employee engagement and create value in their organisations - it can assist them in building a sustainable, competitive organisation. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011

Stakeholder engagement, and specifically employee engagement has proven to have an influence on how companies perform and how value is created in organisations. Within the competitive world where Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) are functioning, employee engagement can be the master key that unlocks better organisational performance. The objective of this study is to research the influence of stakeholder engagement on business performance and value creation, and to identify factors that impact on stakeholder engagement. The processes that are in place to engage with employees and how value are created through employee engagement, are also investigated. Studies have proven that successful employee engagement can have a positive influence on how businesses perform. The various factors that have an influence on employee engagement, are identified, including: • People. • Communication. • Work. • Rewards. • Opportunities. • Quality of life; and • Company practices. The study found that engagement levels in selected SMEs in Gauteng are high and the results, as discussed in Chapter 3, are positive. It proves that a significant percentage of employees are engaged on the following levels: 1. Rational - this indicates how well employees understand their roles and responsibilities in their various companies. 2. Emotional - this level indicates with how much passion employees work and how passionate they are about their organisation. 3. Motivational - this indicates how willing employees are to give more than is expected of them, and how hard they work to perform well on their roles and responsibilities. The results of the study can be used by companies to improve employee engagement and create value in their organisations - it can assist them in building a sustainable, competitive organisation. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011