This study explores the contemporary working lives of prison managers. It attempts to understand the ways in which globalised changes in management practices have intersected with localised practices and occupational cultures. Through an ethnographic study of the lived experience of the practitioners of prison management, the research explores the ways in which the operation of managerialism in a prison environment creates a series of tensions, pressures and expectations on senior managers, and the ways in which these are experienced, understood and negotiated. This study is therefore concerned with the relationships between global and local, and between agency and structure that are characteristic of late modernity. The constraining and enabling features of contemporary prison management are considered in light of Giddens’s account of ‘the duality of structure’. Relevant work on transformation of working lives by Sennett and others are also considered in order to situate this discussion within the world of work more generally. The original research involved ethnographic field work in two medium security prisons in England over a twelve month period, with data generated from observations, interviews and documentary sources. Four aspects of prison management are used in order to address the central issues. The first is a consideration of performance monitoring mechanisms such as targets, audits and inspections; how these are understood, operated, and influenced by those using them and also how they reshape and direct the approach and thinking of managers. The second is a discussion of aspects of agency such as values, discretion, resistance and the use of power; in what ways these are idiosyncratic and individual and how far they are patterned across the organisation and shaped by wider factors. The third issue is a consideration of how people become prison managers and how they approach and understand key issues that face them in managing individual staff, teams and prisoners. The final area considers the ‘hidden injuries’ of contemporary management practice, including how this is experienced by women, members of minority ethnic groups and others who experience themselves as having been marginalised. The study concludes by describing the confluence of global and local, and agency and structure that shape what is described as ‘prison managerialism’. It also describes some of the effects of this and discusses alternatives.

Police culture often valorises 'hard' drinking, and in NSW police label their heavy drinkers 'heroes'. It is queried if there is some relationship between occupational culture and drinking style.It is found that much of the current theorising about the origins and nature of problem drinking, such as psychological theorising about stress, is inadequate to explain and address the extraordinary level of high-risk drinking among police.This thesis explores alternative views such as critical and feminist perspectives on police culture, constructions of masculinity, and mechanisms of 'enabling', to discover whether these might prove more applicable and more productive. The research also explores the matter of whether a case can be made for taking alternative ideas and theories into account in designing intervention programmes for specific occupation contexts, and whether they raise any policy and practical implications for addressing problem drinking within the NSW Police Service. / Master of Science (Hons)

The majority of published work in the area of police occupational culture follows the methodological template of Skolnick (1994) which utilises both participant observation and the interview. The way in which this approach has been used has proved problematic for a number of reasons. First, it has promoted a view that police occupational culture is static and unchanging. Second, it has failed to acknowledge that officers have a choice whether or not to engage in certain behaviours. Third, it has promoted a view that police officers display essentially negative behaviours. The aim of the present research was to investigate, by means of techniques drawn from oral history, the culture or cultures of police officers within the Metropolitan Police Force in London between the 1930s and the 1960s. Firstly, there was a desire to find out to what extent accepted correlates of police occupational culture applied to police work in the period prior to the 1960s when it was first investigated. Secondly, if there did appear to be differences between the findings of the present research and those of authors charting post-1960s police culture, ideas would be forwarded in an attempt to explain such variations. Examples of factors which could account for such variations might include changes in the relationship between the police and the public, changes in police practice or changes in legislation. Through 26 interviews with retired officers, it was found that the intensity of Skolnick's key factors for the emergence of police occupational culture (danger, authority and the need to appear efficient) appeared to be greatly influenced by wider societal factors manifested in the state of police/public relations. Similarly, the present research found great variations within the officers' apparent adherence to key parts of the police 'working personality' as proposed by Skolnick. In short, the great variation in police behaviours exhibited in the present research could be attributed to the fact that wider social factors served to affect the intensity of Skolnick's three key factors.

Idag lever vi i ett samhälle där vissa yrken och branscher av tradition betraktas som maskulina respektive feminina. En bransch som idag är tydligt maskulint kodad och manligt dominerad är den svenska skogsbranschen. För att förändra den maskulint kodade yrkeskulturen har föreningen NYKS, Nätverket för yrkesverksamma kvinnor och icke-binära i skogsbranschen bildats.  Syftet med följande uppsats är att undersöka hur NYKS-nätverket arbetar med att förändra den maskulint kodade yrkeskulturen inom skogsbranschen. Utifrån syftet har två frågeställningar skapats. De handlar om vilka upplevda föreställningar om yrkeskulturens genusordning inom skogsbranschen som NYKS-medlemmarna försöker förändra och om vilka yrkesidentiteter NYKS-nätverkets medlemmar konstruerar. NYKS reformarbete av yrkeskulturen betraktas teoretiskt som en pedagogisk process vilket syftar till att skapa medvetenhet om orättvisor och hinder samt forma nya identiteter och därigenom förändra yrkeskulturer. Genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med nätverkets medlemmar dras, efter kodning och tematisering av intervjuerna, slutsatserna att de har tydliga kulturella föreställningar om både kvinnor och män i branschen, vilka sätter den rådande genusordningen. De upplever att det får konsekvenser att sticka ut från normen och att mannen är norm. Efter att NYKS bildades har det dock börjat ske en förändring enligt medlemmarna. Förändringsarbetet som NYKS arbetar med sker genom att på olika sätt sprida deras tolkning av genusordningen där män och kvinnor har olika förutsättningar. Förändringen sker från gräsrotsnivå där bland annat språket är en viktig del för att både beskriva och ifrågasätta den nuvarande genusordningen. Ytterligare en slutsats är att NYKSnätverkets medlemmar förändrar sina yrkesidentiteter efter att ha blivit medvetna om strukturer och fått nya kunskaper genom fysiska och digitala träffar vilka har medfört ett transformativt lärande. Nätverkets medlemmar har nu format sin identitet utifrån ett systerskap och därigenom har även medlemmarnas yrkesidentitet blivit en könsidentitet. Tidigare forskning om genus och yrkeskultur har visat hur genusordningar reproduceras i olika branscher, där mannen blir norm. Däremot finns jämförelsevis lite kunskap om hur detta förändras och ifrågasätts.  Denna uppsats bidrar till kunskapen om hur genusordningar ifrågasätts och förändras genom att studera hur intresseföreningen NYKS bedriver reformarbete inom skogsbranschen. / Today we live in a world where some professions and industries are seen as masculine respective feminine. One industry which today is clearly masculine coded and male dominated is the Swedish forestry sector. To change the masculine coded occupational culture the association NYKS was founded. The NYKS acronym translates to “The network for professional women and non-binary in the forestry sector”. The purpose of this paper is to examine how NYKS is working to change the masculine coded occupational culture in the forestry sector. To achieve this purpose, I have tried answering two questions about which perceived notions about the occupational culture’s gender structure within the forestry sector that NYKS-members are trying to change and which occupational identities are the NYKSnetwork’s members trying to form. Their work to reform the occupational culture can theoretically be seen as a pedagogic process which aims to raise awareness about injustices and obstacles, and to form new occupational identities and thereby change the occupational culture. Through semi-structured interviews with the network’s members it is concluded, after coding and theming of the interviews, that they have distinct cultural notions about both women and men in the industry, which creates the current gender structure. They experience that there are consequences for breaking the norm and that the masculine is the norm. Since NYKS founding things have started change according to the members. The reform work that NYKS performs is by spreading their view of the gender structure where men and women have different preconditions. The change happens at the grass-root level where, among other things, language plays an important role both to describe but also to question the current gender structure. Another conclusion is that the members of the NYKS-network changed their occupational identities by becoming aware of these structures through physical and digital assemblies, which means the assemblies have led to a transformative learning. The members now form their identity based on a sisterhood and due to that the members occupational identity has also become a gender identity. Previous research on gender and occupational culture have shown how gender structures reproduce in different industries, where the masculine becomes the norm. There is however comparatively little knowledge of how these things change and are questioned. This paper aims to contribute to the knowledge of how gender structure is questioned and changed by studying how the interest organization NYKS performs reform work within the forestry sector.

Si les développements technologiques dans le domaine de la science forensique améliorent sans contredit les capacités de détection et la précision des appareils et des analyses effectuées, la qualité, l’intégrité, l’efficacité et l’efficience de l’exploitation des traces matérielles à des fins judiciaires et sécuritaires demeurent avant tout tributaires de décisions humaines prises tout au long du processus forensique, de la scène d’incident au tribunal. À ce sujet, bien qu’ils soient désormais reconnus comme des acteurs au premier plan du déploiement des efforts forensiques, les techniciens en identité judiciaire responsables de l’investigation des scènes d’incident n’ont fait l’objet que de très peu d’études empiriques. Pourtant, les quelques études qui sont disponibles mettent en lumière un degré élevé de variabilité dans leurs pratiques et leurs performances en matière de recherche et de collecte de traces matérielles, suggérant ainsi un processus décisionnel sur lequel nous ne savons toujours que très peu de choses. Dès lors, la thèse se propose de mieux comprendre, à travers une lentille théorique inspirée de certains concepts-clés issus de la sociologie de l’expertise et de la sociologie de la police, l’orientation des stratégies de recherche de traces matérielles par les techniciens en identité judiciaire. Plus précisément, elle cherche à approfondir les mécanismes de prise de décision et le système de savoirs occupationnels auquel se réfèrent les techniciens en identité judiciaire pour guider et justifier leurs actions, les processus de construction et d’acquisition de ces savoirs occupationnels ainsi que l’étendue du pouvoir discrétionnaire des techniciens en identité judiciaire et les conditions sous-jacentes à sa reconnaissance. Pour ce faire, la thèse repose sur une enquête de terrain de type ethnographique réalisée auprès de 19 techniciens en scène de crime du Québec entre 2020 et 2022, combinant 18 entretiens semi-directifs (35 heures) et près de 165 heures d’observation participante (au poste et sur de véritables scènes d’incident). Les résultats de la thèse révèlent, d’une part, que l’orientation de la recherche de traces matérielles par les techniciens en identité judiciaire est dépendante d’un système de savoirs occupationnels tacites largement ambigu, voire contradictoire par endroits, nécessitant l’interprétation des mandats, des normes informelles et des méthodes à privilégier pour prendre ou justifier une décision. D’autre part, ils suggèrent que ces savoirs seraient principalement issus, aux yeux des techniciens en identité judiciaire, de l’expérience pratique (à titre de policier et de technicien en identité judiciaire) et des échanges avec les pairs expérimentés, traduisant un discours soutenant le primat de la socialisation professionnelle informelle sur la formation et l’éducation formalisée. Enfin, les techniciens en identité profiteraient d’un important pouvoir discrétionnaire de facto leur permettant d’exercer plutôt librement leur jugement professionnel et de définir les savoirs qui sont considérés comme légitimes. Mis ensemble, ces constats proposent de comprendre la prise de décisions des techniciens en identité judiciaire en matière de recherche de traces matérielles au prisme de l’interaction entre un pouvoir discrétionnaire dynamique et un système de savoirs occupationnels ambigu et plus ou moins partagé. / While technological developments in the field of forensic science are undoubtedly improving detection capabilities and the accuracy of the equipment and analyses performed, the quality, integrity, effectiveness, and efficiency of the exploitation of material traces for judicial and security purposes remain above all dependent on human decisions made throughout the forensic process, from the crime scene to the courts. In this regard, although they are now recognized as key players in the deployment of forensic resources, crime scene examiners responsible for investigating incident scenes have only been the subject of very few empirical studies. Yet, those that are available highlight a high degree of variability in the practices and performances of crime scene examiners regarding the search for material traces, suggesting a decision-making process about which we still know very little. This thesis therefore aims to gain a better understanding of the orientation of crime scene examiners’ strategies for searching material trace through a theoretical lens inspired by key concepts of the sociology of expertise and the sociology of policing. More specifically, it seeks to investigate the decision-making mechanisms and occupational knowledge system to which crime scene examiners refer, the processes of construction and acquisition of such occupational knowledge, and the extent of crime scene examiners’ discretionary power and the conditions underlying its recognition by other stakeholders. The thesis is based on an ethnographic fieldwork among 19 Quebec crime scene examiners between 2020 and 2022, combining 18 semi-structured interviews (35 hours) and around 165 hours of participant observation (at the office and at actual incident scenes). The results of the thesis reveal, on the one hand, that the orientation of the search for material traces by crime scene examiners depends on a tacit system of occupational knowledge which is largely ambiguous, even contradictory in places, leaving room for interpretation of mandates, norms, and preferred methods for making or justifying a decision. On the other hand, they suggest that such knowledge is mainly acquired, in the eyes of crime scene examiners, from practical experience (as a police officer and crime scene investigator) and exchanges with experienced peers, reflecting a discourse supporting the primacy of informal professional socialization over formalized training and education. Finally, crime scene examiners would benefit from a significant de facto discretionary power, enabling them to exercise their professional judgment rather freely and to define the knowledge that should be considered legitimate. Taken together, these findings suggest that the decision-making process of crime scene examiners in the search for material traces can be understood through the prism of the interaction between a variable discretionary power and an ambiguous, more or less shared, system of occupational knowledge.