Values theorists across disciplines agree that understanding and applying the phenomenon of organizational values is integral to organizational effectiveness (Beck, 1990; Davidson, 2005; Francis & Woodcock, 1990; Lafleur, 1999; Richmon, 2003, 2004). Consensus on this issue is further evidenced by popular use of the phrase “organizational values” in management, school systems, and university administrative parlance, leading many to believe that organizational values have been thoroughly investigated in the field of educational administration and elsewhere (Richmon, 2004). However, research in this area tends to be superficial, and a review of pertinent literature reveals no clear definition of organizational values or consequent implications for practical application. Since the practice of articulating organizational values is commonly conducted as a part of strategic planning processes, much activity and substantial investment is then occurring without full understanding of the phenomenon at hand. The purpose of this study was to uncover the descriptive, non-negotiable reality of organizational values in a particular context: university student services and administration. A critical realist’s methodology informed the development and implementation of a three-phase study. The aims of this research at each phase were to: (a) investigate how the reality of the organizational values phenomenon has been depicted theoretically in interdisciplinary research and literature; (b) examine how the concept of organizational values has been expressed in policy-driven artefacts in university student services; and (c) explore how the theoretical characteristics of organizational values are expressed in context of individual, phenomenological experiences of university student services and administration. The methods of inquiry used at each respective phase of study were cluster analysis, textual analysis, and episodic narrative interview. Additionally, model development was utilized during each phase of study to analyze the research results, and a comparison of models was conducted at the conclusion of the study as an approach to triangulation. Five key findings emerged from the collective analysis of all three phases of study. First, there was an indication of linguistic and structural inadequacy pertaining to organizational values discourse. Second, the activity associated with the organizational values concept is most frequently located in terms of personal working relationships rather than in context of institutional strategic planning processes. Third, administrative leaders play a key role in ensuring consistency with respect to organizational values understanding and implementation in university student services and administration. Fourth, a deep reality of the organizational values phenomenon was demonstrated at all phases of research. Finally, the idea of organizational values is important enough to scholars, policy makers, and front-line staff alike to warrant a great deal of time, financial, and human resource effort invested to engage explicitly with the concept in some manner. The results of this study have significant implications for both theory and practice in university student services and administration. The results informed recommendations made with respect to the development of fluency in values-related language, re-situating the process of articulating organizational values in university administration, incorporating organizational values into day-to-day administrative practice, and the role of university administrative leaders in organizational values work.

Notre recherche porte sur l’analyse d’un processus spécifique d’apprentissage par le concept d’ingegno du philosophe napolitain Giambattista Vico : La pratique du débat de l’Ecole Gelugpa du bouddhisme tibétain. Dans une première partie, à travers une anthropologie de son geste et de son imaginaire, nous présentons le déploiement de l’ingegno et la dimension transdisciplinaire de cette pratique traditionnelle de formation. Dans une deuxième partie, nous utilisons l’outil AT9 pour faire une lecture herméneutique de l’imaginaire de moines tibétains pratiquant le débat. A travers les projections de soi que constituent les AT9 réalisés, nous cherchons les traces des projections des apprentissages et leur dimension transdisciplinaire. Nous concluons ou plutôt offrons aux praticiens transdisciplinaires, la mise en débat d’un outil transdisciplinaire transformateur des pratiques de formation telles que les nôtres se sont métamorphosées au long cours de notre apprentissage de chercheur / Our research focuses on the analysis of a specific process of learning: The concept of ingegno by the Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico: The practice of the debate of the Gelugpa School of Tibetan Buddhism. In the first section, through an anthropology of its gesture and its imagination, we present the deployment of ingegno and transdisciplinary dimension of this traditional practice of education. In the second section, we use the tool AT9 to do a hermeneutic reading from the imagination of the Tibetan monks in the process of discussions. Through the projections themselves, that constitute the AT9 realized, we looked for traces of projections of learning and their transdisciplinary dimension. It is concluded, or rather offered to the transdisciplinary practitioners, the debate of a transforming tool of the transdisciplinary training practices, such as ours have been transformed during the course of our learning researcher

The research aims to study how the communication context within the Arab cultures influences the employees' perception of equity and reaction to inequity. Specifically, the study explores how employees from Arab cultural backgrounds communicate with each other within the Saudi working context; and how they collect, interpret and use the different contextual information - from the contexts in which they live and work - in order to make judgements about issues related to the perception of equity and reaction to inequity. In order to study the research topic, a conceptual framework is developed to reconcile between Equity Theory, Social Comparison Theory and Hall's Context Model; and as a base serving the process of designing/choosing the methods of collecting and analysing the data. Three main research questions are developed which are about (i) how the communication context is related to employees' willingness and ability to react to inequity (ii) how the communication context shapes the nature of inequity reactions executed by employees and (iii) how the communication context is related to the way equity is perceived among employees. A modified version of critical realism is adopted to focus on exploring the mechanisms, within the communication context, which influence the perception of equity and reaction to inequity. A combination of retroduction and abduction is developed in a sense that retroduction is used to direct the research toward exploring the structure and mechanisms within the research setting, while abduction is used to draw conclusions about how the phenomena studied in the research are evolving by the structure and mechanisms. A mixed methods approach is adopted in the research. The research includes data from thirty-five semi-structured interviews which are conducted in mainly three Saudi private-sector organisations located in Jeddah with twenty-nine male employees and six male managers of six different Arab nationalities. Template analysis is used to analyse the qualitative interview transcripts and field notes, while cluster analysis is used to group the research participants based on their quantitative responses. The research finds that there are no clear-cut areas separating the activities linked to the perception of equity and reaction to inequity. I also conclude that the perception of equity norms and equity comparison components can sometimes be separate activities. Some factors such as the religious interpretation, face-saving, and contextual norms and powers influence the employees' willingness to react to inequity by altering the way in which those employees perceive equity norms. Here, unwillingness decisions are often made not as a result of personal conviction but as a compromise based on the personal evaluation of the surrounding context, realising the inability of the self to react to such situations in the first place. Thus, it can be concluded that inability to react to inequity can reduce the employees' willingness to react against under-rewarded situations. The process of perceiving equity comparison components is found to be related to the type of reaction adopted to re-establish the equity; this relationship is represented by groups affiliated by a hidden factor or factors, which is more influential than the ethnicity/nationality of the group's members. The research makes a methodological contribution to knowledge by suggesting a new approach to study human relations through the communication context; a conceptual contribution by combining the concepts of equity perception, social comparison and communication context in one conceptual framework; and an empirical contribution by providing a fresh insight to contextual themes in the Saudi working environment.

The philosophical and empirical study reported here developed from the observation that information science has had no comprehensive understanding of nonuse of information. Without such an understanding, information workers may use the words "nonuse of information" while referring to very different phenomena. This lack of understanding makes the job of the information professional difficult. For example, the model presented here reduces hundreds of theories of information behavior to a conceptually manageable taxonomy of six conditions that lead to nonuse of information. The six conditions include: 1) intrinsic somatic conditions, 2) socio-environmental barriers, 3) authoritarian controls, 4) threshold knowledge shortfall, 5) attention shortfall, and 6) information filtering. This dissertation explains and provides examples of each condition. The study of a novel area that had no prior theory or model required a novel methodology. Thus, for this study, I adopted the pragmatism formulated by Charles Sanders Peirce, a method of evaluating concepts by their practical consequences. This pragmatism applied in two ways to the study of nonuse of information. First, because nonuse of information is a behavior, pragmatism helped me to limit the psychologic implications of the study to behavior, rather than to expand the discussion to psychodynamics or cognition, for example. I justified this limiting on the basis that behavior reflects the use or nonuse of information, and behavior is more observable than other aspects of psychology, such as cognition. Second, Peirce's concept of pragmatism supported another of his contributions to philosophical inquiry, retroduction, sometimes referred to as abduction. To study nonuse of information through retroduction, I created a fivestep "definition heuristic," based on the writings of Spradley and McCurdy. I then created a nine-step "retroduction heuristic" based on the system of logic identified and termed "retroductive" or "abductive" by Peirce. I used this heuristic to identify examples of nonuse of information and applied the examples to a second corpus of research reports that contained examples of compelled nonuse of information. The taxonomy of this study resulted from this second application and represents a descriptive model of compelled nonuse of information. / text