Thesis--University of California, Berkeley. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 539-591).

Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, 2007. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

This thesis innovates on existing literature on the Transition movement by relinquishing stock academic definitions of its ends and means, which purportedly spell out what Transition 'is'. In its stead, it approaches Transition as phenomenon, namely as an evolving socio-material formation that proliferates a cultural repertoire to sustain a growing range of concerted everyday activities. This is the difference between an instrumental focus, whereby Transition is reduced to a strategy which is oriented towards an unchanging programmatic definition, and an orientational one; the latter attuned to the contingent process by which a movement expresses form and orientation in emergent fashion. The monograph and the introductory chapter contribute to this task in different ways. Everything Gardens and Other Stories undertakes a rich description of various practical realms of Transition and, to capture the coming into being of a phenomenon, it pays particular attention to its developmental trajectory. This entails focusing on the generative movement of the culture of Transition, as it emerges from the attempt to address embodied disquiets originally elicited by information about peak oil and climate change. That initial focus, however, forms merely a station along a path in which new sources of anxiety find validation and prompt further cultural production. The monograph also describes the tensions arising in the process, as a growing body of discursive and material resources have to negotiate an accommodation, in order to become reciprocally recognisable as participant parts enfolded in a common cultural milieu. The introductory chapter supports this account by fleshing out a methodological paradigm that helps direct attention to the unfolding of a socio-material phenomenon in its dilemmatic moments and continual negotiations. For this purpose, starting from canonical sources in phenomenology, it goes on to situate the 'unfolding' of a phenomenon in the proliferation of entanglements between actors, human and nonhuman. In the 'mattering' of a phenomenon so understood, dilemmatic moments call forth an ethical questioning and an ontological politics immanent to the very process of cultural production. This, it is submitted, is precisely how an orientational focus allows to access Transition as phenomenon, beyond the bounds of academic definitions.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Political Science, December 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Rural areas across Europe have suffered severe socio- economic consequences of the financial crisis. Community-led development is a promising way of organizing for social innovation in these areas, in collaboration and independently of public actors. In order to further the understanding of Community-led development organizations, this research studied the sensemaking process and motivations of individuals who decided to engage with Community-led organizations on the community-, municipal-, and European-level. Through semi-structured interviews conducted with ten individuals related to the case of a community-led organization in a village in the south of Sweden, we were able to conduct a narrative analysis. By investigating the narratives of these actors through the lens of the sensemaking properties, we were able to understand the motivations. Sensemaking theory and motivation were chosen in order to thoroughly understand the reasoning behind individuals' engagement. The main findings of this study include the cruciality and interconnectedness of the sensemaking properties ‘identity construction’ and ‘driven by plausibility rather than accuracy’. Furthermore, also the investigation of the motivations showed a strong reference to personal identities and perceptions thereof, based on strong ideological and value motivations among community members and instrumental motivations among representatives of the public sector.

This thesis deals with interpersonal relationships at a workplace. Its aim is to analyze the interrelationships of the selected company and map out subjective interpretations in the terms of employee relations. For these purposes the author uses interviewing techniques through interviews and observations, and based on their findings, she draws conclusions relating to both horizontal and vertical level relationships in the organization. The author formulates a positive and negative form of relationship through testimonies of respondents. She finds the differences between people preferring formal or informal dimension of the employment relationship, and at the same time she reveals several kinds of different strategies that people use in an effort of harmonious getting on at the workplace, both in the terms of prevention of bad relations and in connection with the intervention and the solution of the situation that has been problematic. The results show how "good" and "bad" relationships at the workplace are perceived through the eyes of respondents, nevertheless what is not confirmed, is the presumption that the negative form of relations will be most often represented by mobbing or sexual harassment at the workplace. Among respondents there is the concept of bad relationships linked primarily to...

(in English): The diploma thesis is focused on employee engagement in a specific organization and its analysis. It is based on the assumption that employee engagement can be perceived as an overarching concept based on the theory of role quality, motivation, satisfaction, and leadership, and that employee engagement has an impact on employee productivity and increases the results of the organization. In this diploma thesis, we rejoin the question of what is employee engagement in a specific organization, what is the differentiation according to employee department, and what factors affect the employee engagement. First, the thesis pivots with the terminological grounding of employee engagement and the discussion that surrounds this approach. Then, an analysis of the employee engagement is performed, focusing on ongoing organizational changes due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Finally, the thesis proposes few recommendations that the organization can implement and thus improve employee engagement.

Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague Institute of Sociological Studies, Department of Sociology Bc. Richard Lukáš Obstacles of improvement in pre-graduate teacher education: qualitative case study of faculty of education (Master Thesis) Consultant: doc. PhDr. Arnošt Veselý, Ph.D. Prague 2016 Abstract Institutional and organizational context of teacher training on faculties of education is not sociologically well developed topic, even though it is essential topic for the future of society. The goal of this work is to explore where are obstacles of improvement of teacher training on faculties of education in Czech Republic. I answer this question through the case study of a selected Czech faculty of education. I discovered several obstacles of improvement of teacher training by realizing interviews with faculty heads; analyzing the frames, which they use for framing their experiences with the obstacles; and analyzing the institutional context of teacher training on the selected faculty (intervention heuristic investigation). In the institutional view, the main obstacles are several external factors (e.g. state funding, role of Accreditation Commission etc.); specific history of teacher training in Czech Republic; structure of the faulty and organization of the studies there; and the...