<p>The Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC) is a relatively small but growing independent Canadian labour union that has attracted a great deal of criticism from many mainstream unions. CLAC’s basis in Christian principles, which emphasize cooperation and reconciliation over conflict and reject the socialist notion of class struggle, have led the organization to develop a unique approach to labour relations that puts it at odds with traditional Canadian unions and labour organizations. This approach also seems to have contributed to strong membership growth over a period when the membership of other unions was stagnant or in decline.</p> <p>This paper attempts to provide some insights on CLAC’s competitiveness by squaring its alternative approach to labour relations with its strong growth relative to other unions. The findings of this paper build on existing research and literature on CLAC’s background and philosophical underpinnings and are based heavily on firsthand interviews with workers and union executives. The key findings of this paper are that CLAC’s competitiveness is strongly related to its conciliatory brand of labour relations, its organizational structure, rooted in its founding role as a religiously based cultural institution, and its position on the outside of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) umbrella. Another important conclusion is that the competitiveness of unions is heavily influenced by its ability to align its values and organizational culture with the values and identities of workers and the specific regulatory and economic environment in which they work.</p> / Master of Arts in Counseling (MAC)

<p>This study examines issues arising from the popular use of technology and social networking in the classroom during lecture and its effect on student grades. Data were collected in a first year social science course. Findings of a general survey show that the use of technology and social networking during lecture is a popular form for multitasking with little impact on grades up to a certain threshold. Addressing this issue, this paper puts forth a broad historical overview of the use of leisure activities by workers during preindustrialization and industrialized capitalism. Through an examination of multitasking during lectures, this paper will assess the extent to which social norms of time discipline may be changing and the impacts this could have on the future of work organization. Activity theory is one method of guiding research in order to incorporate these multitasking activities into teaching and learning paradigms and policies for use in the classroom.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>Focusing on a case study of a union organizing effort at the La Platosa mine in northern Mexico from 2009-2012, this paper studies the challenges facing labour activism at Canadian mining companies in Mexico within the context of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The positions of the Mexican and the Canadian governments in relation to contemporary workers’ struggles in Mexico’s mining sector are considered, particularly the latter’s adoption of a ‘corporate social responsibility’ approach to addressing the activities of Canadian extractive firms abroad. By studying the outcome of the request for mediation filed by La Platosa miners with the Canadian government’s Extractive Sector CSR office in 2011 and evaluating the evolution of this government’s policy approach to extractive companies abroad since 2009, we find that CSR as practiced by the Canadian government has been ineffective at mitigating abusive practices by Canadian mining companies in Mexico and that an alternate outcome is not to be expected under existing policy structures. The relative strengths and weaknesses exhibited during labour organizing at the La Platosa mine are evaluated to find both locally specific and more broadly applicable strategies which could be applied to union renewal, both by workers employed under NAFTA’s transnational sector, and by the general labour movement.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

<p>In February 2011, a wave of creative direct action swept across postal depots in the city of Edmonton which saw rank-and-file workers organizing outside of the channels of formal-legal unionism. Fighting against management’s imposition of compulsory overtime as a staffing measure, Letter Carriers and other “outside” postal workers relied on solidarity and resistance at the point of production in a successful campaign to put an end to this practice. The relevance of this particular struggle to the Canadian labour movement is twofold. First, the intensified workloads of Edmonton postal workers reflect a wider shift in the nature of employment relationships away from the existence of employer support as part of the rise of neoliberal capitalism. Second, the choice of workers to organize at a distance from the historically militant Canadian Union of Postal Workers reveals both the predicament facing labour of a highly restrictive formal labour relations system as well as an alternative path of resistance. For Edmonton postal workers, this path was forged in large part as a result of the influence of IWW dual-carder organizers and, more specifically, their introduction of a mode of union praxis known as solidarity unionism</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

A major question in the study of complex organizations is whether it is possible to develop a useful taxonomy which identifies the crucial aspects of organizations and classifies them in a significant manner. One group of typologies of complex organizations focuses on the relationship between the organization and its environment. The purpose of this thesis is to test the validity of three existing typologies of complex organizations, each of which focuses on one aspect of the relationship between organizations and their environment. The major innovation in this research is the use of block modeling, a form of network methodology, to analyze the multiplex relationships and to establish categories of organizations in six towns in Minnesota. This categorical scheme is based on groupings of organizations that share 2 similar patterns of relationships in a community network. The first part of this thesis is an attempt to discover if the three typologies being tested, which were originally developed from data on internal organizational characteristics, are relevant categorical "tools" for distinguishing among "classes" of organizations that were grouped based on the relational data from network analysis of the six Minnesota towns. Three hypotheses are presented, each associated with a different typology to be tested: Hypothesis I - based on inputs (Resource Dependence), Hypothesis II - based on throughputs (Katz and Kahn), and Hypothesis III - based on outputs (Parsonian). Each of these hypotheses predict specific inter-organizational relationships that should be present in the empirical data. A typology is considered relevant for use in this study, if the inter-organizational relationship, predicted by the corresponding hypothesis, is found to be present in the empirical data. All three typologies examined are found to be relevant categorical tools for the network data employed in this study.

The concept of interorganizational field refers to the pattern of relationships or the context within which organizations negotiate or compete to accomplish their goals. This paper examines the proposition that the type of interorganizational field shapes and· influences interactions between organizations. To explore the nature of any contextual effects, a hypothesis is extracted to represent each of four subareas of the literature: the transaction or exchange, the resource dependency, the communication, and the division of labor subareas. Non-verification of the hypotheses indicates the extent and the manner in which interorganizational fields can affect relations between organizations. A case study of these hypotheses is presented for one type of interorganizational field, a federation of social service agencies. The federation includes eight organizations which delivered services and an administrative component to facilitate interagency coordination. The data, which were gathered from project documents, monthly records, and a series of interviews of representatives from each of these organizations, permit analysis of the federation's two-year tenure. Analysis of these data leave three of the four hypotheses not verified, with only the hypothesis on communication between organizations being upheld. These findings suggest that the ''norms of rationality” alleged to govern organizational decision-making are actually assessed according to characteristics of the interorganizational context. More generally, the conclusion is that the interorganizational field level of analysis merits further examination as a causal context. By specifying the nature of this context, it ultimately is possible to theorize whether the effects of variables across fields are linear or curvilinear, and whether interaction effects exist.

There is evidence that cooperation in the workplace can have positive outcomes for organizations. To take advantage of these outcomes, it would be useful to gain information about the causes of cooperation. This study attempts to isolate some factors, leader motivation and style in particular, that may predict cooperation within work groups.

In an era of diminishing public funds, the profession of social work is looking more and more toward the private sector as an arena for social work practice. Social work has had a long-standing interest in the impact of work and the workplace on the individual. This study was developed in response to the lack of documentation of non-work-related services in Oregon's businesses and industries. The research team set out to discover what non-work-related services are available to employees at or through the workplace in the TriCounty area (Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington Counties) of Oregon. This study was exploratory, similar to one done by Hans Spiegel and colleagues in 1974, through Hunter College in New York City.

This study was designed to collect information about the working relationship of otolaryngologists with speech pathologists who provide service to voice disordered clients.

This study examined predictors of community involvement among Liberians in Johnson City, Tennessee. This study was exploratory in nature and used a social survey employing closed-ended questions. Using cross-tabulation analysis, results derived from a random sample (n = 62) of respondents indicate that persons who were older, married with children, employed, more religious, members of the Mande Fu ethnic group, and/or tended toward very liberal or conservative views had the highest rates of community participation. Predictors of types of community participation were also analyzed, the most significant of which was the higher prevalence of males in leadership roles and females in the provision of services and sundry items. The significance of these findings for community empowerment among Liberians in Johnson City was briefly discussed.