The main objective of this thesis was to develop and empirically test a novel analytical framework for occupational mental health: the Healthy Learning Organizations model. One of the central premises of this model is that the organization is an important analytical component to the explanation of the ecology of occupational mental health. More specifically, the nature of the organizational learning process underwent by organizations constitutes a determining source of organizational variability in the distribution of psychosocial risk factors and mental health outcomes. The predictive power of the model was evaluated through the examination of the organizational reality of senior executives from the federal public service of Canada using a mixed methods approach.
The thesis is organized around four scientific articles. The first article provides a critical synthesis of organizational learning literature and draws on the sociological theory on agency and structure to formulate a set of theoretical propositions tackling current challenges on the dimensionality of organizational learning. The second article operationalizes these propositions with a psychometric evaluation of the Organizational Learning Dimensions Inventory. Findings supported the validity and fidelity of the instrument, as well as the relevance of its utilization as a subjective (i.e., individual scores) and collective measure (i.e., scores aggregated at the organizational unit) of organizational learning. The Healthy Learning Organizations model bridges this definition of organizational learning to dominant conceptualizations on occupational stress. In the third article, multilevel analysis demonstrates that the subjective measure of organizational learning is a protective factor in association to mental health outcomes, independent of the relative contribution of psychosocial work factors and the sociodemographic profile of senior executives. Semi-structured interviews offer additional insights for such a protective association. Lastly, latent class analysis in the fourth article shows that the Healthy Learning Organizations model supports a typology of organizational contexts associated to differential risk exposures for occupational mental health. Overall, the Healthy Learning Organizations model emphasizes the need to increase current understanding about organizations and their internal dynamics as social contexts for population health among workers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/30030 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Beauregard, Nancy |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 370 p. |
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