Faire du sens de l'acculturation organisationnelle et nationale : une étude d'entretiens exploratoires des immigrants professionnels de l'Argentine à Montréal, Québec

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Human and Raptor Interactions in the Context of a Nomadic Society

This research project focuses on contemporary eagle-taming falconry practice of the Altaic Kazakhs animal herding society in Bayan Ulgii Province in Western Mongolia. It aims to contributing both theoretical and empirical criteria for cultural preservation of Asian falconry. This cultural as well as environmental discourse is illustrated with concentrated field research framed by ecological anthropology and ethno-ornithology from the viewpoint of “Human-Animal Interaction (HAI)” and “Human-Animal Behavior (HAB)”. Part I (Chapter 2 & 3) explores ethno-archaeological and ethno-ornithological dimensions by interpretive research of archaeological artefacts which trace the historical depth of Asian falconry culture. Part II (Chapter 4 & 5) provides an extensive ethnographic narrative of Altaic Kazakh falconry, which is the central part of this research project. The “Traditional Art and Knowledge (TAK)” in human-raptor interactions, comprising the entire cycle of capture, perch, feeding, training, hunting, and release, is presented with specific emphasis on its relation to environmental and societal context. Traditional falconry as integral part of a nomadic lifestyle has to face some critical problems nowadays which necessitate preventing the complete disappearance of this outstanding indigenous cultural heritage. Part III (Chapter 6 & 7) thus focuses on the cultural sustainability of Altaic Kazakh falconry. Changing livelihoods, sedentarisation, and decontextualisation are identified as major threats. The role of Golden Eagle Festivals is critically analysed with regard to positive and negative impact. This part also intends to contribute to the academic definition of eagle falconry as an intangible cultural heritage, and to provide scientific criteria for a preservation master plan, as well as stipulate local resilience by pointing to successive actions needed for conservation. This research project concludes that cultural sustainability of Altaic Kazakh falconry needs to be supported from the angles of three theoretical frameworks; (1) Cultural affairs for protection based on the concept of nature-guardianship in its cultural domain, (2) Sustainable development and improvement of animal herding productivity and herder’s livelihood, (3) Natural resource management, especially supporting the population of Golden Eagles, their potential prey animals, and their nesting environment.

Whistle-blowing by external auditors: seeking legitimacy for the South African audit profession?

Auditing is often cited as playing an important role in managing agency-related costs and, accordingly, being integral to the sound functioning of capital markets. There may, however, be more to the attest function than a technical rational practice. By virtue of relying heavily on claims to technical expertise, professionalism, prudential judgement and public confidence, auditing is both a source of legitimacy for organisations and, paradoxically, dependent on claims to legitimacy for its continued existence. From this perspective, recent regulatory developments, purportedly enacted to increase arms-length control over the profession, may not only be about improving perceived audit quality and practice but also about ensuring continued faith in the well-established ‘rituals’ of the assurance function. A reporting duty imposed on South African external auditors, akin to whistle-blowing, is used as a case study to explore this perspective. In doing so, this paper contributes to the scant body of interpretive research on auditing, simultaneously offering one of the first insights into auditing regulation from an African perspective.

Year 12 students' mental models of the nature of light

This article reports on the third year of a three-year longitudinal investigation into six secondary students' understanding of optics at a secondary school level. In the third year of this investigation the students, who by now were in Year 12, underwent a teaching sequence that centred on the teaching and learning of physical optics and quantum ideas. The students' mental models of the nature of light were explored prior to, and following this teaching sequence. The researcher took on the dual roles of teacher and researcher. This paper will outline the findings of the third year of this study and the implications they have for the teaching and learning of optics at secondary school level.

The social role of design representation

Design representation is a crucial part of all design activity. Representations provide a vehicle through which design ideas and decisions are explored, communicated and recorded. Since representation is so fundamental to design, it follows that a deep understanding of the nature and use of representation has the potential to improve current design practice. While there is recognition in the IS literature of the importance of representation, previous IS research has focused almost entirely on the functional aspects of representation, in particular modelling to support various methodologies or particular aspects of design such as database, object-oriented or process modelling. Since the development of an information system is a socio-technical process, this paper argues that we need to understand how representations can facilitate both the specification of the artefact, and the social aspects of design. This paper explores the use of design representation by real-world practitioners. It identifies two hitherto neglected social purposes of representation employed by designers when interacting with clients or users: selective focus, and promotion. The paper concludes by noting that as IS faces increasingly complex design challenges it is timely to examine our understanding of all aspects of design representation including its role in facilitating the social aspects of design.

Board behaviour and the global financial crisis : time for a holistic approach to governance

The heightened focus on corporate governance in the aftermath of the financial crisis and in particular the failure of boards to protect their corporations indicates the timeliness of this paper. Although corporate governance has been traditionally linked to control and compliance, the complexities of the 21st Century have focused attention on the need for more holistic approaches. This paper picks up these developments and using interpretive research, analyses thirteen in-depth interviews conducted with board members and senior management, before and after the crisis. The longitudinal data provides valuable insight into the role of boards, their behaviour, culture and decision-making structures.

Good boards are strategic : what does that mean for sport governance?

To learn more about the governance of sport organizations, this study explored what meaning board members of national sport organizations (NSOs) attach to the concept of "strategic capability". In so doing, the inquiry also identified factors considered to constrain or enable board strategic function. This paper draws on a body of knowledge developed over 38 years on board strategic function, primarily from the commercial setting but also from the emerging body of work in the nonprofit and sport governance setting. Located within the interpretive research paradigm this study engaged a range of different qualitative methods including cognitive mapping and visual imagery. Working across two NSOs in New Zealand, four elements were generated that served as reference points in mapping out the meaning of a strategically able board. These were categorized as the need to have capable people, a frame of reference, facilitative board processes, and facilitative regional relationships.

Rethinking creativity: three case studies of the social processes of creativity

Creativity and innovation are often seen as being important in terms of organisations, not only dealing with large amounts of change, but also being able to flourish in uncertain times. Yet, despite large amounts of creativity research, it continues to be a contested subject and fragmented field which leaves researchers without clear direction. Thus the approach to studying creativity needs to be rethought in order to develop new insights into the phenomenon. This research contributes to the debate on creativity by developing concepts around how creativity unfolds within a specific social context. It does this by approaching the study of creativity from a critical perspective and conducting a series of case studies into creativity in organisations. This research finds that, while the production of an artefact is a prerequisite, creativity is not an enduring feature of a given artefact. Rather, creativity exists when an artefact is labelled creative within a particular social system. In addition, as part of the interpretive research process, aspects of identity work emerged. Exploration of creativity as part of the process of identity work provides novel insight into creativity and a conceptual map which may be utilized as part of ongoing research into creativity. This research makes a significant contribution to the understanding of creativity by unpacking the processes of creativity, in three diverse organisational settings, and showing how creativity may be conceptualised as a contextually bound, socially constructed label which is underpinned by identity related motives.

Can creativity be managed? An advertising agency case study

Despite the large amount of creativity research which exists the nature of the phenomenon and how it comes about remains contested. Mainstream research assumes creativity is the result of a creative individual's efforts and is an inherent feature of an artefact. An alternate view postulates that creativity is contextual, occurs due to social processes, is subjective and contingent. Lack of agreement has ramifications for practitioners who are faced with a dilemma as to how to approach creativity within organisations. This research looks at creativity within an advertising agency through an alternative lens to see if this is useful and to assess whether it is able to contribute to the debate by providing new insight into the phenomenon. Findings show a number of social processes involved in the construction of creativity in this environment. This paper concludes by arguing that having an in-depth understanding of how creativity happens can provide practitioners with a basis for reflection and the foundation for development of an action plan around the management of creativity.

A linguagem do blog escolar em um trabalho com multiletramentos: compartilhando sentidos

This research, part of Applied Linguistics field, aims to analyze the language of a school blog, developed with the participation of students, as a work based on the conception of multiliteracies, focusing on the construction of different meanings. The research is carried on from the building and maintenance of a school blog, the Ieceblog, with students of Ensino Fundamental II, since 2008, in a private school in Natal-RN. The investigation of the language produced on a school blog is justified due to the interactive conceptions of writing and reading on the virtual environment. Given the fact that new technologies are a reality in the schools opened to the practices of multiliteracies, it is assumed that text, image, video, audio, non-graphic signs and hypertext intensifies the produced interaction, in which the students become real authors. In this perspective, some voices belonging to the statements that are formed through the posts and comments chosen to the analyses and reflection on the blog space as locus of productions of senses inserted in the school and the world environment, as well as for the identification of the language resources used to intensify the senses that emerge from it. From the view of dialogism conceptualized by Bakhtin Circle, the qualitative interpretive-research deepens the experience of a school blog focusing on digital language in line with the vision of digital literacy. From the blog posts, a corpus that promote the exposure of different manifestations of language in the design of digital multiliteracies is elected. Thereby, the method used was the dialogical analysis of speech based on Bakhtin s studies and the Circle. The corpus was taken from the blog s posts in order to point up the different language manifestations in the following categories: (i) mood reinforced by the mockery, (ii) search for compliance with school sphere, (iii) conflicting social values and consistent complicity between sense and verbal imagery, and finally (iv) social practices that take place from and through the discursive genre. The study points to the tension between the active voices in several directions, revealing the distorted unit of posts which, under the analytical observation raises multiple meanings in a responsive manner. The analysis of the dialogue interaction in which intersperses the digital one becomes more apparent that the multiliteracies events that are mediated by language in addition to structure of the language and makes us rethink the students

Etnobotânica, agroecologia e modelos alternativos em horticultura: análise de conteúdo da mídia impressa

Pós-graduação em Agronomia (Horticultura) - FCA

Etnobotânica, agroecologia e modelos alternativos em horticultura: análise de conteúdo da mídia impressa

Pós-graduação em Agronomia (Horticultura) - FCA

Making the processes of designing explicit within an information technology environment

In this paper, technology is described as involving processes whereby resources are utilised to satisfy human needs or to take advantage of opportunities, to develop practical solutions to problems. This study, set within one type of technology context, information technology, investigated how, through a one semester undergraduate university course, elements of technological processes were made explicit to students. While it was acknowledged in the development and implementation of this course that students needed to learn technical skills, technological skills and knowledge, including design, were seen as vital also, to enable students to think about information technology from a perspective that was not confined and limited to 'technology as hardware and software'. This paper describes how the course, set within a three year program of study, was aimed at helping students to develop their thinking and their knowledge about design processes in an explicit way. An interpretive research approach was used and data sources included a repertory grid 'survey'; student interviews; video recordings of classroom interactions, audio recordings of lectures, observations of classroom interactions made by researchers; and artefacts which included students' journals and portfolios. The development of students' knowledge about design practices is discussed and reflections upon student knowledge development in conjunction with their learning experiences are made. Implications for ensuring explicitness of design practice within information technology contexts are presented, and the need to identify what constitutes design knowledge is argued.

The influence of communication sources on perceived risk about purchasing online

In this paper we report on a qualitative study into the influence of personal and non-personal communication sources in creating, sustaining and/or mediating people's perceptions of risk about purchasing online. In terms of non-personal communication sources, our findings suggest that the popular media significantly influence both purchasers and nonpurchasers’ perceptions of risk about using the Web for purchasing. Despite these negative perceptions, those who have purchased online appear to pay little attention to change agent communications on websites, such as logos, icons and statements about secure payment systems, which are designed to alleviate these concerns. In terms of inter-personal communication sources, our findings suggest that while there is evidence that to some degree, friends or peers influenced the interviewees about purchasing online, the purchasers in our study indicated that they would not influence others to do the same. We conclude our paper with suggestions for future interpretive research into the influence of communication sources on acceptance of the Web for purchasing.

The unequal segmentation of public preparedness for mass evacuation:a cross-national perspective

This thesis is concerned with understanding how Emergency Management Agencies (EMAs) influence public preparedness for mass evacuation across seven countries. Due to the lack of cross-national research (Tierney et al., 2001), there is a lack of knowledge on EMAs perspectives and approaches to the governance of public preparedness. This thesis seeks to address this gap through cross-national research that explores and contributes towards understanding the governance of public preparedness. The research draws upon the risk communication (Wood et al., 2011; Tierney et al., 2001) social marketing (Marshall et al., 2007; Kotler and Lee, 2008; Ramaprasad, 2005), risk governance (Walker et al., 2010, 2013; Kuhlicke et al., 2011; IRGC, 2005, 2007; Renn et al., 2011; Klinke and Renn, 2012), risk society (Beck, 1992, 1999, 2002) and governmentality (Foucault, 1978, 2003, 2009) literature to explain this governance and how EMAs responsibilize the public for their preparedness. EMAs from seven countries (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom) explain how they prepare their public for mass evacuation in response to different types of risk. A cross-national (Hantrais, 1999) interpretive research approach, using qualitative methods including semi-structured interviews, documents and observation, was used to collect data. The data analysis process (Miles and Huberman, 1999) identified how the concepts of risk, knowledge and responsibility are critical for theorising how EMAs influence public preparedness for mass evacuation. The key findings grounded in these concepts include: - Theoretically, risk is multi-functional in the governance of public preparedness. It regulates behaviour, enables surveillance and acts as a technique of exclusion. - EMAs knowledge and how this influenced their assessment of risk, together with how they share the responsibility for public preparedness across institutions and the public, are key to the governance of public preparedness for mass evacuation. This resulted in a form of public segmentation common to all countries, whereby the public were prepared unequally.  - EMAs use their prior knowledge and assessments of risk to target public preparedness in response to particular known hazards. However, this strategy places the non-targeted public at greater risk in relation to unknown hazards, such as a man-made disaster. - A cross-national conceptual framework of four distinctive governance practices (exclusionary, informing, involving and influencing) are utilised to influence public preparedness. - The uncertainty associated with particular types of risk limits the application of social marketing as a strategy for influencing the public to take responsibility and can potentially increase the risk to the public.