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Research focusing on community development processes is increasingly making use of the notion of actor. The actor is engaged in a system of actions. A range of sociological theories has given rise to the various types of social actors, including the theatrical actor, the strategic actor, the actor-network or the reflexive actor. We review these theories in an attempt to define an analytical framework, by employing what we call a tinkering methodology. The aim is to gain insight on the interactions that bind together the various stakeholders by function (acting and the actors' roles) on the fields of action (the scenes of interaction and real interventions) and on effects (the results of these actions). We then propose to apply our analytical framework to a case study on the process of developing an action plan in the Villeray district of Montréal (Québec, Canada). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Administration is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper presents a day in the life of the Walnut Lake Curling Club. The reflexive analytic story is crafted from ethnographic research undertaken in 18 curling clubs across rural Canada. Contrary to a growing tendency toward individualized and privatized leisure, curling clubs in rural Canada remain sites for shared leisure. Building on recent efforts to position leisure sites as third places, the paper enhances an understanding of curling clubs' construction, dynamism and fluidity. Ethnographic approaches are offered as presenting opportunities to comprehend how third places are constructed, particularly within the changing context of leisure in rural life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to use case study evidence to show that post-bureaucracy is less marked by a discontinuity in surveillance than by its displacement and intensification. Design/methodology/approach – The paper describes the complex changes that occurred at the International Development Research Center, a Canadian public corporation. Findings – Fundamental clash of values is evident. The reform has brought about a ‘new order’ which relies on a centralized model of governance. Moves towards the ‘post-bureaucratic organization’ have entailed intensified surveillance and produced a new structure of domination. Originality/value – The paper argues that Anthony Giddens' theories of late modernity and structuration contain elements that explain the emergence of new organizational forms, their continuity and transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Review for the Sociology of Sport is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the role of the police as news sources in Canada. Analysis focuses on the ways in which the police patrol the regions of their organization to which journalists can have access, and on the forms of enclosure they effect over knowledge about their activities. The analysis builds upon theoretical foundations laid by Goffman and Giddens regarding privacy and revelation, illustrating that their social psychological formulations can be extended to the organizational and sociological levels. A typology is developed to distinguish police practices in back region enclosure (secrecy), back region disclosure (confidence), front region enclosure (censorship), and front region disclosure (publicity). Journalists' efforts to overcome the spatial, social and cultural barriers erected by the police are delineated. Consideration is given to the ways in which journalists police the police: how news texts 'play back' into the police organization and affect relations and practices there, including renewed efforts to patrol the facts. The process is shown to be equivocal and problematic, respecting the fact that information is the most difficult thing to guard because it can be taken without leaving its place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of a survey completed by 565 human resource professionals in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The major result suggests that individuals who are more dependent on their employing organizations are more likely to comply with organizational pressures to behave unethically. Factor analysis of our dependent measure of ethical organizational behavior suggested that two distinct constructs were being tapped; furthermore, different variables were found to predict each. The potential for conceptualizing unethical organizational behavior as multidimensional is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Administration is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We contend in this paper that the trade union role in social policy is expanding due to the debate on women's issues. The Centrale de l'enseignement du Québec is seen as a forerunner of this trend, with its policy positions on questions previously seen as 'personal'. The method of promotion of these interests is also new, with 'caucusing' and 'networking'. The significance of these changes goes beyond unionized women workers and affects all women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes some of the effects of different compressed shift schedules—one entailing four 12-hour days and one having four 10-hour days—in two police organizations. The goal is to investigate whether a compressed shift schedule can be designed to achieve a better balance between work and non-work by changing the starting and quitting times, the number of hours worked, the frequency and number of rotations, the number of days worked, and the number of weekends off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper posits that organizational rules consist of control rules and safeguard rules. The latter protect employees from arbitrary managerial decisions whereas the former regulate employees' behaviours at work. Using data obtained from ninety-two Canadian organizations, this study shows that safeguard rules are more prevalent in governments sales organizations and hotels. In addition, unionized firms and firms pursuing functionally flexible strategies also have a higher incidence of safeguard rules. Control rules are less common among prospector firms but are more common in functionally flexible firms, as well as among hotels and sales organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper we present comparative qualitative data on the influence of patients on the relationship between health professionals and hospitals in France and Canada. We elaborate specifically on a typology that depicts the structural influence of patients in terms of open and closed communities. Our analysis reveals some key differences between the open and closed communities across the two countries. Health professionals in open communities in France were able to establish a stronger relationship with patients than those in Canada. Professionals in France described a weaker connection with their colleagues than in Canada, and this may be one of the triggers of stress, burnout and high turnover. There were more similarities among closed communities in Canada and France. Conceptualizing the structural influence of patients in terms of open and closed community ideal types is a useful heuristic device that moves the implicit and explicit influence of patients to the foreground of the analysis of the relations between health professions and organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Occupational communities represent bounded cultures populated by people with similar work identities that transcend organizational settings. In this paper, I examine the relationship between an occupational community's culture and its ability to control strategic resources that advantage its members. Drawing on an empirical examination of the Canadian forensic accounting, I argue that reputation acts as a strategic resource, not only for individual members, but for the community as a whole. The community's practice standards and membership rules work to heighten the importance of individual practitioners' reputations, which in turn benefits client communities by conferring legitimacy on their claims, and restricts entry into forensic accounting. The role of reputation in Canadian forensic accounting serves to illuminate the importance of resources that, rather than being held in some proprietary fashion, are shared among actors who are, ostensibly, in competition with one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the organizational demands of the native policing environment are examined to analyze their effects on native policing arrangements and the constraints and linkages that govern innovation and reform at the levels of policy and program development. It is argued that, as environmental conditions vary and change, current methods of organizing and delivering native police services will become increasingly problematic. Some of the key principles and issues that underlie policing models are discussed and examined in the native context. It is concluded that a community-based approach to policing is a promising strategy that may uniquely serve the interests and requirements of particular native communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes two Canadian aboriginal organizations which have attempted a second-order change, a transformation of their belief system, to make their organizations operate in a manner consistent with traditional aboriginal beliefs, values, and customs. One organization completed a successful change, the other organization's change process was abandoned after 2 years. The process of organizational change followed by the two organizations illustrates the link between interpretive schemes, organizational actions, and organizational structures. The process which focused primarily on the link between the aboriginally-based interpretive scheme and actions proved more effective than the process that linked the structure and the interpretative scheme. For the successful organization, the process of organizational transformation was shown to be incremental, iterative, multifaceted and required a lengthy period of time to complete. During the early stages of process of change, both old and new interpretative schemes were present within the organization. The process of organizational change then became a dialectic involving the old and the new. As a critical mass of people began to adopt the new interpretative scheme, the dialectic focused on different ways of implementing the new scheme. Leaders, critical to the process, had two essential tasks: enabling or permitting the presentation of new interpretative schemes and keeping the dialectic going for a sufficient period of time to ensure the emergence of a interpretative scheme shared by a critical mass of organizational members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structure, that is, deliberate patterns of relationships, is an important characteristic for analysis in comparative studies of organizations. Using a modified version of the Inkson short form of the Aston questionnaire, this study examined contextual and structural variables of 23 community, private, and agricultural colleges and technological institutes in Alberta and British Columbia. The Aston methodology was shown to have discriminating power and structural differences were apparent in the four groups. The factor solutions, however, were different from those obtained in the Aston studies, suggesting that the Aston generalizations do not apply to all types of organizations. In particular, different types of relationships were evident in the formalization of roles, functional specialization, and centralization of decision-making power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the growth of globalization, organizations are facing an increased challenge to manage talent, improve employee engagement, develop effective teams, create succession pipelines, and increase organizational effectiveness in multinational settings. Given the need to evaluate and compare individuals from more than one country using standardized assessment instruments, there is a consequent need to understand the issues and implications of norm selection decisions. The current investigation examines the impact of global vs. local norm selection in the assessment of motivation in work settings. A sample of 21,248 participants from organizations in Australia, Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States completed the Individual Directions Inventory™ as part of ongoing organizational development activities. The choice of norm appeared to have minimal impact on most scales among the Anglo cultures studied. Results illustrate the issues researchers and organizations face when creating cross-national assessments and provide recommendations regarding norm selection and the communication of results to end users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – To analyze lower level employees' retrospective views of their experience with organizational changes introduced by management; to provide a typology of change responses based on employees' interpretations. Design/methodology/approach – Canadian bank employees' accounts of their experience with change were obtained in interviews and analyzed using established guidelines for qualitative data analysis. A typology of change responses (acceptance, resigned compliance, avoidance/opposition, and ambivalence) was derived from the data. Links are made to the literature on readiness for, compliance with and resistance to, change, and to the literatures on framing and on identity as they inform responses to change. Findings – Among others, the findings indicate: that changes that are compatible with employees' role identity or that are viewed as enhancing organizational identity tend to be easily embraced; the extensive prevalence of the ‘resigned compliance’ response; that lack of participation in change decisions may be a common expectation among employees of large bureaucratic organizations that seek uniformity across widely dispersed geographic units; and opposition to change may be functional from an organizational standpoint. Research limitations/implications – Several research implications are outlined including the need for theories to consider that change has been ubiquitous and that its pervasiveness can place its legitimacy beyond questioning. Research limitation includes the fact that the study focused on change survivors and did not have access to employees who had willingly left, or were asked to leave the organization as changes were being implemented. Practical implications – The study provides an understanding of the dynamics that underlie different responses to change. Understanding such dynamics is essential for the performance of the change agent role. Originality/value – Unlike much of the extant literature that tends to focus on the managerial view of change and on managerial framing, this study contributes the lower level employee perspective on, and framing of, change. In contrast with other studies of change that attend to a specific change situation, this article focuses on experiences with multiple changes and on the general view of change held by participants. The study also addresses a gap in the literature, as empirical studies have failed to tie responses to change to identity dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Psychiatry is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article presents a case study of how members of three funding organizations evaluated the same two agencies in Canada. The research on which the article is based sheds light on the “organizational effectiveness” construct, on the ways in which the evaluators use it to reach conclusions on agency effectiveness, and the relation between these conclusions and funders' decisions on agency funding. The authors describe a framework for understanding evaluation processes, describe three funders in terms of this framework, set out predominant patterns in evaluation processes the funders used, and show the effects of these patterns from the agency's perspective. They then discuss the implications of the findings for agency managers and how the findings relate to theories of organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Administration is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Public Administration is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A model for effective management of human resources for organizational effectiveness is proposed. Several elements of this model are evaluated in the light of the failure of personnel and industrial relations policies of organizations in Canada. Suggestions are put forward to improve worker performance and job satisfaction as well as organizational growth and survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compared the influence of organizations' relationships to the institutional versus task environment on organizational performance in the Canadian construction industry. This industry is characterized by both intense institutional regulation and strong market competition. Regulatory stringency and resource stringency were proposed as key determinants of the relative importance of institutional versus task environment relations in predicting organizational profitability and productivity. Results favoured the contribution of task environment relations to organizational success in support of an economic or strategic perspective on organizations. However, under highly stringent conditions, institutional relations were shown to be associated significantly with performance, suggesting that future research needs to consider both institutional and task environment effects on organizational performance and success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]