A processual account of social reality and its application to a corporate change case study

This research project started as an inquiry into the relationship between organisations and the ideas they assimilate. How do ideas get noticed, developed and implemented? Why do certain ideas appear and then disappear without lasting impact? The project was based on a conception of organisations and ideas that was ecological: organisations provide an environment in which ideas can grow, compete, achieve dominance, find a niche or simply fade away. This ecological metaphor began to surface critical problems that questioned its viability. After reviewing the notion of ideas, from Plato through Descartes, Locke, Lovejoy and Whitehead to Rogers, Czarniawska and Latour, the concept of ideas-as-things is seen as problematic, and a better way is proposed, conceiving of ideas as processes: as human-material interactions. This hypothesis repositions the inquiry towards conceiving of organisations as idea- and therefore process-complexes. If ideas are processes and organisations are processes then the distinction between the two becomes difficult to make. If the concept of ideas retains meaning it is as a perspective for interpreting process-complexes that focuses on the way processes develop from the imaginary towards the material. This leads to exploring the nature of the world-as-process. Our conception of reality appears to be framed within a substantive, as opposed to processual, world-view whereby the processes of perception, recognition and verbalisation constitute the means by which the underlying continuum of experience is translated into the discrete components of the world-of-things. It seems that we cannot intellectualise process without simultaneously alienating ourselves from it. How can we conceive of the world-as-process without obscuring it behind the world-of-things? Contemporary process theories can be divided into two broad groups: those that deal with process as specific phenomena within a substantive organisation (exogenous); and those that treat organisation-as-process (endogenous). Those theories in the former group avoid the problems of process altogether while those in the latter largely focus on discursive and intellectual processes, leaving the world of materiality as a secondary phenomenon. There is one field of study, however, where materiality is treated as a primary part of social processes: in Actor Network Theory. Here, however, materiality is granted equal status to human actors, de-centring the importance of human-material interactions. This thesis attempts to develop a novel position on process that centres on human-material interactions. It starts with a simple scheme that envisages social processes to be autonomous from but dependent upon biological processes, that are themselves autonomous from but dependent on underlying physical processes. By considering how each of these processes emerged from its predecessor it proposes a model of process genesis. This model is used to develop a speculative account of how social processes emerged from the biological, identifying the critical role of technology as autocatalytic and durable, and of language in providing variety to enable the social processes to develop autonomously from the biological. The resulting model is of a complex-conjugate process that integrates materiality with intellection. This model incorporates elements of existing process theories: processes of sensemaking and communication entwined around material processes involving technologies. Both technology and intellection provide potentiality that is actualised through the human body, creating further potentiality. Technology stores and mobilising potentiality while intellection provides creativity. Methodology remains problematic for processual research. It is intellectually-intensive and therefore constrained by the substantive nature of all description. A processual approach can limit the “thickness” of this descriptive layer and stay as close to the processual as possible. The author proposes a tool box of process-sympathetic methods, drawing on the discipline of archaeology for inspiration. Archaeologists place a primacy in materiality, being the only remaining component of the social processes they study. The processual archaeologist pieces together extinct processes from this materiality. This improvised methodology is explored through the medium of a case study concerning the fate and fortune of one particular idea within one particular organisations. The idea was Value Based Management and the organisation; a large international company in the late 1990's. This research project provides a tentative proposal for a processual model that could be useful in studying organisation. It suggests that whilst most “process studies” are carried out from a largely substantive world-view, and others are largely concerned with intellectual or discursive processes, there may be an approach that integrates the importance of the technological with the intellectual while remaining focused on central role of the human body. It is very much an unfinished project that requires development in many directions before its own potentiality can be properly tested

Summer Credit Recovery and Middle Grade Students

The purpose of this study was to examine the difference in student success by retained students who participate in the Hamblen County (Tennessee) Credit Recovery Program [HCCRP] in the year prior and following their participation. HCCRP is an alternative intervention for students who have been retained in the middle grades of Hamblen County School System. Student success was defined and assessed in the areas of academic proficiency, discipline, and student absenteeism. Student information regarding each area was obtained from the Hamblen County School System, coded, and analyzed through quantitative testing. This study was guided by 8 research questions and 8 corresponding null hypotheses. Five of the null hypotheses were tested for significance using a paired sample t tests, 2 were tested using a chi square testing, and 1 was tested using a single sample t test. The population of this study was 94 students who had participated in the HCCRP in the 2010- 2012 school years. The analysis of data showed no significant difference in student science scores, number of discipline referrals, or absenteeism in comparing the year prior and the year following the students’ participation in HCCRP. The paired sample t test did reveal significant increases in both student math and reading/language arts scores. A chi squared test showed a significant number of low socioeconomic students within the population. Additionally, a single sample t test showed a significantly higher number of days students missed prior to attending HCCRP and the acceptable level of absenteeism. The result of this study indicates that students who have attended HCCRP as an alternative to grade level retention benefited academically in math and reading/language arts

Studies on the role of parainfluenzavirus type 3 and adenovirus in respiratory disease of sheep

Investigations were undertaken to isolate viruses from sheep, and to assess their role in respiratory diseases by means of epidemiological observations and experimental studies of their pathogenesis.Viruses were isolated from 0*7 per cent, of samples taken at necropsies and from 16 per cent, of sheep in 3 of 4 flocks currently experiencing outbreaks of respiratory disease, but not from 7 flocks with few or no signs of clinical illness.An adenovirus (strain 7769) was isolated from rectal swabs, but not nasal swabs, from 3 of 15 lambs during an outbreak of pneumonia in a group of 4 to 10-week-old lambs. This adenovirus differed antigenically from other ovine, bovine and human adenoviruses, and the species of erythro¬ cytes that were agglutinated by strain 7769 differed from those agglutinated by porcine, canine, equine and murine adenoviruses. It was concluded that strain 7769 was a previously unreported type of adenovirus and was designated ovine adenovirus type 4 (0A4).Although antibodies to the adenovirus group specific antigen were detected in only 6 per cent, of 661 sheep sera, neutralizing antibodies to 4 serotypes of ovine adenovirus were more common. Neutralizing antibodies to ovine adeno¬ virus types 1-4 were more prevalent in animals over 12 months of age.Following exposure of specific pathogen-free (SPF) - 2 - lambs to an aerosol of 0A4 virus, replication of this virus occurred in the respiratory and alimentary tracts and liver, and neutralizing antibodies could be detected in the serum and nasal secretions as early as 8 days after inoculation. Infection was associated with a mild clinical illness, detectable by auscultation only, and accompanied by lesions in the lungs and liver. The lesions found in the lungs of infected lambs were pulmonary oedema and peribronchiolar accumulations of mononuclear cells and in the livers were focal necrosis, lymphangitis and occlusive cholangitis.The clinical disease and pneumonic lesions observed in SPF lambs infected with both ovine adenovirus type 4 and Pasteurella haemolytica were no more severe than those in lambs infected with P.haemolytica alone.Enzootic pneumonia was induced consistently in SPF lambs inoculated with parainfluenza virus type 3 (PI3) followed by P.haemolytica 4 or 7 days later. Seventyeight per cent, of lambs developed severe respiratory disease by this method, 54 per cent, died and 95 per cent, had macroscopic lung lesions. The illness and lesions were more marked in lambs inoculated with both PI3 virus and P.haemolytica than in lambs inoculated with either agent alone and were associated with rapid multiplication of P.haemolytica within the lung

Dea Roma and the Roman virtues : a comparative study in the policy and practice of Deified abstractions

The purpose of this thesis is to provide an in-depth study of the goddess Roma and the development and spread of her cult across the eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire from the second century BC to the reign of Augustus. In the east the institution of her cult was the result of expanding Roman influence in the region, and served as a means for people to conceptualise the presence of Roman power. In contrast to this, her worship in the west, as part of the imperial cult, was mandated by the emperor Augustus. In order to better understand the place of Roma in the context of the western empire, I argue that it is best to view her as a deified abstraction. The deified abstractions were a group of divinities in Rome that embodied a specific ideal or concept (the goddess Concordia embodying concord, Pax embodying peace etc.). In order to view the goddess in this manner, I examine what it meant for Roma to embody "Rome", and what this would have meant to the people who worshipped her. This examination also takes into account the views of scholars such as Mellor, who view Roma as little more than a political tool and a by-product of Greek sycophancy, as well as those scholars who view the deified abstractions in Rome as a carry-over of archaic Roman religion that held little importance to the people of Rome. Such opinions, I argue, are both erroneous and untenable

Objectives of the Soviet Merchant Marine

In the years since the end of the Second World War, no aspect of merchant shipping has created greater controversy than the phenomenal growth of the merchant fleet of the Soviet Union. Starting in 1945 with a makeshift fleet that was a motley collection of obsolete vessels, ships received as reparations from the defeated Axis nations and Lend-Lease Liberty ships, the Soviets have fashioned a modern, efficient merchant marine that is currently second in the world in numbers of ships and sixth in deadweight tonnage. Employed as a powerful instrument of the Soviet state, this fleet now competes effectively with Western shipping lines throughout every corner of the globe. This paper will examine the remarkable rise of the Soviet merchant marine with particular emphasis on the objectives of this growth. For ease of discussion, political, economic and military objectives will be evaluated separately, although, in reality, these aims are often closely intertwined and dependent on each other. This analysis will reveal why the Soviet Union, once regarded strictly as a continental power, is now a maritime superpower and, given her economic development plans, will become even more dependent on her merchant fleet in the future