title: Realising Our Best Intentions: Vision, Values and Voice in Community Non-government Organisations of the Aotearoa \New Zealand Mental Health Sector

authors: Barber, Kirsty Frances Mary

subjects: organising

abstract: This thesis examines the effectiveness of establishing a recovery orientation in community, non-government, mental health organisations in Aotearoa\New Zealand.  It addresses the discursive constructions of key concepts such as madness, recovery and community care.  In addition, it examines the wider, societal and institutional pressures that influence how important features of a recovery discourse, such as empowerment and an ordinary life in community, are articulated and enacted within organisational environments.  It also investigates how institutional hegemonies are contested, and opportunities identified for institutional change and organisational transformation.  
Critical and postmodern perspectives in healthcare provided a rationale for utilising the framework for organisational communication research, developed by Dennis Mumby and Cynthia Stohl (1996, 2007).  The framework addressed the problematics of (1) voice, (2) rationality, (3) the relationship between organisations and the state, as well as (4) the problematic of organising itself.  
Critical Appreciative Inquiry (Grant & Humphries, 2006) was the methodology used for this project.  Focus groups and interviews facilitated dialogue among support workers, team leaders and senior managers from a range of community mental health organisations throughout Aotearoa\New Zealand.  These encounters encouraged conversations about what worked well in organisations, and how to enhance a recovery-orientation, without shying away from a critical analysis of what was impeding best practice.  The dialogues also enabled examination of how these organisations were situated within the larger socio-political and cultural environment.  
The findings of the study showed that organisational stakeholders constructed and translated the discourses of madness, illness and recovery very differently.  Translations reflected the relative power of particular discourse communities, with powerful groups able to control meaning systems through their greater social legitimacy.  Institutionalised discourses of biomedicine and managerialism proved difficult to “deinstitutionalise”, and institutional agents “translated” recovery discourses in ways that ensured little disruption to powerful and privileged interests.  In addition, it was apparent that institutions undertook defensive institutional work when challenged.  Defensive strategies were primarily discursive, e.g. translation, but were important mechanisms through which institutional interests subsumed alternative discourses, and maintained power over an organisational field.
This thesis contributes to the field of organisational communication by demonstrating that perceptions of organisational, and institutional change, are frequently discursive, rather than substantive.  Effective organisational change, therefore, needs to challenge institutional structures and systemic relationships of power.  Sustained, and sustainable, change requires fundamental shifts in the rational bases of institutional logics.  This has important implications for how less powerful actors and organisations can establish alternative discourses in institutionalised fields, such as mental healthcare.

text: Realising Our Best Intentions: Vision, Values and Voice in Community Non-government Organisations of the Aotearoa \New Zealand Mental Health Sector This thesis examines the effectiveness of establishing a recovery orientation in community, non-government, mental health organisations in Aotearoa\New Zealand.  It addresses the discursive constructions of key concepts such as madness, recovery and community care.  In addition, it examines the wider, societal and institutional pressures that influence how important features of a recovery discourse, such as empowerment and an ordinary life in community, are articulated and enacted within organisational environments.  It also investigates how institutional hegemonies are contested, and opportunities identified for institutional change and organisational transformation.  
Critical and postmodern perspectives in healthcare provided a rationale for utilising the framework for organisational communication research, developed by Dennis Mumby and Cynthia Stohl (1996, 2007).  The framework addressed the problematics of (1) voice, (2) rationality, (3) the relationship between organisations and the state, as well as (4) the problematic of organising itself.  
Critical Appreciative Inquiry (Grant & Humphries, 2006) was the methodology used for this project.  Focus groups and interviews facilitated dialogue among support workers, team leaders and senior managers from a range of community mental health organisations throughout Aotearoa\New Zealand.  These encounters encouraged conversations about what worked well in organisations, and how to enhance a recovery-orientation, without shying away from a critical analysis of what was impeding best practice.  The dialogues also enabled examination of how these organisations were situated within the larger socio-political and cultural environment.  
The findings of the study showed that organisational stakeholders constructed and translated the discourses of madness, illness and recovery very differently.  Translations reflected the relative power of particular discourse communities, with powerful groups able to control meaning systems through their greater social legitimacy.  Institutionalised discourses of biomedicine and managerialism proved difficult to “deinstitutionalise”, and institutional agents “translated” recovery discourses in ways that ensured little disruption to powerful and privileged interests.  In addition, it was apparent that institutions undertook defensive institutional work when challenged.  Defensive strategies were primarily discursive, e.g. translation, but were important mechanisms through which institutional interests subsumed alternative discourses, and maintained power over an organisational field.
This thesis contributes to the field of organisational communication by demonstrating that perceptions of organisational, and institutional change, are frequently discursive, rather than substantive.  Effective organisational change, therefore, needs to challenge institutional structures and systemic relationships of power.  Sustained, and sustainable, change requires fundamental shifts in the rational bases of institutional logics.  This has important implications for how less powerful actors and organisations can establish alternative discourses in institutionalised fields, such as mental healthcare.

year: 2015

title: Truth as a cultural value

authors: Wyatt, Jeremy

abstract: In this talk, I will focus primarily on a strategy for thinking about truth's nature that has been recently proposed by Gila Sher.  This strategy—which I call the ‘value-first strategy’—has it that we should first observe that truth is an intrinsic human value and then develop an account of truth’s nature on the basis of this observation.  I will begin by arguing that truth is best described as a cultural, rather than a human, value.  I will then argue that because truth is a cultural value, the value-first strategy compels us to seriously consider some novel ideas about truth’s nature that are respectively grounded in discussions about truth pluralism and some remarks by Alfred Tarski.  To close, I will briefly illustrate how truth's status as a cultural value bears on current sociopolitical debates which concern the value of truth.

text: Truth as a cultural value In this talk, I will focus primarily on a strategy for thinking about truth's nature that has been recently proposed by Gila Sher.  This strategy—which I call the ‘value-first strategy’—has it that we should first observe that truth is an intrinsic human value and then develop an account of truth’s nature on the basis of this observation.  I will begin by arguing that truth is best described as a cultural, rather than a human, value.  I will then argue that because truth is a cultural value, the value-first strategy compels us to seriously consider some novel ideas about truth’s nature that are respectively grounded in discussions about truth pluralism and some remarks by Alfred Tarski.  To close, I will briefly illustrate how truth's status as a cultural value bears on current sociopolitical debates which concern the value of truth.

year: 2025

title: Why do Maori Disconnect?  From their tikanga and legal associated rights and responsibilities within a contemporary world

authors: Jones, Mary Te Kuini

subjects: Ahi Kaa

abstract: This thesis examines some of the reasons why Māori disconnect from their legal and tikanga rights and responsibilities within the contemporary world of today.  The aim of this research project is to identify some of the associated rights and responsibilities of Māori - as land owners, shareholders, Whānau, hapū and tribal members.  Whilst it seeks to reveal some of the desires and visions of the interview participants, the objective is not to seek resolution.  The focus is to identify what deters or dissuades owners from returning and/or participating.  It also seeks to identify whether the assumption or label of disconnection is a reality or myth. 

‘Māori Diaspora’ particularly refers to the substantial increase in outward migration (also referred to as out migration) of Māori leaving New Zealand, and more significantly migrating to Australia, which was in direct response to the neo-liberal reforms of the late 1980’s (Smith L. , 2006).   With the New Zealand government refusing to acknowledge the negative impact their legislation and policy had on Māori, they continued to introduce new systems that were ultimately designed to push many to breaking point.  
Māori who could no longer bear the cumulative effects of such oppression emigrated in search of better economic opportunities and a higher standard of living for their families.  Meanwhile, back home in Aotearoa, the Māori Diaspora left behind a complex set of problems in its wake with diminishing hapū and tribal members driven from their homeland who are gradually becoming dis-connected and estranged from their whenua tipu.   

Whilst repatriation is an uncomfortable topic for many Māori who wish to retain their overseas residency, many continue to dismiss the compounding effects of their absence and the heavy burden carried by those who remain in Aotearoa to keep the home fires burning (or the ‘ahi kaa’).

text: Why do Maori Disconnect?  From their tikanga and legal associated rights and responsibilities within a contemporary world This thesis examines some of the reasons why Māori disconnect from their legal and tikanga rights and responsibilities within the contemporary world of today.  The aim of this research project is to identify some of the associated rights and responsibilities of Māori - as land owners, shareholders, Whānau, hapū and tribal members.  Whilst it seeks to reveal some of the desires and visions of the interview participants, the objective is not to seek resolution.  The focus is to identify what deters or dissuades owners from returning and/or participating.  It also seeks to identify whether the assumption or label of disconnection is a reality or myth. 

‘Māori Diaspora’ particularly refers to the substantial increase in outward migration (also referred to as out migration) of Māori leaving New Zealand, and more significantly migrating to Australia, which was in direct response to the neo-liberal reforms of the late 1980’s (Smith L. , 2006).   With the New Zealand government refusing to acknowledge the negative impact their legislation and policy had on Māori, they continued to introduce new systems that were ultimately designed to push many to breaking point.  
Māori who could no longer bear the cumulative effects of such oppression emigrated in search of better economic opportunities and a higher standard of living for their families.  Meanwhile, back home in Aotearoa, the Māori Diaspora left behind a complex set of problems in its wake with diminishing hapū and tribal members driven from their homeland who are gradually becoming dis-connected and estranged from their whenua tipu.   

Whilst repatriation is an uncomfortable topic for many Māori who wish to retain their overseas residency, many continue to dismiss the compounding effects of their absence and the heavy burden carried by those who remain in Aotearoa to keep the home fires burning (or the ‘ahi kaa’).

year: 2018