The practice of hope: Common themes in participative process and the building of capacity
Date
1998
Authors
Smith, Carol Richardson
Major Professor
Advisor
Williams, Sally K.
Committee Member
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Abstract
Changes that foster more participation in business, education, and community development are being driven by forces such as global business systems, new understandings of education, and devolution of government. Practitioners working in these fields are being challenged to deal with new ways of doing things. As old rules may no longer apply and new paradigms have yet to fully emerge, practitioners may be in the midst of inventing new ways to work. While the persistence of separate disciplines and theories in practice are understandable, an integrative approach could be more helpful to practitioners than any approach applied separately to this situation.
This study sought to accomplish this integration across all three fields by using grounded theory to derive important ideas from field data contained in nine theories in practice, compare these ideas, find common themes, and build a conceptual framework for use by practitioners in designing participative process to build capacity in a time of change. Contributions to grounded theory methods from this study include the use of maps and models to assist in coding initial data and a focus group of practitioners from the fields of business, education, and community development set up over electronic mail. This group validated, extended, and refined common themes from the initial data with data directly from the field.
Findings from the study include three clear and persistent cultural patterns that provide context for categories emerging from the initial data, as well as common themes from data across the three fields naming process design elements of change, learning, and leadership and providing process design principles of context, reciprocity, reflection, ownership, and support. A conceptual framework using these elements and principles to create fifteen dimensions for participative processes that build capacity is presented and discussed.
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thesis