Widespread developments in organizing affect how leadership is embedded in public organizations. The link between leadership and formal positions in the hierarchy becomes less straightforward,... Show moreWidespread developments in organizing affect how leadership is embedded in public organizations. The link between leadership and formal positions in the hierarchy becomes less straightforward, since collaboration across organizational boundaries and flexible arrangements parallel to bureaucratic structures are increasingly common. Leadership is further complicated by the typical reality of unclear or competing goals, tasks, and stakeholder interests. Since navigating in such an ambiguous and complex context often requires a variety of leadership behaviours, this dissertation introduces a comprehensive perspective on leadership as a repertoire of behavioural options. Based on four empirical studies, this dissertation examines how leadership behaviour repertoires take shape in public organizations. By adopting a repertoire perspective, this dissertation underlines that leadership behaviour takes on many forms and is used in a variety of directions in relation to multiple stakeholders – by both managers and non-managerial employees – and indicates that use of the leadership behaviour repertoire can be explained by variation in situations, organizational context, and individual attitudes and experiences. These insights contribute to contemporary challenges for leadership in public organizations in theory and practice. Show less
This dissertation takes ambiguity as its main theoretical focal point. It illustrates how ambiguity is used strategically from many sides. Further it presents novel approaches to conceptualizing... Show moreThis dissertation takes ambiguity as its main theoretical focal point. It illustrates how ambiguity is used strategically from many sides. Further it presents novel approaches to conceptualizing ambiguous content and ambiguous relationships. In addition it is concerned with potentiality and temporality.The deliberate ambiguity of viral stories and the chaos surrounding them, elaborates on how to create an account while accounting for positioning in time as well as space. It elaborates on the way both ethnographer and informants simultaneously create accounts that are specific to their positions, and that these specificities must be considered as the ethnographer shifts between different modes of ordering while in the field, while analyzing, and while retrospectively accounting for past events. The dissertation takes a methodological stance towards embracing conflicts, discontinuity, and messy data as the source of understanding. Deliberately looking for temporalities, potentiality, and ambiguity encourages a focus on uncertainty, open ends, and multiple possible versions. Doing so is crucial when attending to matters that are both sudden, intensive, highly digitally mediated, and subject to massive attention.The dissertation provides methodological as well as practical concerns, valuable to researchers whose object of study is brief but intense, including the retrospective representation of it. Show less
Although the outcomes of our daily-life risky decisions are often unknown (e.g., receiving or not receiving a fine after running a red light), the probabilities of these outcomes may also vary in... Show moreAlthough the outcomes of our daily-life risky decisions are often unknown (e.g., receiving or not receiving a fine after running a red light), the probabilities of these outcomes may also vary in uncertainty. That is, the probabilities may be known (risk) or unknown (ambiguity), which influences risk taking behavior to a great extent. A developmental phase associated with heightened risk taking is adolescence, yet how adolescents process risk and ambiguity, and the relation with real-life risk taking, remain elusive. Moreover, individual differences in observed risk taking behavior remain largely overlooked. In this PhD thesis risk and ambiguity processing in adolescents were decomposed using behavioral economics and fMRI, and related to real-life risk taking. The results indicated that risk and ambiguity differentially impact risk-taking behavior, and are processed by different neural mechanisms. In addition, individual variation in task-related and real-life risk taking highlighted that adolescence is not a phase of heightened risk taking for everyone. Moreover, it was found that real-life risk-taking and prosocial tendencies were both predicted by fun seeking, suggesting this trait may make individuals differentially susceptible to positive or negative outcomes. Together, this thesis points towards a more nuanced perspective on adolescent risk taking and its underlying components. Show less
This dissertation focuses on the literary function of the ambiguities and wordplay in the work of Apollinaire, Prévert, Tournier and Beckett, showing that this function is much broader than the... Show moreThis dissertation focuses on the literary function of the ambiguities and wordplay in the work of Apollinaire, Prévert, Tournier and Beckett, showing that this function is much broader than the humour and entertainment function usually associated with such language play. In the work of these writers, ambiguities and puns often generate serious reflections or tragic plots. Moreover, these language games are so central to the works under investigation that they reflect or underlie their very structures. This use of language is common to all texts explored here, despite their significant diversity in terms of execution and design. This study of the interrelation between ambiguity and wordplay on the one hand and structure on the other, is grounded in close reading. This approach was selected for the insight it can offer into the intentions of the writers under investigation, and for being well suited to the kinds of invitations to interpretation extended by the authors themselves. It is evident that all four approach the idea of authorship with the conviction that the role of the author is both insignificant and inconceivable without the additional complicity and involvement of the reader, from whom they require a co-creative effort. Show less
Ecosystem services (ES) are increasingly embedded in policy agendas, but if and how policy actors are considering them is not often reported. This study assesses the extent to which ES were... Show moreEcosystem services (ES) are increasingly embedded in policy agendas, but if and how policy actors are considering them is not often reported. This study assesses the extent to which ES were considered by key policy actors involved in the strategic decision-making process leading to an innovative large-scale Dutch coastal management project. We analysed retrospective interviews to ascertain which ES were considered and how they were described by policy actors. Over half of the quotes (118/228) and 16 out of the 17 interviewees referred to three broad ES categories, with high degrees of adoption: coastal safety, recreation and cognitive development (learning by doing). The broad terms ‘nature’ and ‘spatial quality’ were also referenced often (36 times). Our findings suggest that broad, unspecified ecosystem services were adopted highly by the policy actors, while specific ecosystem service categories were rarely considered. Relatable and comprehensible cultural ecosystem services also constituted critical arguments for policy actors in their strategic decision making. We reflect that ambiguous, broad terms can help to garner support and unite efforts across disciplinary and institutional boundaries. For ES to align with relevant aspects of decision making, a ‘translation step’ between ES research and decision making might be required and ambiguity should be acknowledged. Show less
Although many neuroimaging studies have investigated adolescent risk taking, few studies have dissociated between decision-making under risk (known probabilities) and ambiguity (unknown... Show moreAlthough many neuroimaging studies have investigated adolescent risk taking, few studies have dissociated between decision-making under risk (known probabilities) and ambiguity (unknown probabilities). Furthermore, which brain regions are sensitive to individual differences in task-related and self-reported risk taking remains elusive. We presented 198 adolescents (11-24 years, an age-range in which individual differences in risk taking are prominent) with an fMRI paradigm that separated decision-making (choosing to gamble or not) and reward outcome processing (gains, no gains) under risky and ambiguous conditions, and related this to task-related and self-reported risk taking. We observed distinct neural mechanisms underlying risky and ambiguous gambling, with risk more prominently associated with activation in parietal cortex, and ambiguity more prominently with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), as well as medial PFC during outcome processing. Individual differences in task-related risk taking were positively associated with ventral striatum activation in the decision phase, specifically for risk, and negatively associated with insula and dorsomedial PFC activation, specifically for ambiguity. Moreover, dorsolateral PFC activation in the outcome phase seemed a prominent marker for individual differences in task-related risk taking under ambiguity as well as self-reported daily-life risk taking, in which greater risk taking was associated with reduced activation in dorsolateral PFC. Together, this study demonstrates the importance of considering multiple risk-taking measures, and contextual moderators, in understanding the neural mechanisms underlying adolescent risk taking. Show less
