Higher Education

Cornwall invokes idyllic pictures of an indigenous population living a rural dream desired by those who cannot escape urban pressures. However, this neglects the social reality for some Cornish Citizens who live in urban communities characterised by pockets of intense deprivation, where generational unemployment and domestic violence have created an endogenous landscape of anxiety and hopelessness. Moreover, voluntary organisations offering support to these oppressed localities have found funding harder to obtain resulting, in some cases, in their closure. The panacea for some analysts has been, to an extent, the notion that the social enterprise model will improve wellbeing in deprived localities by achieving higher levels of social capital and participation amongst community members. The paradigm envisaging community activists entering into working partnerships with social entrepreneurs to effectively implement the public policies of the increasingly minimalized state seems to neglect the contending perceptions of social reality possibly embraced by community members in urban-rural environments. These contending, but equally legitimate, predispositions about the relational situation of the individual and community involvement can be understood as (1) a preference for hierarchical community management; (2) the belief that community services should be determined by market mechanisms and (3) the perception that initiatives are instruments of potential or actual control rendering them determined automata. This last assertion may be the most relevant analysis regarding those residing in the deprived urban areas of the UK, specifically Cornwall in our case study. Nevertheless, all three understandings prompt the question-what is a realistic level of engagement exists in social enterprise initiatives in deprived localities? Therefore, it is proposed that a community-based participatory action research project, informed by the work of Freire (1985, 1996) and Bourdieu (1976, 1984, 1990 and 1998) may provide a methodology for enterprises to address stakeholder apathy and negativity in urban Cornwall.

The traditional role of the British State in determining and protecting the public interest was informed by deontological ethical principles that determined what actions were right or wrong, what constituted the concepts of good or bad.  However, in seeking to achieve an innovative modernisation of the public sector, this hierarchical mode of governance has now undergone a transformation into a hybrid organisational form of new public management that seeks to combine elements of the neo-liberal market-driven model of public administration with its antithesis — the entrenched Weberian bureaucratic model.
It is proposed that lower income communities embraced sceptical tenets of morality as a bulwark against the perceived insincerity of neo-liberal conservative market orientated outcomes.  Thus, they acceded to a physiological strife founded on the fundamental difference between deontological and consequential ethical outcomes.  Moreover, new labour’s political elite has exacerbated this ethical scepticism through a strategy of managerialism, producing an ethically ambiguous scenario causing uncertainty for all stakeholders.     
In this ambivalent contemporary public arena, where efficiency and effectiveness are as important as notions of equity in the delivery of policies that are underpinned by a regulatory vision of “the public good”, political leadership seems destined to cope with an indeterminacy that requires perpetual transfiguration and optimal opportunism.  This inexorably leads to the risk of both overt and direct political authoritarianism at any level of government.

Public servants, who are working in a bureaucratic public sector, embrace community participation subject to carefully prescribed premises.  Firstly, community organisations are instruments of policy implementation legitimately subject to state manipulation and secondly, community members should make rational decisions in pursuit of fulfilling duties owed to the state.  In this paradigm, by the use of education and persuasion, communities can proselytise to their dissenting members through processes of group involvement that promote the recognised virtues that contribute to the maintenance of the existing social order. However, the increasing ineffectiveness of command-type public policy instruments has resulted in the creation of a new post-bureaucratic public management. This scenario requires policy makers to perceive the egalitarian and pro-active involvement of community members in the implementation and evaluation of public services as critical to dealing with issues of fairness, distributional justice, equity, social stability and inclusiveness. 
The conundrum facing public servants is the likelihood that some community members, in the new age of post-bureaucratic management, would prefer the following alternative conceptualisations of community:
• A hierarchical model of community, under which societal common good has priority over local community interests;
• A network model of community, under which the categorical good of community organisations constitutes what is in the community’s best interests;
• A market model of community, under which the revealed market preferences of individual community members has priority over local community interests;
• An anarchical model of community, under which the community interest is taken to be unknowable. 
Thus, public servants aspiring to empower communities, are frustrated by differing perspectives on community engendered by community members contending values, attitudes and beliefs. Therefore, if a community empowerment programme aims to be inclusive then public servants should manage, rather than just facilitate, community initiatives.  This approach demands holistic management that aims to achieve unity-in-diversity with community reality modulated by a consensus over the legitimacy of contending perspectives on the social world.  Moreover, public servants, when engaging with communities should explore, reflect on and then contextualise their unit of analysis from contending social reality perspectives.  Resulting from this process some common ground between contending perspectives might be discernible permitting consensus building to take place even though this may result in the dis-empowerment of existing politico-administrative powers. Therefore, public servants, delivering post-bureaucratic community management find themselves as instigators, utilising a subtle and pre-planned strategy, in an iterative process that encourages communities to play an effective role in the implementation of public policy.

It is apparent that a contemporary strategy devised to deliver an effective social enterprise will seek to create a paradoxical business environment in which a hybrid organisational form must embrace contending strategic understandings.  Such a organisational form would endeavour to combine elements of (1) the neo-liberal market-driven business model set within a minimalist, or hollowed-out, state where customer are knowable only as revealed market preferences.  And its antithesis, (2) the regulated market business model with its emphasis on associational democracy through the purposeful participation of community activists in co-operative community orientated endeavours.

Thus, the social enterprise paradigm embodies the tensions between the agency ontology of the neo-liberal market-driven model of profit orientated business delivery on the one hand, and the structuralist ontology of the regulated market model on the other.  In this scenario initiatives so designed create paradoxes that may leave social entrepreneurs struggling to make sense of self-contradictory and incongruous leadership and management situations.  This dilemma results in social entrepreneurs, and their staff, striving to design and implement organisational strategies that are enigmatic. 

This paper identifies ambiguities and ambivalence that encompass a number of issues.  These include contentions over (1) the imperatives of efficiency, effectiveness and economy as against equity; (2) the desired control by community stakeholders over formulation and implementation of business strategies; (3) the just and effective accountability of staff in relation to their remuneration and answerability and (4) the desired culture of social enterprise, which has traditionally promulgated a safe, stable and predictable employee job environment. 

If a paradox is to be addressed then organisational creativity must be stimulated.  In this nexus, lateral thought becomes critical.  The challenge is to stimulate the art of judgement, which can only flourish through the application of the demanding techniques of reflexivity.  This requires inspired critical self-evaluation and self-deprecation by those confronting the ambivalence and ambiguities.  Therefore, a testing, but rewarding, reflexive procedure is needed to accommodate the necessary non-rational perspectives as well as rationalist approaches to problem solving and decision-making.

Students can experience a wide range of attitudes towards completing assignments in their first year as undergraduates. These inclinations, when considered as a continuum, may range from the notion that coursework can be easily completed the night before the date of submission to the belief that the marker expects brilliant use of the English Language coupled with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject. Of course, these examples are extreme, but the proposition that teaching staff need to pay more attention to creating a process of assessment that retains the necessary means to permit work to be graded in a fair and transparent fashion whilst offering other positive outcomes, is not.
Therefore, this research project implements and evaluates a thorough programme of formative feedback from both lecturer and peers that aims to develop students’ capacity to adopt a critical evaluation of their work and stimulates students’ motivation to improve their existing standards of presentation.
Thus, my chosen methodology incorporates (1) a training process for students; (2) utilises the invaluable resource of employer feedback and (3) evaluates outputs and outcomes. The outputs can be collected as quantitative data whilst outcomes can be explored by psychometric response questionnaires, completed at the beginning and the end of the project. These questionnaires utilise the individual as the unit of analysis and determine consistencies and inconsistencies in attitudes, with the results being the basis of several subsequent semi-structured interviews.
However, the results from the project highlight the complexity of using formative feedback and instead of concluding with the assertion that feedforward can be a positive addition to foundation degree programmes it sounds a note of caution. This concerns the particular interpersonal dynamics that exist amongst a new group of foundation degree students, often drawn from diverse backgrounds with the hallmarks of the non-traditional undergraduates – low attention spans, limited literacy and sometimes more interest in obtaining funding and bursaries than a degree.

MANAGING COMMUNITY:
A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF PRAXIS

by

ALAN SANDERSON


Abstract

If communities are to become a viable means of implementing social policy then community practitioners must individually examine their personal praxis.  Therefore, in discovering a community’s aims and objectives, a management model is needed that offers every practitioner a reflexive means of understanding peoples’ belief’s, values, and attitudes. 
This proposition is critically examined through a philosophical framework that explores individuals’ diverse perspectives on community, derived from their adherence to contending ontological and epistemological propositions about the social world, and its related ethical and motivational dimensions. 
Following a philosophical analysis, the taxonomy of social reality perspectives, developed by Dixon (2003) and Dixon and Dogan (2002; 2003a, b, c, d; 2004), is systematically used to explore the contending views on social reality.  Thus, methodological configurations are associated with logical categories, (1) naturalist agency, underpinning the self-interested (free-riding) homo economicus; (2) naturalist structuralism, underpinning the obligation driven homo hierarchus; (3) hermeneutic structuralism, underpinning the conversation-saturated homo sociologicus  (Archer, 2000: 4); and (4) hermeneutic agency, underpinning homo existentialis.   
The disciplines of social psychology, ethics, and political science are employed to explore selected facets of human nature, moral principles, and political ideology chosen, by associates of each set of methodological configurations, in particular relational situations.
Informed by this investigation a sample of community practitioners were questioned about their praxis.  This reveals that a substantial majority understand and accept an objective and knowable social world where people are self-interested.  Therefore, these practitioners perceive community as a setting where they can influence the decisions of others through discourse and judge its ethical merits by the degree of loyalty and obligation extended to their projects.  Thus, it is apparent that community practitioners should evaluate their praxis, through critical self-reflection, if they are to develop suitably robust and durable symbiotic relationships with adherents to each of the four social reality perceptions. 
This research leads to a new logic, based on the innovative interpretation of ontological and epistemological configurations offered in the seminal work of Bhaskar (1978 and 1979) and Archer (1989, 1995, 2000 and 2003).  Here, an emerging social ontology  informs the construction of more specific theories concerning the dynamics of community in identifiable localities.  Therefore, it now becomes possible to construct a management model, incorporating contending social realities, the techniques of mediation and the results of changing cognition and cognitive dissonance, that facilitates community practitioner’s critical self-reflection and construction of managerial strategies based on community member’s contending perceptions of social reality.

MANAGING COMMUNITY:
A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF PRAXIS

by

ALAN SANDERSON


Abstract

If communities are to become a viable means of implementing social policy then community practitioners must individually examine their personal praxis.  Therefore, in discovering a community’s aims and objectives, a management model is needed that offers every practitioner a reflexive means of understanding peoples’ belief’s, values, and attitudes. 
This proposition is critically examined through a philosophical framework that explores individuals’ diverse perspectives on community, derived from their adherence to contending ontological and epistemological propositions about the social world, and its related ethical and motivational dimensions. 
Following a philosophical analysis, the taxonomy of social reality perspectives, developed by Dixon (2003) and Dixon and Dogan (2002; 2003a, b, c, d; 2004), is systematically used to explore the contending views on social reality.  Thus, methodological configurations are associated with logical categories, (1) naturalist agency, underpinning the self-interested (free-riding) homo economicus; (2) naturalist structuralism, underpinning the obligation driven homo hierarchus; (3) hermeneutic structuralism, underpinning the conversation-saturated homo sociologicus  (Archer, 2000: 4); and (4) hermeneutic agency, underpinning homo existentialis.   
The disciplines of social psychology, ethics, and political science are employed to explore selected facets of human nature, moral principles, and political ideology chosen, by associates of each set of methodological configurations, in particular relational situations.
Informed by this investigation a sample of community practitioners were questioned about their praxis.  This reveals that a substantial majority understand and accept an objective and knowable social world where people are self-interested.  Therefore, these practitioners perceive community as a setting where they can influence the decisions of others through discourse and judge its ethical merits by the degree of loyalty and obligation extended to their projects.  Thus, it is apparent that community practitioners should evaluate their praxis, through critical self-reflection, if they are to develop suitably robust and durable symbiotic relationships with adherents to each of the four social reality perceptions. 
This research leads to a new logic, based on the innovative interpretation of ontological and epistemological configurations offered in the seminal work of Bhaskar (1978 and 1979) and Archer (1989, 1995, 2000 and 2003).  Here, an emerging social ontology  informs the construction of more specific theories concerning the dynamics of community in identifiable localities.  Therefore, it now becomes possible to construct a management model, incorporating contending social realities, the techniques of mediation and the results of changing cognition and cognitive dissonance, that facilitates community practitioner’s critical self-reflection and construction of managerial strategies based on community member’s contending perceptions of social reality.

MANAGING COMMUNITY:
A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF PRAXIS

by

ALAN SANDERSON


Abstract

If communities are to become a viable means of implementing social policy then community practitioners must individually examine their personal praxis.  Therefore, in discovering a community’s aims and objectives, a management model is needed that offers every practitioner a reflexive means of understanding peoples’ belief’s, values, and attitudes. 
This proposition is critically examined through a philosophical framework that explores individuals’ diverse perspectives on community, derived from their adherence to contending ontological and epistemological propositions about the social world, and its related ethical and motivational dimensions. 
Following a philosophical analysis, the taxonomy of social reality perspectives, developed by Dixon (2003) and Dixon and Dogan (2002; 2003a, b, c, d; 2004), is systematically used to explore the contending views on social reality.  Thus, methodological configurations are associated with logical categories, (1) naturalist agency, underpinning the self-interested (free-riding) homo economicus; (2) naturalist structuralism, underpinning the obligation driven homo hierarchus; (3) hermeneutic structuralism, underpinning the conversation-saturated homo sociologicus  (Archer, 2000: 4); and (4) hermeneutic agency, underpinning homo existentialis.   
The disciplines of social psychology, ethics, and political science are employed to explore selected facets of human nature, moral principles, and political ideology chosen, by associates of each set of methodological configurations, in particular relational situations.
Informed by this investigation a sample of community practitioners were questioned about their praxis.  This reveals that a substantial majority understand and accept an objective and knowable social world where people are self-interested.  Therefore, these practitioners perceive community as a setting where they can influence the decisions of others through discourse and judge its ethical merits by the degree of loyalty and obligation extended to their projects.  Thus, it is apparent that community practitioners should evaluate their praxis, through critical self-reflection, if they are to develop suitably robust and durable symbiotic relationships with adherents to each of the four social reality perceptions. 
This research leads to a new logic, based on the innovative interpretation of ontological and epistemological configurations offered in the seminal work of Bhaskar (1978 and 1979) and Archer (1989, 1995, 2000 and 2003).  Here, an emerging social ontology  informs the construction of more specific theories concerning the dynamics of community in identifiable localities.  Therefore, it now becomes possible to construct a management model, incorporating contending social realities, the techniques of mediation and the results of changing cognition and cognitive dissonance, that facilitates community practitioner’s critical self-reflection and construction of managerial strategies based on community member’s contending perceptions of social reality.

MANAGING COMMUNITY:
A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF PRAXIS

by

ALAN SANDERSON


Abstract

If communities are to become a viable means of implementing social policy then community practitioners must individually examine their personal praxis.  Therefore, in discovering a community’s aims and objectives, a management model is needed that offers every practitioner a reflexive means of understanding peoples’ belief’s, values, and attitudes. 
This proposition is critically examined through a philosophical framework that explores individuals’ diverse perspectives on community, derived from their adherence to contending ontological and epistemological propositions about the social world, and its related ethical and motivational dimensions. 
Following a philosophical analysis, the taxonomy of social reality perspectives, developed by Dixon (2003) and Dixon and Dogan (2002; 2003a, b, c, d; 2004), is systematically used to explore the contending views on social reality.  Thus, methodological configurations are associated with logical categories, (1) naturalist agency, underpinning the self-interested (free-riding) homo economicus; (2) naturalist structuralism, underpinning the obligation driven homo hierarchus; (3) hermeneutic structuralism, underpinning the conversation-saturated homo sociologicus  (Archer, 2000: 4); and (4) hermeneutic agency, underpinning homo existentialis.   
The disciplines of social psychology, ethics, and political science are employed to explore selected facets of human nature, moral principles, and political ideology chosen, by associates of each set of methodological configurations, in particular relational situations.
Informed by this investigation a sample of community practitioners were questioned about their praxis.  This reveals that a substantial majority understand and accept an objective and knowable social world where people are self-interested.  Therefore, these practitioners perceive community as a setting where they can influence the decisions of others through discourse and judge its ethical merits by the degree of loyalty and obligation extended to their projects.  Thus, it is apparent that community practitioners should evaluate their praxis, through critical self-reflection, if they are to develop suitably robust and durable symbiotic relationships with adherents to each of the four social reality perceptions. 
This research leads to a new logic, based on the innovative interpretation of ontological and epistemological configurations offered in the seminal work of Bhaskar (1978 and 1979) and Archer (1989, 1995, 2000 and 2003).  Here, an emerging social ontology  informs the construction of more specific theories concerning the dynamics of community in identifiable localities.  Therefore, it now becomes possible to construct a management model, incorporating contending social realities, the techniques of mediation and the results of changing cognition and cognitive dissonance, that facilitates community practitioner’s critical self-reflection and construction of managerial strategies based on community member’s contending perceptions of social reality.

MANAGING COMMUNITY:
A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF PRAXIS

by

ALAN SANDERSON


Abstract

If communities are to become a viable means of implementing social policy then community practitioners must individually examine their personal praxis.  Therefore, in discovering a community’s aims and objectives, a management model is needed that offers every practitioner a reflexive means of understanding peoples’ belief’s, values, and attitudes. 
This proposition is critically examined through a philosophical framework that explores individuals’ diverse perspectives on community, derived from their adherence to contending ontological and epistemological propositions about the social world, and its related ethical and motivational dimensions. 
Following a philosophical analysis, the taxonomy of social reality perspectives, developed by Dixon (2003) and Dixon and Dogan (2002; 2003a, b, c, d; 2004), is systematically used to explore the contending views on social reality.  Thus, methodological configurations are associated with logical categories, (1) naturalist agency, underpinning the self-interested (free-riding) homo economicus; (2) naturalist structuralism, underpinning the obligation driven homo hierarchus; (3) hermeneutic structuralism, underpinning the conversation-saturated homo sociologicus  (Archer, 2000: 4); and (4) hermeneutic agency, underpinning homo existentialis.   
The disciplines of social psychology, ethics, and political science are employed to explore selected facets of human nature, moral principles, and political ideology chosen, by associates of each set of methodological configurations, in particular relational situations.
Informed by this investigation a sample of community practitioners were questioned about their praxis.  This reveals that a substantial majority understand and accept an objective and knowable social world where people are self-interested.  Therefore, these practitioners perceive community as a setting where they can influence the decisions of others through discourse and judge its ethical merits by the degree of loyalty and obligation extended to their projects.  Thus, it is apparent that community practitioners should evaluate their praxis, through critical self-reflection, if they are to develop suitably robust and durable symbiotic relationships with adherents to each of the four social reality perceptions. 
This research leads to a new logic, based on the innovative interpretation of ontological and epistemological configurations offered in the seminal work of Bhaskar (1978 and 1979) and Archer (1989, 1995, 2000 and 2003).  Here, an emerging social ontology  informs the construction of more specific theories concerning the dynamics of community in identifiable localities.  Therefore, it now becomes possible to construct a management model, incorporating contending social realities, the techniques of mediation and the results of changing cognition and cognitive dissonance, that facilitates community practitioner’s critical self-reflection and construction of managerial strategies based on community member’s contending perceptions of social reality.

MANAGING COMMUNITY:
A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF PRAXIS

by

ALAN SANDERSON


Abstract

If communities are to become a viable means of implementing social policy then community practitioners must individually examine their personal praxis.  Therefore, in discovering a community’s aims and objectives, a management model is needed that offers every practitioner a reflexive means of understanding peoples’ belief’s, values, and attitudes. 
This proposition is critically examined through a philosophical framework that explores individuals’ diverse perspectives on community, derived from their adherence to contending ontological and epistemological propositions about the social world, and its related ethical and motivational dimensions. 
Following a philosophical analysis, the taxonomy of social reality perspectives, developed by Dixon (2003) and Dixon and Dogan (2002; 2003a, b, c, d; 2004), is systematically used to explore the contending views on social reality.  Thus, methodological configurations are associated with logical categories, (1) naturalist agency, underpinning the self-interested (free-riding) homo economicus; (2) naturalist structuralism, underpinning the obligation driven homo hierarchus; (3) hermeneutic structuralism, underpinning the conversation-saturated homo sociologicus  (Archer, 2000: 4); and (4) hermeneutic agency, underpinning homo existentialis.   
The disciplines of social psychology, ethics, and political science are employed to explore selected facets of human nature, moral principles, and political ideology chosen, by associates of each set of methodological configurations, in particular relational situations.
Informed by this investigation a sample of community practitioners were questioned about their praxis.  This reveals that a substantial majority understand and accept an objective and knowable social world where people are self-interested.  Therefore, these practitioners perceive community as a setting where they can influence the decisions of others through discourse and judge its ethical merits by the degree of loyalty and obligation extended to their projects.  Thus, it is apparent that community practitioners should evaluate their praxis, through critical self-reflection, if they are to develop suitably robust and durable symbiotic relationships with adherents to each of the four social reality perceptions. 
This research leads to a new logic, based on the innovative interpretation of ontological and epistemological configurations offered in the seminal work of Bhaskar (1978 and 1979) and Archer (1989, 1995, 2000 and 2003).  Here, an emerging social ontology  informs the construction of more specific theories concerning the dynamics of community in identifiable localities.  Therefore, it now becomes possible to construct a management model, incorporating contending social realities, the techniques of mediation and the results of changing cognition and cognitive dissonance, that facilitates community practitioner’s critical self-reflection and construction of managerial strategies based on community member’s contending perceptions of social reality.

MANAGING COMMUNITY:
A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF PRAXIS

by

ALAN SANDERSON


Abstract

If communities are to become a viable means of implementing social policy then community practitioners must individually examine their personal praxis.  Therefore, in discovering a community’s aims and objectives, a management model is needed that offers every practitioner a reflexive means of understanding peoples’ belief’s, values, and attitudes. 
This proposition is critically examined through a philosophical framework that explores individuals’ diverse perspectives on community, derived from their adherence to contending ontological and epistemological propositions about the social world, and its related ethical and motivational dimensions. 
Following a philosophical analysis, the taxonomy of social reality perspectives, developed by Dixon (2003) and Dixon and Dogan (2002; 2003a, b, c, d; 2004), is systematically used to explore the contending views on social reality.  Thus, methodological configurations are associated with logical categories, (1) naturalist agency, underpinning the self-interested (free-riding) homo economicus; (2) naturalist structuralism, underpinning the obligation driven homo hierarchus; (3) hermeneutic structuralism, underpinning the conversation-saturated homo sociologicus  (Archer, 2000: 4); and (4) hermeneutic agency, underpinning homo existentialis.   
The disciplines of social psychology, ethics, and political science are employed to explore selected facets of human nature, moral principles, and political ideology chosen, by associates of each set of methodological configurations, in particular relational situations.
Informed by this investigation a sample of community practitioners were questioned about their praxis.  This reveals that a substantial majority understand and accept an objective and knowable social world where people are self-interested.  Therefore, these practitioners perceive community as a setting where they can influence the decisions of others through discourse and judge its ethical merits by the degree of loyalty and obligation extended to their projects.  Thus, it is apparent that community practitioners should evaluate their praxis, through critical self-reflection, if they are to develop suitably robust and durable symbiotic relationships with adherents to each of the four social reality perceptions. 
This research leads to a new logic, based on the innovative interpretation of ontological and epistemological configurations offered in the seminal work of Bhaskar (1978 and 1979) and Archer (1989, 1995, 2000 and 2003).  Here, an emerging social ontology  informs the construction of more specific theories concerning the dynamics of community in identifiable localities.  Therefore, it now becomes possible to construct a management model, incorporating contending social realities, the techniques of mediation and the results of changing cognition and cognitive dissonance, that facilitates community practitioner’s critical self-reflection and construction of managerial strategies based on community member’s contending perceptions of social reality.

MANAGING COMMUNITY:
A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF PRAXIS

by

ALAN SANDERSON


Abstract

If communities are to become a viable means of implementing social policy then community practitioners must individually examine their personal praxis.  Therefore, in discovering a community’s aims and objectives, a management model is needed that offers every practitioner a reflexive means of understanding peoples’ belief’s, values, and attitudes. 
This proposition is critically examined through a philosophical framework that explores individuals’ diverse perspectives on community, derived from their adherence to contending ontological and epistemological propositions about the social world, and its related ethical and motivational dimensions. 
Following a philosophical analysis, the taxonomy of social reality perspectives, developed by Dixon (2003) and Dixon and Dogan (2002; 2003a, b, c, d; 2004), is systematically used to explore the contending views on social reality.  Thus, methodological configurations are associated with logical categories, (1) naturalist agency, underpinning the self-interested (free-riding) homo economicus; (2) naturalist structuralism, underpinning the obligation driven homo hierarchus; (3) hermeneutic structuralism, underpinning the conversation-saturated homo sociologicus  (Archer, 2000: 4); and (4) hermeneutic agency, underpinning homo existentialis.   
The disciplines of social psychology, ethics, and political science are employed to explore selected facets of human nature, moral principles, and political ideology chosen, by associates of each set of methodological configurations, in particular relational situations.
Informed by this investigation a sample of community practitioners were questioned about their praxis.  This reveals that a substantial majority understand and accept an objective and knowable social world where people are self-interested.  Therefore, these practitioners perceive community as a setting where they can influence the decisions of others through discourse and judge its ethical merits by the degree of loyalty and obligation extended to their projects.  Thus, it is apparent that community practitioners should evaluate their praxis, through critical self-reflection, if they are to develop suitably robust and durable symbiotic relationships with adherents to each of the four social reality perceptions. 
This research leads to a new logic, based on the innovative interpretation of ontological and epistemological configurations offered in the seminal work of Bhaskar (1978 and 1979) and Archer (1989, 1995, 2000 and 2003).  Here, an emerging social ontology  informs the construction of more specific theories concerning the dynamics of community in identifiable localities.  Therefore, it now becomes possible to construct a management model, incorporating contending social realities, the techniques of mediation and the results of changing cognition and cognitive dissonance, that facilitates community practitioner’s critical self-reflection and construction of managerial strategies based on community member’s contending perceptions of social reality.

New Labour faces a conundrum in its assertion that “community capacity building should develop the sharing of resources, co-operation and mutual support in communities” (Civil Renewal Unit, 2003: 1).  Firstly, some community members might prefer community management that renders extensive community consultation as both unnecessary and potentially disruptive. Secondly, other community members might reject all community responsibilities in favour of the delivery of public goods and services through market mechanisms. Thirdly, yet other community members might perceive community initiatives to be another instrument of potential or actual control that could render them as determined automata. Thus, a complex quadripartite reality of community engagement requires exploration.

This project is concerned with the values, attitudes and opinions of college lecturers delivering a higher education (HE) foundation degree (FD) in a further education setting. It is discipline specific as the participants are all focussed on facilitating both academic and work based competencies within the formulation, implementation and evaluation of public services.

Standards of behaviour govern the lives of individuals − or, fashion their self-identity − or, represent their actuality (Hegel, [1821] 1991: 190). Therefore, an individual’s ethics can be regarded as a self-policing mechanism that can stimulate self-control, motivate adherence to matters of principle, accentuate feelings and give rise to particular lines of thought.
In this context, it is proposed that normative ethics or general theories about “what ought to be“ (Taylor, 1975: 175), can be understood in the context of four discrete ethical models. These models result in implicit practical imperatives that reflect in the individual's understanding of their community or communities.

Every teacher should carefully consider the complex dynamics of learner support and guidance in their delivery of a progamme of study. Furthermore, the imperatives of upholding standards that reflect equal opportunities and an  inclusive delivery that accommodates learner diversity must inform individual's praxis.  Of course, these assertions are challenging and require consistent reflection by teacher's over the values, attiudes and opinions they adopt.

The issue of providing flexibly delivered undergraduate education has become a matter of importance, accentuated by the health pandemic of 2020 which makes it  desirable for restrictions to be placed on social interaction until levels of innoculation are high enough to achieve the required level of "herd immunity." This circumstance  has occurred at a time when students already have concerns over the delivery of higher education, its cost and potential benefits, as tuition fees combined with maintenance loans can result in a total debt of £35,000 to £40,000 at the end of a typical three year programme of study at a UK University.
In addressing the implications of this scenario, this paper is divided into four sections. It begins by exploring current research and practice through conceptualising the techniques and methodologies of online tutoring, thus enabling a proposal for a solution to the problem of delivering a third year Honours Programme. Then, this solution is subjected to a critical analysis, informed by the relevant educational literature, which highlights the opportunities and constraints of using online tutoring to deliver Level 3 education in comparison to face-to-face approaches. In the first of the final two section of the paper, the legal, ethical and cultural implications of introducing students to electronic interaction are considered. This precedes section four where some critical reflection over both my own individual praxis for tutoring  students, and the likely implications for practitioner development needed to improve the online learning experience, are discussed.