Monthly Archives: August 2013

Re-thinking the title

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I have been reading the book: The Research Journey, Introduction to Inquiry by Sharon E Rallis and Gretchen B Rossman (ISBN: 978-1-4625-0512-8 (pbk)).

Reading the book has encouraged me to re-think my project title. I decided to review some of the earlier reading and thinking I have done and some of the original concepts that I looked into. I remembered that I was initially interested in organisational behavior, organisational theory, organisational change, Sensemaking, Action Research, Grounded Theory, innovation, service, business systems, information technology, and Actor-Network Theory.

I need to refine and narrow my project scope but I do not want to throw out everything I wanted to use previously. So I have decided to start the conceptual plan with an overarching statement routed in the organisation and then move on to a statement that includes the word innovation and integrate this with the word service.

The combination – organisation – change – innovation – service seem to capture all of the concepts above and more.

Last night I came to the following:

An Actor-Network Theory and Sensemaking inquiry into organisational change: exploring service innovation in relation to postgraduate student enrolment in post 1992 higher education institutions.

Some possible research questions:

  1. How do postgraduate course recruits make decisions whether or not to enrol?
  2. What are the critical factors leading to successful enrolment?
  3. What are service innovations?
  4. What innovations contribute to successful achievement of enrolment targets?
  5. What impact do service innovations have on the organisation, the staff, the curriculum and other services and systems?
  6. When should innovations be implemented?
  7. Who determines the effectiveness of service innovations?
  8. How are service innovations developed and implemented?

A couple of possible research propositions:

  1. P1: postgraduate applicants are more likely to enrol is they have continuing dialogue with academic staff.
  2. P2: services supporting postgraduate recruits (ICT, documents, interviews etc. etc.) need to be clearly defined and transparent.
  3. P3: to be successful service innovations need to include: fees and finance, academic teams, support teams, academic policy, curriculum development, marketing, PR and ICT and other organisational areas.
[Book] The Research Journey

[Book] The Research Journey

Recruiting post graduate students: A heterogeneous association of humans and non-humans

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According to the HEFCE report Postgraduate education in England and Northern Irelend over the last ten years postgraduate recruitment has increased but has declined over the past two years. The reasons for the decline are as yet unknown but HEFCE suspects that the reasons include the recession, increased fees and employers less likely to sponsor employees.

A news report in The Daily Telegraph (from HESA) talks about postgraduate applicants going abroad to take masters degrees due to the lower cost (free to £500.00) and the opportunity to learn a new language and culture.

If it is the case that postgraduate recruitment is going to fall over the next few years universities will need to work hard to convert as many applicants as possible to enrolment. It is going to be necessary to develop strategies to keep applicants interested and engaged throughout the pre-enrolment period.

Using Actor-Network Theory (ANT) it will be possible to describe the current ‘keep-warm’ processes and the structures and strategies of the university and to lead to explanations about the current situation and for improved processes and policies to be developed.

ANT can be used to follow the actor(s) through from the end of the recruitment process into the keep-warm and understand the roles of the human and non-human actors. Websites, emails, telephone communications, letters, personal contacts, meetings, events etc. and to understand the power relationships that exist throughout the process.

The process of getting applicants through to enrolment is fundamentally a service system. It would be beneficial to identify and describe any service innovations.

The research question can then become:

Strategies for increasing postgraduate enrolment: using Actor-Network Theory to describe and explore service innovation.

Graduate

Graduate recrutiment

 

The problem

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Over The past few years the numbers of applicants to post graduate courses has been in decline. This is the case for many universities and is true for applicants in the UK/EU and overseas (outside the EU). There are many reasons for this decline including the downturn in the UK and European economies, UK government immigration policy and the perception of many in countries such as India that applicants from outside the EU are not wanted. Many employers who would in the past sponsor applicants to do management courses and other masters courses have cut their development budgets.

These are just some possible causes but there are likely to be others. If it is the case that the pool of applicants is getting smaller – at least for the time being – then the remaining applicants need to be managed in such as way that the probability of them enrolling on a course is increased. People can make as many applications as they like to as many universities as they like and the decision whether or not to take up a place is likely to hinge on a number of criteria. For example, the distance of the university from the applicant’s home or workplace, course fees, reputation of the institution, potential of job enrichment, promotion or employment at the completion of a course, personal circumstances such as caring, finances, time, confidence in own ability to complete a masters course.

The research project I intend to carry out would make use of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a method for describing the whole range of activities, systems, processes, staff, committees, IT systems, communication plans and other actors. The aim would be to follow the actors both inside the university and those outside considering applying and through the application process through to an end point. The actors would include the range of human and non-humans for example, web sites, emails, pamphlets, telephone calls, messages, and adverts to name just a few.

Other research methods that could be brought to play are Sensemaking Theory – how do the applicants and the staff make sense of the organization and the processes and how to these impact on the applicants? My aim is to create a written ‘rich picture’ of the process and to use ANT to describe innovations and services and to see whether these lead to improved recruitment on to masers courses. Another aim of course is to generate some suggestions for improving recruitment systems and policies.

 

A change of direction – sort of

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I was reading a paper Actors, Networks and Assessment, An Actor-Network Critique of Quality Assurance in Higher Education in England by Jonathan Tummons, University of Teeside (2011). The paper is a very clear exposition of using ANT to analyse a domain of interest and of how to make practical use of ANT. The main point that came across to me after reading the paper was that it is essential to be able to clearly identify an area that is worth researching but more importantly something that you have a strong interest in and that will keep you interested over a protracted period of time. The idea needs to be able to generate crisp and achievable aims, objectives and propositions. The idea needs to be something that relates to your work and is something that generates passion and energy.

At the moment I am working on a work project aimed at converting higher education course applicants to courses to full enrolment. After reading the paper above, I realised that there is a lot of scope in this project to become a research project. The work encompasses marketing, advertising, public relations, business development, market intelligence, international, EU and UK recruitment, national and international laws and regulations, web sites, letters, emails. telephone communications, working in teams, working with academic and support staff, working with external agencies, short and long term strategy including the global market, information technology and reporting systems, data management, customer service techniques, international agencies and reporting to senior management.

The current systems and processes work reasonably well but there is a lot of scope for system, process and team improvement. The main areas of interest include:

  1. What are the critical factors that lead to conversion from applicant to enrolment?
  2. When should the recruitment season begin and why?
  3. What are the barriers to communication within the various teams?
  4. What impact do the non-human actors have on candidates – websites, web pages, emails, paper pamphlets etc.
  5. Can the process be streamlined and improved?
  6. What innovations can be implemented and how can these be implemented?

The theoretical underpinnings would be Sensemaking and Actor-Network Theory. Possible research methods are Grounded Theory and Action Research. The recruitment of students is a service oriented process and the current processes and networks (teams) could benefit from service innovation.

The paper Service Innovation using Actor-Network Theory by Lorna Unden and Janet Francis (Staffordshire University, 2011) is a good source of information for using ANT to lead to service innovation. Using ANT it would be possible to ‘follow the actor’ through the current processes and identify where power resides.

A possible starting point is:

Determining the factors leading to successful conversion of applicants through to enrolment in higher education: Actor-Network Theory, organizational Sensemaking and service innovation.

The aim would be to determine how the sociology of associations – the networks of humans and non-humans influence the decision making of course applicants.