Category Archives: Journals

Rethinking my research project

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Due to changing my job recently I have had to rethink where I will carry out my research project. My original idea was to do the research at the university where I was working. The com pronation of organizational and technological change combined with the support staff restructuring would have been an excellent area for the investigation. Unfortunately now that I have moved to another role in another organization I am not going to be able to go back to the original site. There are a number of logistical and ethical issues to consider for example getting time to go back to the organization and interview subjects, get time to carry out observations and gain access to internal documents. Ethical issues included getting the support of the Directorship for the area under investigation and gaining access to subjects and materials with permission.

Since joining the new organization I have been working to identify potential areas of interest. The difficulty so far has been to find the combination of organizational and technological change and support team change. I have though recently identified a potential area of interest, there organization is having built a new centre for housing administrative staff to deliver customer facing services. Staff will be moving into the new build and will also be using a new IT system. The project is being managed by external consultants and is being delivered through five main project streams.

I am considering tracing the development of the new setup from August this year through to September the following year. This will enable me to work with the people concerned in their current team and group structure through to the move to the new building and the introduction of the new IT system. If I am granted permission by the organization I should be able to interview people throughout the change process and build an identity profile from the existing to the development of the new one. This project gives a good opportunity to observe staff in action and to trace ideas and actions through documents and other artefacts. This opens the door to using ANT as the research method supporting the development of the case study.

Convergent interview number two

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I am planning to carry out my second Convergent Interview on Monday 16th December with the person I interviewed this week. I’m aiming to review and draft the transcript of the interview from this week and then work out a new interview question. I will try to make sure that I am much better prepared for the next interview than the first one!

Turbulence in action

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The university where I am planning on carrying out my research project has appointed a new Vice Chancellor (CEO). The VC designate will be starting work officially on the 1st January 2014. He has though started to attend some meetings on a weekly basis with the current senior management team and individual members of staff and students. The aim of these meetings seems to be for the new VC to gain an early understanding of the institution and some of the key challenges facing it.

On Monday this week the senior management teams of the Faculties were called to meetings with Executive Deans where changes to the existing structure were outlined and a number of posts were identified as being at risk of redundancy. These included the Executive Dean and Pro-Deans of Faculty.

The main message from the Executive Dean was that although there is going to be a lot of turbulence over the coming months it is essential that business as usual continues as there are still students to recruit and the business to deal with.

I have spoken to a small number of staff in a variety of positions about the proposed changes and it seems that there is a common thread of uncertainty but for some people resignation and the view that change is absolutely necessary even if it results in their own positions being made redundant.

The trades unions today issued an email to members saying that they have not confidence in the new VC and asking the Board of Governors to cancel his contract prior to his January 1st start date.

The VC has stated that the changes are not financially driven or a post reduction process but a way of ensuring the long term sustainability and success of the institution.

According to Scott (1995) the dominant sociological view (of an institution) focused on the effects  of cultural belief systems operating in the environment of the organization. There is a possibility that people feel a high degree of uncertainty because they see a threat to the culture of the current organization.

Scott, W.R, (1995), Institutions and Organizations, Sage Publications Inc., California, USA.

Issues to investigate

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I was speaking to a colleague at work the other day about Actor-Network Theory and applying it to a work-based issue. I mentioned that ANT seems to invoke quite strong emotional responses in people sometimes for example I mentioned using ANT to another colleague who responded along the lines of “you don’t want to use ANT because it’s all about power”. This person seemed quite taken aback at the thought I would actually use ANT. This other colleague of mine said “of course ANT is about power!” I said I thought everything especially at work and in terms of project teams, innovation and technology is about power. This person recommended that I read a book called Kinds of Power by James Hillman (Doubleday, 1995).

Book cover, Kinds of Power, James Hillman

Kinds of Power, James Hillman

I’ve now got a copy of this book and have just started to read it. I’ll update on this in a later post, but the main thrust of the book is that business is the one factor that impacts on everyone’s life, more than religion, government, politics, etc. Hillman asks the question “What constitutes the power of business?” Related to this is Karl Weick’s Sensemaking and his views on how power shifts in groups depending on circumstances. Anyway, as I said more on this later…

After thinking through issues relating to the last two assignment essays, reading a lot of journal papers, reading a lot of related books and thinking through work based issues that could be used as possible areas for the research component I have identified a couple of possibilities.

Three issues have the level of complexity, organisational cross-dimensionality, levels of power structure, mess and opportunity for using a range of methods such as interviews, text analysis, video and images. There are issues in all three relating to the initial concept, the business case (quality of), budgets, contractor selection (tendering processes), project team selection and management, team dynamics and in ANT terms, Problematization, obligatory passage point (s a contact point to connect all the actors those involved in the network, Punctualization (blackboxing), Translation (making connections and relating things that were previously different – relating things in a socio-technical network – how ideas are turned into concrete thing like labs, or systems etc.), the Obligatory Passage Point, Network organization, power dynamics and the breakdown of network structures, user impact, acceptance and adoption and dissolution or degeneration into failure. All three of the potential projects contains heterogeneous elements that can be blackboxed or Punctualized.

What has become clear over time though are the potential ethical, operational and governance issues. For example, there are issues about confidentiality to consider. The three potential projects are all current, live projects that have a high degree of visibility in the university. There are likely to be political and management sensitivities surrounding all three. I believe this to be the greatest difficulty in carrying out a work-based project i.e. would the institution like to potentially have problems exposed to a wider audience and have thesis published on them? I foresee some difficulties here.

Thinking in the gym

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There is a saying, a healthy mind in a healthy body (Mens sana in corpore sano). The phrase is derived from Satire X of the Roman poet Juvenal.

English translation:

You should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body.
Ask for a stout heart that has no fear of death,
and deems length of days the least of Nature’s gifts
that can endure anykind of toil,
that knows neither wrath nor desire and thinks
the woes and hard labors of Hercules better than
the loves and banquets and downy cushions of Sardanapalus.
What I commend to you, you can give to yourself;
For assuredly, the only road to a life of peace is virtue.
In Original Latin:

orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.
fortem posce animum mortis terrore carentem,
qui spatium uitae extremum inter munera ponat
naturae, qui ferre queat quoscumque labores,
nesciat irasci, cupiat nihil et potiores
Herculis aerumnas credat saeuosque labores
et uenere et cenis et pluma Sardanapalli.
monstro quod ipse tibi possis dare; semita certe
tranquillae per uirtutem patet unica uitae.
–Roman poet Juvenal (10.356-64)

This afternoon I was in the gym and completed a 12K cross training session. Afterwards in the shower I was pondering whether the use of case study is really appropriate for the project I’m considering. After the taught sessions on Friday and Saturday last week I had thought possibly a combination of case study and action research would be appropriate but I suddenly realized that these might actually not be the most relevant methods. Why?

Well, the way I had been thinking was along the lines of an examination of the implementation of  a sociotechnical systems in a higher education environment with regards improving innovation diffusion (or words to that effect). What I have been concerned about is there being an appropriate project around at the time of my research project that would have the depth, complexity, wide implementation and time bound enough to last long enough for me to do the research.

What I realized in the shower was that what I actually need to do is examine a number of COMPLETED projects looking at them from the perspective of an Archival Review. This would allow me to look at some existing theories on diffusion of innovation and also to possibly to make use of Actor-Network Theory. I had been wondering how I might fit ANT into my thesis and of course, suddenly it makes sense that ANT is used to look at completed works so that lessons can be learned and policies contributing to improvements made.

Suddenly Bruno Latour‘s writings on ANT make sense. Latour discusses HISTORICAL sociotechnical systems. There is of course the possibility that case study or action research could still be used but only if something relevant comes up at the right time. In the mean time I’ll be looking at archival research and ANT in more detail.

 

Papers relating to research

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Social Innovation

The results of social innovation – new ideas that meet unmet needs – are all around us. They include fair trade and restorative justice, hospices and  kindergartens, distance learning and traffic calming. Many social innovations were successfully promoted by the Young Foundation in its previous incarnations under Michael Young (including some 60 organisations such as the Open University, Which?, Healthline and International Alert). Over the last two centuries, innumerable social innovations, from cognitive behavioural therapy for prisoners to Wikipedia, have moved from the margins to the mainstream. As this has happened, many have passed through the three stages that Schopenhauer identified for any new ‘truth’: ‘First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.’

Research Methodology Strategies in Strategic Management

This paper review and examine how strategic management researchers apply
research methods, and what strategies use as part of the research process, to
locate, organize, manage, transform, create, communicate and evaluate
research tools, data and information resources.

Holiday reading

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Over Christmas and the New Year I will be reading the following papers and books:

  1. Power, Responsibility & Wisdom: Exploring the issues at the core of decision-making and leadership by Professor Bruce Lloyd.
  2. Actor-Network Theory and Information Systems Research by Arthur Tatnall and Anthony Gilding.
  3. Bad Management Theories are Destroying Good Management Practices by Sumantra Ghoshal.
  4. Nothing is Quite so Practical as a Good Theory by Andrew H. Van de Ven.
  5. Empirical Accounting Research Design for Ph.D. Students by William R. Kinney Jr.
  6. Organizational Psychology (3rd Ed) by Edgar Schein.
  7. Understanding Organizations by Charles Handy.
  8. The Seven-Day Weekend by Ricardo Semler.

Seven-Day Weekend, Ricardo Semler