Adjusting my data analysis strategy

Posted on 25/05/2017 by yellowbag

I have been reviewing and rethinking my data analysis approach. I have been coding in NVivo directly to the audio track. This has been revealing in terms of coding and memo writing but is extremely time consuming. After thinking through the process from my original strategy of using Convergent Interviewing and keeping short notes rather than transcribing the whole interview, I realised that I need to revisit this and code against my typed notes rather than the whole audio track.

According to Dick the original Convergent Interviewing process relied on note taking without transcription where the notes are linked to the under pinning theoretical framework.

I am now going to:

code in NVivo against the notes I took during and after the interviews
review the contract summary forms to determine themes
query the codes and memos from the text coding and memo writing
combine with coding from the interview recordings

This will return me to my original plan and speed up the data analysis process.

Libraries and customer service

Posted on 23/03/2017 by yellowbag

It has become clear after extensively reviewing the literature on customer services in the Higher Education sector that student services have been slow to the party when it comes to changing processes and services to reflect changing student expectations.

I have found that the university library sector has been ahead of the game for years and there is a significant amount of published research, case studies and articles outlining what has been achieved over the past twenty to twenty five years.

Libraries have really followed on from IT Help Desk systems where staff in organizations became connected to networked Help systems. These allowed staff to place a ‘ticket’ that specified an issue or system failure. The response would likely be someone visiting the staff or a fix via network tools.

Over time the IT Help Desk was reconfigured into a Service Desk where service staff were able to provide more customer focused services not just system fixes. Service Desk staff were eventually able to provide training and other support.

These Service Desk and Help Desk systems have now been introduced into university student service desks and allow students to access 24 hour self service and receive streamlined services.

The issue for where I am carrying out my research project is the SID system (Student Information Desk) combined with a new physical student HUB has significantly changed the working practices of the Faculty support teams. The main impact has been a reduction in student foot-fall and fewer students coming in person.

This has had considerable impact on the Faculty teams in terms of how they now perceive their roles, the SID system has in fact imposed an alternative identity on teams and individuals. The system has demanded that the staff undertake additional training and changes to work process flows. Students are now more likely to go to the student HUB and issues are posted on the SID system where Faculty interventions are needed.

The system has changed the relationship between the staff and students and what were front line staff have now become back-office staff. These issues have generated a mass of data for my research project.

Last interview

Posted on 10/07/2016 by yellowbag

I carried out my last interview on the 3 July. The interviewee was the Academic Services manager who talked about the SID system and the new student HUB that will be opening in September.

The interview was interesting because it was a summary of the situation now and acts as an end point to the start of the interview process that looked back to times before the current organisation structure, over a period of about thirteen years.

The early interviews described long periods of pre-tchnology use where staff self identified as ‘paper pushers’ up to the present day where staff now self identify as having expertise and knowledge that is valuable to academic staff and students.

The next steps will be to tie all the interview strands together and create a chronology of actions or a set of chronotopes.

The fifth interview

Posted on 12/03/2016 by yellowbag

The fifth interview was very interesting. The participant was a team member with a very different perspective on the question.

The participant currently works in a customer facing role and has had a lot of student interaction. This has changed though over the past three to four years as a result of the introduction of technologies particularly web based services that allow students to upload their work electronically which previously had to be submitted on paper. The paper had to be processed, catalogued passed on to markers, returned to the administration team and returned to students.

This process was very labour intensive and made the participant feel underappreciated especially when it came to how they felt they were viewed by other staff – particuallary academic staff.

The impact of technology on the team has been to free up time for the participant to spend more time with students and they felt that this allowed them to provide a much better and more personalised service than before,

The number of students coming in person has significantly reduced and this has meant that those coming in have more complex issues to deal with. This has allowed the participant to develop better customer service skills. The participant mentioned that they felt that the team had developed a better skill set and was more appreciated by academic staff as a group that had real expertise – rather than just being paper pushers.

The participant said that the SID system is a success but it is early days and there is a need to constantly reinforce the message – with staff and students – that it should be used.

This was a very interesting interview because the participant is a direct user of the SID system and had some useful insights. Once again I felt the interview went well and there were some very useful convergent points raised.

The third interview

Posted on 05/03/2016 by yellowbag

I carried out the third interview yesterday afternoon. The participant talked about changes to the team that they manage and who the changed have occurred over the past five years. Changes include changes to the structure of the team, staff leaving and being replaced and the introduction of technology.

The participant was not sure at the beginning of the interview where to start. The participant decided to start with the question “Who is my team?”. This was a great starting point for an answer about identity and multiple identities.

The participant mentioned that they are a member of four teams each of which has a different identity. The issue of working practices and the variety of technologies entering the team were mentioned.

Issues of structure change at team, department and institutional levels were mentioned. Work complexity was mentioned as an influence on the team and how the team functions.

The introduction of the student information desk was raised as an issue for team members and the different ways that staff members have responded to the system i.e. some consider it to be the enemy and others a member of the team. The view that technology has increased workloads rather than reducing it.

The participant mentioned that staff tended to be more open to adopting new technology and innovations if the new technology replaced a manual system or was clearly an improvement otherwise staff would be inclined to see the technology as a problem or be seen by those introducing the technology as blockers or resistors.

The participant mentioned that there needs to be a fit between the technology, the team and the organisation in order for it to be accepted. The need for a technology champion was mentioned as a way of helping the team adopt the technology.

After the interview I reaslied that there is a need to expand the interview scope from the four originally selected teams to include the IT manager who was responsible for the implementation of the student information desk.

Looking at the project through an ANT lens I need to start ‘following the Actors’ a bit more closely. I will be speaking to the IT team manager in the next few weeks, tracing the documentation around the initial idea for the information desk and how the system was translated from the initial idea into the actual application.

I want to investigate how the decision making process and internal relationships influenced the procurement, the project design, planning, training and implementation. I also want to investigate whether the information desk was seen as being aligned with the interests of team members who would be using the system.

The second interview

Posted on 03/03/2016 by yellowbag

The second went a little better than the first. The main difference between the first and the second is I was a better prepared. I amended some of the documentation after comments from the first interview. For example the first participant didn’t want to sign the Participant Consent form because there was a section for a witness to sign. The participant commented that the interview couldn’t be confidential if the form was witnessed.

I have now removed the witness signature. The second participant was happy to sign the form and the interview started. I repeated the same procedure as the first interview, leaving the question on the table in front of the participant.

Another change I made was I made use of the Sonocent text blocking function. This worked really well in allowing me to write text notes against the recorded voice.

The interview lasted about 50 minutes. The participant was happy to speak openly about the team and covered all the points I needed. I have found interviewing to be quite tiring. The need to listen carefully and manage the recordings and type notes is quite strenuous.

I have found that the participants enjoy the experience of being interviewed and it’s interesting how much information people will provide when asking just one question. This seems to create a space where people feel they can open up freely.

The first interview

Posted on 02/03/2016 by yellowbag

I finally managed to carry out my first interview. After about two months of trying to get people to engage with the project I decided to change my research design slightly. Originally I had planned to set up a Convergent Interview reference group but it was not possible to gather the group together. The people selected were interested but did not have the time to come together as a group due to work loads.

The slight change I made was to interview the people who had agreed to be on the reference panel. I reasoned that as they were interested in being on the reference panel they would be interested in being interviewed. I was correct. I now have three interview participants and have completed two interviews and have a third lined up for Friday this week.

The first interview went very well. The participant was asked to answer one question and a few supplemental questions. I typed the questions and printed them on a landscape piece of paper and left it on the table so that the interviewee could keep the question in mind so that they stayed focused.

I was slightly concerned that my interviewee would not remember to come or would just not bother. The participant was about five minutes late but did arrive. I was both happy and disappointed. I asked the participant to sign the release form and then started the interview.

I explained the purpose of the research and then asked the participant to read the question. The participant spent nearly 50 minutes talking about his team. The answers given aligned really well with the three theories underpinning the research. Completing the interview I realised that the readings I have been doing for the literature review made complete sense. I now believe the project will actually provide some interesting insights into teams, technology and identity.

Rethinking my research project

Posted on 14/02/2015 by yellowbag

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.

Thoughts on sensemaking, organizational justice and turbulence

Posted on 17/11/2013 by yellowbag

I have now decided to stay with the topics of sensemaking, organizational justice and turbulence for my assignment and thesis. At the session on Saturday 16th November I went through my presentation with the group after initially thinking that I would not bother as I thought it was not going to be good enough. I also had a bit of confidence loss in what I am doing. Whilst doing the presentation I realised that the topics and themes are actually worthwhile. I received good feedback from the group.

I need now to firm up my thinking on a whole range of issues including:

Questions – I need to repeat the Goldilocks test on the questions but more importantly I need to make sure that the questions will be able to elicit responses of value to the research.
Methodology – I need to make a decision at least for the assignment on the methods that I am going to use. My initial thoughts are that Grounded Theory would be a good place to start because it will allow me the opportunity to practice coding in software (such as NVivo).
Scope of the assignment research project – this needs to be carefully crafted as there is going to be a very limited amount of time to carry out the actual research component and I will need to identify people who can possibly provide data.
For the assignment I am going to look at doing a small amount of triangulation by finding relevant documents and carrying out some textual analysis.
Ethics – I will need to inform the participants that ethical approval has been granted and that they have the right to curtail the interview if they wish to do so.
Participants – I need to identify the participants for the assignment. I only need one or two people for the assignment and there is an opportunity to interview the current VC before he leaves at the end of December. I would want to have some excellent questions though before proceeding as I would not want to waste his or my time.
Timeline – I need to work up a firm timeline for the research. This should be straight forward, assuming I can get the participants on board.
Literature review – I need to work on my literature review very, very soon. I have been doing a lot of reading recently but I need to get my references into Mendeley and organised into categories.
Theory – I need to firm up the underlying theories that I am going to use. I was thinking of using ANT which is complementary to the Case Study method but Grounded Theory is similar in terms of following the actor.

Servce Science Research Areas – IBM Suggestions

Posted on 13/10/2013 by yellowbag

On the IBM Service Science website there are some suggestions for research areas for SSME. One that resonates with me is:

People in Services

Customer behavior in networked environment, service social network and models
Organizational relationship, alignment, and culture

My research question at the moment is:

Where organizations have implemented service systems and service innovation cultures, how have staff teams been transformed and developed and what measures constitute success?

Sub-questions:

What is service innovation?
What are service systems?
What are the expected results of service systems and innovation?
What is the impact of service innovation on service culture?
How is customer / service value determined?
How scalable is service innovation and service systems?
What management techniques are applicable to service innovation and service systems team transformation?
What constitutes a service innovation?

Service Innovation and Innovative Services

Service Innovation – an overview from Ian Miles

SSME Some initial notes

Posted on 22/09/2013 by yellowbag

Services Science Management and Engineering. SSME at IBM.

Baumol’s cost disease. From Wikipedia.

Invention of Service Science at IBM.

University Relations Worldwide Community. Explanation, learning and overview.

IBM Service Science Wiki. IBM Global University Programmes.

International Society of Service Innovation Professionals. ISSIP.

Service Science. Standards.

Modelling Service Relationships for Service Networks

Modeling Service Relationships for Service Networks from Jorge Cardoso

Re-thinking the title (2) Themes (1)

Posted on 19/09/2013 by yellowbag

I have been looking into the field of service innovation recently and reading some papers on this. Here is a definition of Service Innovation from Finland’s research agency, TEKES.

Service innovation is a new or significantly improved service concept that is taken into practice. It can be for example a new customer interaction channel, a distribution system or a technological concept or a combination of them. A service innovation always includes replicable elements that can be identified and systematically reproduced in other cases or environments. The replicable element can be the service outcome or the service process as such or a part of them. A service innovation benefits both the service producer and customers and it improves its developer’s competitive edge. A service innovation is a service product or service process that is based on some technology or systematic method. In services however, the innovation does not necessarily relate to the novelty of the technology itself but the innovation often lies in the non-technological areas. Service innovations can for instance be new solutions in the customer interface, new distribution methods, novel application of technology in the service process, new forms of operation with the supply chain or new ways to organize and manage services.

After reading the paper Innovation, Network Services and the Restructuring of Work Organisation in Customer Services by Matias Ramirez (2004) I have changed the title of my thesis to:

An investigation into the impact of customer support teams on the diffusion of service innovations: An Actor-Network Approach.

The central themes of the thesis being:

The impact of:

methods of diffusion of service innovations in an organisation;
organizational culture on the adoption of service innovations;
job description design (Enforceability Criteria: Task Centered or Function Centered) and service re-organisations on the diffusion of service innovations;
communication methods on the how well service innovations are adopted and accepted;
management techniques and philosophy on how well service innovations are implemented;

There are also themes around:

employee discretion to take decisions, try new work methods and to introduce innovations (Function Centered);
re-structuring and the effect on staff, customers, services and service innovation within the organization.

Possible useful resource http://www.service-innovation.org/

Re-thinking the title

Posted on 27/08/2013 by yellowbag

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:

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

A couple of possible research propositions:

P1: postgraduate applicants are more likely to enrol is they have continuing dialogue with academic staff.
P2: services supporting postgraduate recruits (ICT, documents, interviews etc. etc.) need to be clearly defined and transparent.
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

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

Posted on 26/08/2013 by yellowbag

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 recrutiment

The problem

Posted on 18/08/2013 by yellowbag

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

Posted on 08/08/2013 by yellowbag

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:

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

User acceptance and adoption

Posted on 28/05/2013 by yellowbag

I have been dealing a lot recently with theory specifically actor-network theory (ANT). I started assignment two and decided that after reading some journal papers and thinking about a gap in the body of knowledge I realised that ANT needed to be set to one side for a while. I have reverted back to my original idea relating to the acceptance and adoption of technology and innovations. After reading through some journal papers in this area I have found that there is a lot of material on user acceptance but not relating to higher education administrative systems.

There is an opportunity to carry out several case studies and / or action research projects at the university making use of a couple of theories; diffusion of innovations theory (as a general theory of acceptance and adoption) and then actor-network theory combined with case study method to discover what network effects positively or negatively impact on technology or innovation acceptance and adoption. Some of the key actors might be, development teams, staff users, managers, HR managers and trainers, IT staff, the software application, customers and academic staff.

The BBC and Archival & Phenomenological Research

Posted on 12/03/2013 by yellowbag

At the present time and for the past few months the BBC has been going through a period of difficulty due to the revelations relating to the disgraced former DJ Jimmy Savile. The police, the BBC Governors, BBC managers, social services, social workers and many others are now involved in uncovering the extent of Mr Savile’s activities covering the period from about 1962 to just before he died in 2006.

Listening this morning to a discussion on the case on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, it struck me that if one was undertaking a DBA at the BBC at the moment (and in the right job with a supportive team and manager), the Jimmy Savile case could be an excellent topic for carrying out an Archival Research project as part of one’s thesis.

There is now a vast amount of published data on the case including official reports, police reports, witness testimony, news reports from the BBC and other sources consisting of printed materials and a vast amount of other media. The Daily Mail¹ (February 22nd 2013) reported that “3,000 pages of emails, interviews and submissions released online“.

There would also be the possibility of including Phenomenological Research². It might be possible to interview existing staff and other relevant people about the case to bring in some personal view points.

The outcome of the thesis would definitely be one or more policy recommendations related to some relevant management theory. It would be interesting to see over time what support the BBC would lend someone carrying out this research as it would likely be deemed to be a risky piece of work. As Stan Lester³ (1999) points out:

“Phenomenological approaches are good at surfacing deep issues and making voices heard. This is not always comfortable for clients or funders, particularly when the research exposes taken for-granted assumptions or challenges a comfortable status-quo.”

Finding a research project with such a high level of richness in one’s own workplace is clearly a challenge. The search is on.

(1) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2282667/Jimmy-Savile-scandal-90-pages-BBCs-report-blacked-DG-goes-ground–blamed-fiasco.html

(2) Epistemologically, phenomenological approaches are based in a paradigm of personal knowledge and subjectivity, and emphasise the importance of personal perspective and interpretation. As such they are powerful for understanding subjective experience, gaining insights into people’s motivations and actions, and cutting through the clutter of taken-for-granted assumptions and conventional wisdom. (Lester, 1999).

(3) Lester, S (1999) ‘An introduction to phenomenological research,’ Taunton UK, Stan Lester Developments [Online] (www.sld.demon.co.uk/resmethy.pdf, accessed March 12, 2013).

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