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.