Category Archives: Research

Research material

Consultation begins turbulence increases

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The university has begun a consultation process to gather the views of staff with respect of the change proposal that has been drawn up by the new VC. A series of staff forums where staff can raise issues, concerns and suggestions have begun. These are being chaired by senior managers some of whom have been given notice that their jobs are at risk of redundancy. The response of staff to the proposals at these meetings has varied between resignation and an acceptance that the Schools structure is a done deal and anger at the way that the process has been implemented. The anger at the implementation seems to fit very well with views on Organisational Justice specifically the aspect Procedural Justice and Informational Justice.

I have noticed that in the last few days formal meetings seem to always start with a discussion about the restructuring. There does not seem to be any part of the organization that has been left untouched by an element of uncertainty. I have found that asking people simple questions about the restructuring elicits long answers with strong views on the situation. This leads me to an assurance that using Convergent Interviewing is a sound method of gathering data.

An interesting point to note is in the literature on interview techniques much is made of the interview process whereby the interviewer should make an introductory statement at the beginning of the interview e.g.

  • Identify the auspices under which the research is being conducted.
  • Purposes of the research, funded or for a thesis.
  •  Indication of what the research is about.
  • Indicate why the subject has been chosen.
  • Make it clear participation is voluntary.
  • Assure the respondent that their identity will not be revealed and all information will be confidential.
  • Provide opportunity for respondent to ask questions or raise concerns.
  • Ask some simple opening questions and lead to the main substance of the interview.

(Bryman, 2012)

The interesting point is that when interviewing strangers the lead in to the main interview is probably essential in order to gain the confidence of the interviewee and to put them at ease. I have found that asking people I know and work with at work a question the usual response is for the colleague to open up with their views expansively and almost immediately. My view is that there is a strong possibility that I am going to be able to gather a lot of interview data for the assignment and the thesis project with little problem.

I have attached notes that I took at a consultation meeting that took place on Wed, Dec 04, 2013.

Consultation Meeting Notes Wed Dec 04 2013

Invitation to part time staff to consultation meetings received Thu, Dec 05, 2013.

Part time staff invitation to consultation meetings December 2014

Restructuring FAQ #1 posted Dec 05, 2013.

Restructuring FAQ 05122013

Bryman, A, (2012), Social research Methods, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK.

More thoughts on sensemaking, organizational justice and turbulence »

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The situation where I would like to carry out the research for my assignment is changing rapidly. The new CEO has presented the plan for changing the organizational structure to the board of governors and there is a meeting on Monday 25th November with senior managers. At the meeting it is expected that information will be presented outlining the new structure.

I will need to identify some key participants to interview soon as I want to make sure that I speak to people who are currently in existing posts and roles and who may be or will be affected by changes. This will allow me the potential to go back at a later point to review their opinions on the changes after they have been implemented.

The feeling of organizational turbulence has definitely increased over the past week due to the build up to the meeting this week. There is an increasing feeling of uncertainty and apprehension. This is very rich material for carrying out the interviews. I would expect to find that people are attempting to make sense of the situation and would also expect to find that people discuss issues relating to justice and how decisions have been decided on by the executive.

Since my last post I have been looking at various papers investigating large scale change in organizations. I have also been looking at methods for organizing my assignment  literature review. In doing this I came across two related and very interesting papers. One Introducing the Literature Grid: Helping Undergraduates Consistently Produce Quality Literature Reviews by Peter Yacobucci (2012). I have created a spreadsheet for the purpose from the specification in the paper and this seems to work very well and I think it will be very helpful. I looked at using NVivo 10 for the literature review but I found the application crashed several times.

I found I had wasted a lot of time setting things up in NVivo 10 so at the moment I am sticking with the spreadsheet. During the search for a method of organizing my literature I started to search for papers  in Emerald on interview techniques. In one, Employee perceptions of organizational change: impact of hierarchical level by Jones. L, Watson. B, Hobman. E, Bordia. P, Gallios. C, Callan. V (2008).

The abstract describes the paper as, The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of organizational level on employees’ perceptions and reactions to a complex organizational change involving proposed work force redesign, downsizing and a physical move to a new hospital. I found this paper to have several similarities to the situation that I am intending to investigate in my assignment.

I realised that as the situation is similar but separated by time and being a different field (a hospital) I noted that the authors specify two research questions that I could re-use in my own research. In my view it is perfectly acceptable to re-use these questions because the situations are different and it would be interesting to see how the outcomes of my assignment study differ or are similar to this study.

What I found to be very interesting in the paper is a reference to Convergent Interviewing. When I first read the paper I did not pick up that this is in fact a specific interviewing technique. I re-read the paper and found that the interviewers asked their participants only one question. I found this confusing at first. After looking up references to Convergent Interviewing I found that the technique is based on asking just one question. The question has to be very well crafted in order to illicit a significant response from interviewees.

In the paper there is a question that chimes with my own research so in the same way that I am going to use the research questions I will use the same interview question. According to the papers on Convergent Interviewing the interviewer should ask the question and then use deep listening in order to focus on the answer and use some small prompts if necessary. The aim is to allow the participant about an hour to 90 minutes to talk about their thoughts and views. The interviewer records the main points of the interview in their notebook.

I think it is going to be a challenging getting my participants to respond adequately to one question. On the other hand I believe that people who are struggling to make sense of a turbulent situation will be willing to talk about their feelings and opinions because they will have strong views on the situation – either positive or negative.

I will be approaching some interview candidates this week.

 

 

Thoughts on sensemaking, organizational justice and turbulence

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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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).
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.

Things fall into place

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After spending the last few months investigating Actor-Network Theory, Organisational Justice Theory, Institutional Theory, socio-technical systems, service systems, sensemaking, service science and team change I have FINALLY had an epiphany that has led me to a much more concrete and plausible research topic.

I found a PhD thesis Managing Organizational Change during Institutional Upheaval, Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Higher Education in Transition by Dijana Tiplic. After reading through the thesis I realised that where I am working is an organization in upheaval. A new Vice Chancellor will be starting in January and this change at the top is already causing uncertainty throughout the organization.

I felt that the word upheaval seemed a bit loose so decided on turbulence. I have found that this is a good choice as turbulence is actually a technical term relating to large scale organizational change either as an external influence or an internal one. Some external turbulences include the outbreak of the First and Second World Wars, the 1929 Stock Market crash, the 2008 financial crisis, changes in legislation affecting businesses such as tax changes, interest rate changes etc.

Internal turbulence can be produced by a change in the Chief Executive Officer, a major IT infrastructure implementation either one that succeeds – look at the introduction of ICT’s into the newspaper industry by News International, or one that fails and almost or completely destroys the company.

I have realized that there is a good link between sensemaking in organizations, institutions, turbulence and change. These concepts are all active where I work and as the organization and it’s institutions are on the verge of a turbulent change (new CEO) this is an opportunity too good to pass up.

I am going to use the situation to investigate how an organization controls change in turbulent times and make the transition from one leader and associated ideas to another. Staff in the organization are concerned and apprehensive about the future and are anticipating significant changes. There is a view that the university will be transformed from a faculty based structure to a schools based one. This view tends to be based on the fact that the new VC’s ex-university is a schools based organization.

Speaking to various people in the organization there is a strong view that the whole place is going to be transformed into a new structure. People I speak to about the new VC tend to speak as though they are justifying their positions. I have noticed that there has been an increase recently in a focus on managing performance. This seems to be related to people / managers in the organization justifying their position or the position of their team. There is also a feeling of uncertainty amongst some staff that this change might be an opportunity to remove them.

The challenge for the organization is to manage the turbulence so that it successfully emerges stronger and better positioned in the market i.e. profitable.

So the title of my thesis is going to be: Making sense of the organization in turbulent times. I’ve Googled this title and it does not seem to exist!

Unified Services Theory

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I have been looking at service systems and service science and have bought the book Service Science by Henry Katzan, Jr. (Available from Amazon)

Service Science

The book explains service science theory as the underpinning concept of service systems as described by IBM as SSME. I have decided that to undertake a piece of research on the development of a customer service team into a service systems team I am going to use Unified Service Theory as my main underlying theory. The theory is summed up in the following diagram:

Unified Service Theory

Unified Service Theory

UST in full: With services, the customer provides significant inputs into the production process. With manufacturing, groups of customers may contribute ideas to the design of the product, however, individual customers’ only part in the actual process is to select and consume the output. Nearly all other managerial themes unique to services are founded in this distinction. (From Understanding Services Businesses)

Defining by Customer Content:

With services, an effective means of understanding, analyzing, and comparing processes is on the basis of customer content. There are three general types of customer inputs into service processes: the customer’s self, the customer’s belongings, and/or the customer’s information. This principle occurs because customer inputs are present in all services, in accordance with the Unified Services Theory.

Identifying the Customer:

With services, “the customer” is sometimes not clearly defined. Generally, the customer is the individual or entity who directly or indirectly decides whether or not the firm shall be compensated for production. The actual paying customer may desire a non-paying “critical audience” to be satisfied with production, qualifying the critical audience as an indirect customer. This principle occurs because companies can have many stakeholders, some providing inputs and some merely consuming outputs. Since the Unified Services Theory is based on the idea of customerinputs, it is necessary to clearly define who the customer is.

Identifying the Production Process:

With services, the company’s Uproduction process is defined as company effort to add value to customer inputs. Company effort in preparation for production is the pre-production process. When the production process concludes, and the customer may use the production outcome to continue to add value. This post-production process is primarily based on customer action. Often, well-designed service outcomes will enable the customer to create value in the post-production process. This principle occurs because the only ways companies can add value is through efforts and through outputs. Efforts can add value directly to customer inputs (given by the Unified Services Theory). Outputs, or outcomes, can allow customers to add value after the company’s production efforts are complete.

The Unit of Analysis:

With services, the unit of analysis is a process segment. A process segment is a sequence of steps of production. When processes are dissected into smaller segments, the presence or absence of service principles becomes more pronounced. This principle occurs because customer inputs are present in some parts of a production process, but not present in others. By the Unified Services Theory, the parts that involve customer inputs identifies the process segment as a service process.

Weighting the Mixture:

With services, different process segments have different degrees of customer input, and some may have none (acting as manufacturing). The weight, or significance, of specific process segments is most often determined by the amount of value in the overall service contributed by specific segments. This can be approximated by contribution to “willingness to pay.” Some other segments are important for accounting, regulatory, or risk-control reasons. This principle occurs because value of a service process or of individual process segments is judged by how well it adds value to customer inputs. The noted exception is process steps that protect the company’s ability to remain in business by meeting regulatory or risk-control requirements, or by keeping an accurate accounting of production, revenues, and costs.

As seen from the diagram the main idea behind UST is that the customer is a key part of the service system. This is the underlying concept for service value co-creation where the service provider and the service client both gain value from the service operation. For the research project (assignment and probably main project) I intend to use UST as the main theory for developing the service (within an Action Research project) Actor-Network Theory for investigating the background and the various human and non-human actors and Sensemaking theory for reflecting on what has happened.

 

 

Servce Science Research Areas – IBM Suggestions

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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

SSME Some initial notes

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Services Science Management and Engineering. SSME at IBM.

Baumol’s cost disease. From Wikipedia.

Snap 2013-09-22 at 19.28.56

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

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

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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

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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.

Penetration (Market)

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The penetration of a technology or innovation into the workplace is what this work is really about. User acceptance and adoption are precursors to wider penetration into the wider organisation in some respects.

Some concepts and theories to look into ….

And…

http://jordi.pro/bass/

 

Addiction by Design

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I was looking for a particular book the other day on the Amazon website and cam across a book called Addiction by Design, Machine Gambling in Las Vegas by Natasha Dow Schüll. Schüll is associate professor in the Program in Science, Technology and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The book concerns the recent and dramatic shift away from social forms of gambling played around roulette wheels and card tables to solitary gambling at electronic terminals. The book draws on research by Bruno Latour (ANT) as well as others involved with gambling research. The book is absolutely riveting! Schüll writes in a compulsive and even addictive style and almost every paragraph contains a jaw-dropping fact. Thoroughly recommended for anyone interested in ethnography or just how easy it is to manipulate people.

Addiction by Design

Addiction by Design

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.

Sensemaking, Grounded Theory and ANT

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For the literature review for assignment two, I have been reading a range of journal papers and conference proceedings about Sensemaking, Grounded Theory and Actor-Network Theory. After reading the paper Ecological Sensemaking by Gail Whiteman and William Cooper (Academy of Management Journal, 2011), I came across a reference to the book Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide to through Qualitative Analysis by Kathy Charmaz (SAGE, 2008).

Book cover for Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis

I have been reading through this book and it is an excellent introduction and guide to GT. It has given me some ideas for how GT and ANT could be combined, in fact I have a couple of papers that demonstrate how this can be done for example, the paper Actor-Network-Network Inspired Design Research: Methodology and Reflections (Ben Krall, 2007) and Doing Chinese Studies at the Crossroads of Grounded Theory and Actor-Network Theory (Basile Zimmerman (University of Geneva, Switzerland, 2008).

For the essay for assignment two, if I had more time and more words or I had the opportunity to write it again (!), or I can just write here on this blog, I would re-focus on the combining of GT and ANT. I believe that GT can provide a structured framework for the application of ANT. GT and ANT are complimentary in terms of the methods used i.e. structured intensive interviews, observation of phenomena, textual analysis, video and image analysis and coding of results. ANT on the other hand often uses the same methods, interviews, textual and document analysis and observation of phenomena. GT uses the process of writing regular memo’s to record outcomes of interviews etc.

I am also interested in Karl Weick’s Sensmaking as a possible overarching theory for my thesis. Within Sensemaking I would use Grounded Theory combined with ANT to drill into the issue. Sensemaking and organizational storytelling also have a strong relationship.

User acceptance and adoption

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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.

ANT and Translation

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According to John Law Punctualisation is an effect or a process – not something that happens and is then fixed. As Law says no version of the social order, no organisation and no agent is ever complete, autonomous or final.  Law states that Translation in ANT terms is a verb that means transformation and the possibility of equivalence – the possibility that one thing may stand for another e.g. a Network.

Translation is contingent, local and variable.

4 general principles of translation also apply:

  1. Durability – some things are more durable than others. Thoughts and ideas are less durable than speech but walls are more durable than both. Walls though are only as durable as they are allowed to be over time. Walls can be taken down and turned into other things. Durability then needs to be approached with caution.
  2. Materials and processes of communication. These include: writing, electronic communication, methods of representation, banking systems, early modern trade routes. These (translations) are what Latour calls immutable mobiles: letter of credit, military orders etc.
  3. Translations that relate to the relationship between literacy and bureaucracy, print, the development of double entry book keeping, and newer technologies and the capacity to foresee outcomes.
  4. The scope of ordering, Strategies relating to; enterprise, administration, vocation, and vision which operate collectively to generate multi-strategic agents and inter organisational transactions. Organisations may be seen as a set of such strategies which operate to generate complex configurations of network durability; spatial mobility, systems of representation and caluability – configurations which have the effect of generating the centre/periphery asymmetries and hierarchies characteristic of most formal organisations.

Questions stem from these concepts such as:

  1. What kinds of heterogeneous bits and pieces created or mobilised and juxtaposed to generate organisational effects?
  2. How are they juxtaposed?
  3. How are resistances overcome?

  4. How it is (if at all) that the material durability and transportability necessary to the organizational patterning of social

    relations is achieved?

  5. What are the strategies being performed

  6. throughout the networks of the social as a part of this?

  7. How far do they spread?
  8. How widely are they performed?
  9. How do they interact?
  10. How it

    is (if at all) that organizational calculation is attempted?

  11. How (if at all) are

    the results of that calculation translated into action?

  12. How is it (if at all)that the heterogeneous bits and pieces that make up organization generate an asymmetrical relationship between periphery and centre?

  13. How is it, in other words, that a centre may come to speak for and profit

    from, the efforts of what has been turned into a periphery?

  14. And maybe most interestingly – How is it that a manager manages?

 

Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay

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I have just read “Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay” by Michael Callon. This paper is a very good exposition of how ANT works in practice. I have found many later papers are not as clear or as well written as this early paper. Many recent papers such as Jim S Dolwick’s ‘The Social’ and Beyond: Introducing Actor-Network Theory are written in obscure and overly complex language. It seems that one way of creating a difference in journal writing is to use an obfuscating style. Another older (original) paper by John Law, Notes on the Theory of the Actor Network: Ordering Strategy and Heterogeneity is also a clear description of ANT in use…

ANT

An Ant

For example the concept of Punctualisation are in effect just simplifications of complex networks in the social sphere. Punctualisation can be summed up in a concept such as a railway station or sugar beet as an ingredient in a soft drink. They contain within them many other heterogeneous assemblages or networks. For example sugar from a sugar beet listed as an ingredient on a soft drink is an Actant in a network of other actants (actors) such as farmers, the soil, pesticides, pickers, the distribution network , the marketing company, processing plants, advertising companies, banks etc. etc. As Law states heterogeneous networks are precarious because they can fall apart at any time and turn into failing networks. Punctualisation though is a way of dealing with Networks of the Social without getting involved with a lot of complexity.

Actor-Network Theory – Applications and Possiblities

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Looking at the moment at Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and the possibility of using this as the underlying theory for my thesis project. I am considering using ANT along with Everett Rogers Diffusion of Innovations Theory and Karl Weick’s Sensemaking Theory. The rationale for these together is that they compliment one another in many regards. ANT has been used over the past 20 years for analysing socio-technical systems (STS) and other Information Systems. One influential text  was – Actor-Network Theory and Information Systems by Arthur Tatnall and Anthony Gilding, 1999. ANT was developed in the mid-late 1980’s by Bruno Latour, Michael Callon and John Law and was initially used as a technique for studying science and technology. The aim of Tatnall and Guilding was to make use of ANT as an alternative to the prevailing use of quantitative methods used for studying IS at that time.

Michael D. Myers in the paper Qualitative Research in Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, 1997 states that there are four main qualitative methods commonly in use in IS research. These include, case study method, ethnography, grounded theory and action research.  Since the mid 2000’s ANT has increasingly been seen as complementary the case study method. In recent years ANT has been used increasingly in other fields of research including accounting and finance research, human resources research (e-HRM), archaeological research and maritime archaeology research and organizational research to name a few.

One of the main reasons for the widening of interest in ANT is it’s ability to bring into the view of the researcher both human and non-human entities (or things). This allows researchers to better understand many more aspects of organizational (human/non-human) constructs than straightforward  human systems constructs or information systems constructs. Humans and non-humans operate in complex networks of interactions. Innovations are often led by a main actor (actant) who ‘enlist’ other actants into the network of the innovation. The innovation – e.g. a technology – also becomes an integral part of the network. These are in effect heterogeneous actors working together in a network or black-box, a single point actor.

A key characteristic of ANT is it’s description of all actors as texts that can be examined and interpreted. Actors within a black-box can include documents, emails, reports, software agents, organizations etc. etc. All of these can be described textually or verbally from documents or observation. This aspect lends itself to the case study technique which also draws on similar elements.

More on Diffusion of Innovations Theory and Sensemaking Theory soon…