Work plan for research project

It's a bit hard to plan two years ahead, but since I don't need to worry about coordinating financial and people resources, it's not a great problem. So here's first draft starting July 2008, with thanks to my student colleagues who shared their approaches.

Literature review
Month Activity
1- 27 Continue to read and review literature on public sector, consultants, clients and relevant method such as social network theory

Skills audit
Month Activity
1 - 22 Attend courses, seminars & conferences as appropriate
Rewrite my OUBS web page when it’s out of date
2-4 Learn any specific analysis skills such as the maths needed for social network analysis
6-10 Learn necessary software such as NVivo and software for social network analysis
1-28 Adjust plans as life gets in the way
9-10 Write a paper on the pilot case study results

Methodology
Month Activity
1-4 Review and decide methodology & methods
Choose options for analysis
4 Write something about the design, method and methods
4 Get ethics approval (skill B2, B3

Data collection
Month Activity
1-4 Identify 5 or 6 case studies, one of which can be a pilot study. Five might suffice, but six will cover contingencies such as lack of access
5 Interview pilot study
3-15 Identify & interview about 6 interviewees per case study, these being the equivalent of chief exec or primary client, senior responsible owner, project manager, a consultant, a user, relevant politician. .
5-15 From interview data and documentation identify potential relationships in networks and send questionnaires to confirm relationships. There can be hundreds on a project, so think about how many to choose, how to choose them and why
6-15 Devise and sent questionnaires on relationships to identified participants
6-20 Transcribe interview data and input questionnaire data

Analysis
Month Activity
7-20 Analyse earlier cases while collecting data for later cases
Meet supervisors regularly

Writing
Month Activity
15-23 Write drafts for supervisors
Continue to meet supervisors regularly
26 Proof read dissertation
28 Submit

Proposal for probation

I have my proposal ready - thanks to bright idea of supervisor #2.

It will be a qualitative study of engagement between consultants and clients in the public sector with the aim of finding how engagement adds value to a consultancy project.

Data collection will come from 5-6 case studies with around 6 interviewees per case, the unit of analysis being a project. The framework for the questions will come from Nahapiet and Ghoshal's framework for building intellectual capital from social capital.

Analysis will be using discourse analysis of interview data together with relationship analysis (SNT) gathered from interviews and questionnaires.

The contribution will be to

• academia - the findings on engagement
• practitioners - how relationships influence value

How does this sound?

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Nahapiet, J. and Ghoshal, S. (1998) 'SOCIAL CAPITAL, INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL, AND THE ORGANIZATIONAL ADVANTAGE', Academy of Management Review, 23 (2), pp. 242-266. 842

Probationary viva

By the end of June, I have to have produced a proposal that contains:

• A viable research question
• A critical literature review which situates the proposed research
• A research proposal including an outline of proposed method(s) and a critical justification for them
• A work plan for the project

And then in July, I have a viva. I have to explain and support what I intend to do. The rules say:

The student must undergo a mini-viva – an independent oral examination on the project report. It must be conducted by at least two experienced academic researchers who are not the student’s supervisors.

The assessors must provide a written report indicating whether the student’s performance was adequate. If the student’s performance was not adequate, information should be provided about what must be rectified before probation can be ‘passed’.

I propose research that has a constructionist philosophy behind it and therein is a potential problem because I hear that one of the examiners is a quantitative researcher, so of a different philosophy. I hope I can explain myself well enough.