Publications

Lecturer jobs require a publication record but I don't have a publication record, yet alone such a record in A* and B* rated journals. How do I get a publication record when I no longer am a research student and don't have a research job?

For the time being, I'm pootling around having fun as a user experience developer on a new OU network for learning, SocialLearn. Sadly, this is not a research associate position and doesn't officially provide the experience or skills that a lecturer needs.

I could:

1. make a participant study of relationships between users and contractors who are developing the web site. That builds on the business research I've done for my PhD
   
2. research the user experience - that builds on research studies in a different field

Why is it important to focus on the public sector?

My research looks at engagement on public sector IT projects, so

Why is it important to focus on the public sector?

This might be a viva question and I can say that I justify this focus in the literature review (page 14) where I've written:
IT projects are important to the public sector because they are a key means of implementing government policy requiring often rapid changes to how the public sector department functions and provides services.
But maybe I've justified only the focus on IT projects, not on the public sector. The public sector makes policy and implements it through IT. Examples of failures of such implementation are:

• Libra system for the magistrates courts
• the National id scheme with an initial budget of £3 billion that went up to £5 billion.
• in 2003 the government introduced two credits: Child Tax Credit and Working Tax credit. The Inland Revenue's IT supplier created a new IT system for processing the tax credits, a system that went live in April 2003 with problems that took ten weeks to solve. Volumes were higher than expected and the testing window had been cut. Both suppliers and IR senior managers had to account for the fiasco to a Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee.

Public Sector IT continues to be problematic. The day after I submitted my thesis, a Public Administration Select Committee was interviewing IT expert witnesses on good governance and the effective use of IT (pd report is here). Witnesses pointed out that IS is there to implement government policy and government business change.

Hence, I see a need to focus on the public sector.

Ridiculous confusion

All I have to write is a couple of paragraphs about different ends of the belief spectrum of enquiry (ye wha'?!). Belief system - how you believe reality. It's about what you believe is real, what your assumptions are. It seems reasonable to surface those assumptions, because they influence what you believe you know, and therefore how you go about researching, and I need to explain why I researched it the way I researched it, to justify it.

Except, the belief spectrum of enquiry is full of paradigms, perspectives and isms.

• Positivism
• Realism
• Constructivism

And on top of those there's post-positivism (don't ask me if there's a negativism), critical realism and constructionism. I don't know the difference between constructivism and constructionism. I had thought my approach was constructionist, but now I'm confused and it might be that my ontology is constructionist and my methodology hermeneutically dialectic, though I thought this research was taking a critical realist research perspective because, although the organisation’s IS projects took place in real objective spaces, each individual participant constructed themselves in a particular way in relation to the project or programme setting. Which is they constructed themselves, so aren’t I working to a constructionist philosophy?
Now I have all these different terms to work with:

• approach
• ontology
• methodology
  
• perspective
• philosophy

This bit of my methodology chapter is never going to get writ.

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Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions and emerging confluences. In N. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3 ed., Vol. 3). Thousand Oaks ;London: Sage Publications.

Free consulting

Here is a review of research that looks at the value of consulting. It really looks, and measures it, a positivist approach I think. And so unusual that it is noted in the FT, by an economist.

The pdf paper is downloadable from Bloom's web site here.

Double the work or double the fun

Today's PhD comic is just where I'm at, after my supervisor commented two weeks ago that progress seemed to be slow. So:

• I'm thick, or
  
• I'm wading through research sludge, or
  
• I'm doing the wrong things, or
  
• I'm not doing enough things.

I am doing enough PhD work. Like fellow PhD blogger, Minh, here, I think and talk about my PhD so I'm well not happy to progress slowly. I want to submit this year.

So what do I do? Double the hours? Do double the wrong things?

Rewriting

After supervision, I seem to have found a new ball to roll. By the end of last week, I was getting stuck, apart from a short moment when I realised that my theoretical framework could act as a paradigm for good practice and if components or connection on it are missing, then I have a tool to analyse how to improve engagement.

I wrote that idea up in a hurry, illustrating it with some of my case studies and gave my supervisors 24 hours to read it before our meeting. I'd already given them two other papers and then rolled to a stop.

Supervisors' response is positive because it may be a way to compare across cases instead of using tables, (which I'd tried and weren't working).

Future weeks' work then will be to rewrite all five cases studies:

• do they show mutuality of engagement of interactive problem solving?
• do they show a meta-capability to produce engagement?
• what was complex about each project?
• identify the value that grew from solving complexity and knotty problems
• write about the value for each case
• identify what the key issues were that needed to be resolved, if they were resolved and how engagement helped the extent to which they were resolved.

I feel like my supervisors have given me a kick, and like a ball I'm slowly rolling again. May be this mess of thoughts will gain speed.

Life after PhD

Cloudworks is showing a conference or a seminar this morning that features ex-PhD students and what they're doing, how they moved on, and what in their PhD helped them to get work afterwards.

See voices of experience.

Following up contacts

Following up contacts can be nervous making. I imagine contacts might be rude - unlikely, or expect you to know something you don't know so you feel stupid and embarrassed. I don't like following up but I have to do it. I think it must be like selling and following up leads; I need to know how to sell.

I plan carefully. If it's a phone call, there are four scenarios:

1. They answer and say "Yes, do come and talk to our people and our consultants. Give us your dates and we'll draw up a timetable for to talk to three people the first date and arrange three or four others on another date". Ha! I'd be lucky.
2. They don't answer the phone and I have to try another time. Procrastination is purgatory.
3. They have an answer phone. I plan before dialling exactly what message I'm going to leave like name, where from, why I'm phoning, that I'll phone again, what my number is time and date of call
4. Wrong number - check my records and look for the right number.

I also plan email. I write an introduction, why I'm emailing and I hope for a reply. Sometime it doesn't come for weeks and I don't know if it's because people are considering my request or ignoring me, so I hesitate to email again. Often they've very kindly considered my email, taken it to others in the organisation and discussed it. Some have come back and said:

"Sorry, too busy at the moment"
"Sorry, we've no suitable IT project"
"Sorry, we can't help you."

It's good of them to have gone to the trouble. Perhaps it's even been an AOB agenda item for a project closing meeting. So I'm grateful just for the consideration.

What bothers me is if people are worried that my research might expose them to media vilification. To allay fears I've written a short summary on my aims and methodology. Some have asked for my CV - okay. Others have checked my OUBS web page and followed the link to this blog. So I'm being open and honest about my research.

Perhaps my hesitation to follow contacts is because I don't know very much about the contacts so I can't tell if I'm wasting their time. Though I doubt anyone is going to come to me voluntarily saying "Here's our organisation. We used consultants on an IT project that's nearly finished. Do come in! We'll all talk to you."

No, my job is to sell my research - be a saleswoman.

Discussion of research

We are due our PhD students day, when we have discussions around the table with ten minutes for each student to present their work to each other and to academics. Occasionally, academics have little to contribute but are still interested. See last year's discussion here.

Today, with no round table pressure I had the luck to discuss my research with a senior academic in IT, who works in the OU and has researched IT using social capital. He read the paper I'd sent to EURAM, and my OUBS web page, and then he asked me useful questions, like

• what's the difference between social capital and trust?
  
• what is capital?
• what is engagement?
  
• what is quality of engagement?
• why IT?
• why the public sector?
• where's the value arise from engagement?
  

He suggested relevant literature, including, Habermas. Habermas is not where I would have gone, but apparently he described four forms of communication:

• instructive
• strategic
• discursive
• co-ordinative (not Habermas's term)

I could use Habermas's forms as ways of analysing engagement along a spectrum. See the theory of communicative action.

Another interesting point he made is that there is an IS Professor Dunleavy at LSE who has researched and written on macro level IT systems in national public sectors. He's found that IT projects are governed by national interest in building capacity of an IT industry in a global market place. If a nation, such as UK or Japan has an IT industry then it is more loath to pull out of failing public IT projects than countries like Holland that doesn't have an IT industry to contribute to the economy.

May the PhD day turn out as useful.

---

I suspect the Professor Dunleavy is the Patrick Dunleavy who wrote that really useful text on Authoring a Phd : How to plan, draft, write and finish a doctoral thesis or dissertation that I mentioned here.

Bunking off

Yesterday was a lovely autumnal day. The afternoon sun shone brightly on red, yellow, green leaves, and long shadows lay across the Northamptonshire hills around Towcester.

One of us students had this brilliant idea of going over to the Towcester races if the weather was good, and it was. So one third year, two second years and a first year nipped over there for the afternoon. We all got some work done in the morning, and enjoyed the sunshine and atmosphere at the races. We lost money. :(

The first year student is researching financial behaviour, and he runs our investment club. He didn't take the (recently reduced) funds of the club, but perhaps choosing which horse to stake your money on isn't much different from choosing where to buy your shares.

Why aren't I researching such pleasant environments as race tracks? There must be something researchable in the racing business.Perhaps there's social capital to develop there.

Why it is worthwhile to answer my question

How does engagement increase value of consultancy projects?

If

• Engagement adds value
• Projects succeed because of engagement
• Human capital is good
• Intellectual capital is increased

Then
We know engagement is worth while, worth having, worth creating, worth doing, worth further research. But that is about a different question - does engagement add value? Engagement could provide collaborative advantage {Huxham, 1993 #838}. If it does, then is engagement worthwhile? I assume that if engagement adds value, then it is worthwhile. But what about the question of how engagement adds value?

220,000 people work in the UK consulting industry. How do they add value to UK business and in particular to the UK public sector that provides 29% of the consulting market? The intelligent client {Czerniawska, 2002 #894}who knows how to engage with consultants gains the value. So how does an intelligent public sector client engage with consultants?

The research isn’t there to tell us.

---

Czerniawska, F. (2002) The intelligent client: managing your management consultant, Hodder & Stoughton. 894
Huxham, C. (1993) 'Pursuing Collaborative Advantage', The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 44 (6), pp. 599-611. 838

Careers

Universities have three legs to the career stool:

1. admin or management
2. research
3. teaching

We heard three of our academics discussing the issues surrounding these strands.

The researcher recommended the need for mentors and some structure of support. She's loved the job, always has, but fell into it by accident.

The teacher quoted Pinchto intrapreneuring - do it then ask - I think he said. Teaching is less quantified in its assessment than research. aim to be on committees but teaching is less well paid than outside work, and you can't avoid the students.

The administrator explained something of a university management structure. The job involves management roles like keeping resources coming in. Managing makes a dent in your publication rate but these roles mean that you are in the centre of things because you ave collective responsibility for the management of the school so you have to have issues, dilemmas and different perspectives on performance.
The downsides of management: demanding, difficult to put boundaries, collective responsibility, takes discretionary time and mental energy.

Conclusion: management gives you the chance to experience real management and use that experience in the maelstrom (Edgar Allan Poe), which can be valuable. It is a stimulating experience which is avoidable, but needed if your career aspirations are to lead a university.

Feedback

Supervisor has read my proposal & suggests:

• rewrite the introduction - Supervisor has attacked it and written five sentences that bring the argument together - why didn't I write like that?
• sort out month numbers with real dates - good idea, I didn't like the numbers anyhow.
• reconsider which life cycle model to use - yes - the one I'm using is perhaps too simple for the context
  
• I be less casual - whoops!
• also have to work out some points of clarity

Nevertheless, perhaps I have a "robust" research question. Yeah!

Data analysis & using NVivo

Third year student, Linda Wilks, presented on the role of habitus in festivals. That was interesting but of greater relevance and use to us students was her explanation of how she analysed her qualitative data. Here's what:

Recording the interviews

• Assess background noise
• Put your recorder on something soft

One of my colleagues had problems transcribing an important word when the interviewee spoke as he put his coffee mug down.

Transcription

• Use a foot pedal
  
• Contract some of it out but expect to have to check it thoroughly yourself too. Cost is £11 per hour of their time.
• Takes approx 7 hours to do 45 minutes

I thought this useful & practical. But it got more useful because she talked about organising the data to make it manageable by:

1. Designing a data classification system
• Based on research theory
• Related to interview questions
• Be prepared to modify it
• Transfer into NVivo under ‘tree nodes’
  


2. Import your transcripts into NVivo
• Highlight sections of the transcript and drag into the appropriate tree node


3. Export the tree node contents
• Make sure you tell NVivo to include the folder and hierarchical name
  

She gave us a screen dump of NVivo with nodes and folders and hierarchies. She explained with examples of sources and numbers of references in the nodes, and an analysed transcript.

• To get an idea of the important areas, assess how many references a node has.
• Print out tree nodes for analysis.

For the second level of analysis, she used Fairclough's critical discourse analysis and justified the use in relation to her work.

She had a check list to scribble on her texts, for example what styles, types of statement, intertextuality and transferred the notes to a spreadsheet.

The final step is to write up findings, without reference to theory at this stage and no language that precludes conclusions.

What I've noted above is all Linda's work, and if you want to know the detail you should contact her. I'm going to get NVivo and practise on my MRes data, and I'm going to look up Fairclough.

Reflexivity and research

Is reflexivity like recursion?

You have to go in on yourself to find what the assumptions are, but that assumes an understanding of what assumptions are.

We had a speaker, Ann Cunliffe, from Hull, give a lunch time seminar on the topic. It's a social constructionist approach that questions our notions of reality.

"an unsettling of the basic assumptions, discourse and practices used in describing reality"
{Pollner, 1991}

But, questioning reality means that I question the tools that I have to question with. So let alone not write authoritative accounts, the idea of reflexivity meaning that theories and explanations must be tentative undermines any confidence I have left in my research and analysis.

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Pollner, M. (1991) 'LEFT OF ETHNOMETHODOLOGY: THE RISE AND DECLINE OF RADICAL REFLEXIVITY', American Sociological Review, 56 (3), pp. 370-380. 845

Fun fiddling

• A Third Year Student here researches festivals.
• Festivals include musicians
• Musicians play violins.
• So TYS is learning the violin.

She came in with her violin and the other two students already in noticed it, so she played a little. Then three more of us arrived and listened, so she got a clap. No-one else was in to be bothered. Friday is quiet in the OU.

We have an open plan office so we can be sociable. But we have to be careful not to be too noisy too often because we'll distract each other from work. It's a good atmosphere.