Access to cases in public organisations

"getting acquiescence to interviewees is perhaps the easiest task in case study research" {Stake, 2005:65}

Such acquiescence is not easy for researching consultant-client relationships. Both parties are shy - skittish. Getting into central government is even more difficult because of the sensitivity and secrecy - hardly surprising given the criticism central government departments can face, like "x department spent so much on consultants or £m wasted on failed government IT. It's about politics here on the BBC. And selling papers here.

Such criticism may not be deserved - government servants face so much accountability and their top people do not want to be hauled up in front of a select committee to explain a public failure. Neither do their suppliers. Is it only the specialist IT media that report the less political good news here?

Maybe they suspect the motives of researchers looking for bad news, and don't believe they are looking to see how they do what they do together. On top of that, they are busy, just plain working with little spare time to explain what they do to outsiders - wouldn't they have to account for their time anyhow?

As a researcher I'm a guest. Despite the research area being a matter of public interest, I have no scholarly right to know {Stake, 2005}, but am a guest in their spaces. My manners must be good and I have no intention of exploiting or embarrassing anybody.

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STAKE, R. E. (2005) Qualitative case studies. IN DENZIN, N. K. & LINCOLN, Y. S. (Eds.) The sage handbook of qualitative research. London, Sage Publications.

Dangerous paths in writing

A recent Academy of Management paper on writing, {Pratt, 2009 }, includes advice that my supervisors have already given me, especially dangerous paths:

1. telling about data not showing it
2. showing too much data and not interpreting it
3. using deductive 'short hand'
4. quantifying qualitative data
5. inappropriately mixing inductive and deductive strategies

Having the feedback from my supervisors is so much better than reading about what I’m supposed to be doing, even in an excellent paper like this.

To find better paths he advises:

1. make sure your methods section includes 'the basics' (like discuss why this research is needed)
2. show data - in a smart fashion
3. think about using organizing figures
4. think about telling a story
5. consider 'modeling' someone whose style you like who consistently publishes qualitative work (who might I pick?)
   

Not sure I can do this writing right yet, but I keep practising.

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PRATT, M. G. (2009) For the lack of a boilerplate: Tips on writing up (and reviewing) qualitative research. Academy of Management Journal, 52, 856-862.

Hooking your supervisors

What must I do to finish my PhD?

• project manage
• balance time and money
• cope with life
• manage the data I have
• learn skills

Supervisors help by guiding, approving (e.g. conferences), and mainly advising on writing (I think). There are books available, like Rowena Murray's. Your university supports you by providing details of processes and what you and your supervisors can expect in a PhD Student Handbook. A Google search reveals lots of handbooks from lots of universities. A Google search "difficulties with supervisors" reveals plenty of advice. Advice to supervisors can also be helpful to students; I like this page at Oxford.

I wonder what hidden agendas supervisors have

• to cover their backs if something goes wrong
• not give too much help (but see PhD Comics early Nov 2009)
• join you in writing papers in the longer term relationship

At a recent seminar on managing your supervisor, the advice was to shape your relationship with your supervisors, find a hook to engage them. Initially the metaphor appealled, but then I thought of nasty fish hooks like in the anti smoking ads here, and pirate hooks and hooking kicks in tae kwon do. Boxing uses hooks here. So I'm looking for a different metaphor. Anyone got one?

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MURRAY, R. (2002) How to write a thesis, Buckingham ; Philadelphia, Open University Press.

Lateral literature

At coffee, colleague complained that she's having to go back and revisit literature, not only in her original area but laterally. So am I.

Last week, talking to a participant about successful collaborative IT projects, he commented on the importance of power. You can't have collaborative projects with unequal power, he said. "Aw", I think, "Ping!" - yes of course, obvious really.

I haven't thought about power for a couple of years. See here. Participant tells me about Andrew Cox at Birmingham and his work that links power and the supply chain {Cox, 2001}, a branch of literature I have not looked at at all - I hadn't thought supply chains were relevant, but in the context of public sector procurement IT systems, there's a relationship with the supplier and supply chain. See the NAO and OGC literature on procurement for example...

So I need to look up some of literature on the supply chain and power.

My grateful thanks to that participant.

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COX, A., IRELAND, P., LONSDALE, C., SANDERSON, J. & WATSON, G. (2001) Supply chains, markets & power.
NAO (2005) Sustainable procurement in central government. HMSO.
NAO (2004) Improving procurement: Progress by the office of government commerce in improving departments’ capability to procure cost effectively, , . . IN REPORT BY THE COMPTROLLER AND AUDITOR GENERAL (Ed.). HMSO.
NAO (2004) Improving it procurement: The impact of the office of government commerce’s initiatives on departments and suppliers in the delivery of major it-enabled projects. HMSO.

Advanced technology program

Advanced technology (ATP) enhances collaboration:

"brought strange bedfellows together." See the ATP site.

It's an old technology that's been around for decades. It's component based software development (CBSD) that involves reusing existing components, creating mock-ups and taking them back to the user to see and accept. So you get an iterative approach to IS development, working regularly with the user, rather than the strict waterfall method {Royce, 1970 }. It avoids failure of user acceptance testing at the end of the process.

What puzzles me is why government departments don't all use such approaches already.

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ROYCE, W. W. (1970) Managing the development of large software systems. Proceedings, IEEE WESCON.

Power

If power is an important element for collaboration (as someone has argued to me), then how does it fit in with engagement?

You can't have collaboration with unequal power. And how does power fit in with social capital?

The power-influence matrix is one that consultants use to analyse their key stakeholders, though I find little evidence that clients are aware of this, or do it themselves. Who consultants make the effort to engage with and how, depends on the results of their analysis of power-influence. Therefore power and influence must come into any model of engagement. But is power a facet of communication or of knowledgeability, or is it some separate dimension?

Power could be in:

• contacts and connections (could be strong social capital)
• dominant norms or cultures (including physical, and norms are included in the relational dimension of social capital in Nahapiet & Ghoshal's model)
• informal networks (social capital again)
• control and information

Etzioni 1975 writes on power, as do Pugh et al 1989. They say power comes in one of the following forms:

• coercive (physical) power
• remunerative or utilitarian (material)
• normative or identitive (symbolic) like the way someone dresses I suppose. See {Kaarst-Brown, 1999 #91}
  

An old OU MBA unit (B800) diagrammed overlapping forms of visible power: position, expert power, personal power and dependence.

• Expert power comes with knowledge and skills, and is, I believe, part of engagement
  
• Position power influences who has to be engaged in relationships.
• Dependence power could be held by lower levels in the management chain who also have expertise.
• Personal power comes with people, like someone I heard called "a friendly sort of bloke".

Power is negotiated, isn't it? So are all these types of power negotiated somehow? Something doesn't quite fit in the context of client-consultant relationships. I remember Sturdy (1997) wrote about the insecurity of the consultant so how does that insecurity work with power? Can't consultants make managers feel insecure too ? {Ernst, 2002}.

These cogitations imply I've got more work to do to answer my own questions.

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ETZIONI, A. (1975) A comparative analysis of complex organizations. IN PUGH, D. S., HICKSON, D. J. AND HININGS, C. R (Ed.) Writers on organizations. 2 ed. New York,
Harmondsworth, Penguin Modern Management,
The Free Press.
KAARST-BROWN, M. L. (1999) Five symbolic roles of the external consultant: Integrating change, power and symbolism. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 12, 540-561.
STURDY, A. (1997) The consultancy process - an insecure business? Journal of Management Studies, 34.
ERNST, B. & KIESER, A. (2002) Consultants as agents of anxiety and providers of managerial control. Academy of Management Proceedings. Academy of Management.

On intellectual craftsmanship

Some months ago, I read of this classic by C. Wright Mills, called "The Sociological Imagination". Though it didn't seem relevant to my research, but whatever I was reading recommended its appendix "On Intellectual Craftmanship".

It's terrific! Why didn't I read it earlier! These few pages seemed to be aimed at the apprentice researcher, which is what a post-grad is. Wright Mills starts by commented that:

"Only by conversations in which experienced thinkers exchange information about their actual ways of working can a useful sense of method and theory be imparted to the beginning student."

Yes - I need those conversations. He reports on how he does what he does. Guess what? Despite being written as long ago as 1959, he recommends keeping a daily journal about

"personal experiences and professional activities, studies under way and studies planned."

Advantages of such a journal include:

• relating experience to work in progress
• serving as a check on repetitious work
• capturing 'fringe-thoughts'
• "keeping your inner world away" to draw out implications from events or ideas
• building the habit of writing
• developing powers of expression

Well, isn't this what a research journal is, or what I'm trying to do with this blog?

This appendix comes in six sections.

Part 2 explains how to use the file of writing for intellectual production through maintaining and rearranging it. He gives examples from his own work.

Part 3 is about empirical projects.

Part 4 suggests seven techniques for getting ideas, for "stimulating the sociological imagination".

1. re-arrange the files
2. play with the phrases and words
3. classify your notions
4. consider extremes - think of the opposite
5. invert your sense of proportion
6. "get a comparative grip on the materials" - that's what my supervisor recommended last month - compare public sector case studies with case studies in other sectors.
7. arrange materials for presentation, identifying and sorting the main themes. Cross-classify them.
   

Part 5 explains how you might write in clear and simple languages, even on complex subjects. He advises clarifying your answers to three questions:

"(1) how difficult and complex after all is my subject?
(2) when I write, what status am I claiming for myself?
(3) for whom am I trying to write?"

Part 6 advises that you order what you've found out, that "thinking is a struggle for order"

Part 7 advises trying to understand "men and women as historical and social actors".

Part 8 is on keeping "your moral and political autonomy". Thus:

"the sociological imagination has its chance to make a difference in the quality of human life in our time"

This is an inspiring appendix to read and reread.

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Mills, C. W. 1959. SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION.