B852 ECA

Submitted in time! (ECA=Examinable Component of Assessment)

Now it's gone in - the most I've written for 14 years and I'm quite pleased, not only because of the quantity (6000 words) but I think I've written a coherent argument for the research that I'm suggested.

Having said that, I'm not now sure that I can remember what I wrote! :( For instance, I reviewed Gable's research on success factors when engaging consultants, but cannot think of much wrong with it as a piece of quantitative research. Then, I suggested qualitative research using Forster's suggestion of a hermeneutic approach using documents together with interviews, yet now I wonder what research question I was proposing. And I spent so looong choosing a paper to critique. The part-time students get told a paper, but choosing one is a learning process in itself.

Finding sophisticated research questions is what I'm now supposed to be doing for the first tutor marked assignment (TMA) of the dissertation, the literature review, which is due 1st May. Any and all research questions are eluding me.

Conversation

I spoke to a Civil Servant about consultants. CS had herself been a consultant and had recently joined the civil service in a senior position. She argues that accountability is not an issue, that red tape is a nuisance and that civil servants need to take more risks but also that some projects need not go wrong if the civil servant clients do the right things, manage the project, use NAO and OGC guidelines.

Tracking an accountability writer

One of my readings on accountability is by Melvin Dubnick. After finding his web page from a link on a paper of his, I've also found his blog. I notice that he keeps track of his readers by using Technorati at Technorati Profile so I shall try it too.

Hermetic paranoia

What a lovely term! Hermetic paranoia! Perhaps it means that I've got too many ideas coming at me.

"Most intellects are honed, not blunted, by use. Too frequent a resort to argument by analogy can lead to a hermetic paranoia in which everything is seen as part of a vast and secret conspiracy."

Fisher, 2004: 80

I think I've got it from reading too much for my literature search and attempt to write the second draft of the literature review for my supervisors.

Fisher, C, 2004, "Researching and writing a dissertation", FT Prentice Hall

Nebulous clouds, wise owls, and frogs

I'll follow up my PACE presentation (See Weds April 18) and add photos here with the props that I used to explain my story and my slides. Here's a start:

• Clouds of accountability
• Owls who give consultancy advice, at a price
• Frogs? We'll come to that later. For now, the frog represents the public service manager.

Feedback included:

• that the topic seemed political, so I must rethink my wording.
• that it would be useful to have a slide that states a definition of accountability or develop a conceptual framework of relationship between accountability and consultants in the public sector.

Professional and Academic Communication in English presentations

The PACE course culminated in our presentations. There were six of us who presented:

ET: 'Globalisation and international adoption'
LW: 'Internet-mediated intercultural foreign language education - access and opportunities within and beyond the classroom in China’
SB: 'Ethical decision making in designing products'
MB: 'Teleporting'
GC: 'How can language creativity be incorporated into the classroom in universities in China?'
me: 'Accountability in the public sector for the use of external consultants'
VS: 'Plasma Crystals'

When we walked into the room, we immediately saw strangers, and a TV camera. NO! Two TV cameras. Aagh! and another person with a sound boom. So we were a little uncomfortable, nervous, and found any excuse to delay starting at all. Our stalwart tutor BM, led us round the room saying the alphabet all in one breathe. Or trying to say it in one breathe. The idea was that when we stopped walking around, just the speaker would carry on to the front of the room, the cameras would roll and BM would introduce the speaker. An alternative to this exercise was to say

me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me

on one long breathe, the idea being that this would reverberate in the nose and energise us ready to speak. Perhaps.

We all mastered the technology, using the computer and PowerPoint, despite one file or USB stick not quite working initially. It is a shame but relevant that the news today links to "No point to PowerPoint" though this was also last week's news. In fact, it's not PowerPoint that should be ditched, but the way that the tool is used.

But it was a most useful and interesting session. I love knowing what other people are researching and how they are doing it. Research seems a fascinating occupation.

Another thing that I've really enjoyed about these PACE sessions is the input from the ESOL speakers, because they've shared their culture and experience of English. Their standard of English is very high, and although I can speak and work in one other European language, I couldn't say that I could research and write at this level. They are admirable.

U501 workshop on presenting

This was one of the more useful workshops. One of the exercises involved groups putting together answers to:

1. What makes you nervous about giving presentations?
2. And how do you deal with your nerves?

The various groups came up with the following answers to the first question.
Things that make us nervous are:

• timing
• fear of failure
• argument
• blank mind
• sounding stupid
• stage fright
• embarrassment
• getting the words out, the volume right, stumbling, speed, ESOL
• being exposed as a fraud or charlatan or lazy and someone else knowing more
• fear of questions or of lack of questions
• personal appearance
• overwhelmed by too much stuff
• too little stuff and ten minutes left empty
• the person that you are quoting being in the audience
• terminology, concepts and theories that you are not aware of

Answers to the second question were fewer.
How do you deal with your nerves?

• admit ignorance
• stick to the story
• breath
• be well prepared, practise, have a script
  
• get to the venue early
  
• encourage your self
• google the experts who might be in the audience
• joke
• have alternative equipment
  
• prepare answers for awkward questions e.g. "yes, that's fascinating and I intend to look further at it"
• body language and posture
  

Categories from the above could be:

• Me
  
• My material
• Equipment
• audience & questions

Me
Problem	Advice
Fear of failure	Encourage your self
Blank mind. Getting the words out, the volume right, stumbling, speed, ESOL	Have a script. .
Sounding stupid. Embarrassment	Body language and posture
Stage fright	Breathe
Personal appearance	Dress appropriately

The material
Problem	Advice
Timing	Rehearse
Too little stuff and ten minutes left empty	Prepare & practise.
Overwhelmed by too much stuff	Be well prepared. Practise.

Equipment
Problem	Advice
I can’t use equipment, or it won’t work with my data	Take an alternative form. E.g. take transparencies as well as keeping them on a USB stick.
Unfamiliar equipment	Get to the venue early

Audience
Problem	Advice
Argumentative person in audience	Stick to the story
The person that you are quoting being in the audience	Google the experts who might be in the audience
Being exposed as a fraud or charlatan or lazy and someone else knowing more	Admit ignorance
Terminology, concepts and theories that you are not aware of. Fear of questions or of lack of questions	Prepare answers for awkward questions e.g. "Yes, that's fascinating and I intend to look further at it"

Accountability: the word and the concept

Melvin Dubnick makes the distinction [1] between accountability as a word and as a concept.

As a concept it is really difficult to explain, which is why I used a cloud of cotton wool as a metaphor for it in my presentation last week. Accountability seems to change to suit the way the context blows it, who the person in the context is who has to account, and the person being accounted to.

As a word, it is fascinating. Dubnick is right that there isn't a common language to translate it. My French is reasonable, so I tried to translate it and thought it might be "responsibilité " as my old Collins Robert doesn't give accountability, but only accountable, which translates to "responsable". But then I found a French Canadian paper that uses the word "imputabilité". I discussed it with our Spanish lodger who suggested "responsabilidad" and I've found in the Collins Easy Learning Spanish "to be accountable to someone" is "responder ante alguien", which don't seem quite the same. One of my Chinese colleagues looked thoughtful and said that she couldn't think of an exact translation in Chinese. I don't know if she was looking for the word "accountability" or a way of expressing the concept.

If it is so difficult to catch the meaning, then how much more difficult is it to enact accountability, particularly when there are so many people in an organisation who must account for a decision and actions, and so many stakeholders?

---

[1] Dubnick, 2002, Seeking Salvation for Accountability

Symbolic roles for consultants

Kaarst-Brown (1995) together with a fellow consultant set up what was to be a five-year consultancy project with a client. However, at the end of the first year, the chief executive terminated the project even though there was much work outstanding. Nevertheless, the client expressed satisfaction with project, progress, cost, behaviour and relationship. It was Kaarst-Brown’s perception that the project had failed, and she set about a retrospective participant observation and analysis. As a result she found that consultants had a symbolic role to play and that these roles matched Lewin’s stages of unfreezing, transition and refreezing (Lewin, 1951. So, for example, just the arrival of a consultant was symbolic of change yet to come. If the wrong symbolic role was played, then the consultant might give out signals inconsistent with the stage of the project. Kaarst-Brown concluded that at one stage the two consultants had played a symbolic role that implied the project was coming to a successful conclusion, which the CEO had perceived as success and so had concluded the consultancy.

The research questions that I would want to follow up are:

• Are the consultant’s symbolic roles to be found in project documentation?
• Is there evidence of Kaarst-Brown’s symbols at various stages of the project?
  
• Can these symbols be seen in the project documentation or heard in the discourse?
  
• Do the symbols reveal existence of project governance?

---

Kaarst-Brown, 1999, Five symbolic roles of the external consultant: Integrating change, power and symbolism, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol 12, no 6.

B852 ECA progress

Progress is slow. I have the structure, but that is given by the format of the question. I know the content for both sections, but need to put it together. To my surprise I can see a logic forming that links the two sections.

In the paper I'm reviewing, there is x, but it could be y and z isn't dealt with. Therefore in my proposed research I'm going to use y and deal with y in the light of z.

That is, the research (by Gable) is a statistical analysis in the positivist paradigm of the factors that predict success when engaging external consultants, which means that Gable believes it is possible to measure success factors. Therefore my proposed research will take the view from the opposing paradigm, that is from the constructivist perspective, that as it isn't possible to measure what makes for a successful project, then I'll research projects by collecting and analysing data that comes from project documentation, supplemented with interviews. Analysis will use the hermeneutic method. (See Forster[2]))

How does that sound?


[1] A multidimensional model of client success when engaging external consultants. By: Gable, Guy G.. Management Science, Aug96, Vol. 42 Issue 8, p1175
[2] Forster, N, The Analysis of company Documentation in Cassell, Symon, (Eds) 1994, Qualitative Methods in Organizational Research: a practical guide, Sage

Relevant theories

I wonder what theories are relevant. So far I think:

• agency theory
• stakeholder analysis
• discursive forms of accountability
• governance theory
• ethics of office

Perhaps ethics matters.

Management Ideas Poem

I just really like this poem, probably because I recognise most of the names. It is in the front of Huczynski's book on 'Management Gurus'.

With Herzberg, Mintzberg and Mr Argyle
I'm desperately trying to develop a style
But will I ever get the chance to Schein
Often I feel I'm in de Klein

I'm looking for a Handy solution I shout
But as soon as I'm interested it just Peters out
I've looked everywhere (at Field on the roof and Maslower down)
Till I'm Reddin the face and begin to frown

I'm not as Jung as I used to be (keep it quiet)
But Freud egg and Drucker l'Orange are not my diet
Even in Tescos during Shopnhausers
The Kant stop talking about the brain's mystical powers

I've looked at TA and got my fingers Berned
My cross-transactions have Vroom for improvement - so I learned
I get de Board feeling so easily I never take stock

Learning styles may have help me (but I lied)
However, I discovered,'Honey, it's Kolb outside'
My search has been rewarded (partial I'd admit)
when asked for my opinion I say it's all Tannenbaum and Schmidt

I'm sorry if the above doesn't scan
But I'm afraid I missed the meter man

(Holland 1989:96)

Discursive construction of accountability

Accountability is nebulous, changing with the context of discourse and constructed through discourse (Sinclair, Newman, Newman, Day and Klein). The context of discourse varies, which is important because it involves various and conflicting accountabilities.

Sinclair researched the context of discursive construction of accountability using interviews with 15 chief executives of Australian public sector organisation. Using content and discourse analysis she identified five forms of accountability that overlapped Day & Klein's but included professional and personal accountability, and these were expressed in discourse and two discourses of accountability: structural and personal.

Structural accountability is abstract, detached and rational. It is

“a technical property of a role or contract, structure or system” (Sinclair, 1995: 224).

Personal accountability is:

"Confidential and anecdotal… with the potential to be something that is feared"

So this is a more problematic accountability. It “functions to admit risks and failures, exposure and invasiveness with which accountability is experienced”. It also involves emotions of fear.

Sinclair’s forms of accountability are expressed with chameleon like changes between contexts.

A consequent issue is the difficulty for the observer to recognise accountability without knowing the context.

Grilling toast and essay writing

I like my toast done one side, so I grill it, but my family distract me.

"Have you seen the soil dug up from the camellia pots?"
"No."
"Come and look."

I go, but remember to pull the grill pan out first. The pots have had small hazelnut trees growing in them, but we didn't plant them. Thinking Man in my Life has realised that squirrels are digging for nuts, for nuts that they buried there earlier, and we see the mess. "Caught grey handed!" announces step daughter #3. TMimL leaves for the allotment and I return to toasting, but then realise that I've got easter eggs for one daughter and not for others, so dash after TMimL to check chances of finding some spare eggs! None! I return to the smell of burned toast. Damn.

Similarly, I sit down to work out the argument in my writing. Accountability is a social relationship and I insert what Bovens says about it being formal or informal. Then hear,

"Are you coming, Mum?"

from daughter leaving for church. I feel guilty at missing because Easter is one day of the year when I really want to go.

"Because if you are, you should come now."

I know; it'll be full unless I arrive half an hour early, but on the other hand, I will be tense because I've not yet written what I want to, then I'll be grumpy when I have to be sociable. I stay and return to my writing, but can't remember what I was thinking about. It was something to do with Bovens and how the argument fitted types of accountability.

Like I scraped off a few bits of burned toast, I scratch out a few sentences and start again. With toast, I know I'll eventually run out of bread to toast. I wonder if I have enough interruptions, I'll eventually run out of any coherent thought

Supervisors' questions

My supervisors have raised the following questions:

• Why the discrepancy in estimates of amounts spent on public sector consultancy?
• What accountability is there and how is it exercised?
• Do rule bound approaches to public sector accountability actually help or hinder discharge of effective consultant-client interaction?
• Should examination of project process be of client only or of client and consultant or of how they work together?
• Considering audit requirements and consultancy: 1) how is consultancy made visible and accountable? 2) what is the impact of power relations between client and consultant? This relates to the transaction between parties and Foucauldian space.
• Take the contrast between formal systems for accountability and evaluating with informal systems of how learning and capability develops and conclude how to "capture" these.
• What kind of evaluation of consultancy takes place? and what might come in useful? What part does accountability in the usual public sector sense play in all this?

In an attempt to consider these questions, and aiming to write a review of the literature I'm looking for causes and effects. So I sketched out the relationships I saw between various elements of the problem.

This exercise lead me to consider my research question to be:
Can a study of the client-consultant relationship be helpful to understanding how accountability is constituted in the public service?

Essay assessment according to gender

I read research that indicated that female assessors will be more severe about content, whereas men will look more for argument. I'll post the link when I remember where I saw it.

This fits in with my experience. See my earlier post about essays. Poor presentation distracts me from content. And my male assessors have criticised my lack of argument.

Review of Gable

A multi-dimensional model of client success when engaging external consultants.

The rationale and background

There were dramatic failed consultancies that appeared to arise from a failed understanding between clients and consultants of a client’s goals for the project and how to assess progress.

Purpose of this research:

The paper presents & analyses a measurement model for assessing client success when engaging consultants to assist with Computer Based IS. Existing theory:

1. discusses importance of consultant intervention and related process variables


2. discusses multistage models of consultation process


3. attempted to identify factors that contribute to successful implementation of MS


4. discusses importance of identifying judgment criteria & behavioural objectives.

Research Questions

1. does this measurement model work for measuring client success ?


2. how does it distinguish between process and results?


3. does it measure consultant effectiveness?


4. in which of six dimensions of engagement is there success?

Materials or evidence
Case studies and surveys in 85 computer based system selection projects (CBIS). Participants are Singaporean small, medium & local business. Clients response was 80% (67/85) and 32/35 for consultant. What are the characteristics of the non-respondents?

Method: case studies, 1 pilot & 5*cases analyses. Unit of analysis is the selection project because:

1. it is easier to distinguish between selection failure and implementation failure


2. selection projects is characteristic of engagement where consultants is employed only to assist with identification of a solution.

Model is descriptive measurement model (the “inner” model in co-variance structure analysis). It includes 3 objective and subjective areas of assessment: objective is usage/acceptance of consultants’ recommendations; change in client understanding; actual vs. estimated resource requirements. Subjective is the client’s satisfaction.

Is the questionnaire valid & reliable?

Validity Internal (causal) validity – I cannot see how this is measured. Does A cause B? The B are the 7 areas. So what is the independent variable that causes them?

Content validity was checked through semi-structured interviews (how?), development of case narratives, and publication of problems, pilot testing, and presentation of early observations, presentation of a priori measures of success.
Survey instrument used Likert-like scales.
Testing construct validity – factor analysis used.

B852 tutorial - last one

Only two of us were there for our last B852 tutorial, V & I
We had some tasks:

1. get as far as we could in the block V readings


2. prepare two exercises

Being as the course doesn’t finish for another few weeks, it’s been a bit of a struggle to keep ahead with the readings. Nevertheless, I skim read the last two readings in the Accounting & Finance block.

Reading 5, which is long, was about the fabrication of accounts in the NHS in the nineties. By ‘fabrication’ I mean, the creation or construction of management accounting systems, and the word is taken from a paper by a French man, so probably doesn’t have the connotations of ‘fabrication’ as in a tissue of lies!

There was little in the way of management accounting in the NHS before the 1990s so little knowledge of financial data or control of costs so some form of accounting system had to be created. However, in conclusion the author points out that a descriptive theory such as agency theory does not explain change, and that “interests are discovered through the fabrication process, and may shift through the fabrication of budgeting systems.”

Reading 6 was from Kaplan, the chap who wrote about the balanced scorecard. In this article he describes how use of action research helps both theory development of such theories as the balanced scorecard, and communication of management of management accounting processes, improving on theories through teaching and publishing.

The first task we discussed was:

Please prepare a brief outline of a research question that you would like to pursue. You should cover:

1. the research question itself


2. Why you think it is worth pursuing.


3. Who might be interested in the research?

Keep it brief (for example you do not need to go into detail on the research design).

V had put some thought into this. His research question is:

“What non-market soft assets play a role in the standardization vs. adaptation decision in selected organisations in England?”

We said that its utility was that it was very useful for practitioners because of the gaps in the literature about effectiveness of strategy because we know only about related benefits of standardising and adaptation. The methods part of the research is evolving, anticipating the use of scales and open ended questions.
My research question arose from last week’s supervisory discussion: the production of projects in the public sector- should it be the responsibility of the clients or of the consultants or is it a chain of accountability?
It seems worth pursuing for the following reasons:

1. there is ambiguity in accountability


2. it is financially costly if the joint enterprise goes wrong


3. media interest


4. public money


5. political decisions of how we use public money, public or privatised services


6. purchase of costly systems, usually IT


7. purchase of management advice that might save e.g. road building contracts can be better negotiated following consultant’s advice or BPR of processes in a county council to reduce e.g. application for disabled parking stickers from a 30 day turn round to 4 days.
   

Who might be interested in this research? Politicians, public servants, media, consultants.

The other task from last week was:

Each student to (briefly) introduce their chosen paper:

1. Why was it chosen?


2. Outline research question(s) posed


3. Explain methods used – quantitative/qualitative?


4. Try to explain methodology, theoretical perspective and epistemology


5. Critique

V has written up part of his proposal, but hasn’t yet chosen his paper. OTH, I had identified several papers but I needed to discuss ideas with people. Up to yesterday, I had thought that the best thing for the ECA was to critique a piece of quantitative research and propose something qualitative. Consequently, I had chosen several pieces that I’d found when drafting my literature review. I chose 3 quantitative papers (Gable, Ginsberg, Deakins & Dillon) about consultants and spent all Saturday and Sunday analysing them, identifying their research questions, the participants and methods. I critiqued some way, but one of them seemed to be a classic (Ginsberg 1986) and that Gable (1996) had won a prize so was pretty good. Suddenly, I could see how I could critique this fascinating paper by Kaarst-Brown on symbolic roles of consultants. It is a retrospective participant observation piece of research so open to criticism of bias, and lack of generalisability. However, discussion with tutor J, and with colleague V, makes me realise that it would take me too long to design my quantitative research that could stem from Kaarst-Brown’s work, so I’m back to using the quantitative, probably the Gable one, and will design qualitative research that uses case studies and in depth interviews, probably with a view to eliciting K-Brown’s symbols when I come to do the dissertation.

OU Associate Lecturer research day

The OU Oxford region arranged a first: a one-day conference to discuss, present or display research that ALs had undertaken. It was worth the effort to get there.

There were poster presentations on:

• bilingual learners
• competitive advantage, organisational learning and the computer
• culture as in issue in knowledge sharing
• using the web for research dissemination, team building and project management

and there were seven half hour presentations. All the topics were fascinating, despite most being PowerPoint presentations. The real teachers of course had only a few words on each slide. The most professional had more slides, but used pictures to illustrate the words that he spoke about flood management and risk. One guy stimulated heated debate on practitioner based enquiry, generating arguments about the need for ontologically understanding before researching, and using the literature. Someone else described a sombre experience of tutoring prisoners, when she took in a lemon in the expectation of using it to debate its existence. But the lifer didn't debate; he took it, said nothing, held it, smelt it. Then he said, "I haven't seen a lemon for 12 years."

The presentation on a Vygotskian mediated, linguistic phonics programme, reminded me of when I taught reading to infants. My mother would have been interested in this too because she used to be involved in a scheme to teach reading using just five colours to help identify the 44 sounds of the English language.

The presentation on using Foucauldian genealogical analysis to explore discourses of widening participation was perhaps the most difficult to follow, but I wonder how to explore accountability using Foucauldian genealogical analysis.

Someone spoke on gender & linguistic competence from an analysis of the linguistic census in Catalonia. A surprise revelation was that the language used in a family tended to be that of the father. On language again, someone showed how little identification and documentation done in schools of linguistic competencies of bilingual learners. Bilingualism is not appreciated by the mainly mono-lingual English. I liked the playground insult from the 6-year old:
"You wouldn't understand; you're only mono-lingual!"