Discussion for supervisors

I have a couple of issues to discuss with supervisors:
1. ways of analysing and interpreting
2. anonymity of design

Tomorrow the draft dissertation must be in. The new chapters are:
Chapter 4 - data collection and analysis
Chapter 5 - interpreting the data
Chapter 6 - findings

I have chapter 4 and some attempt at chapter 5, but would like to add more to it. I've structured it round answering the research questions, but am also thinking of an alternative structure that works round the concepts of power, autonomy and collectivity that came out of the analysis.

That is something to discuss with my supervisors.

The second issue to discuss is the one of anonymity. I now realise that having just one case study, and a small case study, although I can anonymise the source, because I'm looking at relationships, the participants can recognise each other. That makes it difficult to use all the data. For instance, if one participant, as a consequence of his or her relationship, perceives something that might be a critique from the perspective of another participant, then, there could be repercussions in the organisation if they read what I write. So I have limited my publishable data. Interesting, and something that I just hadn't worked out before the research, or hadn't worked out far enough. That was partly lack of experience, partly lack of forethought, but also I couldn't have told how many participants I was going have until I found the project. Obviously, there would be only one CEO, but I might have expected more directors, and more managers and more assistants, in which case there would have been anonymity in numbers.

An alternative design would be to have had a number of cases either within this organisation or in more than one organisation. The unit of analysis would still be the project and the relationships in it.

Supportive family

Isn't it wonderful what questions your children can ask? At lunch table my 17 year old asked me how I was analysing the data and I was explaining that I'd transcribed the interviews and then had devised some codes to put against chunks of speech, but that when I came to apply them they didn't work so I created other codes of climate, process and structure and subdivided those when I came across ideas that reminded me of something in the literature, like conflict suggesting political elements. I didn't know I could verbalise what I was doing.

Then the 17-Y-O, who is a mathematician was saying something about "but that's only opinion, not facts" and 19-year-old scientist got into debate of researching opinions and facts.

I'm so glad they're interested. They are going to have three more years of me doing this, and someone has to read my work before I give it to my supervisors.

Analysing vs interpreting

The instructions say that chapter 4 should be about analysing the data, and chapter 5 interpreting the data. Well, some might say that those words are a bit similar in meaning, so I have to work out where they separate. I'm taking the analysis to be a description in the light of the codes that I've applied. The interpretation is more about explaining what the data reveals, and I'm structuring that interpretation against the roles and what they suggest in answer to the research questions.

Nerves

Our Director of Research Studies tells me that I did really badly at the PhD interview and he had to dig me out of it. I'm not surprised because I have often have done badly at interviews despite having an excellent CV, appropriate for the position and a suitable covering letter written well enough to get on the short list. So what am I doing wrong?

DoRS suggests I'm answering too quickly without first working out what the question is getting at. He gave some suggestions:

1. take a few deep breaths - well I used to do that when gliding and ended up hyperventilating at the top of a launch and about to faint, so no, that won't work for me.
   
2. ask the questioner to repeat the question
   
3. write it down. I like that suggestion, so I was thinking about, when I had gone there prepared mentally to write down questions, why I didn't. It was because there was so much stuff in front of me, the laptop, my notes and a mug of water, that I would have had to move, but I couldn't move them because I would have knocked over the water.

Which brings me to a physical problem - why would I have knocked over the water? Because my hands shake when I'm nervous. I probably couldn't have read my handwriting if I had written the questions, because my hands would have shaken too much! My mother has trembling hands, only noticeable when she pours the tea, and tells me it is a familial tremor. Well, it hits me when I have emotional stress. In order to take up the DoRS's advice, I'm first going to have to deal with the tremor, so no caffeine, nor ginseng which also makes me shake. I do like the comment that apparently alcohol reduces the tremor, but at interview perhaps no glass of wine.

The DoRS's fourth suggestion was that I practise over the next year, that my supervisors get me to offer seminars on my research. That way I'll reduce the stress through familiarity with the process of discussing and defending it.

Writing the draft dissertation

The draft dissertation is due 1st August. I have heaps of issues to discuss in it:

• the scapegoating or buck-passing that Harmon mentions, in a public environment where risk taking is avoided, and perhaps I have an example that manifests the avoidance or the fear of blame. I must look for alternative interpretations of the data.
• reflect on limitations, what I would do differently and what I would do if I had more time
• write on the unit of analysis for this project as sets of relationships around any one issue of accountability and multiple cases of relationships - I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here.
• the psychological contract might be another perspective to emphasis
• the principal-agent relationship is informal between the parties
• reflect on the difficulties of anonymising in a single case study
• debate the term transparency - what did it mean to those participants who used it, but I didn't follow up.
• delimitation on the consulting project - when was the work completed (Werr, 2002:63)

Analysing

I thought I might analyse the discourse from interviews against Werr et al's [1] two types of discourse: bureaucratic and network. I started out with a table:

Role	Management of Consultants	Example of discourse
CEO	talked about process & strategy & outcomes	"It's the funding which is something usually discussed with the individual and the cabinet member" and "there are contractual agreements"

Then I checked Miles and Huberman [2] had a role-ordered matrix, which in 15 minutes gave me a useful one page table of roles in the job, as primary,ultimate, intermediate clients. I've still to work out anything useful about recognising the types of discourse though.

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[1]Werr, A, Styhre, A. 2002, Management Consultants – Friend or Foe? Understanding the ambiguous client-consultant relationship, International studies of Management and Organization, vol. 32, no. 4, winter 2002-3 pp43-66
[2] Miles, Huberman, 1994. Qualitative Data Analysis: an expanded source book, 2nd edition, Sage

Doing the Masters in Research

If a reader is interested in following this full time course, there's a document at
http://intranet.open.ac.uk/studentservices/publications/documents/research-degrees/MRes.doc
that gives the details.

Ingredients collected

It seems as if I have a set of ingredients, the data I've collected from interviews, and a recipe book, the Miles & Huberman [1], but how I put them together is up to me, both in what I choose to do with the ingredients and how I mix them, so I come out with, not definitive results, but what I want to present, or rather, not necessarily what I want to present but what I'm able to present, depending on how I analyse and write.

I remember when I was little how I would have paints and paper, and want to represent a wonderful picture through my painting, but my paint would be too watery and I'd produce something horrid, not what I meant at all. I was disappointed because I couldn't show and share with other people what was in my mind.

So I must hone skills to use the tools and to communicate what I find.

Son's just been reading something from this week's New Scientist[2] on finding a mathematical proof after 7 years. Once a useful alternative view of the problem revealed a solution, it took days, hours to compress the proof to a few lines. Son said that he too could see this at his lower level of maths, where having realised the answer he wanted, he could say, "irrelevant, irrelevant, irrelevant" and strike out much, leaving the last succinct and correct two lines.

That's what I want to do too with this analysis - must be my mathematical background, but it's going through all the irrelevancies first before finding the points that you want and need.

---

[1] Miles, Huberman, 1994. Qualitative Data Analysis: an expanded source book, 2nd edition, Sage
[2] New Scientist, Proof and Beauty, page 48, 21 July 2007

Draft analysis

Coding is impossible. I started with codes on accountability, relationships and client types, but when I introduced structure, processes and climate I had a table of nine cells, each with six or more codes. I turned for Miles and Huberman for help, and ended up doing

• contact summary forms
• a role ordered matrix
• rich pictures

Metaphors

Whilst analysing what people have told me, I'm enjoying the metaphors they use. Personally I cope better with visual metaphors, such as "walking through treacle", though some people use metaphors of taste such as "palatable promises". On reflection, I see the walk through the treacle, but perhaps someone else would feel the viscosity, and someone else would taste the treacle.

My colleague has just asked me if I'm transcribing everything, including the "erms" and "ers". But the ums and ers, and the "you knows" tell me something about the speaker in the same way as the metaphors do. One person used a lot of visual metaphors, another used only a few metaphors but more mechanistic, or I can't see the metaphors. One person used a lot of ums and ers whilst thinking about what the next word would be, or how to express something, whereas another had so many 'you knows' that I had to think there was an expectation that I understood, would agree, could encourage a somewhat perhaps shy or diffident character.

Literature

Supervisors' comments on my literature review for the last submission were that it was still a bit sparse. They suggested that I used references to methodological literature to help pad it out a bit; so I'll use such as Miles & Huberman and Gummersson and Yin.

However, I have been reading more on agency theory, pyschological contracts and clients, so may refer also to Eisenhardt, Conway & Briner as well as Rousseau and Miller.

Yeah. I know - that's just a list of stuff, but they are relevant in that they have theories that apply to what I'm doing.

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Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, Agency Theory: An Assessment and Review The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 14, No. 1. Jan., 1989), pp. 57-74.

Gummesson E, 2000, Qualitative methods in management research, 2nd ed, Sage

Harmon, M. M. (1995). Responsibility as Paradox: a critique of rational discourse on government, Sage

Miles, M. B., Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative Data analysis: an expanded sourcebook, Sage.

Miller, E. (1993). From dependency to autonomy: studies in organization and change, Free Association Books.

Rousseau, D. M, 2005, Developing psychological contract theory, in Great Minds in Management: The process of theory development, Eds. Smith & Hitt, Oxford.

Yin, R. K. (2003). Case study research: design and methods, Sage.

Data access

How odd! From waiting for weeks for the first interview that would set me off on this project, I suddenly get two more, with no or almost no notice.

I'd emailed someone on Friday, having found the email address through Google, so I didn't know if it would get through, but could find no other contact details. On Monday morning I delayed reading my email till 10.25, when I found a reply saying to ring at 10.30, or wait for two weeks. I was rushing round the office - fortunately had the digital recorder with me - looking for a phone with a loud speaker, in privacy. Our research degrees secretary was, as usual, helpful and I was suitably ensconced within 10 minutes, and able to do the interview.

Similarly, I'd sent an email to someone that was obviously waiting to speak to me and rang me at home the next day. Again, I was rushing around, trying to make sensible conversation, find my questions and switch on the recorder. Again, though it was a useful interview.

Now I'm still waiting, still negotiating via a secretary for access to another interviewee whose perspective is really important, and people keep telling me that interviewee will be pleased, delighted and eager to talk to me, but I don't know when.

Then there's a final interviewee who is someone I know already. I think I'll try to make contact there later in the summer, after the draft dissertation is in, so I don't distracted from the writing by the interview and the time that transcribing takes.

Practical progress

Collecting data from real interviews is much more interesting than reading the literature. Now I've got to make sense of it.

I'm in

I've just had an email suggesting that I

"might be pleased to know that we will be making you an offer to stay with us for another 3 years."

Might!
I can't think of anything else I want to do.

No news

Despite feeling quite positive about my research question, and having an enthusiastic supervisor #2, and a calm supervisor #1, there is still no news about my acceptance or rejectance on to the doctorate programme.

Dispirited

It wasn't too good a week last week, waiting to hear the results of the interview as well as hoping to collect data from interviews, but with no interviews planned for another two weeks yet.

However, maybe things will fall into place this week. My contact has emailed me in reply to a query about contacting two more people, and is supportive. :)

Supervisors think we should still meet despite no data.

May be July will be good.