Accountability for Consultants

Passed and awarded

2007-12-20T15:21:00.000Z

They accepted my dissertation. I got it all sewn and bound by Abbey binding, delivered it to the office so the library now has a copy. I received a letter acknowledging it and telling me that I've been awarded the degree in absentia.
:)

Moving on

2007-10-17T16:47:00.000+01:00

I'm leaving here. I said it was a one-year blog and it is. I'm starting a new blog on the doctoral experience at http://phd-ejh2.blogspot.com/ but I might pop back to post any final news on the results of my dissertation, if there is any.

Viva

2007-10-02T12:01:00.001+01:00

Viva done yesterday and it went better than the interview for the PhD. This time I did feel like there was a conversation at one time rather than an inquisition, though the director of studies this time realised how nervous I was.

The first question was about how the philosophy influenced the choice of methods and collection - and I can't remember the whole question.

They also wanted to know what I'd have done differently in the light of the last excitement of negotiating access and having the interview data withdrawn on the last day. What had I learned?

We had a discussion about transaction costs and differences in procedural and outcome accountability. Transaction costs is something to investigate further.

And there was a question about the theory that overlapped both accountability and consultancy - I couldn't remember the different types of literature on consultancy nor the words - but they wanted me to talk about agency theory and the model that I used to show the chain of accountability.

I was a bit disappointed to discover that the examiner had a list of corrections to the references. How could I have missed these! And the director wanted me to remove the use of the first person where I'd reflected on methods. Okay.

Incidentally, they congratulated me on my use of diagrams and tables, which they said helped to show the concepts. Just as well as I'm so low on my verbal reasoning skills that I have to use these other skills.

Constantantly negotiating access

2007-09-09T14:18:00.001+01:00

"Finished!"

said I on Friday morning around 11.30. I had written what and how I wanted, and taken all the latest 60-80 comments from my supervisor into account. I'd sorted the print layout. I'd practised binding. All I had to do after lunch was tweak the abstract, print and bind three copies. So I went to lunch.

As I came back from lunch, the secretary handed me some post - a self-addressed envelope - and slightly surprised, I thought,

"Oh, good! Someone has returned me a consent form."

It read:

"I don't want you to use any of the information that I gave you."

Director and supervisor #2 came to my rescue, checking that I had had ethics approval, and everything was anonymous. Then the director helped me to put together a fax to the participant in which I assured her of her anonymity, of her service, of her organisation. Director and supervisor #2 said that my dissertation wouldn't be published but be labelled special confidential.

So it was kind of sorted. But I wasn't happy because I want to be able to publish so, Friday evening I took my draft and a bottle of good wine round to the chap who'd given me access in the first place. He was incredibly sympathetic, and practical. He made three suggestions, which I've implemented, and he's sent me an email saying that I can publish!

Hurrah! :) smileys :)

The methods theory that goes with this comes up in a story from Buchanan, Boddy and McCalman about constantly having to negotiate access. They describe similar experiences and one of those 80 comments from my supervisor was to reference them. Good supervisor - aren't I lucky?

[1] Buchanan, D., Boddy, D., McCalman, J. (1988), "Getting in, getting on, getting out, getting back", in Bryman, A. (Eds),Doing Research in Organisations

Final abstract

2007-09-07T13:22:00.000+01:00

The aims of this study are to find how public sector authorities account for the use of consultants and how client-consultant relationships affect public accountability.

The media frequently accuse the public sector of profligate expenditure on private consultants. This research examines public accountability for the management of external consultants looking for justification of use. Research literature on consultants refers to client roles, relationships between clients and consultants, and discourses that vary with relationships. Literature on accountability refers to types, chains of relationships, discourses, procedures and outcomes. The study applies agency theory to client roles and relationships to identify problems of different perceptions of accountability between multiple decision makers and stakeholders.

A social constructionist perspective is taken that leads to a qualitative analysis of a single case study of the use of external consultants in a council service review project. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews supported by documentary evidence.

Emerging issues of public accountability include transparency of processes. Different perceptions of accountability revealed unconscious enactment and possible gaps. Findings confirm the literature on accountability and begin to extend research on some types of client-consultant relationships, suggesting public accountabilities in which managers of consultants account proactively and users account reactively. Further research might investigate the institutional pressures that influence accountability and client-consultant relationships.

Activities that are difficult to do

2007-09-02T16:38:00.000+01:00

"Things like 15000 word woffles was what made me chose engineering!"

emailed one of my computing students after we'd compared notes on banging our heads against walls. I didn't mean to do anything that involved so many words, but I did want to study for a doctorate - this gives me the first step, but our director of research says it's the hardest thing I'll ever do.

It is difficult to do because abstract and creative. I have to identify the (invisible) gaps in the literature and research on my topic, generate new approaches / ideas / methods to fill in those gaps and explain it logically and coherently to those already well experienced in the field.

See M256 Unit 12 2.2. Table 1 for difficult-to-do activities.

Rewrite

2007-09-01T14:18:00.000+01:00

My overworked #1 supervisor keeps me on my toes. At half past five yesterday evening, he emailed me to warn me that I have more work to do yet. I think it's the coherence between sections that I need. He says:

check I've answered the research questions
check I used concepts from the literature in the analysis

I may have done so, but it's not very clear or explicit.

And in the conclusions, I have to explicitly link back to the research questions and literature to say how the research sheds new light on them. And there I was thinking I'd done this, but evidently not clearly enough for my reader.

Dissertation nearly there

2007-08-30T16:10:00.000+01:00

I've been checking my work against the marking scheme. I reckon it passes, but I can't tell the quality of the pass; I don't think it's a distinction. How can you assess yourself against clearness? What is clear to me has not been clear to my supervisors. The marking scheme for a band that is 84-70% wants

"clear articulation of research questions that are derived from a critical review of the literature."

I can find problems with that - what's "clear"? What's "critical"? and have my questions come from the literature? Do I show that they have, or do they seem to come from the top of my head!

Restructuring

2007-08-17T14:26:00.001+01:00

I've reordered material from the draft dissertation so that the analysis covers roles and application of agency theory to the data. That takes out loads of material from the chapter that has to be called interpretation. What's the difference between analysis and interpretation?

I think the analysis bits are where I've applied ideas from Miles and Huberman, used codes, rich picture (Checkland) and drawn up a role-ordered matrix.

That's quite helpful because it shows where the roles match Schein's concepts of client types. Then I put that analysis on to my agency theory diagram so I can see the chain of links, and back stitch links between various accountors.

The interpretation bit needs a bit more thought. I've linked it from the analysis by occasionally picking up ideas in the analysis and suggesting they are new to this case. For example, the analysis identified incidents of accountability despite that participant saying he/she couldn't think of one or didn't understand the question, so I thought that was unconscious acting of accountability and something to follow up in the interpretation.

Funny how writing helps you think. It seemed to me that that unconscious acting was a reaction to a situation, so the participant demonstrated reactive accountability, and that meant I realised that the other planned accountability was proactive. And that leads me to my last, not yet properly written chapter on findings.

Relooking at the literature

2007-08-15T16:04:00.000+01:00

I've gone back over the literature review chapter- it's quite depressing because now I think I don't really have incisive research questions, and am not clear how I get any questions from the review at all. If I haven't set a question, then what is my research answering.

I've rewritten the section on accountability again. And again. My supervisors want a definition, but I'm not sure that a definition is good enough, because that makes it sound like you can get a grip on accountability but it's too nebulous to grip.

I've talked about Sinclair's discourses of accountability, and Bovens analysis of accountability in the public sector and Siegel-Jacobs and Yates research comparing outcome and procedural accountability seems important. Agency theory matters and I've drawn diagrams to show how I'm applying it to multiple accountors and accountees.

And that moves me on nicely to discussing consultants, clients and relationships.

Bovens, M. 2005 Public Accountability in The Oxford Handbook of Public Management, draft, L. Lynne C., Pollitt (eds.), Oxford, Oxford University Press
Siegel-Jacobs, K and Yates, J.F., (1996). "Effects of Procedural and Outcome Accountability on Judgment Quality" Organizational behavior and human decision processes 65 (1): 1–17.
Sinclair, A., 1995, The Chameleon of Accountability: forms and discourses, Accounting, Organizations and society 20(2/3.): 219-237

What do you do when..?

2007-08-14T09:03:00.000+01:00

Suppose the consultant advises something, and it's bad advice. Who's responsible? The consultant for giving bad advice? Well, he won't get more work from that company. But it's not a company, it's a public service and it's public money that's been spent to get that bad advice. So why did someone in the service get bad advice? Through bad management. There are ways of preventing the situation arising:

Write a brief,
Get the contract right.
Require progress reports
Withhold payment.

Look at briefs. This is what the consultant said:

“Because you need to be very clear what does the client want actually get out of this, because you’ll never be able to give them the right recommendations if you have a misunderstanding or a misinterpretation of what their goals are.”

Get the contract right. Look at contracts:

"So there are contractual agreements between the council and the consultancy and there are certain agreed outputs."

Progress reports warn the managers before it goes wrong.

And if it still goes wrong, look at withholding payment:

“I can think of one, where one of our IT contracts to implement an upgrade to a social services system where the consultants failed to deliver what we wanted, and we got into a contractual negotiation where we withheld a considerable sum of payment.”

If the project gets to the stage where there’s a contractual negotiation and withholding of money, then the process has gone a long way down the wrong road. But who is ultimately responsible?
Some say one thing:

“The person that decides that they should be brought in and sets the brief”

Others look at something wider:

“I think the county needs to be more transparent to its council taxpayers, in terms of the use that is made of consultants.”

Some say the public elected leader of the council.

So it looks as if there is some sort of process to prevent and to deal with bad consultancy advice, and for the lines of public accountability that must answer for that poor advice.

The story

2007-08-13T09:09:00.000+01:00

The case study story is about a small project in an English county council where consultants were brought in to develop an approach to a county council service.

For those who don't know, county councils are run by the public servants and the elected members or councils represent the electorate. County councils provide services such as

education including schools and art galleries,

care services such as adoption, social services and may be care homes,

development services such as waste disposal,

community services such as parks or libraries,

resources such as estate management, encampments, transport and roads.

The basic brief was to consider the future of the service but was driven by budget problems.

The consultants visited all the branches of the service, listened to the service assistants and then produced an internal report. The operations managers incorporated the consultants’ advice into a long technical document that became the county council’s report. Some components of the report had repercussions, for instance one component advised closing eight branches, which would save over £200,000.

The elected members took the review to public consultation. People objected to losing the service and they found a totally different approach to the way those branches were run and consequently kept five of them.

The consultants’ recommendations were not totally implemented; the political process changed the outcome.

Last supervision meeting

2007-08-09T15:13:00.000+01:00

Having spent an intense hour discussing my draft dissertation with my supervisors. As always, they've read my ramblings and courteously and logically point out the errors and lacunas of my writings. But this is the last formal submission so is the last time they get to comment on my work and my last chance for advice. I've got six weeks to ruin it by myself. It has to be handed in 10th September. The supervisors don't mark it, but some third party who knows nothing about it.

However, S#1 volunteered to take a look at it when he gets back from holiday, and has even arranged to meet to discuss it, just one week before it is due in. :) S#2 might have time to comment on an electronic copy, but is back from a longer holiday even later than S#1.

I've allowed husband to book us a trip away after submitting the dissertation, but then today they started talking about the viva. Viva! When? Talk to people about it? Oh dear, not another interview. But it's only with two people not a whole board of them and I suppose I might manage.

Asymmetry of information

2007-08-08T17:05:00.001+01:00

Agency theory talks about asymmetry of information. The principal and agent have different information and different information needs. That's relevant to explaining a perspective of this project. One person saw that it 'petered out' rather than coming to a clear conclusion. At the final stage, operation managers were able to continue to call the consultants for advice, who therefore billed for extra days. If the principal /Operations Manager perceived a need for information & lacked confidence in own ability to carry on and implement the changes, but perceived the consultant / agent had that information, then contact was continued, and the billing.

Keil, Mann and Rai discuss this escalation in their paper on why software projects escalate [1]; I think it is irrelevant whether or not the project is a software one. There seems to be a lot of research on software projects and at least some of it must be transferable to non-software projects. Keil et al's quantitative study found that two constructs associated with agency theory, were associated with projects that could be predicted to escalate. The concepts are:

goal incongruency

information asymmetry

Goal incongruency is where there is potential conflict between the principal and the agent, such as the agent acting for his own best interests rather than that of the principal.

Information asymmetry is where
"the agent is assumed to have private information to which the principal cannot costlessly gain access." Baiman[2]

Implications for good practice were the importance of good communication and monitoring of projects to avoid information asymmetry. They also suggested management should implement early warning systems to detect escalation.

Good communication is something the participants have mentioned in my case study – they require transparency. A combination of monitoring mechanisms and good communication seem to have made this project successful from the perspective of most of the participants.

[1]Mark Keil; Joan Mann; Arun Rai, Why Software Projects Escalate: An Empirical Analysis and Test of Four Theoretical Models, MIS Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 4. (Dec., 2000), pp. 631-664. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0276-7783%28200012%2924%3A4%3C631%3AWSPEAE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2
[2]Stanley Baiman, AGENCY RESEARCH IN MANAGERIAL ACCOUNTING: A SECOND LOOK, Accounting Organizations and Society Vol 15.No 4 p.p . 341-371.1 990.

Finding gaps

2007-08-06T13:50:00.001+01:00

Gaps so far:

mechanisms of accountability missing towards the end of a project
potential lack of brief & timescales
lines of accountability that might involve an intermediate client
lines of accountability missed in a complex project than involves more than one service, (not in this project). Where a project involves two services then someone has to realise and communicate its existence to both of the relevant elected members.

Points of view

2007-08-05T18:50:00.000+01:00

I have five different people, all talking about the same project.

They seem to have overlaps of their perspectives of accountability, but also there are two different views. One is absolutely sure accountability existed all the way through this project and can immediately indicate lines and mechanisms of accountability. Another sees gaps. How do I reconcile these two views? I suspect that they are both right; that there was accountability but that accountability was only clear for the first phases of the project and not in later parts.

Agency theory suggests that information asymmetry between agent and principal means the principal wants information that the agent possesses. So if there is a public-sector manager who doesn't yet feel confident that she/ he knows what he /she wants to know, then the temptation to prolong the contract must exist.

Interviewing

2007-08-03T09:44:00.001+01:00

I have this wonderful digital audio recorder that the department has lent me to do my interviewing. It's an Olympus DM-10 and apparently costs a small fortune. At Amazon, it's nearly £200, no, £300. But it records well over the speaker phone - I haven't got to meet any of my interviewees yet. It's small and fits into my hand and it's unobtrusive. I like it so much that I might get myself one. I suppose I could justify it if I am going on to do the doctorate and I do interviews again. And it would also be useful for one of my hobbies- recording what my older relatives say about family history. I'm convincing myself...

Don't shoot the advisor

2007-08-02T11:08:00.004+01:00

In the August copy of Management Today, Richard Reeves wrote this. He argues that it's up to the public-sector officials to make sure consultants' advice is of high quality. There's a balance needed between the cost of permanently hiring or training specialists that the service might need for only a few months, and bringing in the external expertise, but consultancies are profit making businesses, and must make money to survive. I like Reeves metaphor:
"If the public sector is handing out sweets, they can hardly be blamed for the resulting sugar high."
However, he does also accuse civil servants and politicians of deifying those in the private sector, and I don't know what evidence he has for that. It is not what I'm hearing from my interviewees. What I am hearing is that consultants earn their money by:

providing expertise that is not in-house,
moving organisations that wouldn't otherwise be moved and
saving the organisation more than they cost.

And if the lines and mechanisms of accountability are in place, then there won't be many undeserved sweets.

Draft in

2007-08-01T12:28:00.001+01:00

The draft is in, and I await the verdict. Nevertheless, I know there were more additions and refinements, not least the extra perspective from the interview due on Friday. But there was also the feeling that it wouldn't matter if I didn't use quite the right language, or if I experimented with diagrams, which I have done when examining the number of relationships.

Discussion for supervisors

2007-07-31T10:52:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-28T21:09:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-26T08:54:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-24T17:28:00.000+01:00

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:

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.
ask the questioner to repeat the question
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

2007-07-23T17:09:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-21T18:53:00.001+01:00

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.

[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

2007-07-20T20:12:00.001+01:00

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

2007-07-19T09:35:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-18T15:03:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-17T11:20:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-16T19:14:00.001+01:00

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.

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

2007-07-13T18:01:00.001+01:00

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

2007-07-12T14:13:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-05T15:36:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-05T12:06:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-02T09:17:00.000+01:00

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.

Unit of analysis

2007-06-29T11:41:00.001+01:00

I'm rethinking my unit of analysis in view of:

the questions that the interviewing board asked
reading Eisenhardt [1]

Eisenhardt points out that both the positivist and the principal-agent streams share a unit of analysis that is the contract between the principal and the agent. Now if this unit governs the relationship between the principal and the agent, and I'm looking at how the relationship between the client and the consultant influences accountability, then my unit of analysis is the contract between the client/principal and the consultant/agent.

I had thought my unit of analysis was the project, and thought that we'd discussed that at a supervisory meeting, that the Master's would then extend into the doctorate by investigating other projects, but now I'm rethinking.

[1] Eisenhardt, K.M., 1989, Agency Theory: An assessment and Review, The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 14, No. 1. pp 57-74

Interview debrief

2007-06-25T15:22:00.000+01:00

Some of the Phd application interview went okay, and some didn't. I don't know which bits were which and what will count to get me a funded place in the OUBS.

The presentation went as I planned it, so I'll not complain; it's the questions that were hard to anticipate, and indeed none were questions that I had thought they'd ask.

The four interviewers, 2 men, 2 women were all people I've met before.

Questions included:

What's your unit of analysis? (Female interviewer#1)
How are you going to theorise this?(FI#1)
Have you thought about value - I can't remember the exact question.(MI#1)
How are you going to get access? I'd have thought it would be fraught with ethical problems? (MI#1)

After the question on unit of analysis there was something else, I can't remember what but her response to whatever I said, was "but that's just descriptive" so I inferred that description wasn't good enough. Yes, okay. But if you compare descriptions you'll have a better idea of what's going on - she used the term 'cause and effect'. Yes.

The question on theory is phrased in a manner that means I don't immediately know what she wants and in fact, nearly freeze, thinking that I haven't got any theory, till I remember that although I haven't expected this question, I've anticipated it and jotted notes on structuration, complexity theory, Foucault and actor-network systems. I just don't know which way to go yet. From what she said, I'm afraid that not knowing might be a fault and that I should already know.

What was a success was that the research question is interesting, relevant and topical.

MI#2 asked me to describe my journey over the last year - he wanted reflection, so I said something about at least being able to be here and that I couldn't have coped with this interview last year, and that my marks initially were low, but have got better all year, and that I've learned to write, made contacts in the DTWs and in PACE sessions, and that I can now find research papers on the Internet. FI#1 said something about the 'tools'. Was that good or bad? I don't know.

I think that FI#1 & FI#2 said quite a lot, and I felt I just had to nod and say yes. Does that augur well? Or should I have said more?

There are five or 6 places, and at least six interviewees, though I thought ten had been invited to interview. We won't know the decision for a few days...

Adverse effects of Accountability

2007-06-22T17:35:00.000+01:00

Lerner & Tetlock [1] wrote about experimental work that indicated accountability could produce inefficient decision outcomes. Under resource scarcity, decision makers would be inefficient but fair. I wonder if that works in the public sector, where people often suggest there is a scarcity of resources.

Later Siegel-Jacobs & Yates [2] distinguish between procedural and outcome accountability, and I wonder which is of greater relevance to using consultants in the public sector. I suspect, especially after having just read the 31st report of the Commons Public Accounts Commitee, that outcome accountability is what the media and MPs ask for, but if the procedural accountability exists, assuming that means a need to justify one's actions, then the project stages that use consultants will each be accounted for. Perhaps procedural accountability is less visible than outcome accountability. Perhaps there are more gaps in procedural accountability than the MPs and media realise.

[1] Lerner, J.S., Tetlock, P.E., 1999, Accounting for the Effects of Accountability, Psychological Bulletin, Vol 123 no 2 pp 255-275
[2] Siegel-Jacobs, K, Yates, J.F., 1996, Effects of Procedural and Outcome Accountability on Judgment Quality, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol 65, No 1 pp 1-17

31st report : Central Government's Use of Consultants

2007-06-21T17:03:00.000+01:00

There's this report that criticises the public expenditure on consultancy. The one that the Public Accounts Committee published this week is a critique of the report on the Government's Use of Consultants that was published in November 2006. The committee took evidence from Mr John Oughton, Chief Exec of the Office of Government Commerce. He mentions accountability and some of what he says indicates the gaps that exist in accounting for consultants, so is pertinent to my research. For example,

Q49 Annette Brooke: Can you just tell us a bit more about applying lessons across departments?.. What is it that is the barrier to sharing good practice and making progress on all fronts, as it were?

Mr Oughton: The Chairman invited me to a reflective session at some stage before the end of March. One reflection now, if I may? There is still quite a strong resistance to ideas that come from elsewhere and this is not just a public sector issue, it is a private sector issue as well. Other people’s ideas are never treated as warmly as one’s own; that is just human nature. Breaking through those barriers and encouraging the sharing of good practice and the adoption of good practice is a big issue. It is slightly reinforced by the system of, and this is very much a personal view, accountability that we have here, where each department is accountable for its own delivery and feels, rightly, very strongly that it must do the best job it can. That rather discourages them from looking at other people’s ideas and other ways of undertaking business. ..

So this civil servant is talking about the public servant's accountability, yet the report says that:

"clients need consultants to show ownership and accountability to implement their work"

It seems to me again, that the MPs and media take away the requirement to account from the public servant client of the consultant and put the requirement on the consultant, despite the evidence that the public servant should account.

At Q127, Mr Oughton again refers to accountability of the accounting officers, not the consultant:

My own view however is that the sense of accountability that accounting officers and those who report to them have actually means that it is really not in our style, it is not in our fashion to be putting the blame elsewhere. You may not believe this but the sense of accountability that we have, both in responding to the work that the NAO do and to the work of this Committee, is a real one. I do not try to push that off on others by saying I have taken advice from someone and I am going to disown that advice. If I have paid money to secure advice, then I stick by that.

Accountability came up again from Mr Williams in Q136. Government departments had been asked for progress reports, but two did not respond to the request. Mr Williams remarked:

It would be interesting to know which the departments were, when it was and at what level there was any accountability in relation to this.

And although a footnote identifies the culprits, there is no explanation of accountability.

Finally, at Q142 from Mr Bacon compares the situation in the UK with the USA.

What is wrong with and what is contrary to greater openness and accountability—and I accept the points you make about accountability—in having a more statutory Clinger-Cohen type approach? Why can you not go down that route?

I don't know about this Clinger-Cohen approach so must find out.

Reviewing qualitative readings

2007-06-18T21:02:00.001+01:00

I wish I'd found this blog that reviews the qualitative readings earlier. It's really useful. It is written by an OU student who was studying E835.

Consultant interview questions

2007-06-16T14:25:00.000+01:00

It would seem sensible to interview the consultants in the relationship too, to get their perspective on the relationship and how they see the client's accountability for using consultants. But what questions should I ask in order to elicit this?

Client interview questions

2007-06-14T14:05:00.001+01:00

To find out where each interviewee fits into the organisation, ask about job title.

To find out about the project ask about:

Original intention of the project
Name of consultancy
Type of consultancy
Money – cost and expected savings
Days
Number of people – client side & consultants
Reasons for use
Outcomes expected
Outcomes delivered
What worked well?
What was problematic?

To find out about client-consultant relationships ask:

At what stage(s) of the project did you work with consultants, (thus identifying client type in Schein’s suggested type: contact, intermediate, primary, unwitting, indirect, and ultimate.)
How did you work with consultants?
What did they do and what did you do? What are your positive and negative experiences of the use of consultants on this project? (cf Werr et al, 2002, image 1)
What has been successful in the management of consultancy on this project? (cf Werr et al, 2002, image 2) and what has been difficult or problematic?
Do you think in general the problems to which consultants are called to solve are the really important ones? Why do you think that? Who should account for consultants that are called to solve these problems? How should their use be accounted for? (From Gattiker & Larwood’s 10^th question)

To find out about accountability as perceived by the interviewee ask:

What is your understanding of accountability with respect to consultants?
Who do you render account of yourself to, with respect to the consultancy, and about what, or in which terms?
How was accountability put into practice and monitored?
What impact do the mechanisms of accountability have on: a) quality of the consultancy work done b) outcome of the consultancy work (See Ezzamel et al, 2007) Did they have any other impacts or effects from your perspective?
Can you recall a particular incident in which you were aware of accountability? Describe it. Explain it.
Who do you regard as having the main accountability for the effective use of consultancies in general? And also with respect to this particular project?

Finally:

Who else could or should I talk to?
Do you have any other advice or comments for me?

Planning data collection

2007-06-13T16:43:00.000+01:00

What's an interview schedule? Supervisor #2 wants one. I guess it must include times and names of interviewees, but I can't do that yet. I can describe the project, guess some interviewees, have two contacts and have some thoughts for questions.

He can't have seen the appendices that I added to the proposal, which is where I wrote some people and some questions.

Latest literature

2007-06-12T13:01:00.000+01:00

I have been reading something very recently published on accountability as discursively constructed in the field of education.

Positive progress

2007-06-09T11:16:00.000+01:00

"General direction and focus is encouraging"
wrote Supervisor #2 on my recent proposal. He even thought that I could get some papers from the research. So I feel a lot happier than I did when he returned my last B852 TMA. He and S#1 were extremely helpful yesterday showing me how to tighten up wording, pointing out and rewriting bad research questions, avoiding the wrong arguments or stands. I have to:

revise the draft proposal
start collecting data
read Miller [1] on the different versions of clients
and write S#2 a couple of pages on the project, people and accountability that I'm asking about, together with an interview schedule.

I must remember that a constructionist view is, I think, that of a single person, rather than the social constructivist perspective that builds together.

They pointed out my research questions were ontologically social constructionist, and therefore a wording 'to what extent..?' was wrong because it implied a quantitative approach, and they should read 'How', and be descriptive.

Then, when I asked if they thought I should apply for the doctorate they even looked slightly surprised that I was considering asking, as if it had been an expectation, rather than the nightmare I was suffering.

Miller, Eric, 1993 From Dependency to Autonomy: studies in organization and change, Free Association Books, London

Collecting data

2007-06-07T20:48:00.000+01:00

I've managed to record two interviews, one only 20 minutes on the phone and awful sound quality and the other face-to-face. The short one should lead, I hope, to a case study, and I'm already finding documents to go with it and some interesting relationships between consultants, clients and accountability. The longer interview was more about getting practical background but led to some themes. For example:

there's a mass of written or electronic evidence available for public projects.
more projects work in teams rather than hierarchical now than some years ago, so accountability might be a team duty rather than pass up the hierarchy.
but OTH, some public organisations will still be hierarchical.
therefore, although I might expect to find network discourse expressing accountability in a team context, I might find hierarchies in the public sector, a concern with control and consequently the discourse on accountability will be bureaucratic.

Data collection

2007-06-02T17:59:00.000+01:00

I need some data. I need someone who has used, tasked, managed, selected, worked with consultants in the public sector to talk to me and let me record what they say.

Research questions from the literature

2007-06-01T16:27:00.000+01:00

I'm pleased, and slightly surprised to find that my initial questions, months ago, have developed into something researchable. I had thought those initial questions were researchable but perhaps they weren't and anyhow, I had a less clear idea of how I'd research them than I do now. From the literature I have evidence that both accountability and relationships are discursive constructions, which means that research needs a constructionist perspective, a qualitative approach to data collection and either grounded analysis or discourse analysis. I think the questions are:

To what extent do public sector managers account for their use of consultants?
What do different public sector managers do to demonstrate their accountability for managing consultants?
To what extent does the kind of client-consultant relationship, influence the expression of accountability in a public sector organisation?
Are there gaps in public accountability?

It's the third one that is researchable and most interests me.

Four important papers

2007-05-24T17:26:00.001+01:00

Four research papers particularly interest me:

Appelbaum, S. H. and A. J. Steed (2004). "The critical success factors in the client-consulting relationship." Journal of Management Development 24(1).
Kaarst-Brown, 1999, Five symbolic roles of the external consultant: Integrating change, power and symbolism, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol 12, no 6. Accessed 15/4/2007
Sinclair, A., 1995 “The Chameleon of Accountability: forms and discourses.” Accounting, Organizations and society 20(2/3.): 219-237
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

How to use them best?

The Appelbaum et al is a quantitative analysis of critical success factors in the client-consulting relationship.
The Kaarst-Brown is a qualitative analyis, again of the client-consulting relationship, interesting & amusing but perhaps too subjective, not sufficiently validated to be useful, and a retrospective self justification for a project that had gone wrong.
Sinclair's article is important for the light she sheds on the discursive construction of accountability by public sector managers.
Werr et al similarly qualitatively analyse the discursive construction of the client-consultant relationship.

I think that the Sinclair and the Werr et al articles are the most important because they both identify discursive constructions of the aspects that interest me. Perhaps my research must look at the discursive construction of accountability and the relationship of that construction to the client-consultant relationship.

Accountability for the apple

2007-05-22T16:11:00.000+01:00

I can imagine a scene in Paradise, the walled garden surrounding the apple tree, the core lying on the grass, the serpent slipping away, while Adam and Eve account to God for their decisions and actions.

"She did what the consultant told her."
"The consultant advised me to do it."

You see, an interaction exists between these components:

Paradise to be lost on accounting for the wrong actions,
the stakeholder eye of God watching the actions,
the two client managers and
the consultant.

It looks to me like a system, but that's because I went to John Martin's seminar on Emergence, and this idea struck me when he was describing gardens as systems like the one at Bagh-e-Shahzadeh at Mahann in southern Iran. The surprise is even when they exist in the middle of a desert,

Cross

2007-05-21T20:04:00.000+01:00

Well today I'm more cross than glum. I read marker's comments on last TMA, then looked at the breakdown, but it is odd because the individual scores add up to more than the given score. I scrape on to the PhD, depending on interview and competition. I look between the lines, knowing tutors mark to encourage or to discourage. A tutor should have checked the overall mark was indeed right for this TMA for this student. If it was, then he should have adjusted the individual marks, so the message came across clearly; if it wasn't he should have gone back and re-added them.

I spent yesterday evening looking at a couple of web sites, at universities that research the web, business and governance. I'm too late to apply now; e.g.The Oxford Internet Institute applications had to be in by 18 May but as some of our PGs came in January, it may be possible to get somewhere else in the new year, like De Montefort or Brunel, both of which research areas that interest me.

So now I've gone from very, very glum, to being cross, and then being sulky. Yes, I've learned loads, and at least I won't have to go through that part of the process again, if anywhere will take me with my inability to explain, justify, consider, discuss or write clearly. And I did enjoy writing that TMA. :(

Glum

2007-05-20T12:38:00.000+01:00

I'm not doing well enough at this. I'm good in some areas but not where things get assessed, so I had better be looking for something else to do in October.

The really important problems

2007-05-18T12:07:00.000+01:00

The problems consultants are called upon to solve are often not the really important underlying ones [agree (1) – disagree (7)][1]

This question involves the direction of the organisation, its mission and how it functions because you are looking at change and can’t ask people there to think of a different way of delivering the service. I anticipate the answer to this question will be different according to the relationship with consultants. Gattiker & Larwood designed the question in order to examine the political dimensions of the client-consultant relationship. The political dimension might be hiring a consultant in the belief that a consultant could lend meaningful weight to support a particular position, especially when bringing about change. So they anticipated finding that consultants might not know the important underlying issues behind their being hired. What the research found was that clients & consultants response to this question didn’t vary significantly from the expected chance value, so evidence for political hiring was mixed.

But that question need not be interpreted as about politics, but rather about choosing to consult on the right issues for the right reasons, and there is a need to account for that choice, isn’t there?

Secondly, G&L examined data from top-level personnel and it may be that lower level personnel have different perspectives on those reasons, and require different accountabilities. G&L suggest that “lower-level personnel have less need for influencing changes in organisational direction”, which might be true, but OTH if such personnel want to keep their jobs after change, then they would have different interests, different accountabilities and different responses from the executives. And public sector employees have different forces acting on them from corporations.

The weltanschauung of accountability to public is not the same as that of protecting jobs. Here, the accountability is for improving service not about change, but less cost and fewer people. But employing fewer people again implies that jobs are lost, and there is accountability for loss of jobs. (In a British society – a democratic society requires accountability, but an American culture will be less concerned with loss of jobs than a British one. Stakeholders in a British culture will include the workers and their union reps)

[1] Gattiker, U. E. and L. Larwood (1985). "Why do clients employ management consultants?" Consultation 4(Summer 8756-6508): 119-129.

Methodology

2007-05-17T09:23:00.000+01:00

If that CEO lets me, then I'm going to do a single organisation case study. The intention is to get information from and about a number of client representatives (cos Schein identifies different kinds of clients) and find out how they express accountabilities (different kinds of accountabilities) for their use and management of consultants. I should be able to map accountabilities to the different client stakeholders. So the data should match the theories I've read from Schein, Werr, Sinclair, Bovens, etc.

Analysis may be discourse analysis from interviews (takes ages to transcribe :() and stakeholder analysis and soft systems analysis (Checkland).

You see, that's my summary of my research proposal, which is supposed to be thousands of words and I'm assuming all the bits that I have not written. What else must I write about? Ethics - I'm stuck again. Access - okay. I have to write about the limitations of the research and why it's a good idea to do it this way - i.e. justify my approach, which I suppose also includes discussion of validity, generalisability ( a bit difficult with case studies).

PhD recruitment interview

2007-05-16T17:02:00.000+01:00

In June the OUBS interviews us and external candidates for the six funded places on the PhD. I have 15 minutes to present to the panel:

my ongoing research project for MRes (max 2 slides)
how that research might be extended into a PhD project (max 2 slides)

Then the panel will ask questions on the presentation and "related issues" whatever that might mean. I also have to give in a clean copy of my first dissertation module assignment - it was okay, but I don't have a mark - and talk to my supervisors about their willingness to supervise me . I hope they both do.

And I wonder how the external candidates manage these hurdles.

Research progress

2007-05-15T09:41:00.000+01:00

We are moving on from literature review to collecting data and some of us are having problems.

My Neighbouring Student emailed:

"I feel as if I am going around in circles with the research proposal. There are a number of ways I could do the research and I am struggling to explain why my prefered route is best."

Student from Hampshire is balancing home, health and study, about to take the family on a holiday, followed by an operation, but she hasn't yet collected data and has no participants to observe.
" Pressures of trying to get everything done before going away really - just not enough hours in the day and need to prioritise."

NS also has a family with a son that was off school yesterday so she had to stay home but has managed to get in for today's doctoral workshops conference presentations.

And I'm dead chuffed that I've had an encouraging email from a CEO whose organisation I'm hoping to use as my unit of study.

Accountability and tofu

2007-05-11T16:10:00.001+01:00

Accountability is an abstract concept that is variously and metaphorically described as a social and political process (Day and Klein, 1987; Sinclair, 1995) with dimensions (Day and Klein), functions (Bovens, 2005), forms and discursive constructs (Sinclair, 1995).

And as a chameleon, a chimera, links in a chain, and tofu. Tofu? Yes - go and download Dubnick's draft paper, as he says not to quote it yet.

Clients and accountabilities

2007-05-10T20:19:00.000+01:00

Had a supervisory meeting with S#2 today. Brilliant idea. Schein has identified several different types of client, and various writers describe different kinds of accountabilities. There may be research questions about how these accountabilities match to clients. Perhaps they could be mapped...

Why blog? why write?

2007-05-06T15:32:00.000+01:00

At last week's Curriculum, Teaching & Student Support Conference at the OU there were reports from people who are investigating the use of blogs as learning tools. It seems an area ripe for research though I worry that some are saying "we've got a tool; how can we use it?" in the way that they say, "we've got a hammer; what can we hit?"

However, I agree with Miranda who wrote,

"it’s like I have a running commentary in my head that just goes on and on, and it’s so abstract that writing is like the only way to make sense of what’s happening. Some days I write over fifteen pages straight, and still have no idea of what I’m trying to say, just that I haven’t said it yet."

She is right; writing reflectively is what helps to make sense of what's in my head though I can't say that I'd write 'over fifteen pages straight'. I'm surprised how much I do write if I make the tiniest effort. And there's something about blogging that is better than writing a diary. There is this possibility that someone will read it because you do publish it in the hopes that there might be someone who wants to comment, so it's more than just reflective. And I also find it useful to go back to when I get to certain points in my study. Thoughts I had had come in useful later.

Aporia

2007-05-03T10:46:00.000+01:00

When supervisor#2 to me last week that perhaps I was being too perfectionist in discarding possibilities, that he was being kind. Perhaps I am suffering from aporia. Do you know this term? I think this pertains to my lack of philosophical rhetoric. Apparently, aporia means:

"a state of puzzlement resulting from philosophical objections to proposed courses of action whilst simultaneously lacking any alternative solution." [1]

But Wikipedia also says it is an expression of doubt. I came across it in the context of performance appraisal, which is either “lauded” as central to organisational effectiveness or “denigrated” as a ritual. I suppose the state arises from such conundrums or dilemmas.

I suspect aporia applies in some way to accountability and might also relate to stakeholders and contracts. Supervisor#1 mentioned relational contracts. Contracts are usually thought of as legalistic and there are psychological contracts. Perhaps analysis of legalistic and relational contracts would reveal some aporia.

How would a stakeholder approach enable effective governance?

[1] Simmons, J., Eades,E., 2004,
Challenging aporia in the performance appraisal of consultants: a stakeholder systems reponse, Clinician in Managment 12:153-63

Designing accountability

2007-05-01T17:01:00.001+01:00

Power states [1] "Accountability and account giving are part of what it is to be a rational individual” (page 1). In order to audit, there must be:

a relationship of accountability

the relationship must be complex so that the principals are distant from the action and are unable personally to verify them.

Is accountability in the public services sufficiently complex that the principals are hardly known personally. So who verifies? Which principal can verify the action of the management agent in a public service? In the EDS case, it must have been vertical accountability from lower management up to Sir Nick Montague but was he so distant that audit would have been required? And would it have helped?

Power goes on (p123) to ask:
"What does accountability mean when it is operationalised by auditing?"
He relates themes of risk, trust, democracy and surveillance.

Page 127 the audit requires trust in experts; it is the dead end of the chain of accountability (Day & Klein: 244 [2]). Power states (p127):
“Audit expresses the promise of accountability and visibility”, which makes me think beyond visibility. Visibility is a design principle along with affordance, structure, consistency and feedback. So what other design principles apply to audit? Do they apply?

Day & Klein conclude (p249) that “accountability must be seen… as a system which is woven into the fabric of political and social life as a whole”

If accountability is a system, then somewhere it will show these design principles, even if they emerge naturally rather than be deliberately man designed.

Look for visibility, affordance, consistency, structure and feedback in systems of accountability.

[1] Power, M., 1997, The audit society: rituals of verification, Oxford
[2] Day, P., Klein, R., 1987, Accountabilities: five public services, Tavistock Publications

B852 ECA

2007-04-30T09:09:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-27T14:03:00.001+01:00

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

2007-04-22T15:20:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-21T19:06:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-19T14:04:00.001+01:00

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

2007-04-18T19:36:00.001+01:00

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

2007-04-17T14:57:00.000+01:00

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

What makes you nervous about giving presentations?
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

2007-04-15T20:39:00.001+01:00

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

2007-04-14T18:16:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-13T22:23:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-12T20:02:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-11T10:25:00.001+01:00

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

2007-04-09T10:32:00.001+01:00

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

2007-04-08T12:26:00.001+01:00

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

2007-04-05T17:55:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-04T15:56:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-03T15:43:00.000+01:00

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:

discusses importance of consultant intervention and related process variables

discusses multistage models of consultation process

attempted to identify factors that contribute to successful implementation of MS

discusses importance of identifying judgment criteria & behavioural objectives.

Research Questions

does this measurement model work for measuring client success ?

how does it distinguish between process and results?

does it measure consultant effectiveness?

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:

it is easier to distinguish between selection failure and implementation failure

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

2007-04-02T09:31:00.000+01:00

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

get as far as we could in the block V readings

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:

the research question itself

Why you think it is worth pursuing.

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:

there is ambiguity in accountability

it is financially costly if the joint enterprise goes wrong

media interest

public money

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

purchase of costly systems, usually IT

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:

Why was it chosen?

Outline research question(s) posed

Explain methods used – quantitative/qualitative?

Try to explain methodology, theoretical perspective and epistemology

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

2007-04-01T15:41:00.001+01:00

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!"

Supervision meeting

2007-03-29T13:24:00.000+01:00

Today I met with my two supervisors to discuss my draft literature review. It's not due until 1st May, but supervisor number 1 had asked me to provide something earlier and it's been a very useful exercise. Firstly, it has got my thoughts on paper. Secondly, I've found more papers that might be suitable to use for the B852 End of course Assessment (ECA).

Disaster!
You know how you worry about criticism, and really aggressive comments about how stupid you are? Well, S#1 had just nipped off as I joined them (they hadn't seen me waiting at another table), and supervisor number 2 greeted me, but looked so worried about my writing, that my heart sank. My review has no 'so what?'. There is no obvious research question. It needs a punch line. So I had one of those hot moments while I worried. Fortunately, S#1 returned, pointed out that this was only a draft and didn't need to be in for another 5 weeks. So there was no disaster and we then went on to a constructive discussion.

Nevertheless, the literature review needs to lead to a specific question to research,

one that is more than just interesting. (We have an exercise for the next B852 seminar on identifying a research question that we would like to pursue, so these thoughts might help that exercise).
Secondly, such a research question might involve the interaction of clients and consultants with the link to accountability. For example, projects thrive with ambiguity of who is responsible for outcomes. And where does that idea take me? There are different kinds of accountability and accountability matters when disputes occur. Maybe the research question is about failure of projects. I don't like that avenue, a) because it is retrospective, b) because I haven't seen much success of T401 students on this avenue, and that may again be because retrospection is so theoretical after the event.

So if outcomes of projects are co-produced between consultant and client, then how do you allocate responsibility or accountability?

There is a broad area and people don't know how consultants are held to be accountable. The research could be on

accountability
or on consultancy in terms of clients.

A refined research question might look at

the production as a joint enterprise. Should it be client or consultant or a chain of accountability?
how accountability works in the public sector? Are there problems about that, such as ambiguity. There might be multiple accountabilities.
audit inspections exist, so do potentially different chains of accountability, in particular when consultants are used, it is not that clear who is responsible for what.
how are the guidelines used and are they useful?
how is accountability enacted with regard to management consultants?

The key ideas are:

multiple accountabilities
contextual factors such as history or culture
idea of the tensions between sorts of accountabilities
how clients manage the consultant

I meet with S#2 next Wednesday to discuss aspects of consultants and meet both again near the end of April.

Research choices

2007-03-27T18:18:00.000+01:00

In our B852 tutorial today we discussed several questions:
1. Do you think that research in accounting and finance (or any business discipline) is going to be driven by issues of interest to practitioners?
I think we said no, not just such practical issues, but also theoretical ones. No, because there are forces and motivations acting on academic researchers to produce research based on theory.

2. What do you think are likely to be the differences between research topics that emanate from practical issues and research topics that are inspired by more theoretical issues?
Whilst research topics that arise from practical issues may have immediate relevance, the relevance might be limited to that particular area or field. In contrast, research arising from theoretical issues might have more generalisable applications.

3. What are the attributes of a ‘good' research question or topic?
Starting with the concept of ‘goodness', which is a philosophical debate on its own, I think that ‘good' depends on who is assessing it, so goodness is a subjective thing.
A good research question must be something of interest, and doable. What is a good research question to me may not be to my supervisor, and that matters, because he is assessing my work. So a good research question is also a question that is of interest, not only to me but also to a wider community. It has to be something that other people what to debate, that others want answered, so that question exists in a society, a political society of its time. And a good question for one time may not be for another era. Hence, when I come to propose my topic for my PhD, I need a research question that will be of interest to me for three or four years because I'm going to be doing a lot of work on it, but also of interest to my targeted supervisor. If I don't find an interested supervisor then I won't be doing the PhD.

Symbols of consultancy

2007-03-24T21:40:00.001Z

Kaarst-Brown (1999)[1] has suggested five symbolic roles to consultancy. These symbolic roles indicate something about the stage that a consultancy project is at, and that symbol can relate to Lewin's stages of unfreezing, changing and refreezing. The symbol is useful to indicate the stage. However, if the client perceives a symbol at the wrong time, then the project incorrectly moves into another phase.

Her research arises from her consultancy experience, realising that at least one project that she and her colleagues were involved in, had not completed all the expected tasks even months after the consultancy project had been signed off and the consultants had left.

The consultant can deliberately use symbols to indicate the phase of the project. It's of relevance to my research because it relates to the client-consultant interaction. That interaction involves the consultant getting the client to be accountable for using consultancy services and symbol may explain failed projects. One reason for using a consultant might be political, because the consultant legitimises the management action, so that the manager is seen to have another authority justifying the possibly unpopular or criticised decision. Whilst Kaarst-Brown says that there is an inadvertent symbolism associated with the presence of an external consultant, the symbolism can be consciously used manage a project.

-----------------------
[1] Kaarst-Brown, 1999, Five symbolic roles of the external consultant: Integrating change, power and symbolism, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 12 No. 6, 1999, pp. 540-561.

Consultancy: academics & practitioners

2007-03-22T12:40:00.001Z

There are two kinds of literature on consultants and consultancies. The academic literature uses and builds on management theory with references other academic literature. In contrast, the practitioner literature offers practical steps for how to do it, and is more often aimed at the consultants, rather than the clients.

For example, Edgar Schein, whom other writers on consultancy often cite, uses theories of organisational development. In 'Process Consultation: Its role in Organization Development', Schein describes models of consultancy: the purchase of expertise model, the doctor-patient model, and the process consultation model. It is the process-consultation model that he defines and describes in great depth, and on which his other writing is built. The process of consultation concerns the client's activities to solve a problem rather than solving the client's problem for him, which would be content consultation.

A practitioner like Fiona Czerniawska writes to be immediately useful to the consultant and to the client. She offers a single simple model with no explanation of the theory behind it, and no academic references. Last year, she wrote 'Ensuring Sustainable Value from Consultants' and she has recently advised the National Audit Office on central government's use of consultants.

Management consulting news shows a pragmatic approach to writing, with no obvious theory.

Networking

2007-03-20T20:39:00.000Z

Today there was a doctoral training workshop on the topic of networking. Unfortunately I had to miss it in order to go to a business women's networking event.

Amongst the many interesting women that I met, in a friendly and non-threatening atmosphere was one Woman of Particular Interest for my research topic. WPI is a senior civil servant, joining the civil service only about 18 months ago, with experience of having been a consultant and of using consultants in the civil service. She tells me that accountability is not so much of an issue. She finds that red tape is a nuisance and so encourages people to get round it, take more risks, but calculated risks, taken with knowledge. She said that projects that involve consultants need not go wrong if they are correctly managed and we discussed the NAO guidelines. It was encouraging to find someone who was practically interested in what I'm researching and willing to talk to me. I hope we'll be in touch again when I come to do my interviews.

Systems thinking

2007-03-19T13:01:00.000Z

From this plethora of understandings of accountability can I suggest that it emerges from different human behaviours?

Public accountability

2007-03-17T19:25:00.000Z

Accountability requires at least two people. Networks and constructs of accountability could not exist without each other, although they are not obviously the same. If accountees were not there, the accountor could account, so a social network must exist. There has to be someone to account to, the accountee, and someone to account, the accountor. Bovens [i] seems concerned with the idea of accountability as a social network. Its functions are for democratic control, to enhance integrity of public governance, provide public catharsis, and improve performance and maintain or enhance legitimacy of public governance. Accountability could be a scheme for blaming; if there is liability, who is the accountor? Broadness of accountability in the public sector makes accountors almost anonymous. There are many accountors in an institutional context: corporate, hierarchical, collective, individual (c.f. Sullivan). This could be corporate accountability or hierarchical accountability and links with Day & Klein’s discussion of hierarchical accountability.

Secondly, there is a problem of many eyes: who is the accountee? Such stakeholders are more diverse than in the private sector. Who is the accountor accountable to, and these could also be institutional accountees, not just individuals. Such accountees may be organisational, political, legal, or professional. Role of the media has increased importance to political accountability, and accountability is symbolic of the integrity of governance. In the move from vertical to horizontal accountability, which eyes are more powerful? There can be a problem of too much accountability, where the best outcomes are not obtained because of the need to prove fairness.

[i] Bovens, M. (2005). Public Accountability. The Oxford Handbook of Public Management Draft, L. Lynne & C. Pollitt (eds.),. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Accountability - what is it?

2007-03-16T16:02:00.000Z

What is accountability? Accountability is variously described as:

links in a chain (Day and Klein),

a chameleon (Sinclair),

a chimera (Lindsay & O’Byrne) [1]

consisting of many hands (Bovens, Sullivan) and

many eyes (Bovens).

Day and Klein [ii] refer to accountability being a social and political process, a point that is taken up by others (Sinclair, x) in discussion of forms of accountability. Day and Klein point out that accountability existed in the simplest of ancient societies, but would be embodied in institutions in the more complex societies, which implies a social framework and shared expectations.

“Our starting point is that accountability is all about the construction of an agreed language or currency of discourse about conduct and performance, and the criteria that should be used to assess them.” (p.2)

They asked how members of different kinds of committees & authorities defined accountability and accordingly researched accountability in five public services, interviewing members of boards and also collecting and analysing agendas and minutes and attending meetings. They found that accountability depends on an agreed framework of meaning, brought about by a shared dialogue and also that board members saw a dimension of accountability in the general sense of being answerable for the individual actions of service providers, an interpretation that “revolves round the ability to call service providers retrospectively to account for their actions.” (p. 236). However, there are still difficulties of collective competence in getting objectives met.

[i] Lindsay, A., O'Byrne, G., Accountability of Tertiary Education at the National Level: A Chimera?
[ii] Day, P. and R. Klein (1987). Accountabilities: 5 public services, Tavistock.

Construction of my argument

2007-03-15T16:16:00.000Z

I’m interested in the possibly excessive expenditure by the public sector on consultancy services, and what accountability exists for this expenditure.

Possible cause of the problem

Confusion of accountabilities
Enthusiastically self-marketing consultant
Needs,which may be people, perspective, process and perhaps political

How does public procurement of external consultants affect various stakeholders? I think it must demotivate some employees, particularly those that are further from the consultancy selection process, it may annoy some other stakeholders such as unions, but on the other hand it gives new skills to those employees (managers) higher up the management career path and those who are closer to the choice to use consultants. Secondly, it gets a job done that otherwise would not be done quickly or effectively or at all.

Consequences

I deduce that the consultancy market will continue to grow, that the public sector will continue to purchase consultancy services and that there will be two classes of workers involved:

Public servants who cannot do what consultants do
Consultants who have specialised skills

And this division will be self-perpetuating. So in order to justify the division, there is a need to discover evidence of lines of accountability amongst those who select and use consultants, identifying accountors and accoutees.

Seeking salvation for accountability

2007-03-14T14:39:00.000Z

This paper by Melvin Dubnick (prepared for 2002 annual meeting of the American Political Science association) distinguishes between the word accountability and the concept accountability. In discussing the word he points out the difficulty of translating accountability into other languages. I know some of the major romance languages so had already realised the problem there would be when I was anticipating having to research all the literature even in other languages if I move onto writing a doctoral thesis. Transferring that problem of language knowledge, I suspected that other languages would be equally intransigent. Dubnik indeed reports:
“The result is there exists little room in those languages for a possible distinction between the conceptualisation of accountability (as a concept) and responsibility."

Accountability in US forces - Matty Hull

2007-03-13T17:02:00.000Z

Today’s paper reports on the death of a British soldier, Matty Hull, through US friendly fire. The inquest heard yesterday that if the Americans had followed the same combat rules as the British, then the mistake would not have happened.

A relevant piece of research overlaps with my studies of accountability: Romzek, Ingraham, “Cross Pressures of Accountability: Initiative, Command, and Failure in the Ron Brown Plane Crash”, 2000, in Public Administration Review Vol. 60, no3.

As in the Matty Hull case, this paper indicates that wrong procedures were followed. However, the focus of the research is on accountability, and identifies a conflict between “institutional rhetoric and managerial conditions (that) encouraged entrepreneurial behaviour and initiative” and an administrative reality that “emphasized a risk-averse, rules-oriented approach to accountability when things went wrong.”

From what I read in today’s newspaper on the Matty Hull inquest, and from seeing the video published on the web, I’d guess that this conflict still exists ten years after the Ron Brown crash.

I notice in the research that the American authors comment on hierarchical accountability that reflected in disciplinary actions and a “combination of different accountability standards”. They refer, not to a disaster, but to a ‘mishap’. Their reflections on damage to career do not express a concern for the human loss and the pain of the victims’ families. How odd! I notice that an MP comments that the US military has failed to help the soldier’s family in their question to find out the truth about his death.

It seems to me that 10 years after that crash, the US military still apply different standards of accountability, and particularly when non-Americans are involved.

Literature review

2007-03-05T20:48:00.000Z

Looking at the literature on accountability, I have found papers on its forms (Sinclair) and dimensions (X). Some write about systems of accountability (X) but few define it. Fewer measure it; it is not quantifiable. Accountability is discussed as a discursive construct and its forms identified as different according to some circumstance of context. It is accountability to some body or some organisation, not accountability for anything other than for decision-making.
The literature on consultants may be categorised as:

Academic
Practitioner
Media
Grey

The academic literature has two strands (x):

Functional literature reflecting OD and how the consultant helps a client who is in charge;
The critical strand reflects takes the view that the client is weak and the consultant powerful in possession of knowledge.

Practitioner literature tells consultants how to do it, offering steps, processes, advice on marketing, and salary agreement between partners (Maister).

Media criticise the amounts spent on consultants and offer horror stories in the public sector, sometimes confusing outsourcing with consulting.

The consultants’ professional body, the MCA, together with the NAO and OGC have written reports on the use of consultants, with advice for clients in the public sector on how to procure and run consultancy projects. This seems to be the best source for suggesting managers in public sector can be accountable for the use of consultants.

Foucault and consultants

2007-03-03T17:30:00.000Z

Having read Townley's (1) argument for application of Foucauldian ideas to HRM, I am wondering how to apply them to consultancy services. I think I'd want to look at the transaction between client and consultant, that Townley calls an "analytic conceptual space". I think this approach would contrast with Czerniawska’s (2), perhaps, more pragmatic explication of the relationship between client and consultant. Czerniawska sees these as separate systems or functions. She argues that these functions built a relationship. If seems to me that she is basing her structures on an underlying systems model within a positivist paradigm. Her thesis might be built on an underlying systems approach, seeing two interconnecting worlds, that of the client and that of the consulting world, with three subsystems to each world, and relationships to explore and analyse. Those relationships are examined in terms of routes to success (c.f. Hard Systems Methods) before considering a blueprint for the future.

My stance would be to look at the specific aspects of client behaviour and how a client accounts for what the consultant does.

There is passing mention to accountability:

Page 132 as being on the client’s agenda
Page 183 location of accountability within a portfolio of projects.

I would argue that the relationship is constructed.

1. Townley, B., Foucault, Power/Knowledge, and its relevance for Human Resource Management, in Academy of Management Review, 1993, Vol. 18, 518-545, No. 3 in B852 Block III Reading 6. See http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=9&sid=58bdc04f-3136-4b08-a555-81ae696857c4%40sessionmgr2

2. zerniawska, F., Toppin, G., 2005, Business Consulting: a guide to how it works and how to make it work, The Economist

Justifying my research choice

2007-03-03T14:23:00.000Z

The purpose of my research is to find what accountability there is for the use of external consultants. Since there are some meanings, forms and dimensions to accountability, it is not a quantifiable concept but discursively constructed. Therefore I have to research using methods that gather and analyse such constructs. The following is based on Crotty (1998).

1. The techniques I plan to use are:

Case study
Semi structured interviews
Document collection.

Interviews will be face to face if possible with chief executives or senior management of at least two pubic sector organisations, but may be constrained by telephone interviews. Whilst improving my shorthand, I’d still hope to record these interviews.

Documents that I’d hope to access would be

Contract,
Agreement
Conditions
Organisational structures.

2. This study is framed within the interpretive research paradigm employing qualitative techniques. Methodology is ethnographic enquiry in order to uncover management perceptions of lines of accountability and the Weltanschauung of the managers. This is an appropriate method because there is little attention in the literature to accountability for the use of consultants, and the inductive process may provide thicker /richer description.

3. Philosophical stance is then symbolic interactionism.

4. The epistemology is constructionism.

Working

2007-03-02T22:06:00.000Z

Despite no blog here for a month, I am working. It's just that I'm confused over the reading I'm doing and cannot put it into words. I think that I'll have to do the same as winsome words and write something about every paper every day for a month. I'm drawing maps and influence diagrams of writers and who cites others but it doesn't seem to be moving me on very far. I have to discuss my outline literature review with my supervisors on Tuesday, and have the draft ready in about four weeks. That's getting scary. I have found books and research papers on accountability and on consultancy, but the nearest overlap is through advisory reports from the National Audit Office.

So here's an alternative in the hopes of spring:

I meant to Do My Work Today

I meant to do my work today -
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree.
And a butterfly flitted across the field.
And all the leaves were calling me.

And the wind went sighing over the land
Tossing the grasses to and fro.
And a rainbow held out its shining hand -
So what could I do but laugh and go?

Richard LeGallienne

The Consultant

2007-02-26T21:10:00.001Z

Of all the businesses, by far,
Consultancy's the most bizarre.
For, to the penetrating eye,
There is no apparent reason why,
With no more assets than a pen,
This group of personable men,
Can sell to a client more than twice,
The same ridiculous advice,
Or find in such a rich profusion,
Problems to fit their own solution.

Bertie Ramsbottom, in the Financial Times, April 11, 1981

quoted in Management consultants: what do they do?, De Jon, Van Eekelen, The Leadership & Organization Development Journal 20/4 1990, 181-188

Accounting for service

2007-02-03T20:34:00.000Z

"Happy are those who hunger and thirst for what it's right; they shall be satisfied."

Matthew 5: 5-6

For me, this is why I want accountability in my public services. To me being accountable is about justifying what you do, so you might do the unpopular, but the right thing; you account for it. On the other hand, you might do the wrong thing and have to explain your action. That is accountability. And I want to know that accountability does exist, that those who hunger and thirst for what is right are satisfied.

I think I have to work out what I think accountability is or what managers think it is. It sounds like a personal construction so I could I research what managers say about accountability in order to explore their constructs, but Sinclair has already done that. Alternatively perhaps I could find models of accountability, and compare how public managers actions match the models, which sounds a more positivist approach.

Why research this topic?

2007-01-31T14:54:00.001Z

Consultancy is important because there has been £7 billion in three years spent by the UK public sector (National Audit Office, 2006). In 1980, it was only £61m and £1.2bn in 1995 [i]. UK expenditure is high compared to other countries. For example, in 2003-4 Australia spent only $259,768 on 9 consultants (Senate Annual Report 2003-4). The top nine UK consultancies made £12 billion revenues according to the Management Consultancy Association. The world wide market for consultancy is over £100 billion according to the MCA Industry page. So there is a lot of money spent on consultancy, and a lot spent in the public sector.

Who accounts for this spending? There is much criticism in the media for the expenditure:

From the BBC:

2004 Thursday, 10 June, 2004 A NAO Report criticised consultancy bill in N. Ireland suggested there was no proven need for consultancy and that government guidelines on the use of consultants were not being followed.

Monday, 26 September 2005 Consultancy cash 'out of control' when government spent £1.86bn on private consultancy firms.

Tuesday, 31 January 2006 Secrecy over government consultants At the beginning of 2006, Austin Mitchell, MP, said that auditors estimated that the Department for Education and Skills was spending £4m on external consultants. But the File On 4 programme obtained a confidential internal audit report on consultancy in the DfES which showed the figure to be between £20m to £30m, so there is some discrepancy and that has not been accounted for. Members of Parliament have asked for that accountability. E.g. The National Audit Office sets guidelines.

Friday, 17 November 2006 Defra's '£170m consultants’ bill'

Friday, 15 December 2006, Spending on consultants at £2.8bn “The public sector paid £2.8bn to outside consultants last year, the government's spending watchdog says.” But central government departments’ expenditure fell from £2bn to £1.8bn during the same period. NAO report () says around £7.2bn was spent.

Wednesday, 3 September, 2003, union leaders were sceptical of local government plans to use consultants (Consultants to help social services).

Monday, 5 August, 2002, there was criticism of another public body for spending on consultants, yet still losing money (Railtrack in 'consultancy spending spree').
This is not an issue of the 21st century. Even earlier, there were queries about the need for management consultants.

Wednesday, July 28, 1999 Business: The Company File Who needs management consultants?

From Newspapers:

In the Telegraph, Government pays double for consultants for instance, but that is actually about an outsourcing contract, not consultancy, which goes to show the level of misunderstanding of what consultants do, and of the difference between outsourcing and consultancy.

Financial Times 2007 Drive to get better value from consultants

All accessed 31/01/2007

The number of these articles and the level of interest show that the business of consultancy is significant to the economy. However, the tones of the articles indicate concern at the level of public expenditure.

Members of Parliament and the National Audit Office express interest in justifying use of consultants and accounting for money spent on consultancies. (House of Lords, MPs questions on use of consultants 2005, National Audit Office report 2006 on Central Government’s Use of Consultants). The demand is that the public bodies account for their use of consultancies, (Select Committee Enquiry into Inland Revenue and Tax Credits 2004), but there is little evidence of that accountability.

[i] Craig, D., 2006, Plundering the Public Sector,

Constructing accountability

2007-01-15T12:37:00.000Z

I've been reading a paper by Janet Newman 'Constructing accountability: network governance and managerial agency' that in turn led me to looking up who she is: Professor in the OU. Here's her inaugural lecture, though you may have to be a member of the OU to see it.

http://stadium.open.ac.uk/stadia/preview.php?s=1&whichevent=604

What is bothering me is how do I research public accountability when accountability is a construct. I've read Sinclair's 'The chameleon of accountability: Forms and discourses' that indicates models of accountability in Australian public sector, but the very term 'chameleon' indicates how variable the concept is. So how am I going to research it?

New words

2006-12-22T16:44:00.000Z

I've had a term of coping with new terminology, and words that I think I know then find that they mean something else in this academic context, or something more than I had understood. This week's words were intersubjectivity, locutionary and illocutionary and perlocutionary, which have to do with Searle's speech act theory and I read them in Ethnographic Research: A Reader, in a chapter on 'Distributed cognition in an airline cockpit' by Hutchins and Klausen. By the time I got to asking husband about a synedoche, which wasn't in his dictionary either, both of us were all jargonised out. I mean, that we'd had too much jargon. So when a couple of days later I found this poem in the introduction to 'Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography' editors Clifford & Marcus, it really spoke to me. The editors prefix it with

"Finally, as an Invocation, we offer the following verses composed in mock despair by our first editorial reader, Jane Kepp, dictionary in hand."

The Hermeneut's Dilemma, or, A Jargon Poem

Twas prelapsarian, and the hermeneut
Sat huddled with his faithful trope,
Sunk in thaumasmus, idly strumming his lute,
Lost in subversion with nary a hope.

Then with heartfelt apoplanesis he cried,
O come, interlocutor, give me your ear!
In my pathopoeia, I've slandered and lied;
Now of my grim project this discourse you'll hear.

I've dappled in vile phenomenological rites,
And joined in a secret synecdoche,
Squandered my received knowledge in bibulous nights,
And embraced epistemological heresy.

O, but now my metonymy is too great to bear!
This ecphonesis has become too deictic to hide!
I've lost all the poesis I once held so dear . . .
And, with typical hypotyposia, he died.