Discussion for supervisors

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

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

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

That is something to discuss with my supervisors.

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

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

Supportive family

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

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

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

Analysing vs interpreting

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

Ingredients collected

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

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

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

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

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

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[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

Methodology

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).

Foucault and consultants

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:

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

I would argue that the relationship is constructed.

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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