Why I like Critical Realism

Critical realism (CR) is a duality, proposing that the world exists independently (objectively) of our “perceptions, language or imagination”, while simultaneously recognising that part of the world is made up of our subjective interpretations which affect how we see and experience it (Edwards et al, 2014, p. 2).

CR embraces both the objective (observations and ‘laws’) and the subjective (things we can’t observe are still real nonetheless). It attempts to separate the “widely accepted socially constructed version” of truth from the reality it represents, peeling back emergent layers of the entities being studied to find their essences (the elemental properties of a thing) and causal powers (think chemistry - the elements of one element interacting with another) (Edwards et al, 2014, p. 6).

Thus the approach of a critical realist allows the researcher to inhabit the real world, but interpret it in a rich way, seeking deeper answers than appear on the surface, using data but interpreting it in a layered approach that allows for the complexity of human behaviour. It also allows for different interpretations of the same data, but coming to a point, on balance to determine the most likely ‘best’ position at a particular time, for a particular level of understanding.

My Reasons for using CR

1. Kiwis. I suspect that the national psyche of New Zealanders fits with this approach; look to the very essence of something, to its irreducible authentic components without fancying them up. Be a bit pragmatic and informal about it, like men and women at a social; put them together again and see how the bits relate to each other and watch what they do. Numbers alone don’t give you the richness of the picture about the whys and wherefores of the social interaction – or social inaction – that results. Yet in many ways I feel that Kiwis want to stop short of complete understanding, to allow some mystery and myth to exist.
   
   
2. My world is this way. As a New Zealander at the bottom of the South Pacific, living in a partnership of Maori and ‘otherness’, the world contains a natural dichotomy of both global physical, and New Zealand social, systems. Both equally strong, both equally influential. The journey is a New Zealand essence – in fairly recent memory we have all travelled to this place. To see the New Zealand context, we often have to view it through the lens of ‘away’; our Kiwi OE allows other New Zealand essences to surface when we leave our environment.
   
   
3. I think this way. I suspect I relate well to critical realism because in my family, meal-times were an opportunity for learning and idea-sharing with all at the table. Ideas or statements shared were rigorously explored, deconstructed, and tested against evidence, ethics, and known or observed human behaviour. The same approach was taken with any media including television, films, books and theatre. Both my parents were public servants; both grandfathers craftspeople. Most of my Father’s family has an artistic or creative bent; my Mother’s family a strong sense of community service. Both families include those who weren’t afraid to form their own opinions ahead of society around them. My siblings and I were taught to be critical thinkers, to share ideas, and to change our views when our personal models were found wanting. We were encouraged to look more deeply than just the superficial.
   
   Critical realism allows for other ‘best’ ways, for personal choice, and for us each to decide what is right for ourselves, in our own contexts. As a product of a New Zealand provincial upbringing with a great deal of rural influence – being exposed to volunteering, sports, hunting, fishing, the bush and car travel from infancy – we were taught that we didn’t have the corner on any “one best way”. That although a particular model worked for us, it was not the ONLY way that worked: we were encouraged to be respectful of others’ sacred cows, and attempt to understand their reasons for their view. Our family modelled respect and acceptance in many ways that I only came to appreciate much later in life: I had a friend as a child who was profoundly deaf (I still have no recollection of how we communicated, but we managed with enthusiasm) as well as Maori, Aboriginal, Japanese, English and Kiwi friends. I have married a German.
   
   
4. I learn this way. My philosophical approach to my own learning has formed naturally as a spirally growing one: to quote Sinatra, “do be do be do” (Precht, 2011, p. 248). What I mean by this is that I take a recursive deductive (objective) and inductive (subjective) approach, whereby I learn the theory, test my world for fit with it, then recheck and readjust the theory for sense; based on my experience and my perception of the world – as I experience it. This is in part due to being a New Zealander, with our strong practical “give it a go” identity. I feel this derives from how I was taught to think as mentioned above: the more one acts, the more one is. It is an ever increasing spiral that leads me onwards. My drive for constant progression is probably something else that is a family pattern, as well as a chunk of that Protestant work ethic: standing still means that the world was leaving you behind.
   
   
5. I teach this way. I do not have the reserve and uncompromising objectivity of a true positivist, nor do I have the only one of seven billion realities subjectivity of a confirmed relativist. While I feel that in teaching we have generalisable ‘best’ methods and techniques, and that refinement of these can be meaningfully applied across our teaching organisations to the benefit of all participants, these methods will not suit everyone to the same extent. I am a perpetual seeker of ‘better ways’; not necessarily fashionable ways, but more engaging, dialogue-producing and open-minded methods of creating transfers of leadership knowledge, context and meaning in the classroom. I try to create learning opportunities so everyone in the room has an opportunity to learn by some explanation, some reflection, some structured slides, some film clips, some readings, some discussion groups, some writing, some modelling and some application.
   
   
6. I research this way. Critical realism takes account of the values of our human systems and of the researchers who research them; thus my worldview has determined the questions I am seeking to answer; that ‘I’ am mostly indivisible from ‘my research’ and my New Zealandness. Both myself and my participants will co-construct the research findings from “interactive dialogue and interpretation” (Ponterotto, 2005, p. 129).

Applied CR is exploratory, emergent, and focused on who we are as researchers. It is inductive, and fits well with grounded theory and action research.

Sam

References:

• Edwards, Paul K.; O'Mahoney, Joe & Vincent, Steve (2014). Studying Organizations using Critical Realism: a practical guide. UK: Oxford University Press
• Ponterotto, Joseph G. (2005). Qualitative Research in Counseling Psychology: A Primer on Research Paradigms and Philosophy of Science. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 2005, Volume 52, issue 2 (pp. 126-136)
• Precht, Richard David (2011). Who Am I? And if So, How Many? A Journey Through Your Mind (English edition translated by Frisch, Shelley from the 2007 first edition). UK: Constable

Marie Corelli is no more: long live John Anster

Previously on my 'About' page, I had cited a quote by Marie Corelli - whom I knew had misattributed a triplet to Goethe - which was “Seize this very minute. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power, magic in it”, which I had referenced as "(misattributing Goethe, 1905 p. 31)".

Interestingly the Quote Investigator, Garson O'Toole (actually the pseudonym for Professor Gregory F. Sullivan), has just researched this very triplet. After some extensive research, Garson reports that the "1835 text from John Anster was distinctive enough that he should be credited with its authorship; although, one should also note that he was inspired by a passage in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 'Faust'."

Garson also notes that the word "Whatever" is, in the original, "What", so if we want to be accurate, we need to word this as 'What'. There are also some punctuation errors, and the first half of the first line is missing ("Are you in earnest?", then "seize this very minute").

Thus I should either amend my quote reference to "(Corelli, misattributing Goethe, 1905, p. 31, after Anster, 1835, p. 15)", and leave the 'Whatever' in place and punctuation errors in place; or I should change my citation to "(Anster, 1835, p. 15, translating Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 'Faust: eine Tragödie', 1808)", and change the 'Whatever' to 'What' and correct the punctuation.

I have had a think about what would be appropriate for my About page, and have decided to take the second option. I have changed the paragraph to:

A leadership act takes place when, in the words of John Anster, we “seize this very minute- What you can do, or dream you can, begin it, Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it” (1835, p. 15, translating Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 'Faust: eine Tragödie', 1808).

But I feel a pang of loss for Marie Corelli :-(


Sam
 
References:

• Anster, J. (1835). Faustus, A Dramatic Mystery; The Bride of Corinth; The First Walpurgis Night, Translated from the German of Goethe, and Illustrated with Notes. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman (p. 15)
• Corelli, M. (1905). The Spirit of Work in The Daily Mail (Editors) The Queens Christmas Carol: An anthology of poems, stories, essays, drawings and music by British authors, artists and composers. Ballantyne Press (p. 31)
• The Quote Investigator .(2016). What You Can Do, or Dream You Can, Begin It; Boldness Has Genius, Power, and Magic in It. http://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/02/09/boldness/

Employee Engagement Techniques

We can all talk about engagement in the workforce, but do we know exactly what that means?

Engagement is what I was talking about with Kelley's exemplary follower style in the previous post: people who are critical, independent thinkers and are very active and constructive on behalf of the organisation. They are consistent in behaviour, deal appropriately with conflict, cope well with change and are mindful. They use their power - referent, expert, network and information - well, and habitually practice acts of leadership (Kelley, 1988).

But these people need good leadership to perform this way. They need a work environment which is supportive, empowering, positive, open to discussion and new ideas, where entire business systems are approached as a learning opportunity and new solutions are sought as a matter of routine.

Setting up a workplace culture like this is the role of the leader: and, as Schein thinks, the most important thing that leaders do (1992). Engaged employees make up 30% of your workforce. Michael Smyth suggests that engaged employees are "worth their weight in gold. Treat them well and they will pay you back many times over by going the extra mile" (2008, p. 10).

However, what do you do, as a leader, when you take over an organisation or a department, where the employees are disengaged?

Disengaged employees are those who do not get satisfaction from their work, nor do they 'get' what the organisation is trying to do. The reasons for this can range from being shut down by management early in their careers, to simply being unmotivated. Disengaged workers fall into Kelley's model largely as passive followers, but very alienated followers could also sometimes be regarded as disengaged (1988). Smyth suggests that around 9% of workers in New Zealand are disengaged (2008), and aligns it to a cheating personal relationship, where the guilty party lies and deceives their partner.

The disengaged cost you a lot. They can damage the company's reputation by bad mouthing your firm. They do not give your customers the excellent service that customers should have for you to be sure of repeat business. The negativity that disengaged workers put into the workforce pulls down the morale of the rest of the employees, which in turn damages team function. Then you get the knock-on effects of reduced return on assets (ROA) and reduced profits.

There is a huge cost to the business from this. Smyth reports on a study done by JRA (NZ) Limited in 2007 which estimated that engaged workplaces had a ROA 95% higher than disengaged ones, and that engaged workers generated 68% more sales than a disengaged one. Further, engaged workplaces had a 29% higher retention rate (2008). Keeping a good worker for longer saves a company a lot of on-boarding and productivity costs.

The best thing is, as a new leader, talking to everyone and getting your head around how this cultural machine works is now your job. Think of it as your preliminary survey: until you know what you are getting into, you won't know what you need to do to repair it.

You will have to go quietly, and build trust. Employees who have had poor leadership will take some time to change those behaviours which have arisen as a stress-response. John Kotter and Leonard Schlesinger wrote about some excellent change management techniques in 1979, which also apply to strategies for changing the mindset of disengaged workers:

• Communication: talk with the entire team. Then have a chat with each person, and find out who they are, and what their aspirations are, what their skills are, and what their interests are. Sometimes people are simply in the wrong position, are unchallenged, have got lazy, or have other stuff going on in their lives which is distracting them from work. But everything should start from a conversation.
• Training: sometimes people have moved into positions but have not had good training for that role. When chatting to each person, find out what training they have had and what they think they need - or what you can suggest. A small investment in training can show people that they have value to the company; it can re-energise them; as well as creating organisational productivity gains.
• Coaching: where workers are really stuck, either set up an internal mentoring programme, or coach individuals yourself to help them understand that they have organisational value. Remember that, if you treat everyone like they are in the in-group, they will live up to your expectations.
• Participation: When reorganising work, processes or results, talk to the team. Use the team's knowledge, skills, methods & ideas for improvements. Set clear outcomes - end goals - but don't decide the shape of the journey - the instrumental goals: let the team organise that collectively.
• Negotiation: Where there are certain things that you are required by your KPIs to achieve, negotiate with the team. Good compromise or trade-offs can allow necessary change to be accepted, as well as building trust. The elements of participation present in negotiation can remind the team that the organisational goals must be met in order to meet their own needs.
• Support: If the previous items don't work, use the organisational EAP already in place to help disengaged individuals readjust; counselling, stress leave or re-assignment within the organisation. Work with the employees to help them find their mojo... or to help them make the decision to move on.
• Exit: if all else fails, then work with your HR team to help help disengaged employees to move on. 

Ensuring that employees are engaged makes for positive workplaces. It is a leadership role to ensure that engagement happens.

Sam

References:

• Kelley, Robert E. (1988). In praise of followers. Harvard Business Review, November 1988, Volume 66, issue 6 (pp. 142-148).
• Kotter, John P. & Schlesinger, Leonard A. (1979). Choosing strategies for change. Harvard Business Review , March /April 1979, Volume 57, issue 2 (pp. 106-114)
• Schein, Edgar H. (1992). Organizational Culture & Leadership (Second Edition). USA: Jossey-Bass
• Smyth, Michael. (2008). Employed But Not Engaged. NZ: The Approachable Lawyer

Kelley's Five Followership Styles

It is interesting how much we focus on leadership, because in doing so, we forget about the other key players in the process: followers.

Like good leaders, good followers need to develop some sound characteristics. Consider a good sports team. We have those who lead and those who follow, at different times, and for different reasons, within a game. The team relies on the expertise and abilities of those with the required skill set, as the team needs the skills in question.

To be able to access those skills on the fly, the team has to be aware of the talents available and who possesses them. No one can be passive, and everyone has to be a good thinker.

In fact, there are two key parameters that we, as followers, need to display: critical thinking, and active behaviour.

The critical thinking is where we are mindful of what is going on around us, and of what the team needs for their outcome to be achieved. It is not about us: it is about the organisational goal.

Active behaviour is where we don't sit back and wait for others to put their hands up: we get on and do it, if we are the best qualified.

Based on these two ideas - critical thinking and active behaviour - Robert E. Kelley thought about two continua: the first being independent, critical thinking, versus dependent, uncritical thinking; the second being active versus passive behaviour.

Based on those two continua, came up with his Five Followership Styles model, which are:

1. Effective: a follower who is both a critical, independent thinker and active in behaviour. They exhibit consistent behaviour to all people, regardless of their power in the organisation, and deal well with conflict and risk. They cope with change, put forward their own views, and stay focused on what the organisation needs. They understand how others see them - so are mindful. They make acts of leadership often, and use their referent, expert, network and information power often in service of the organisation. Kelly called this group originally "The Stars".
2. Conformist: this follower type is very busy, but doesn't necessarily engage their brain to think through what it is they are doing. They participate very willingly but don't question orders. They will avoid conflict at all costs and take the quietest path, but will defend their boss to loyal extremes. Kelley originally named this follower type "The Yes-People".
3. Passive: think of a two year old who doesn't want to do something and just goes floppy. This is the passive follower. They don't engage their brain enough, nor do they take concrete action. Robert Kelley called this group "The Sheep". While not showing any initiative nor responsibility, this follower type can be the result of micro-managers or a negative, over-controlling and blame-oriented culture.
4. Alienated: this follower thinks extremely well, but for some reason often snipes from the sidelines. They have got stuck where they are, are very negative and feel they have lost their power. They have seen 'too much', have become bitter in their work from being passed over for promotion, or from having stayed too long in one position.
5. Pragmatic Survivor: this follower type I think of as the organisational 'canary in the mine-shaft'. They can flip between different followership styles, to suit each situation, and are our early warning system when the organisation's culture is starting to change for the worse. We all know that there are some people who can see the writing on the wall early: identify them and use them to ensure that your work culture remains healthy at all times.

We can't have only exemplary followers in an organisation. New people can be passive or conformist, as we all try to minimise risk until we are comfortable and more certain of our environment. We need some pragmatic survivors so when the culture starts to deteriorate, we see our canaries pulling away and can run repairs prior to a breakdown. The devil's advocates - the Alienated - amongst us can spark new ways of thinking, if we can direct their criticism wisely and help them move into new roles which avoid bitterness.

But most of our profit comes from exemplary followers, our stars. Something to remember.


Sam

References:

• Daft, Richard L. (2007). The Leadership Experience (4th Edition). USA: Thomson South-Western.
• Kelley, Robert E. (1988). In praise of followers. Harvard Business Review, November 1988, Volume 66, issue 6 (pp. 142-148).
• Rohde, Susan, & Ford, Deb (2007). Determining Your Followership Style. USA: Roosevelt University. Retrieved on 6 January 2008 from http://www.roosevelt.edu/hr/td/documents/DeterminingYourFollowershipStyle.ppt

Kim and Tui: in-group versus out-group leadership

I heard the other day about an interesting situation in a workplace. Two second year engineering degree student interns - Chris and Lou - are working in their respective engineering speciality for a firm that I know of. Chris and Lou are both realistically confident, are studying at the same University, and chat often to catch up on each other's progress.

They are working for two different heads of department; Kim and Tui, also both engineers.

What is really interesting is that Kim and Tui are leading Chris and Lou in very different ways.

Kim's intern, Chris, asks lots of questions. Kim goes and finds the answers, then tells Chris what action to take. Yet when Kim is leading full-time, permanent staff, there is more discussion. Chris is noticing a difference in Kim's leadership style which seems to apply only to him.

Tui's intern, Lou, also asks lots of questions. Tui asks Lou what action might be appropriate in this situation, and they have a discussion about possibilities. Lou usually works out what seems to be the most logical solution.

Why this is interesting, is that Chris and Lou have a common friend, Pat, who is interning at another firm nearby, whose parents know Tui.

Tui has heard - through Pat's parents - that Chris wishes that, like Lou, he was working for Tui, because he is finding it hard to stay motivated when working for Kim, is feeling a bit under-challenged, and is starting to loose confidence as an engineer.

What is happening here is an interesting pattern of leadership exchange known as 'in-group' and 'out-group' behaviours.

In-group behaviours are where we give our workers:

• the freedom to self-determine how they will tackle a job, clearly explaining what we need to achieve, then leave it largely up to the individual to decide how they will do that. That is not to say that we leave people to sink or swim: as a leader, we ask questions to help the worker to decide what would be the best actions to take, but we do not tell.
• our ear. We listen carefully to worker's suggestions and ideas, and use those ideas where they will work, giving credit to the worker. This empowers our team to be more creative, and helps everyone focus on what is in the best interests of the company.
• trust. Workers know they can try something after thinking it through and discussing it, and if they make a mistake, it will be treated as on-going learning. Mistakes are simply steps on the way to professional practice, and the same ones won't be repeated.
• challenging work. Everyone will get some interesting projects, as well as some of the routine tasks. But everyone will be expected to think.
• acknowledgement. Worker success is credited to where it is due, regardless of who that person is and what their rank is in the team.

Out-group behaviours, on the other hand, are where we dictate actions to workers; take no notice of their own suggestions; punish mistakes so we make workers tentative, stop thinking or even completely switch off; keep all the exciting jobs for ourselves; micro-manage; tell workers how we are 'right'; and keep remembering mistakes, not successes.

These two types of behaviour can happen within the same group: with one or two perceived poorer-performers treated as out-group members. Out-group treatment is a very powerful and - worse - often unconscious set of behaviours. If the leader treats someone in this way, it is often picked up by others in the group. We are a monkey-see, monkey-do animal.

The most wonderful way of working is to treat ALL our employees as in-group employees. We will find that everyone on the team, regardless of ability, starts to behave more like star performers. And once they trust that this will be our consistent behaviour, they too will become more like the stars they can be.

However, it does require us to be able to step back a little and to observe ourselves and how we relate to our people. Reflection is a powerful tool for this.

And just to finish off, Tui is having a chat with Kim, and passing on some in-group/out-group materials. Hopefully Kim will start using in-group behaviours.


Sam

References:

• Daft, Richard L. (2009). The Leadership Experience (Fourth Edition). USA: Cengage.
• Tajfel, Henri & Turner, John C. (1979). Chapter 3: An integrative theory of intergroup conflict, in W. G. Austin & S. Worchel's (Eds) The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations. USA: Brooks Cole (pp. 33-47).

H- and G-indexes... and Harzing's index

Like all human endeavour, we have the leaders in any field and the also-ran's. We humans seem to like differentiating things and deciding what equals things of higher or lower status and value: whether that be cars, clothing, music, art or writing.

So, you can understand why evaluating academic journal quality is a bit fraught when you are comparing different disciplines, longevity, universities, funding regimes, countries of origin, and  philosophical bases.

Google Scholar makes it extremely simple: it looks solely at how many times a piece of work has been cited by others. However, Google Scholar can't, with a citation, measure whether an article has been cited to refute what it says or to uphold it.

Lots of people have had a crack at more complex models: like the h-index and g-index.

The h-index was developed by Jorge Hirsch in 2005 (so quite recent), as a measure of writer's productivity and the number of citations their publications get over time. It will start low at the beginning of an academic's career, and hopefully increase over time as they get better known in their field (ie, "h of [their] N papers that have been cited at least h times each, while the rest of the N papers have less than h citations each"). Then in 2006, Leo Egghe created the g-index to measure productivity based on the writer's publication record which has a more complicated mathematical formula (something like the greatest number that the top G articles received altogether, at least G square citations). Both these indexes are used as well as the journal rankings to say whether a particular academic has cut through or not.

Then there's SCImago, the World of Knowledge database (thus Thomson Reuters Web of Science), the Aston Business School, the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (WU Wien), the Danish Ministry, HEC (Hautes Études Commerciales de Paris), the University of Queensland Excellence in Research Australia, AERES (Agence d’évaluation de la recherche et de l’enseignement supérieur), the Cranfield University School of Management, the Erasmus Research Institute of Management, the Australian Business Deans Council, FNEG (Foundation National pour l’Enseignement de la Gestion des Entreprises), The Association of Business Schools (led by Bristol and Harvey Morris).

A wonderful professor, Anne-Wil Harzing, does a table each year rating all the business management journals, which she publishes as open access on her website (here).

The Harzing journal ranking also includes the RAE ranking evaluated by Mingers and Harzing (2007), which considers a whole heap of data to come up with a summary solution, the RAE Level Descriptor:

• 4: Quality that is world leading in terms of originality, significance, and rigour.
• 3: Quality that is internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance, and rigour but which nonetheless falls short of the highest standards of excellence.
• 2: Quality that is recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance, and rigour.
• 1: Quality that is recognised nationally in terms of originality, significance, and rigour.
• Unclassified: Quality that falls below the standard of nationally recognised work. Or work which does not meet the published definition of research for the purposes of the assessment.

I like this latter measure. It seems eminently sensible to me to use one that looks at citations, h-index, g-index, university standings, and the publications themselves.


Sam

References:

• Harzing, Anne-Wil (2015). Journal Quality List. Retrieved 7 January 2015 from http://www.harzing.com/jql.htm
• HLWiki Canada (2015). Author impact metrics. Retrieved 7 January 2015 from http://hlwiki.slais.ubc.ca/index.php/Author_impact_metrics 
• Mingers, John & Harzing, Anne-Wil. (2007). Ranking journals in business and management: a statistical analysis of the Harzing data set. European Journal of Information Systems, August 2007, Volume 16, issue 4 (pp. 303-316).
• Research Gate (21 December 2012). What is the difference between H-index, i10-index, and G-index? Retrieved 7 January 2015 from https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_difference_between_H-index_i10-index_and_G-index

The Arcane Art of Academic Publication

The British Financial Times publishes a list of the 'best' business schools, which still surprisingly feeds into journal quality (Harzing, 2015). Why surprising? Because most of the academic journals are no longer owned by the schools which created them. They are instead owned by for-profit publishing houses.

Like accounting firms, there are five key players in the academic journal business. They are Reed-Elsevier, Springer, Wiley-Blackwell, Taylor & Francis, and Sage (Vocativ, 6 October 2015). When the journals were published by the schools who did the research, the Universities tended to lose money on publications. So they sold the rights - often for very little - to these five behemoth publishers.

And now, to quote a Guardian headline, "Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist" (Monbiot, 29 August 2011). That's referring to Rupert Murdoch, raper and pillager of the media empire known as News Corp. These five publishing houses vigorously police access to academic information, and charge academics like a wounded bull for that privilege.

The lecturers in the schools who actually do the research still write the articles. For free. What is more, those same researchers still peer-review all the papers submitted to those journals. Also for free (Gershman, 6 May 2014).

The editing of the articles, following the peer-review, is still done by the researchers themselves. For free. The layout and presentation of the articles to comply with the editing rules of the journal is still done by the researcher. For free. No journal article authors ever get a royalty for how many times their articles have been published, downloaded or cited. Wow. Oh, and those researchers still teach... in their spare time (Gershman, 6 May 2014).

The schools - and therefore the Universities - which created the journal articles then have to pay to read it and to share it: sometimes as much as $95 for one twelve page article. What really is crazy is that most of these articles are not even published in hardcopy any more. You just 'rent' access to a pdf of the article, usually for just 12 months. You are supposed to renew after twelve months if you still need it. Even if the original author is dead and that it should be outside copyright by now. Ouch.

The taxpayers in each country where those researchers live and teach have funded the research. Those taxpayers have also funded the tertiary institutes, the researchers, and the libraries who get the papers back in. However, those big 5 publication houses 'own' the papers. In 2011, Reed-Elsevier alone made $1.1b profit: a 36% profit (Gershman, 6 May 2014). In 2013, a 39% profit (Schmitt, 23 December 2014). Ouch again.

As a private individual, getting access to papers is nigh on impossible. You need to go through a tertiary institute. Newspapers and journos generally can't afford access either, unless you are an elite magazine like The Economist.

Worse still, lots of tertiary institutes can't afford access to the journals themselves. This not only due to the rorting of the journal system, but also because, overlying the big 5 publishers, are databases which index and search the articles themselves and lock access on behalf of the publishers.

For example, Thomson Reuters Web of Science is so expensive that neither of the institutes which I teach for can afford to pay the annual database access subscription. I was reading a post which related that the University of California San Diego library spends 2/3rds of their entire library budget to getting access to databases, and that just getting "to the Arts and Sciences collection at JSTOR -- only one of the many databases and collections of information -- [they] pay a one time charge of $45,000 and then $8,500 every year after that" (McKenna, 2012). That is ONE collection at JSTOR, which is in turn only ONE of the databases. And that 2/3rds of the library budget is journal access appears common throughout the higher education sector.

If you head off to Wikipedia and take a look at the list of databases, you will start to see that this too is a sector of a few, rich, tax-dollar parasites. Ebesco, JSTOR, ProQuest, Thomson Reuters, Wiley-Blackwell, Reed-Elsevier... starting to sound familar...?

We can find any piece of research online, by doing a Google search, or a Google Scholar search. We don't actually need the databases. What we should call them is "gatekeepers", because they lock up the articles, which we access unless we pay rental (even for a single letter published in a journal in 1939).

Considering all the research that is 'disseminated' by these companies is actually paid by the public purse, it seems madness that our tax dollars go to making these fat cats fatter.

Bring on open access. It would also significantly lower the cost of tertiary education.


Sam

References:

• Gershman, Samuel (6 May 2014). The Exploitative Economics of Academic Publishing. Retrieved 7 January 2016 from http://www.betaboston.com/news/2014/05/06/the-exploitative-economics-of-academic-publishing/
• Harzing, Anne-Wil (2015). Journal Quality List. Retrieved 7 January 2016 from http://www.harzing.com/jql.htm
• Krisch, Joshua A. (6 October 2015). These Five Corporations Control Academic Publishing. Retrieved 7 January 2016 from http://www.vocativ.com/culture/science/five-corporations-control-academic-publishing/
• McKenna, Laura (2012). Locked in the Ivory Tower: Why JSTOR Imprisons Academic Research. Retrieved 7 January 2016 from http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/locked-in-the-ivory-tower-why-jstor-imprisons-academic-research/251649/
• Monbiot, George (29 August 2011). Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist. Retrieved 7 January 2016 from http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist 
• Schmitt, Jason (23 December 2014). Academic Journals: The Most Profitable Obsolete Technology in History. Retrieved 7 January 2016 from Retrieved 7 January 2016 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-schmitt/academic-journals-the-mos_1_b_6368204.html
• The Economist (11 January 2014). No peeking… A publishing giant goes after the authors of its journals’ papers. Retrieved 7 January 2016 from http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21593408-publishing-giant-goes-after-authors-its-journals-papers-no-peeking
• Wikipedia (n.d.). List of academic databases and search engines. Retrieved 7 January 2016 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_databases_and_search_engines

The continuum of channel richness

Richard Daft in his 2009 book, The Leadership Experience, explores a continuum of channel richness for leadership communication. The 'richness' is influenced by three key characteristics: first, the ability for the sender and the receiver to handle simultaneous multiple cues; second, facilitating rapid two-way feedback; and lastly, building personalised communication.

In considering the diagram above, face to face communication is the richest form because of our ability to convey a great deal information instantaneously. 7% of our communication is from our words, with 93% collectively being delivered from our tone, inflexion, emphasis accent, phrasing, body language, eye-contact, hand movements, facial expressions, "hearing a smile", "sensing a lie", emotional connection, mirroring, and touch. This provides the 'best' in channel richness.

While once it was also hard to record a conversation, to accurately remember and to share what was said, these days you can capture the salient points via smartphone video or voice to text. The remaining potential disadvantage, that of spontaneity, remains. We can say things in the heat of the moment that are incorrect, inaccurate or unwarranted.

The next-most rich communication channel, due to technology advances, is video conferencing software such as Skype or Google Hangouts. The advantage of video conferencing is that we have immediate two-way feedback, we can record the communication, and we can converse with a number of people at once.

Next comes phone. We lose our sight senses, but can still hear tone, inflexion, emphasis accent, phrasing, "hearing a smile", and "sensing a lie" from hesitations and choice of words. While this is still rich, it is nowhere near as rich as face to face. Additionally, while a phone call can be recorded, it is still not normal to do so.

Following this is email, texting, online chat or instant messaging (IM) and, at the far end of this section, posting comments to social media or websites (where there is slightly more time delay). These text only forms of communication lack the visual and verbal cues but it's now used for the kind of communications. Will once handled by phone simply because the speed and reduction and long distance telephone cost the companies most successful in this area are those who supplement electronic media with the human touch. We have a record of what was said, we can share it, we have feedback often very quickly.

Then we have video, which provides all the visual cues of face to face communication, but lacks two-way immediacy. However, we could delay dissemination and post via digital media with online chat and feedback.

Then we have memos and letters, which while able to be personalized, often isn't done well. These days letters and memos are felt to be an imposition, old-fashioned, command-and-control, or 'telling'. There is a very slow feedback cycle on this type of leadership communication. While not the lowest in richness, it is almost the lowest, as it is often not focused on the needs of the receiver, but on the needs of the sender. While, like email or chat, there is a record of what has been said, and written work is usually relatively well thought through - and reasonably easy to share with an intended audience - it feels impersonal, arms-length and lacking in  immediacy and any opportunity for negotiation.  This is a closed process.

Not a good communication channel, but it can be a good summary and formal finaliser of what was earlier discussed and decided upon.

Lastly is the formal report which is the least channel richness-oriented piece of communication. It is very impersonal, only goes one way and there is usually no opportunity for feedback. The advantages are that we have a clear record, and it is usually well thought through and it's often easy to share with a very wide range of people.

So when we consider all these forms of communication, we can see almost immediately that face to face, video conferencing, phone, or email/chat/IM should form our most common communication channels.

If we cannot be present at the time, video conferencing provides us with a rich channel option, just without the feedback (though we can create a feeling of immediacy by posting on a digital media platform with a feedback function).

The more formal ones should be avoided, except as follow-up on richer channels. They no longer provide sound leadership communication.


Sam

• Reference: Daft, Richard R. (2009). The Leadership Experience (Fourth Edition). USA: Cengage (diagram p. 280).

Plain Text Pasting

If you are like me, and do a lot of copying, pasting, sythesising and rewriting, and get frustrated by trailing formatting which adversely affects your pasting, then I have a great tip for you.

In Word, you can set your default paste option to plain text. Even better, setting up Word this way should work in Outlook as well (well, it does in mine).

That doesn't mean that you can no longer copy and paste images or formatting: it just means you have to select 'Paste' from the Ribbon when you need to do that, or use the right-click menu.

To set up plain text paste as your default option in Word, go to File | Options | Advanced | Cut, Copy, and Paste, and then for all four pasting options, set to "Keep Text Only", and click OK. And, as an added bonus, if that little "Paste options" button that pops up when you do paste irritates the daylights out of you, directly underneath your paste options is where you can send it to bye byes forever by unticking it.

Hope that makes your life easier :-)


Sam

TCFEX Courses on Udemy: a review

When it comes to technical MOOCs, I am a staunch Udemy fan. I really like how course materials on Udemy are mostly video and organised in a chapter-like way, segueing you seamlessly from element to element.

Having been pondering doing my PhD for about a year, in August 2015 I got a Udemy specials emailer with some research-related courses advertised. I signed up for two free courses from an Israeli educator called  TCFEX LLC. The papers I signed up for were "Write Research Papers & Get Your Research Published" and "Overview of Research Tools & Writing a research proposal". 

Most of  TCFEX's papers are $300 a pop, so auditing a couple of courses for free seemed like a good idea. Then in January 2016, I got another Udemy specials emailer with two other TCFEX units for USD$10 each: "Writing a Thesis, Paper or Research Project: Getting Started" and "Transform your Research Paper Writing: Starting to Write".

I signed up for both - for NZD$30 for the two - or one fifth the price of an academic textbook. Even if the courses told me nothing new, this was a low-risk investment.

I started watching the "Overview of Research Tools & Writing a research proposal" course - signed up for in August but not yet started - first, as I figured that would be the first in the series of what I had signed up for.

However, this appears to be the last in the series... however, it does seem to stand fairly well alone, so I have persevered.

Having now almost completed this - last - course, I have learned some new things. It very briefly explores search engines, databases, h-factors, ISI ratings, citation indexing, keywords and the research proposal structure. There are some interesting writing tips, but the main benefit is access to a MindMeister mind map packed full of research tools which all the TCFEX courses appear to be based around (link here).

This mindmap really is a treasure trove. It contains a lot of resources which I had not previously discovered, and which will be very useful in both my teaching and writing.

However, the courses themselves are like the difference between a screenplay and a book: a screenplay has a skeletal outline and only just links the elements. The TCFEX courses are screenplays. Exploration of the elements is extremely brief, just giving us the sketchiest reasons for a more comprehensive exploration of the tools.

However, it is enough to start us off: we can then decide how much we need to focus on each tool, or whether to discard it.

I will complete all four units, but I suspect that there will be a fair bit of repetition between all the units that I have bought - having already had a bit of a preview of the others while trying to work out which one I should be starting with.

When considering post-graduate studies, the courses are definitely worth a look if free or on special at USD$10. In my view they are not worth anywhere near the normal price of USD$300 each, though.


Sam

References:

• TCFEX (2013). Research Tools by Nader Ale Ebrahim. Retrieved 4 January 2016 from https://www.mindmeister.com/39583892/research-tools-by-nader-ale-ebrahim
• Udemy (n.d.). TCFEX Search. Retrieved 4 January 2016 from https://www.udemy.com/courses/search/?q=TCFEX&src=ukw&lang=en

Planning for Action Research Data Collection

Sagor (2000) suggests that tabulating your research questions and aims can help you think through more specifically about what data you need in order to triangulate your action research project.

He suggests that we write our research question into the left-most column of a four column table on the first row. In the second column we record one data source, another in the third and another in the fourth.

We then add each of our research aims into individual additional rows, and complete the required data sources for each one.

For example, our research question might be "Could we motivate our [students] to conduct and complete Real World Advocacy Projects?", with the data sources recorded as 'Teacher journals', 'Student surveys' and 'Grade book records' (Sagor, 2000).

We then need to review our table and ask ourselves if these are the best data sources we can collect in order to answer each of our questions. When we are satisfied with our answer to each question, we have completed our data collection plan.

Dick (2005) suggests that we can then make an action research data collection plan by creating a three column spreadsheet list. Using our triangulation data sources from Sagor above as a base, we can brainstorm further ideas and form a more complete list. We key in all our sources (in rough chronological order) in the left-most column.

In the second column, we key in the date that we estimate - our earliest “realistic” date -  that each item needs to be completed by.

In the third column, we record any additional resources, support or help that we need to accomplish each item. We need to get specific: noting names and contact details of people, resources or organisations.

That should then give us a fairly clear data collection plan for our action research project.


Sam

References:

• Dick, Bob (2005). Approaching an action research thesis:  an overview. Retrieved 30 December 2015 from http://www.aral.com.au/resources/phd.html
• Sagor, Richard (2000). Chapter 9 Data Collection: Building a Valid and Reliable Data Collection Plan. Retrieved 30 December 2015 from http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/100047/chapters/Data-Collection@-Building-a-Valid-and-Reliable-Data-Collection-Plan.aspx

Action Research Definition & Triangulation

Action research was defined by Hult and Lennung in 1980 as an approach that "simultaneously assists in practical problem-solving and expands scientific knowledge, as well as enhances the competencies of the respective actors, being performed collaboratively in an immediate situation using data feedback in a cyclical process aiming at an increased understanding of a given social situation, primarily applicable for the understanding of change processes in social systems and undertaken within a mutually acceptable ethical framework" (p. 247).

Hult and Lennung's definition, while 35 years old, still appears to be drawn on as being the 'most' valid definition of this type of research design.

According to Hult and Lennung (1980), there are six key aspects to action research that we need to be aware of. They are:

1. Understanding an immediate, and complex, social situation
2. "Simultaneously assisting in practical problem-solving AND expanding scientific knowledge" which allows for both interpretive observation assumptions and active researcher participation as a collection instrument (Hult & Lennung, 1980, p. 247; Baskerville, 1999)
3. Collaboration with and through participants
4. Cyclical process
5. Seeks to unpick the process of change
6. Ethical framework

Because action research is a unique and different approach, allowing the researcher to take a dual role of both observer and process participant, planning for action research is a little different to normal.  It is harder, when being an active participant, to ensure that the data collected is reliable, generalisable and has validity.

Ensuring sound data triangulation is, according to Dick (2005), the accepted method for covering reliability, generalisability and validity when undertaking action research.
Dick proposed that there are three aspects to ensuring triangulation in action research: that of the planning itself, the action we take, and in reflecting after the action. These three things help embed the cyclic nature of action research that Hult and Lennung (1980) specify in their definition. 

Further, Dick (2005) suggests that these three aspects break down into seven component parts, which will help to ensure that data is well triangulated:

1. PLAN: Decide which questions you wish to have answered;  if this is the first step in the process, it may be a very broad question (eg,  "How does this system work?").
2. PLAN: Decide who to ask, and how to ask them
3. ACTION: Ask
4. REFLECTION: Check the information you collected, and devise ways of testing it in the next cycle.
5. REFLECTION: Interpret the information. What does it mean?  Devise ways of testing your interpretation in the next cycle.
6. REFLECTION: Check the adequacy of your choice of participants and way of collecting information.  Amend them for the next cycle if desirable.
7. REFLECTION: Check your data and interpretation against the relevant literature;  you may not do this for every step, but may limit it to every few cycles.

We then use this seven step check-list to hone our methodology, questions, and participant sampling for our next cycle.


Sam

References:

• Baskerville, R. L. (1999). Investigating Information Systems with Action Research. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 2(19), 2-31. https://doi.org/10.17705/1CAIS.00219
• Dick, B. (2005). Approaching an action research thesis:  an overview. Retrieved 30 December 2015 from http://www.aral.com.au/resources/phd.html
• Hult, M., & Lennung, S.‐Å. (1980). Towards a definition of action research: a note and bibliography. Journal of Management Studies, 17(2), 241-250. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.1980.tb00087.x

Micro-action planning

Many PhD scholars try to create large periods of time to work in, but, as most of us don’t plan that well, and scholars often have far too much to do, that required free time simply does not materialise.

So a good strategy for when we know that there will not be large periods of time to get our research done in is to do micro-projects each day.

Firstly we need to take the time to create a thorough research project management plan, chunking tasks down into small and complete-able actions which will only take five to ten minutes each.

While this require us to do some pretty in-depth planning, making a list of micro-tasks which we can complete each day will help to keep us connected to our research and ensure that we continue to make incremental progress.

With these tasks being so small, they can be completed any time that we find ourselves with five minutes to spare.



Sam

• Reference: Jain, Dr. Rachna (n.d.). Do a little each day. Retrieved 30 December 2015 from http://completeyourdissertation.com/blog/105/do-a-little-each-day/