The concept of ‘researcher as research instrument’ within the hinterlands of research

Hinterland by Mike the Mountain via Flickr

Piantanida & Garman (1999) present a theory to expand the notion of qualitative inquiry to present it as a method and a logic of justification for the research study.  Their theory makes explicit the notion of the ‘researcher as research instrument’ (other references to ‘researcher as research instrument’ include Guba & Lincoln, 1981 ; Shindler & Case, 1996 ; Piantanida & Garman, 1999 p. 139; Janesick, 2001 ; Meloy, 2002 p. 61; Merriam, 2002 ; Patton, 2002 p. 109; Janesick, 2003 p. 47).

…the researcher is as much a part of the inquiry as the intent of the study and the inquiry process.  In fact, the researcher’s thinking lies at the heart of the inquiry…Ill-conceived dissertation folklore…contribute[s] to “dissertation block” by diverting attention from the very wellspring of knowledge that feeds the dissertation—that is, students’ own professional experiences, personal intellectual concerns, and assumptions about knowledge (Piantanida & Garman, 1999, p. 24).

Engagement with the ‘researcher as research instrument’ notion is very much dependent on the researcher’s worldview and their own ontological, epistemological and axiological underpinnings of what constitutes acceptable research.  Just how explicit this position is ‘owned up to’ is also dependent on the underlying assumptions and within the social contexts of acceptable research practice within disciplines and theoretical schools of thought.  The continuum for making this position explicit (or not) runs from an objective (values free) stance where the notion of ‘researcher as research instrument’ may be hidden from view to the subjective (values laden) position where it may be fully declared. 

Whether this position is indeed visible or hidden it is nevertheless in play in the everyday decision making and conduct of research, for example:

• The patterns of reading the literature
• Who is seen as expert, novice, practitioner and what weight is thus accorded?
• Intuition, insight and subjectiveness
  • Are these and other ‘soft’ skills used to guide decisions about the research?
• Researcher’s experience in the world, at work and in research?
• How much of this is drawn upon to come up with a do-able research project?
• How the research is written, how the researcher is positioned within the text.

The notion of ‘researcher as research instrument’, therefore takes root in the ontological, epistemological and axiological underpinnings of what constitutes acceptable research for each of us.  From here it will manifest (or be hidden) in the selection of research methods and in the research text itself.  For those of you who are undertaking research, have you thought much about the position of ‘researcher as research instrument’ ?

Your comments welcome:

How do you, see yourself (more or less depending on technique, method, philosophical framework) as part of the creation of the ‘text’ and ‘data’? (Take the poll above)

Do you see this position as being ‘not about me but through me’ in your own research work?

What resonates most strongly here?

Attached is the discussion paper and readings on this topic which were prepared for the RMIT Qualitative Inquiry Special Interest Group meeting of 5-May-09.

References

Guba, E. G. & Lincoln, Y. S. 1981. The evaluator as instrument, Effective evaluation, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, pp. 128 – 152.

Janesick, V. J. 2001. Intuition and Creativity: A Pas de Deux for Qualitative Researchers. Qualitative Inquiry, 7 (5), pp. 531 – 540. http://qix.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/7/5/531

Janesick, V. J. 2003. The choreography of qualitative research design: minuets, improvisations, and crystallization. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Strategies of qualitative inquiry, 2nd ed., Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 46 – 79.

Meloy, J. M. 2002. Writing the qualitative dissertation: understanding by doing.  (2nd ed.) Mahwah, N.J., Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Merriam, S. B. 2002. Qualitative research in practice: examples for discussion and analysis.  San Francisco, Calif. ; Jossey-Bass.

Patton, M. Q. 2002. Qualitative research and evaluation methods.  (3rd ed.) Thousand Oaks, Calif., Sage Publications.

Piantanida, M. & Garman, N. B. 1999. The qualitative dissertation: a guide for students and faculty.  London, Sage.

Shindler, J. V. & Case, R. E. 1996. Apperception and Meaning Making in the World of Qualitative Inquiry: An Examination of Novice Qualitative Researchers, Annual AERA Meeting. New York,  AERA.

Bibliography

Denzin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y. S. 2008. Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials.  (3rd ed.) Thousand Oaks, Calif., Sage.

Kamler, B. & Thomson, P. 2006. Helping Doctoral Students Write: Pedagogies for Supervision.  Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, Routledge.

Law, J. 2004. After Method: Mess in Social Science Research.  London ; New York, Routledge.

Announcement: Leadership Masterclass for HE leaders

I’m very pleased to announce that I am running a leadership program in 2009 for ATEM and the L H Martin Institute based on my PhD topic. This program is for senior academic and administrative leaders in the tertiary education sector and is a residential program to be held at the Deakin Mgt Centre 10 – 12 February, 2009.

This Leadership Masterclass sets an ambitious agenda to test leadership literacies for the knowledge era, think in the future tense and give executive leaders much needed space for personal reflection and renewal to think deeply about their purpose and pathways to excellence.

The tertiary education sector is competitive, dynamic, multi-layered and globally focussed and new leadership literacies draw on the leader’s ability to build strong relationships, know themselves and their people well, and, lead with vision and strategy. These times call for new ways of doing business, not more of the same things that are not working.

This Leadership Masterclass has four foci:

Reflect, Recharge, Renew (built in to the whole residential program)
Values, Vision and Valour (led by Deborah Nanschild)
Engage, Empower, Enlighten (led by Heather Davis), and
Focus, inFluence and Futures (led by Maree Conway)

I’d really appreciate it if you could send this on to your communities of practice and get the word out for me.

Please see http://www.waypoint.com.au/Masterclass2009.html for full details, cost and registration details. Earlybird closes on 20 December.

Scholarly Impact Seminar with Prof Andrew Pettigrew

The duty of intellectuals in society is to make a difference (Sir Thomas More–shortly before his execution in 1535)

Had the pleasure of attending Andrew Pettigrew’s seminar today on “increasing the scholarly impact and policy impact of research” where he called on researchers to rise to the challenge of the ‘double hurdle’–that is addressing both scholarly quality and relevance in their work; and by reaching out and connecting with the ‘real world’.  His concern that academics are mostly ‘invisible’ within the academy and viewed with ‘indifference’ by practitioners in the field has led him to consider ‘impact’ (a final good) rather than ‘output’ (intermediate good) as a way to measure scholarly and policy impact.

He sits on a UK council that oversees their RAE process and that committee is encouraging measures of impact (exactly what has recently been taken out of the Australian equivalent).

Andrew’s work in this area advocates co-production with stakeholders as a means of scholarly impact, and this premise is similar to Andrew Van de Ven’s ideas around “Engaged Scholarship“.

Catch up blog #1

>>> 3 March, 2008: Began a 3 year full time PhD scholarship with RMIT’s School of Management. My research concerns identifying leadership literacies for the knowledge era and applying them to Higher Education in Australia. My supervisors are Assoc Prof Sandra Jones and Dr Peter Macauley.

>>> 20 June, 2008: Began to use social software as a way to share my research journey and and have subscribed to Twitter and Facebook .

>>> 5 August, 2008: Had my first sole authored refereed journal article published:

Davis, H. (2008) Golden Capital, Living Asset Stewardship and other kindred intangibles: Can we measure up? International Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management,Vol 8, No 1, pp. 137-146. [view online] [download from publisher]

>>> 20 October, 2008: Successfully defended my proposal at a RMIT School of Management Confirmation Seminar.

>>> 25 October, 2008: Added LinkedIn to the social software.

Working with literatures

The word ‘subjunctive’ was added to the glossary today. This word was used to convey the possibilities of different endings or having a ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ feel to it, in that wonderful 2006 film “The History boys“.

There is also a great passage in this film where “Hector” the English Lit teacher is speaking to a student (Posner) about ideas and past authors and that magical moment when a thought of one’s own manifests itself in the form of someone else’s writing.  Hector describes this as:

…the best moments in reading are when you come across something—a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things—that you’d thought special and particular to you.  And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, maybe even someone long dead.  It’s as if a hand has come out [of the book] and taken yours.

It illustrates that whilst our own new found knowledge feels ‘new’ to us that the idea has probably been pondered upon before us and others will ‘find’ it after us. I think this is what “working with the literatures” (Kamler & Thomson 2006) is all about and I have had several of these magical moments myself, especially around the work of Mary Parker Follett from the 1920s. Kamler and Thomson move the notion of ‘the literature review’ from a passive, perhaps ‘preceding the research-not so much a part of it’ activity to one that is embedded and actively engaged with throughout the whole PhD study.

Reference

Kamler, B. & Thomson, P. 2006. Helping doctoral students write: pedagogies for supervision. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, Routledge

Social complexity theory for sense seeking: Unearthing leadership mindsets for unknowable and uncertain times

I have just had a paper published which outlines the thinking behind the framing of my PhD study.  It is published in the Emergence: Complexity and Organization Journal (E:CO 17.1) and this issue as well as all others, are currently offered for the time being as open source as the journal moves into a new online platform.

Abstract: This exposition considers perspectives underpinning contemporary leadership studies given we are located in what Hawking describes as the ‘century of complexity’, also understood as a Knowledge Era. Social complexity as context allows consideration of the turbulence our times without looking for guaranteed, certain, or ‘right’ answers and allows us to work with these conditions, rather than succumb to threat rigidity, pretend they do not exist, or think they are someone else’s problem. To make sense of these conditions requires ontological and cognitive shifts of mindset that more closely match the ‘requisite variety’ of the complexities of our times. The paper draws upon a PhD interpretive inquiry which identified cogent leadership literacies for the 21^st century and explored them within Australian university settings. Various cognitive frames feature in this paper and serve to illuminate possibilities for scholars and practitioners seeking fresh approaches for leadership studies for a Knowledge Era. Whilst there are many contemporary scholars already doing so it is also clear that the ontological shifts are not easy and that archaic mindsets are difficult to dislodge even in light of wicked problems like the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 or environmental disasters.

You can find this issue at https://journal.emergentpublications.com/article_tag/volume-17-issue-1/

 

Myths about research cultures

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This blog is a repost from  Tseen Khoo, aka The Research Whisperer, Great work Tseen.

The Research Whisperer

As I was digesting information about the funding cuts a few weeks ago, I read Kate Bowles’ considered piece on the folly of applying an “efficiency dividend” to higher education.

At the time, I wanted to blog more specifically on the idea of applying such a mechanistic and corrosive idea as an “efficiency dividend” to research institutions and the effect it would have on research cultures.

When I sat down to type it up, I realised that it would be a long, tedious rant that no-one would want to read.

What I thought might be more useful is a post focused on myths about research cultures, and letting these cultures’ specific, complex forms speak for themselves.

Universities and institutes scrambling for pieces of the (often shrinking) grant pie is a narrative as old as time. OK, maybe not quite that old, but certainly old enough to scar the past…

View original post 723 more words

Taking a punt on Leadership Development: Improving the ‘odds’ for R&D of leadership in changed and changing times

This post is the abstract for a workshop I will be co-presenting with my colleague Dr Fiona Kennedy, Senior Leadership Facilitator and Researcher, New Zealand Leadership Institute at the ILA Oceania Conference in Auckland next week.  There are a couple of questions at the end you are most welcome to respond to here on the blog.

To take a ‘punt’ on leadership development invites the surfacing of knowledge claims, and the mindsets that underpin these claims. This approach is supported by Cilliers (2002) who argues that only modest claims for ostensibly unknowable conditions exist, and that we need to be careful about the reach of our knowledge claims as well as the constraints that make any such claims possible (p. 256). Therefore considering the reach of our knowledge claims and as well as surfacing contemporary constraints invites all of us who are involved in leadership development to delve deeper into conversations about we might be gambling with and what we might do to improve the ‘odds’.

In this session we identify and investigate ways of working with, and talking about, contemporary conditions for leadership development that are marked by volatility, ambiguity, complexity and uncertainty (VUCA). We focus on leadership development that is characterized more as ‘mindset’ work rather than ‘skillset’ work since the former orientation is more strongly connected to contemporary conditions and less attached to ‘known’ outcomes. We identify some of the language and ideas that can help us engage and work with unknowns while also ‘knowing’ something worthwhile about our effort and investment.

This session will proceed as follows. First, Heather will set the scene by describing the sense-making frames of social complexity. Next Fiona will describe mindset oriented leadership development work and some of the implications for evaluation in conditions of uncertainty. However the real work of this session is to bring “researchers, developers and learning and development practitioners out of their respective worlds and into conversation together”. Therefore the bulk of this session will be focused on activities to elicit discussion amongst participants in order to grow our understanding of the tensions, conflicts and opportunities that are faced by different dimensions of the leadership development community as we negotiate more modest claims for the important work we are invested in in these times of uncertainty.

Questions to begin these conversations may include:

1. What language might practitioners be using to address conditions of uncertainty on the one hand and the inherent pressures associated with expected ‘outcomes’ of leadership development to be known ahead of time on the other?

2. What conflicts and tensions are at play as we encounter uncertainty and how might academics and practitioners help or hinder themselves and each other in negotiating this terrain?

3. Who is ‘the house’, if the ‘house’ always wins?

References

Cilliers, P. 2002. Why we cannot know complex things completely. Emergence, 4(1/2): pp. 77-84.

Thesis is passed and published

Happy to report that my PhD thesis ‘Leadership Literacies for Professional Staff in Universities’ has now been published at http://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/view/rmit:160335.

This blog was part of my action learning approach to my research and study and my grateful thanks go to all who engaged with this work along the way.

Abstract:

This interpretive inquiry explored leadership approaches for professional staff working in contemporary universities. It was underpinned by an emergent methodology grounded in American Pragmatist philosophy, Critical Management Studies theory and was framed as a qualitative act of inquiry.

A framework, comprising Worldly, Sustaining, Leadingful, Relational and Leadingful Leadership Literacies was constructed. This framework emerged from reflections about, and the critical examination of, leadership studies in changing times. Influences such as complexity as a sense making frame; mindsets emanating from different eras; as well as language and power relations were explored.

The framework was empirically explored by looking for signs of these Leadership Literacies in relation to professional staff working in universities. This was undertaken, first with a thematic exploration of two published Australian university leadership research reports for signs of theoretical congruence with the Leadership Literacies. Second, a survey of professional staff eliciting lived experiences of work and leadership were analysed for signs of the Leadership Literacies in practice, using a qualitative Framework Analysis.

This research found indications of the five emergent leadership literacies identified in the framework having theoretical congruence and observed in practice of professional staff working in Australian universities. This suggests that the Leadership Literacies framework is well positioned to ground ongoing research and analysis of these emergent leadership concerns for professional staff working in universities.

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 5,600 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 9 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

The thesis has been submitted…Leadership Literacies for Professional Staff in Universities

Lucas de Groot (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

I’m very happy to report that I submitted my thesis ‘Leadership Literacies for Professional Staff in Universities’ last week. Here is a snippet about the findings and also my acknowledgements page.

Leadership Literacies for Professional Staff in Universities

The first discovery of my thesis was the naming of the Worldly, Sustaining, Leadingful, Relational and Learningful Leadership Literacies that I proposed were appropriate for leadership for professional staff in 21st century universities.  These indicate that the focus of leadership studies has moved from all about the leader (as it was in the 20^th century) to the work of leadership that everyone does in knowledge-intensive enterprises (and into what is termed in the literature, a post-heroic leadership space). The next two discoveries found that these LL’s were evident in i) theorisations of higher education leadership research projects (The Scott report Learning Leaders In Times of Change and the Jones & Ryland report that synthesised 4 ALTC research projects about distributed learning prospects for Australian universities); and ii) in the data elicited from the lived experiences of work and leadership given by 226 ATEM professional staff members.  In naming one of the LL’s ‘Sustaining’ I was able to test for human sustainability indicators and these results are less rosy than the rest, and this is reflected in my final reflections. These discoveries led to my finding that the Worldly, Sustaining, Leadingful, Relational and Learningful Leadership Literacies were appropriate and indeed indicated as congruent with leadership for professional staff working in universities.

7.3 Final Reflections

My final reflections I turn to three ideas emerging in unison as I contemplate putting the final full stop in this thesis. These are about amplification, the idea of ‘leadership as the business of energy management’ and how these relate to the people I have featured in this thesis, professional staff in Australian universities.

I have spoken several times already about amplifying the considerable body of literature that is now encapsulated within the Worldly, Sustaining, Leadingful, Relational and Learningful Leadership Literacies. This thesis has also amplified the voices of professional staff working in universities, who as Szekeres (2004) reasoned in her search for them in higher education discourse, were ‘invisible workers’. I captured as many of these voices that wanted to be heard and they had much to say about work and leadership in universities in this early part of the 21^st century. One of the key messages I discerned from their accounts was about energy management, having positioned this as a leadership concern within my Sustaining Leadership Literacy. Given the recollections in Martin’s (1999) research that I shared in this thesis, about the effects of change and turbulence on academic staff, there are similarities in the responses given by professional staff, some ten years later. I gave two accounts of academics voicing their frustration and sense of despair from Martin’s research*. These sentiments have been shared by my participants, and one quote, from Martha, eloquently encapsulates similar frustrations (and risks):

We seem to be working longer and longer hours—I regularly work a 50+ week and also work on the weekend. Most of my colleagues are in similar positions, this situation will increasingly take a toll on our health, work productivity and organizational sustainability. However, what can we do about it? Martha (Generation Jones (Late Boomer), Go8 Manager)

I regard this as a key leadership challenge in universities at this time. I am also struck, yet again, by the prescience of Mary Parker Follett, and her grasp of these concerns so long ago. She was a person ahead of her time. This leads me to ponder whether she may also be ahead of ours in light of her messages about making the connection between leadership and energy management stronger.

Whoever connects me with the hidden springs of all life, whoever increases the sense of life in me is my leader (Follett 1928, p. 294).

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*This from earlier in the thesis in the chapter on Australian HE leadership…

Another notable work is Elaine Martin’s Changing Academic Work: Developing the Learning University (1999). Connecting student learning theory with then nascent ‘learning organisation’ literature to frame her study, Martin captured the effects of change in academic work through the lived experience of academics. In this snapshot of change in the UK and Australia, Martin reflected that it did “not make happy reading. They paint a picture of despondence and frustration, with the occasional pocket of optimism” (p. 13). The research revealed 60% of leaders, as well as 80% of academics (in non-leadership positions), complained that accountability was excessive (p. 17). Their concern was “not with accountability itself, but with the battery of accountability mechanisms which they saw as getting in the way of real work” (p. 17). In addition, Martin captured the effects of change on people, something that I emulate in the next chapter, albeit with a different cohort of university staff. She found that while 77% of leaders felt ‘undervalued’, so did 88% of academics (in non-leadership positions) [p. 21]. Two statements from contributors to Martin’s study are especially poignant, and support my argument that energy management is a key leadership responsibility in the 21^st century:

The first, airs frustration: “I feel like the miller’s daughter in Rumpelstiltskin. Each day I do the impossible, I perform the miracle—but there is only greed for more, never gratitude for what I am doing” [Senior Lecturer, Social Science] (p. 21).

The next is simply heartbreaking: “I gave to my work what I should have given to my family, I now have no family … and soon may have no job” [Lecturer, Economics] (p. 22).

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge my supervisor Sandra Jones for her encouragement, single-mindedness and considerable understanding of what it takes to stay on course as I traversed a lot of territory; and for knowing when to let me explore and when to rein me in. As a practice-led researcher I came with ideas and a passion for this topic which, under Sandra’s counsel, were galvanised into a plan of inquiry. I sincerely thank her for her encouragement, good humour, intellect and staying power. Special mention and thanks, Sandra, for your ability to finally move my resistant focus stemming from these ideas and passion for my profession to what is expected to be in (and out) of a thesis in the discipline of management.

Peter Macauley, my second supervisor, is acknowledged for his encouragement and the collegial working relationship we have shared for thirty years. Having someone who knew me well was invaluable for my own personal journey especially since my identity has shifted, was unmade and remade in the process of this experience. Thanks Pete for your practical and strategic advice, gleaned from your own doctoral education research focus, it was invaluable.

I also acknowledge the support and assistance of RMIT for their research training program, their RMIT/APA full-time Scholarship, as well as the opportunities afforded by presenting at international conferences in Rome and London.

I have many people to thank for their support during this time. Of special mention are my fellow doctoral students Deb Nanschild, Anne Hiha, David Holzmer, Ailsa Haxell and Robyn Ward for the many conversations shared which led me to deeper understandings of my inquiry (and theirs). Thanks to Chris Bigum for the generous chats about all things philosophical. Thanks also to Terry Evans for his initial encouragement to begin the journey and for wisdom shared during many coffees since.

Special thanks to the 226 Association for Tertiary Education Management (ATEM) colleagues who took the time to participate in this research project. This would not have been possible without the support of Maree Conway and Giles Pickford (ATEM Secretariat) who agreed to act as the conduit between myself, as researcher, and the potential participants for this study. Thank you, Linda McKellar, ATEM Vice President, for your wisdom and as conference travelling companion for several overseas conferences; Stephen Weller, President of ATEM, for your commendations of support and encouragement. Thanks also goes to my focus group of experts who tested the survey for relevance and ease of use.

Last but no means least are my family. I would not have been able to take time out to undertake this inquiry as a full-time student without the support of my partner, Philip. His encouragement, support and culinary skills sustained me during this time. I dedicate this thesis to my children Ashleah and Rohan who have been as supportive of my studies as I have been of theirs. They have been the inspiration to look afresh at leadership and hopefully they (and their generation) will benefit from, and indeed champion, the kinds of 21^st leadership literacies I have introduced in this thesis.

Leadership as Energy Management: Reconnecting Humanist Concerns with Leadership for Knowledge-Intensive Enterprises

I presented at ATEM’s Bass Region Conference: Wellbeing: People and Places on May 11.  Here is the abstract.

We find ourselves today, in the second decade of the 21st century, embedded in a knowledge-intensive era (Uhl-Bien et al 2007) framed by the interrelationships between knowledge production as the main driver of growth and wealth creation, globalisation, massification of education and deepening concerns about our world’s environmental sustainability.  The shift is towards a different approach, not yet named or fully understood, yet emerging as leadership perspectives appropriate today’s VUCA[1] (Johansen, 2009) conditions that frame our work in Australia Tertiary Education today.

One definition of leadership that accords with these conditions is that “leaders are in the business of energy management” (Kets de Vries, 2003 p. 111).  This definition acknowledges that leadership is deeply bound to the sustainable use of our creative energies.  It also elevates the judicious governance of energy of self, others and the environment alongside, not subordinate to, financial governance, and therefore towards more holistic approaches to governance (Elkington, 1998; Bragdon, 2006).  This approach calls different and deeper ways of thinking about our world, our worldviews and our leadership and research practices.  It has resonance with the Human Relations Movement from the 1930s (Follett 1925) that remained unprivileged for much of the 20^th century but has since been rediscovered in the 21^st century as a theoretical basis to work with effectively with today’s VUCA environment.  For example, it can provide the language for leaders and followers to articulate what they may have long felt—that profits above all else and rampant consumerism are not serving the purpose of our lives and they are leading to unsustainable business practices that are harming people and the planet (Evans, 2008).

Human Sustainability Development excercise.  This is how audience members rated institution, all in second wave development stages.

My research has found that appropriate leadership literacies for the Knowledge Era rest on these humanist principles which expand governance to include human, environmental and financial energies.  Such leadership understandings bring issues of sustainability and complexity into the leadership fold, based on the premise that leadership is not set apart from the living systems—human and environmental—that we serve (Davis, 2010a, b).  Here the term literacy suggests more than just the ability to read and write, to be literate also implies a deeper understanding of the particular phenomenon under review and the ability to make sense of, embody, interpret and interact with complex sources of information and experiences inherent in that domain.The literacies emerging from my inquiry have been named as ‘Worldly’, ‘Sustaining’, ‘Leaderful’, ‘Relational’ and ‘Learningful’ Leadership Literacies for the Knowledge Era and these have been tested for signs whether they have yet been theorised and experienced in Australian universities.  To test for signs of observation and experience, some ATEM members were asked about their lived experience of work and leadership during the period November 2009-February 2010 in an online survey.  The results relating to whether the ‘Sustaining Literacy’ had been observed or experienced will be the focus of this presentation, particularly the results pertaining to human sustainability development and energy management drivers that have been investigated as part of this inquiry. 

References

Bragdon, J. H. 2006. Profit for life, how capitalism excels:  Case studies in living asset management. Cambridge, MA: Society for Organization Learning Inc.

Davis, H. 2010a. Other-centredness as a leadership attribute: From ego to eco centricity. Journal of Spirituality, Leadership and Management, 4(1): pp. 43-52.

Davis, H. 2010b. The sustainability zeitgeist as a gps for worldly leadership within the discourse of globalisation, European Academy of Management 10th Annual Conference: Back to the future. Rome: EURAM.

Elkington, J. 1998. Cannibals with forks: The triple bottom line of 21st century business. Gabriola Island, BC ; Stony Creek, CT: New Society Publishers.

Evans, P. 2008. Is an alternative globalization possible? Politics Society, 36(2): pp. 271 – 305.

Follett, M. P. 1925. Dynamic administration: The collected papers (H.C. Metcalf & L.F. Urwick 1940 ed.). New York: Harper & Bros.

Johansen, R. 2009. Leaders make the future: Ten new leadership skills for an uncertain world. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Kets de Vries, M. F. R. 2003. Leaders, fools and imposters:  Essays on the psychology of leadership (Rev ed.). New York: iUniverse Inc.

Klenke, K. 2008. Qualitative research in the study of leadership. Bingley, UK: Emerald.

Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R., & McKelvey, B. 2007. Complexity leadership theory: Shifting leadership from the industrial age to the knowledge era. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(4): pp. 298-318.

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[1] Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA)

Servant Leadership Theory as an indicator of the Worldly Knowledge Era Leadership Literacy

Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My abstract has been accepted for the Global Servant-Leadership Research Roundtable to be held in Melbourne in June.  I am using SL theory (and particularly Sendjaya’s SL Behaviour Scale Model) as an indicator of a worldly leadership mindset.  Here is my abstract:

Leadership Redux: Reconnecting Humanist Concerns with Leadership for the Knowledge Era through the Lens of Servant Leadership

We find ourselves today, in the second decade of the 21st century, embedded in a knowledge-intensive era (Uhl-Bien, Marion, & McKelvey, 2007) framed by the interrelationships between knowledge production as the main driver of growth and wealth creation, globalisation, massification of education and deepening concerns about our world’s environmental sustainability.  As Klenke (2008) argues, these changes are signifiers of a “paradigm shift that is permeating the field of leadership studies” (p. 380) as we move away from 19^th century industrial era and machine-age leadership mindsets where command and control practices and heroic leadership models were privileged and still influence leadership practices today.  The shift is towards a different approach, not yet named or fully understood, yet emerging as leadership perspectives appropriate today’s VUCA[1] (Johansen, 2009) environment.

A Servant Leadership (SL) (Greenleaf, 1977; Spears & Lawrence, 2002) redux is not surprising given these turbulent conditions, especially since the Global Financial Crisis (Shiller, 2008; Lamba, 2010).  SL theory is integral to making sense of these conditions which call for different and deeper ways of thinking about our world, our worldviews and our leadership and research practices.  Leaders and followers are articulating what they may have long felt—that profits above all else and rampant consumerism are not serving the purpose of our lives and they are leading to unsustainable business practices that are harming people and the planet (Evans, 2008).  It is also emblematic of the renaissance of humanist principles of leadership (Follett, 1924, 1925; Mayo, 1933; Barnard, 1938) taken up from the latter stages of the 20^th century, for example, by McGregor (1960),  Drucker (1993), Hock (1999), Raelin (2003), Senge et al (2004) and Turnbull (2011).

One definition of leadership that accords with the principles of SL and works with the conditions already described is that “leaders are in the business of energy management” (Kets de Vries, 2003 p. 111).  This definition acknowledges that leadership is deeply bound to the sustainable use of our creative energies. It also elevates the judicious governance of energy of self, others and the environment alongside, not subordinate to, financial governance, and therefore towards more holistic approaches to governance (Elkington, 1998; Bragdon, 2006, 2009).

My research has found that appropriate leadership literacies for the knowledge era rest on these humanist principles and this expanded notion of governance and, indeed, that SL is central to this endeavour.  Such leadership literacies bring issues of sustainability and complexity into the leadership fold, based on the premise that leadership is not set apart from the living systems—human and environmental—that we serve (Davis, 2010a, b).  Here the term literacy suggests more than just the ability to read and write, to be literate also implies a deeper understanding of the particular phenomenon under review and the ability to make sense of, embody, interpret and interact with complex sources of information and experiences inherent in that domain. 

The leadership literacies I have determined from the literature as appropriate for the Knowledge Era have, in turn, been used to investigate whether they are yet evident in Australian universities, by asking university professional staff about their lived experience of work and leadership.  The responses were analysed against the selected themes of this inquiry which are grounded in a SL Behavioral Scale (SLBS) (Sendjaya, Sarros, & Santora, 2008)[2] with the addition of sustainability development; leadership as work, i.e. process and practice; worldly leadership; and learning metabolism.  I expect my findings to elucidate that the re-emergence of humanist concerns in general, and Servant Leadership theory in particular, are strong foundations for leadership literacies for the Knowledge Era.

References

Barnard, C. I. 1938. The functions of the executive. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Bragdon, J. H. 2006. Profit for life, how capitalism excels:  Case studies in living asset management. Cambridge, MA: Society for Organization Learning Inc.

Bragdon, J. H. 2009. Capitalism as a human system: The value of relational equity. Reflections, 10(1): pp. 1-8.

Davis, H. 2010a. Other-centredness as a leadership attribute: From ego to eco centricity. Journal of Spirituality, Leadership and Management, 4(1): pp. 43-52.

Davis, H. 2010b. The sustainability zeitgeist as a gps for worldly leadership within the discourse of globalisation, European Academy of Management 10th Annual Conference: Back to the future. Rome: EURAM.

Drucker, P. F. 1993. Post-capitalist society. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann,.

Elkington, J. 1998. Cannibals with forks: The triple bottom line of 21st century business. Gabriola Island, BC ; Stony Creek, CT: New Society Publishers.

Evans, P. 2008. Is an alternative globalization possible? Politics Society, 36(2): pp. 271 – 305.

Follett, M. P. 1924. Creative experience. New York: Longmans, Green and Co.

Follett, M. P. 1925. Dynamic administration: The collected papers (H.C. Metcalf & L.F. Urwick 1940 ed.). New York: Harper & Bros.

Greenleaf, R. K. 1977. Servant leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness. New York: Paulist Press.

Hock, D. 1999. Birth of the chaordic age. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Johansen, R. 2009. Leaders make the future: Ten new leadership skills for an uncertain world. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Kets de Vries, M. F. R. 2003. Leaders, fools and imposters:  Essays on the psychology of leadership (Rev ed.). New York: iUniverse Inc.

Klenke, K. 2008. Qualitative research in the study of leadership. Bingley, UK: Emerald.

Lamba, H. S. 2010. Understanding the ideological roots of our global crises: A pre-requisite for radical change. Futures, 42(10): pp. 1079-1087.

Mayo, E. 1933. The human problems of an industrial civilization. New York,: The Macmillan company.

McGregor, D. 1960. The human side of enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Raelin, J. A. 2003. Creating leaderful organizations: How to bring out leadership in everyone. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Sendjaya, S., Sarros, J. C., & Santora, J. C. 2008. Defining and measuring servant leadership behaviour in organizations. Journal of Management Studies, 45(2): pp. 402 – 424.

Senge, P. M., Scharmer, C. O., Jaworski, J., & Flowers, B. S. 2004. Presence: Human purpose and the field of the future. Cambridge, MA: SoL.

Shiller, R. J. 2008. The subprime solution: How today’s global financial crisis happened and what to do about it. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press.

Spears, L. C., & Lawrence, M. 2002. Focus on leadership: Servant-leadership for the twenty-first century. New York: J. Wiley & Sons.

Turnbull, S., Case, P., Edwards, G., Schedlitzki, D., & Simpson, P. (Eds.). 2011. Worldly leadership: Alternative wisdoms for a complex world. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R., & McKelvey, B. 2007. Complexity leadership theory: Shifting leadership from the industrial age to the knowledge era. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(4): pp. 298-318.

van Dierendonck, D. 2011. Servant leadership: A review and synthesis. Journal of Management, 37(4): pp. 1228-1261.

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[1] Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA)

[2] The SLBS was also cited in van Dierendonck, D. 2011. Servant leadership: A review and synthesis. Journal of Management, 37(4): pp. 1228-1261.

Are there emerging leadership literacies for knowledge enterprises in times of flux?

Here is my presentation which was given as part of a panel discussion about leadership and complexity for the International Leadership Association’s annual conference , London on 29 October, 2011.  The full document containing the panel abstract and the four presentation abstracts can be found here and David Holzmer’s post about this event can be found here.

Complexity and Uncertainty in Universities in Australia: Emerging Leadership Literacies for Knowledge Enterprises in Times of Flux

Description: Leadership literacies for the knowledge era enterprise rest on humanist principles of Servant Leadership theory and interconnect with sustainability and complexity through the premise that leadership is not set apart from the living systems-human and environmental-that we serve. Leaders also understand that these living systems are dynamic, emergent and unpredictable.

Abstract Although only history can ultimately confirm it to be true, anecdotal evidence suggests that we are witnessing new times framed by the interrelationships between knowledge production as the main driver of growth and wealth creation, globalisation, massification of education and deepening concerns about our world’s environmental sustainability. Added to these complexities is a reliance on the certitude of risk assessment and management that pervades the sector. However, the greatest risk to universities in Australia, as elsewhere, are changes to government policy, particularly when these policy changes reduce funding in an already underperforming knowledge nation (Considine et al. 2001; Wood 2003).

These times of change and uncertainty call for different and deeper ways of thinking about our world, our worldviews and our leadership practices. We find ourselves today, in the second decade of the 21st century, well and truly embedded in the knowledge era. Here universities are both sites of knowledge work and in the business of knowledge acquisition and dissemination and therefore can be seen as both drivers and vehicles of knowledge production, the main economic driver of growth in this knowledge-intensive era. Leading productively and promoting a culture of learning and performance are therefore vital to the sector and the society it serves.

Complexity theories (see for example, Waldrop 1992; Kurtz & Snowden 2003; Uhl-Bien et al. 2007; Obolensky 2010) are one way to surface these issues and make our thinking visible and encourage dialogue about the turbulent and challenging conditions we are experiencing. Through the lenses of complexity theory and proximal modes of understanding (Cooper & Law 1993) we see other ways of understanding the world unfettered by an ideology of neo-liberalism.

Instead, these world views rest on an assumption that complex social processes underpin our complex planet and our emerging worlds because they explicate the processes that lead to results, not just the results in isolation:

…taken-for-granted states of being, human or organizational, are products or effects of complex social processes. And if we want to understand them, we need a sociology of becoming.  Proximal thinking views organizations as mediating networks, as circuits of continuous contact and motion-more like assemblages of organizings…organizations so conceived are really effects created by a set of mediating measuring instruments (Cooper & Law 1993, pp. 238-40).

One concept of leadership that resonates well for universities and other knowledge-intensive enterprises and that work with the conditions already described is that “leaders are in the business of energy management” (Kets de Vries 2003). This definition privileges a view that that leadership is deeply tied to the sustainable use of our creative energies. It also elevates the judicious governance of energy of self, others and the environment alongside, not subordinate to, financial governance and into a triple bottom line (Elkington 1998) approach to governance.

Leadership literacies for the knowledge era rest on humanist principles of Servant Leadership theory (Greenleaf 1977) and interconnect to the domains of sustainability and complexity through the premise that leadership is not set
apart from the living systems-human and environmental-that we serve. Leaders also understand that these living systems are dynamic, emergent and unpredictable (Davis 2010). Leadership literacies for the knowledge era enterprise also  expand the notion of leadership to incorporate the process of leadership alongside post industrial and post heroic understandings of how leaders and followers (Chaleff 2009; Ladkin 2010), customers and other stakeholders contribute to the knowledge enterprise. Leadership therefore is deeply personal yet paradoxically all about what can be achieved collectively with everyone inside enterprise’s circle of leadership.

Further to presenting these emerging trends for leadership in knowledge era enterprises this presentation will share preliminary findings from a current PhD study investigating whether or not leadership literacies appropriate for the knowledge era are being practiced in universities in Australia today. These ‘leadership literacies for the knowledge era’ and their focus on complexity, sustainability (Dunphy et al. 2007) and servant leadership (Greenleaf 1977; Spears & Lawrence 2002; Sendjaya et al. 2008) theory will be further explored through the preliminary findings of this research. Complex Adaptive Systems theory will be used to as a way of recognising the cognitive leaps needed to attune mindsets to appropriate way of thinking about leadership appropriate for the knowledge era and the turbulent times that beset the 21st century. For example, one key element of Complex Adaptive Systems theory is to understand the world as an interconnected system and that “each of these systems is a network of many “agents” acting in parallel” (Holland, in Waldrop 1992, p. 145). Some of these “agents acting in parallel” have come together as panellists for this session and are also  indicated by the similarities of the themes from this PhD research project from Australia which began in 2008 and the findings from the IBM research report “Capitalising on complexity” (Berman & Korsten 2010).

As well as outlining the preliminary findings from my PhD study, this presentation will focus on a different complexity theory than those outlined by the other presenters in this panel discussion. The VUCA movement (Johansen 2009) encapsulates the turbulence-the Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity-that mark the 21st century within a VUCA acronym thereby ‘taming’ it to some extent and suggesting ways of working with VUCA rather than feeling
powerless in the face of it.

References

Berman, S. & Korsten, P. 2010. Capitalising on complexity: Insights from the Global Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Study. Portsmouth, UK, IBM Institute for Business Value.
Chaleff, I. 2009. The courageous follower: standing up to and for our leaders. (3rd ed.) San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler.
Considine, M., Marginson, S., Sheehan, P., & Kumnick, M. 2001. The comparative performance of Australia as a knowledge nation. Sydney, Chifley Research Centre.
Cooper, R. & Law, J. 1993. Organization: Distal and Proximal Views. In S. B. Bacharach & P. Gagliardi & B. Mundell (Eds.), Research in the sociology of organizations: Studies of Organizations in the European Tradition, Vol. 13,
Greenwich, Conn: JAI Press, pp. 275-301.
Davis, H. 2010. The sustainability zeitgeist as a GPS for Worldly Leadership within the discourse of globalisation, European Academy of Management 10th Annual Conference: Back to the future. Rome, EURAM.
Dunphy, D. C., Griffiths, A., & Benn, S. 2007. Organizational change for corporate sustainability: a guide for leaders and change agents of the future. (2nd ed.) Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, Routledge.
Elkington, J. 1998. Cannibals with forks: the triple bottom line of 21st century business. Gabriola Island, BC ; Stony Creek, CT, New Society Publishers.
Greenleaf, R. K. 1977. Servant leadership: a journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness. New York, Paulist Press.
Johansen, R. 2009. Leaders make the future: ten new leadership skills for an uncertain world. San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Kets de Vries, M. F. R. 2003. Leaders, fools and imposters: essays on the psychology of leadership. (Rev ed.) New York, iUniverse Inc.
Kurtz, C. F. & Snowden, D. J. 2003. The new dynamics of strategy: sense-making in a complex and complicated world. IBM Systems Journal, 42(3), pp. 462 – 483.
Ladkin, D. 2010. What goes on in the relationship between leaders and followers? In, Rethinking leadership: a new look at old leadership questions, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 55-74.
Obolensky, N. 2010. Complex adaptive leadership: embracing paradox and uncertainty. Farnham, Gower.
Sendjaya, S., Sarros, J. C., & Santora, J. C. 2008. Defining and Measuring Servant Leadership Behaviour in Organizations. Journal of Management Studies, 45(2), pp. 402 – 24.
Spears, L. C. & Lawrence, M. 2002. Focus on leadership: servant-leadership for the twenty-first century. New York, J. Wiley & Sons.
Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R., & McKelvey, B. 2007. Complexity Leadership Theory: Shifting leadership from the industrial age to the knowledge era. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(4), pp. 298-318.
Waldrop, M. M. 1992. Complexity: the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. New York, Simon & Schuster.
Wood, J. 2003. Australia: an under performing knowledge nation? Journal of Intellectual Capital, 4(2), pp. 144 – 164.

Pardon, my philosophical disposition is showing…

Plato and Aristotle. Image via Wikipedia

I’m concentrating on writing my research design chapter at the moment and so I am thinking about my philosophical disposition and how this notion is treated in theses.  No doubt it depends on the very things that make up the  philosophical disposition–the metatheories of epistemology, ontology and axiology– whether we 1) think about them at all, 2) understand them and claim them as our own, and 3) make these understandings explixit or keep them silent in the actual thesis.  In any event I figure if I’m doing a philosophy degree I should at least consider what this means.

While we can be plural and cross disciplinary in our theoretical frameworks, methodology and methods, I contend that it is impossible to be philosophically plural.  Our philosophical dispositions aren’t really choices in the same sense as choosing appropriate theory, methodology and methods for a particular piece of research, but rather are a statement of our understandings of  our way of knowing, our way of being and what we value.  It is therefore important to be clear and keep true to these dispositions in order to build a strong and authentic framework to make all the other decisions that need to occur in the conduct of research.

Whilst these insights about philosophy are all very well, they are not reason enough to be made explicit in the thesis.   The statements I make concerning my philosophical disposition will be included in my thesis to provide some background because I am positioning myself in the inquiry as one of the research instruments and therefore it is necessary to acknowledge “a critical self-awareness of [my] own subjectivity, vested interests, predilections and assumptions and to be conscious of how these might impact on the research process and findings” (Finlay 2008, p. 17).  They also influence the choices I have made to conduct a qualitative interpretive inquiry and so are explicated to locate my  philosophical, theoretical and methodological standpoints within the wider philosophical and research domains.

It will probably not surprise readers to learn that my philosophical disposition is one of an interpretivist epistemology, relativist ontology and values laden axiology.  Now that sounds easy enough, but it has taken me nearly three years to be able to say that out loud.  In fact, up until a month ago I thought my epistemological standpoint was constructivist!!

So how about you?  What is your philosophical disposition? Do you intend to write it in to your thesis and what are the reasons for this decision?

References

Finlay, L. 2008. A dance between the reduction and reflexivity: Explicating the “phenomenological psychological attitute”. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology,  39, pp. 1-32.

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