June 2004 Archives

Last night, on the spur of the moment, Lisa and I decided to go and see Shrek 2. What a hoot. It was very funny film. There were so many in-jokes, allusions and references to other movies (e.g. a giant gingerbread man that was reminiscent of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghost Busters, which itself was a parody of the Pillsbury Dough Boy)

I think the animation is the best I've seen. Look out for some of the details on Prince Charming (e.g. his mole, the way his clothes are rumpled, the movement of his hair). However, like many animated features there are times where the animation isn't up to the same high standard.

Two performances really stood out -- Antonio Banderas as Puss in Boots and Jennifer Saunders as the Fairy Godmother. In particular, the songs ("Holding Out for a Hero" and "Fairy Godmother Song" ) sung by Jennifer were very well done; I didn't know she could sing that well - this will be one sound-track I have to buy.

All in all, another one for the DVD collection.

Today, I gave a department seminar on my PhD topic Strategising in professional service firms. I've posted a copy of the slides in case anyone in interested.

If found it strangely nerve wracking. As I said at the start of the presentation "How do I know what I think until I've said it". With such a view, I suppose it is unsurprising that I was nervous.

On a technical note, I had a few problems with the presentation. I decided to use a tree-like structure for the slides, i.e. a main trunk, of about four slides, branching of to many supporting slides. This was all done using hyperlinks. Alas, I found the hard way that you can't hyperlink (in PowerPoint) to a slide whose title contains an apostrophe. E.g. A title such as The people's choice. This made some of the slide titles clunky, to say the least. Secondly, I set up a transparent block as a hyperlink on each of the branches, that should have returned me to the main 'trunk'. Oddly, sometimes it is really easy to 'select' the block (i.e. to click on it), but on some slides it only works if you click on the edge of the block. This is most frustrating and I haven't gotten to the bottom of the problem yet.

But overall, I was please with the mechanics of the presentation.

The general feedback I had (from the small, but select audience) was that it was a solid presentation. I found the discussion we had at the end very useful. Special thanks need to go to Brigid and Rachel for their helpful comments.

As I've mentioned before, one of the things I'm researching is the organisation and management of law firms. This research is based on work done by John Gray. It's taken almost a year to get everything into place but last Friday we sent out the surveys.

I had a couple of emails yesterday about the survey, but today, completed survey forms have started to arrive. So far I have a 2 per cent response rate - I hope to get that up to over 80 per cent. Once I get back from EGOS, and my Research Assistant gets back from Australia, we'll start following up with the outstanding firms. It really is nice that the firms have responded so promptly, and that they have taken the time to complete the survey.

On a technical level, the research is really designed to do two things. Firstly, we hope to find the extent to which law firms are moving from the P2 form (professional partnership) towards the MPB (managed professional business). I'd also like to compare the aggregated results with the results from Australia and Canada (and maybe the UK if they are ready). There are some practical implications of this which I will discuss at a later date. It is also design to confirm some results of Stan Malo's work on Options Theory in law firms and on they way the firms manage progression of professional staff through the firm.

My hope is that in doing this work, beside producing useful research outputs, I'll be kept at the forefront of the literature of professional service firms -- which will be a big pay-off for my PhD.

Bibliography

Gray, J., McAllister. G. & Hinings, C. R. (2002). ?Why aren?t Australian law firms confined by national boundaries??. Paper presented to the ACSANZ Conference, 'Converging Futures', National Convention Centre, Canberra, 12-15 September.

Gray J. (2002). Reflexivity and emerging forms in law firms, in D. Brock, C. (Bob). Hinings, M. Powell (eds). Restructuring Professional Organizations. London: Routledge.

Gray, J. (2002). Stars or Question Marks: Strategically Organising Small Law Firms. Business Quest Georgia, USA: Georgia State University Press.

Malos, S. B. & Campion, M. A. (2000). Human resource strategy and career mobility in professional service firms: A test of an options-based model. Academy of Management Journal 43. 749-760.

Malos, S. B. (1996). Individual mobility in the downsizing age: An options-based strategy for career survival. Proceedings of the Institute of Behavioral and Applied Management. 63-66.

Malos, S. B. (1996). Promotions, up-or-out strictness, and career development in professional service firms: An investigation of linkages suggested by an options-based approach. Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings. 76-80.

Malos, S. B. & Campion, M. A. (1995). An options-based model of career mobility in professional service firms. Academy of Management Review. 20. 611-644

McAllister, G. & Gray. J. (2002) Why are Large Australian Law Firms Merging? Paper presented to the Workshop on Professional Services Firms at the University of Alberta, Alberta, 15-17 August.

After my little scare, I'm doing many things to try and put the problem (well at least the majority of the medication) behind me. In many ways it is the 'usual suspects', viz:

• Exercise
• Weight loss
• Diet
• Low sodium food (less than 1,500 mg per day)
• and, of course, medication

For exercise, I'm doing a bit of walking. (Well that's pretty much all I'm allowed to do.) So, each day I try and walk 10,000 steps. My progress is shown in the graph. The red line is my daily average; the blue band is my target.

So far, the exercise (and everything else) seems to be having a pay-off. I do feel that I've lost some weight. I've actually had to tighten my belt a couple of notches -- and some of my clothes seem to be a bit baggy.

I took the idea from Lisa - she's been doing it for over a year now - and she is definitely fitter and slimmer. The trick is to buy a pedometer and record what you actually do. I find it is a great motivator.

I'll probably never get off all the medication, but I hope to minimise my dependency on it.

PS: The graph is built automatically using JPGRAPH from data stored using MySQL. The whole thing is glued together using PHP.

I was talking Rachel about some of the work she has been doing with regards to strategy in Maori organisations. We digressed on to Johnson's (1992) and since neither of us had a slide on it, I quickly made this copy using PowerPoint (it looks much better full-size; just click on the image).

In analysing any organisation, understanding what is going on inside it is important -- and the cultural web helps with just that. I think it is one of Gerry's most practical contributions to strategy.

References

Johnson, G. (1992). Managing strategic change: Strategy, culture and action. Long Range Planning, 25(1). p. 28-36.

I've noticed that when I quote something, by using block-quotes, e.g.

block quotes

That the subsequent paragraphs don't display correctly under Internet Explorer. They are fine with Firefox. I suppose I should look into at some stage. Alas, the only time I have is at home, and their I don't use Microsoft... So it might have to wait until the next time I work during the weekend (which should be a long time away).

I've fixed it. Alas, Internet Explorer doesn't handle having a left border and no right border well. Removing the borders and colouring the blockquote gets around the problem. I found this by accident.

I've was reading Wilson, D. C., & Jarzabkowski, P. (2004). Thinking and acting strategically: New challenges for interrogating strategy. European Management Journal, 1, 14-20. It talks about many things, of which I Will say more later, but I was intrigued by the references to an article by Emirbayer Mische. So, I got a copy - all 62 pages, and have spend the past four hours or so reading it.

Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998). What is agency? American Journal of Sociology, 4, 962-1023.

The abstract says:

This article aims (1) to analytically disaggregate agency into its several component elements (though these are interrelated empirically), (2) to demonstrate the ways in which these agentic dimensions interpenetrate with forms of structure, and (3) to point out the implications of such a conception of agency for empirical research. The authors conceptualize agency as a temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past (in its ?interational? or habitual aspect) but also oriented toward the future (as a 'projective' capacity to imagine alternative possibilities) and toward the present (as a 'practical-evaluative' capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects within the contingencies of the moment)

But that hardly does it justice.

This is a marvellous synthesis and reconceptualisation of human agency. It's clear why Wilson & Jarzabkowski (2004) used it in their EMR¹ article .

I particularly liked the article for two reasons. Firstly, it situates the concept of agency in history. This represents one of my own personal peccadilloes -- I always like to know the "story" behind something; it's one of the way I make sense of things. The range of ideas the article draws on is impressive (even considering its length): Turner, Bourdieu, Parsons, Mead, Weber, Lacan, Aristotle, Kant, -- all the usual suspects. The trick is the skillful integration and synthesis of ideas.

For me this has to be the definitive article on agency. Five stars!

As I was reading the article, I had a sense of strong links with the underpinnings of psychodrama. After all, much of psychodrama is about being more agentic -- or as they² say, helping people to exhibit more spontaneity -- to be able to act in new (less 'routine') ways. If I had some time, it would be fun to try and do a point by point comparison between the article and psychodrama.

Talking of psychodrama, where is the new theory in psychodrama coming from? Is there any new theory. Most of what I read seems to be reinterpretations and expositions of the works of the masters³. (Of course, my knowledge of psychodrama isn't great, so I'm probably missing out on whole chunks of that literature.)

¹ Interestingly, I was made aware of the European Management Review as a result of an e-mail from the strategy-as-practice web site and e-mail list. There was a special edition of the journal (regarding strategy-as-practise) which was available free on the the Internet.

² Psycho-dramatists, that is.

³ J. L. Moreno and Zerka Moreno

I've notice that I haven't been writing much about my PhD (on my other blog). So, I've decided to unify that blog with this one ... not a easy thing to to (from my previous experiences).

So, I'll be putting up my notes on articles that I read here.

For the past three years, I've been using TurnItIn with my classes as a means of improving the quality of students work. Besides using it as a tool to prevent plagiarism, I've been using the Peer Review option to allow students to see and comment on each others work. Feedback from students, and by looking at their marks, this has been generally successful.

Recently, TurnItIn introduced an array of new products including GradeMark ™. According to the advertising blurb and what I read in the manuals, GradeMark should improves the process flow of marking and grading - allowing lecturers to electronically markup assignments. I've trialled other products and have been generally impressed by their ability to facility the use of structured feedback - in the form of rubrics - and the way the speed up the marking process, whilst allowing greater feedback.

So, it was with some excitement I set about marking a small set (30) of assignments from one of my classes. I spent a few hours setting up some generic rubrics that would apply to case analysis. This was probably too long but the documentation is weak in this area - it is a "how to" rather than a "why to" so it isn't always clear what needs to be done and why.

Anyway, I sat down to start marking. It normally takes me between twenty and thirty minutes to mark this type of assignment.

Oh dear - TurnItIn being web based, and me being in New Zealand resulted in some really long response times. Even a simple mark up, using the quick tags, e.g. "SP" (spelling), could take 5 seconds or more. This is too long. The quick tags are almost exclusively geared towards typos, and there is no way to add to them. So even adding a comment like "Good" (or if I was using a pen and paper, a tick mark), meant at least two lots of 5 second delays. What aggravated the situation is that if, between delays, I scrolled ahead reading the document, then at the end of the fie seconds or so, I be repositioned back to where I was originally. No, those delays were here to stay.

Now it isn't all bad. When I wanted to add an extended comment the delays had no real impact. But for the bulk of my comments (except at the end) tend to be rather small.

After half a dozen essays I gave up. It was taking me nearly an hour to mark a single essay and I found that I wasn't giving the normal quality of feedback I like.

So, I printed the rest of the out and marked them the old fashioned way.

Que Sera - it's important to try these things out. I hope the students don't' feel disadvantaged in anyway.

Reflecting back on the assignments I have marked so far, there are some interesting interpretations of the critical part of critical incidents. The on-line Merriam-Webster dictionary says:

of, relating to, or being a turning point or specially important juncture : as (1) : relating to or being the stage of a disease at which an abrupt change for better or worse may be expected; also : being or relating to an illness or condition involving danger of death

And it is in this type of sense that many students have interpreted the word critical. However, in academic work we often use words in very particular/specific ways, and this is a good example of that (sometimes subtle) difference.

Flanagan, in talking about critical incidents, is very precise in what he means by the word 'critical'. As was said in an earlier post (which was based on Twelker citing Flanagan):

In order for the incident to be considered critical, it "must occur in a situation where the purpose or intent of the act seems fairly clear to the observer and where its consequences are sufficiently definite to leave little doubt concerning its effects."

Now this is a very different meaning to the word critical than is in common or garden usage as given by the dictionary above

Flanagan does not use the word critical to man "a specially important junction". By critical he means that these is a clear link between what was intended to be done and what actually happened are pretty clear. There is little ambiguity between that action took place, and there was a consequence. In our complex world often we do things and there isn't a clear link between the action and the consequence. For example, each day I check my email, but what (if any) is the link to the level of my research output? Thus, checking my email is not critical (in Flanagan's sense) with regard to my research output.

However, sometimes actions and consequences are much more clearly linked. E.g. "We met with the intention to talk about the future of the firm, and by the end of the meeting we had written a new strategy document", or "we met to address the issue of the declining number distribution outlets -- subsequently we increased the margin to the retailers, but in two rollovers this had little effect". There is a deliberate action and a consequence.

Thus, in the last example, the questions/reflection/analysis/etc would revolve around understanding how it came to pass that the decision was made in increase the retailers' margin - even though it was ineffective.

(Oh, well. I'm aware that many of these postings are a desire on my part to take a break from marking. So, back to the salt mine, I guess).

PS. Talking of Flanagan. I wonder how many people actually bothered to track the article down and read it before they casually inserted a reference to him (when all they did was read it on the web here)?

Besides the recommend readings, some students are finding and using (in their assignments) other excellent readings. They are using some real classics in the field. Based on that, I've decided to read at least one article that each student references (assuming I haven't read it already). The results so far have been mixed.

• Some students are finding and using good articles, and using them well. They clearly understand the main message of the article and the limitations of the article. Hurrah!.
• Others are selecting rather poor quality sources. E.g. Web sites (like this one¹), trivial "Letters to the editor" types of short pieces, and journals of dubious quality. Good, reliable sources, typically come from good journals (well respected) and the individual article is cited in many other articles (in other journals). Just Googling three or four key words is unlikely to deliver up high quality sources. Nor will putting the same key words into EBSOChost. The easiest way to find good sources is to start with a known good article and read the articles that the good article cites, or search for articles that cite the good article. That, combined with keyword, searching is a much more effective technique.
• A few are picking good articles and are making little on no sense of them, or even using the incorrectly. E.g. an article might say "Some people think that team rationality is important, but they are wrong. Much more important is X Y Z" and the whole article goes on to prove the authors point. Anyway, some students will take a 'sound bite' from the article, such as "rationality is important", and use it to support their point of view. This is bad research and bad writing.

¹ There is nothing I say in class, or that I write here, that is worth citing (in an academic context). In class, and here, there are pointers to some good sources - but don't' waste time by referencing me. Go back and read the original articles to which I refer.

In an earlier entry I wrote (complete with typo - out should be our):

Maps filter out perceptions of the real world. They bring some things into sharp relief and diminish the importance of other things.

Which seems all well and good. But, I'm reading an assignment and I find:

Maps can be used to filter out perceptions of the real world, they can bring some things into sharp relief and they can diminish the importance of other things.

Spooky. And there is no attribution (citation, reference) whatsoever... Oh dear.