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Inside International Development Organisations: Socially Constructing Judgement in-the-Moment
This exploratory study aimed, first, to build new knowledge on how senior managers of international development organisations defined judgement and how they made sense of it in the context of their leadership roles and work environments. A secondary aim was to explore methodologies and methods, specifically unstructured interviews and observations, to be used in the PhD phase to study the social phenomenon of judgement. Using an ethnographic and reflexive approach, this study addressed the question: How do managers understand their use of judgement ‘in-the-moment’ in practice? Results from the two participating organisations suggest that there are diverse interpretations of the meaning of ‘judgement’; it is a socially constructed process; used in uncertain situations; and influenced by time and space. These findings contribute to our understanding of how judgement in-the-moment is perceived inside an understudied area: the everyday context of small international development organisations. Theoretically, this study complements the existing literature with a social constructionist perspective and draws linkages to judgement as a constitutive element of sensemaking. Methodologically, the reflexive approach taken builds awareness of examining the ‘multiple selves’ and how researchers influence their research and are influenced by it as subject and object. The validity, methodological issues, limitations and implications for future research are also discussed
How organisations generate and use customer insight
The generation and use of customer insight in marketing decisions is poorly understood, partly due to difficulties in obtaining research access and partly because market-based learning theory views knowledge as a fixed asset. However, customer insight takes many forms, arrives at the organisation from increasingly diverse sources and requires more than mere dissemination if it is to be useful. A multiple case study approach is used to explore managerial practices for insight generation and use. Multiple informants from each of four organisations in diverse sectors were interviewed. Findings reveal the importance of value alignment and value monitoring across the insight demand chain, to complement the information processing emphasis of extant research. Within the firm, the study suggests the importance of customer insight conduct practices including insight format, the role of automation and insight shepherding, to complement the much-researched process perspective. The study provides a basis for assessing the effectiveness of insight processes by both practitioners and scholars
Getting It on Record: Issues and Strategies for Ethnographic Practice in Recording Studios
The recording studio has been somewhat neglected as a site for ethnographic fieldwork in the field of ethno-musicology and, moreover, the majority of published studies tend to overlook the specific concerns faced by the researcher within these contexts. Music recording studios can be places of creativity, artistry, and collaboration, but they often also involve challenging, intimidating, and fractious relations. Given that recording studios are, first and foremost, concerned with documenting musicians’ performances, we discuss the concerns of getting studio interactions “on record” in terms of access, social relations, and methods of data collection. This article reflects on some of the issues we faced when conducting our fieldwork within British music recording facilities and makes suggestions based on strategies that we employed to address these issues
The methodological dance: critical reflections on conducting a cross-cultural comparative research project on ‘Sport for Development and Peace’
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.Social scientific research requires engagement with individuals, groups and or organisations embedded within specific sectors and locations. The ‘Sport for a Better World?’ project aimed to examine the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) sector within multiple international locations through fieldwork conducted by a four-person research team. This paper discusses the methodological benefits and challenges of this methodological approach, with a particular focus on working with individuals and groups as gatekeepers, encultured informants, translators and volunteers. In turn, we describe and contextualise the levels of exchange expected by stakeholder partners as well as the implications of our identity as white, international researchers. Overall, we argue for the importance of understanding: the agency and needs of local actors amidst transnational networks; the extent to which history and politics inform everyday experiences and contemporary research encounters; and the likelihood that unequal power relations, particularly along lines of race, class and geography will affect data collection and interpretation. We also discuss various methodological strategies we negotiated in-the-field, and how these insights inform our understandings of the social, political and cultural environment in which SDP programmes operate in different locations
Heuristics for Gaining Project Insights
This paper presents a collection of behaviours for gaining insights in projects of small, innovating organisations. An explorative study of 12 informants and their subject matter expertise are used to inform this work. The paper draws on three bodies of literature – Innovation Management, Knowledge Management and Project Management to inform the theoretical background. So far no framework has been developed that are tailored to the unique situation of Small Innovators as they aim to foster innovation within the organisation. A number of propositions is offered based on the qualitative data analysis and hermeneutic literature appraisal that address potential heuristics processes that could enhance a Small Innovator’s ability to gain better insights while pursuing innovative project outcomes
Youth and social justice in UK policy: spaces for youth voice and participation or new hegemonic constructions?
Recent UK youth policy, which has promoted the involvement of young people in designing projects and services, in democratic participation and voluntary action, has generated renewed public and academic interest. While the resulting developments indicate a shift towards including young people more in decisions about their lives, the future of many of these projects is now uncertain, as the new Coalition government prioritises a programme of significantly reduced local spending. Despite discussion on these strategies, little research to date has seriously considered young people’s position in debates on social justice. This article seeks to do this, drawing on recent research with young people in community-based organisations, to consider young people’s perceptions of recent policy initiatives and the extent to which they experience a greater sense of empowerment in the new policy spaces offered
Women asylum seekers and refugees: Opportunities, constraints and the role of agency
This article is based on the findings of research undertaken towards a doctoral thesis funded by the University of Leeds. The research focuses upon the actions and experiences of women asylum seekers and refugees living inWest Yorkshire. While acknowledging that the context in which women find themselves can present a number of barriers, this paper looks at their actions and practices at the individual and collective levels. It illustrates that some women are able to draw on the resources available, and are engaged in activities
that not only assist their own settlement in the host society but also assist the development of support structures for future arrivals of asylum seekers and refugees
Organisational symbols : reflections of organisational culture?
The objective of this paper is to discuss the role(s) of organisational symbols in representing organisational identity. To what extent do the so-called organisational symbols have significant impact on the employees in an
organisation in identifying themselves with the organisational identity? Is it due to the top-down approach imposed by the top management? This paper is based on a six month ethnographic study conducted in selected Information
Communication Technology (ICT) based corporations in one of the Malaysian Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) cities. From the findings, there are three main organisational symbols which are related to organisational identity : identity cards, black sofa, and office cubicles. The paper concludes that the construction of organisational symbols is a mix of a controlled culture (topdown) and to a certain degree is the participative activity of the employees.
Nevertheless, the organisational symbols are embraced by the employees due to the need to be identified with an organisation
Accessing elite nurses for research: reflections on the theoretical and practical issues of telephone interviewing
Elite groups are interesting as they frequently are powerful (in terms of position, knowledge and influence) and enjoy considerable authority. It is important, therefore, to involve them in research concerned with understanding social contexts and processes. This is particularly pertinent in healthcare, where considerable strategic development and change are features of everyday practice that may be guided or perceived as being guided, by elites.
This paper evolved from a study investigating the availability and role of nurses whose remit involved leading nursing research and development within acute NHS Trusts in two health regions in Southern England. The study design included telephone interviews with Directors of Nursing Services during which time the researchers engaged in a reflective analysis of their experiences of conducting research with an `elite' group. Important issues identified were the role of gatekeepers, engagement with elites and the use of the telephone interview method in this context. The paper examines these issues and makes a case for involving executive nurses in further research. The paper also offers strategies to help researchers design and implement telephone interview studies successfully to maximise access to the views and experiences of `hard to reach groups', such as elites, while minimising the associated disruption
Health and medical research funding agencies' promotion of public engagement within research: a qualitative interview study exploring the UK context
Background:
Public engagement (PE) has become a common feature of many liberal governmental agendas worldwide. Since the turn of this century there has been a succession of United Kingdom policy initiatives to encourage research funding agencies, universities and researchers to reconsider how they engage with citizens and communities. Although most funding agencies now explicitly promote PE within research, little empirical work has been carried out in this area. In this study, we explored why and how health and medical research funding agencies in the United Kingdom have interpreted and implemented their role to promote PE within research.
Methods:
Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 30 key informants from 10 agencies that fund health or medical research. Data were also gathered from agencies’ websites and documentation. The analysis was based on the constant comparative method.
Results:
Across agencies, we found that PE was being interpreted and operationalised in various different ways. The terminology used within funding agencies to describe PE seems to be flexibly applied. Disciplinary differences were evident both in the terminology used to describe PE and the drivers for PE highlighted by participants – with applied health science funders more aligned with participatory models of PE. Within the grant funding process PE was rarely systematically treated as a key component of research. In particular, PE was not routinely incorporated into the planning of funding calls. PE was more likely to be considered in the application and assessment phases, where it was largely appraised as a tool for enhancing science. Concerns were expressed regarding how to monitor and evaluate PE within research.
Conclusions:
This study suggests funding agencies working within specific areas of health and medicine can promote particular definitions of PE and aligned practices which determine the boundaries in which researchers working in these areas understand and practice PE. Our study also highlights how the research grant process works to privilege particular conceptions of PE and its purpose. Tensions are evident between some funders’ core concepts of traditional science and PE, and they face challenges as they try to embed PE into long-standing systems that prioritise particular conceptions of ‘scientific excellence’ in research
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