Resistant Self in Leadership: A Hermeneutical Conundrum

Autoethnography offers leadership study opportunities as it allows the texts to move between the self of the subject and the researcher who can themselves be a co-researched subject. In this sense texts moving between 'selves' represents a hermeneutical concern (or ‘language game’); that is it is possible to see the self as a text, in a context, and moving between selves, although not to gain access to the ‘original intent’ of the author; the text in this instance is in ‘our’ hands and as such transforming from the author in a new direction. As such, in this domain: “all understanding is interpretation, and all interpretation takes place in the medium of language which would allow the object to come into words and yet is at the same time the interpreter’s own language” (Gadamer, 1975: 350)

Our future city

As well as repairing the physical damage caused by last December's storms, our 'divided city' should re-imagine itself and re-invest, writes Dr Stephen Gibbs, a senior lecturer in global leadership and change and chair of Carlisle Flood Action Grou

Is it really so bad to have a business mogul as president?

Donald Trump’s image as a street fighter offering a voice to the disenfranchised propelled him to victory in the US election. But beyond the artifice of political stage management, it just might be possible that an executive business brain will cut through Washington’s House of Cards. Trump has never held public office so he’s a total newcomer to the Washington bear pit that scuppered much of Obama’s agenda. His experience as a business mogul, however, comes with some transferable skills. Executive and global leadership are wholly interlinked and so there are some important lessons to be learned from business. This can be seen in the way that the crisis in America’s auto industry was handled

Outline working proposal: Cumbria River Catchments Authority

Proposal and presentation to Cumbria Floods Partnership, 22 April 2016, Hallmark Hotel, Carlisle, Cumbria, UK. The proposal responds to the DEFRA modernisation agenda, arguing for restructuring of both national and local government bodies and agencies in response to December 2015 flooding. It adopts a strategic management ethos, mapping capabilities of existing structures as the basis of forming new strategic architecture

Spiral diffusion of rotating self-propellers with stochastic perturbation

Translationally diffusive behavior arising from the combination of orientational diffusion and powered motion at microscopic scales is a known phenomenon, but the peculiarities of the evolution of expected position conditioned on initial position and orientation have been neglected. A theory is given of the spiral motion of the mean trajectory depending upon propulsion speed, angular velocity, orientational diffusion and rate of random chirality reversal. We demonstrate the experimental accessibility of this effect using both tadpole-like and Janus sphere dimer rotating motors. Sensitivity of the mean trajectory to the kinematic parameters suggest that it may be a useful way to determine those parameters

An Efficient Frequency-Independent Numerical Method for Computing the Far-Field Pattern Induced by Polygonal Obstacles

For problems of time-harmonic scattering by rational polygonal obstacles, embedding formulae express the far-field pattern induced by any incident plane wave in terms of the far-field patterns for a relatively small (frequency-independent) set of canonical incident angles. Although these remarkable formulae are exact in theory, here we demonstrate that (i) they are highly sensitive to numerical errors in practice, and (ii) direct calculation of the coefficients in these formulae may be impossible for particular sets of canonical incident angles, even in exact arithmetic. Only by overcoming these practical issues can embedding formulae provide a highly efficient approach to computing the far-field pattern induced by a large number of incident angles. Here we address challenges (i) and (ii), supporting our theory with numerical experiments. Challenge (i) is solved using techniques from computational complex analysis: we reformulate the embedding formula as a complex contour integral and prove that this is much less sensitive to numerical errors. In practice, this contour integral can be efficiently evaluated by residue calculus. Challenge (ii) is addressed using techniques from numerical linear algebra: we oversample, considering more canonical incident angles than are necessary, thus expanding the set of valid coefficient vectors. The coefficient vector can then be selected using either a least squares approach or column subset selection

UK Resilience: A Question of Governance

Governance of UK institutions is at the heart of UK Plc performance. The management, leadership and structures underpinning delivery of central government policy when tracked through to the point of delivery offer revealing and challenging findings. This paper uses the experience of UK Winter '15/'16 storms and the performance of critical infrastructure to explore existing governance architecture surrounding delivery of UK resilience

Revelation, Verisimilitude and ‘Drama’ in Modern Strategic Leadership

Autoethnography offers leadership study unique opportunities as it allows the leader to become central to the research process; satisfying both an ontological and epistemological argument for an increased focus on the ‘self’ (Spry, 2001; Humphreys, 2005). It therefore differs from ethnography in its ability to move on from the wide-angle view of the organisational context (‘other’) to the “focus on the inner, vulnerable and often resistant self” (Boyle and Parry, 2007: 186). This has the ability to place the individual leader as a central figure within the story of leadership experience (Kempster, 2010). Co-produced autoethnography places a further emphasis on the subject by requiring the researcher to write about themselves and then be open to interrogation by themselves, reflectively, as well as their co-author, creating a co-produced narrative ‘sandwich’ (Ellis, 2004; Ellis and Bochner, 2000). The potential is to allow the organisational leader to “reveal a discovery” through their narrative (Saldana, 2003: 224)

Going the distance: supporting a teaching team to move to distance learning. A Case Study. How ready are academics for the ‘Only Connect’ world?

Introduction The generally positive and conflict free version of the future portrayed in the FutureLab ‘Only Connect’ World suggests that students, at least, will be familiar with a democratised, collaborative, dispersed, asynchronous and digitised learning landscape. However, teaching staff with their experience of conflict between researcher and educator identities along with university systems supporting them are less prepared for this world. This paper reports on the experience of converting a face-to-face Master’s course to a wholly online, distance learning (DL) course largely following the Open University DL model but based on using and creating open educational resources (OER). The original course was an MSc in social research methods and had been running for 17 years, but it needed to reach a wider recruitment market. Two key aspects of this conversion were that many of the teaching team were not experienced in teaching DL, and that the changeover was not a special project, with special funding, but a run-of-the mill course development. The development was taken through the standard university approval process but as a fully DL development it had to meet two specific criteria: the QAA DL precepts and our university DL regulations. Both, to varying degrees, assume that the course development and/or the course delivery will be undertaken by fully experienced staff. The teaching team was overwhelmingly a research active and research focussed group of academics and thus well qualified in the subject matter of the course, but although many had taught the previous, in-person Master’s for many years, they had little demonstrable experience with DL. Methods This dilemma was addressed using a mentoring approach. An academic from another subject area in the school, who already had experience of leading a DL course was brought in to assist the team. Both he and the lead technical support had formal DL qualifications and this met the formal university validation criteria. The academic worked with another teaching team member (who is a NTF and has experience of technology based and distance learning teaching) as key facilitators/mentors to the remainder of the teaching team. In addition, the technical support team helped with the creation of the OERs we needed and in running the webinar and discussion software we were using. There were several key tasks: 1. Convert existing face-to-face curricula to OER based DL versions 2. Find, appraise and adapt existing OER materials 3. Create new OER materials 4. Develop teacher skills with DL pedagogy and associated tools 5. Develop open access web pages for the OER materials and closed VLE pages for registered students. Two pilot modules were offered in Jan 2014 and the student experience was evaluated using a range of learning analytics, including a number of in-depth interviews. Results Initial curriculum development/conversion was undertaken using an Australian design system. One of the mentors undertook this conversion for one module and other module leaders followed the model to ensure consistency in teaching approach. To develop teacher skills in DL software and pedagogy, we ran a series of staff development sessions, and used the two pilot modules to modify our pedagogic designs and to disseminate DL teaching skills more broadly. Attendance at and scheduling of these sessions was problematic and in some cases we had to resort to distance learning approaches to the skills development. OER materials were mainly videos and one mentor had considerable experience in making them. He advised other teachers on the options and the pedagogic focus of the OERs. Some teachers were reluctant to appear in person in these OERs and this was addressed by a combination of screen capture approaches and the use of already existing OERs – fortunately common in the areas concerned. Discussion A key tension in this development was between the research active and research focus of the teaching team and the need for the teachers to acquire new skills in both software use and in distance learning requirements. The individualistic focus of the researchers was often at odds with the collaborative, connected and communal needs of DL. Consistency in curriculum design helped here as the teachers could easily adapt their modules using the model. In the case of skills acquisition, the two pilot modules were crucial. This diminished the initial load on the mentors whilst technical and pedagogic experience was built up and it enabled the establishment of guidelines for good practice in OER production, curriculum design, DL pedagogic practice and in the software use on a relatively small scale to start with

Case study. We’re not the Open University. So can we do it?

Introduction This paper reports on the experience of converting a face-to-face Master’s course to a wholly online, distance learning (DL) course largely following the Open University DL model but based on using and creating open educational resources (OER). Two key aspects of this conversion were that the teaching team (with one exception) were not OER enthusiasts or even experienced in DL and OER use, and that the changeover was not a special project, with special funding, but a run-of-the mill course development. The philosophy of the development was to use and create OERs and to make these and much of the teaching materials open to all. However, the course is not a MOOC; students are fee paying and are examined and accredited in the standard way. The original course was a MSc in social research methods and had been running for 17 years, but it needed to reach a wider recruitment market. The teaching team was overwhelmingly a research active and research focussed group of academics. Methods The development was taken through the standard university approval process and the team then worked with two key facilitators/mentors (one a member of the teaching team), staff development support and the local learning technology technical support. There were several key tasks: 1. Convert existing face-to-face curricula to OER based DL versions 2. Find, appraise and adapt existing OER materials 3. Create new OER materials 4. Develop teacher skills with DL pedagogy and associated tools 5. Develop open access web pages for the OER materials and closed VLE pages for registered students. Two pilot modules were offered in Jan 2014 and the student experience was evaluated using a range of learning analytics, including a number of in-depth interviews. Results Key issues in using existing OERs were the effort needed to find them and check their accuracy, appropriateness and suitability. Fortunately there are lots of good materials available (e.g. from the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods). To create our own OERs (principally videos) we had to develop expertise in both teaching staff and technical staff and create a suitable workflow. A key to this was mentor support. To develop teacher skills in DL software and pedagogy, we ran a series of staff development sessions, and used the two pilot modules to modify our pedagogic designs and to disseminate DL teaching skills more broadly. Discussion The experience here shows that universities can draw on the attractions and benefits of MOOCs in standard funded courses. By the careful choice and creation of OERs we created a sustainable and cost efficient course. Choice of subject is important here: social research methods is a relatively slow changing area and OERs will remain usable for many years. This means that not all courses at all universities can follow the Open University approach, but it does show that by careful use of OERs, selection of subjects and courses, DL and openness can be achieved along with a standard funding model