A methodological perspective

I value so much from so many of the perspectives that I have come across relating to questions o f what we can know and how we can know it. I would like to write this section

without using a single four (or, of course, more) syllable word. This is partly to contradict the confusion that is felt by so many tyro researchers when struggling with research paradigms. A compromise would be to use long words only with a specific definition attached.

What are the perspectives that have informed this study? I have found myself drawn to ethnography, by which I mean using the shared knowledge held by people to account for the patterns of their action, using mainly methods which involve being among the people and noting what I see and hear (Gill & Johnson, 1997). My work has been both emic, that is, using sense made by the people I watch and listen to (especially in the conversations and the sagas), as well (in the questionnaire and the interviews) as etic, that is, supplying much of the sense myself.

I have used a model similar to analytic induction in coming up with rough descriptions of role types, of processes and of frameworks. I have then tested these intellectual

properties against a series of cases, which give me chances to recast my descriptions, and to find what each of the cases has in common.

I had been impressed by dram aturgy (Goffman, 1958) as a way o f making sense of data. I saw it as using the metaphor of the theatre to show how social action unfolds and is made sense of by those involved (Feldman, 1995). I have woven into my account some sagas that could be seen as inspired by this view. Morgan’s (1993) emphasis on the importance of metaphor, story and image has also been a strong influence here. However,

during the course o f this research I became disenchanted with the theatrical metaphor. It seemed unduly restrictive, and as I explored sensemaking, I came to see how the

sensemaking perspective sees talk as much less finished than the notion of script and performance would allow. Shorter’s (1983) argument about indeterminacy o f even a partially completed sentence is salient here. He sees a partial sentence as more like a seed growing into a tree, than a script being manifested as a performance. Dramaturgy seems to be useful as a framework for studying aspects of organisational life which have a strong element o f performance, such as cults (Cheng, 1999), charismatic leadership (Gardner & Avolio, 1998), customer service delivery (Hopfl, 1995) or planned change programmes (Hopfl, 1994). It is less useful in studying the world of the intellectual property developer (IPD).

A tradition in research of valuing each case and making sense of it as a whole, rather than seeking the general from a large number, is sometimes called idiographic. I first came across this perspective in Allport, 1937.1 use it both in keeping whole my accounts of each o f my respondents, but also in the sections where I describe my own relation to the issues studied here. Treating myself as a case of the phenomena I am studying is not only idiographic, but also autobiographic or, as it is sometimes known, ipsative. The use of autobiography as a means of illuminating management and development issues is very much in the air with two powerful examples of the genre recently published (Harrison, 1995; Page, 1996). However the tradition stretches back much further than this, with a review of a wide literature already in existence carried out by Torbert & Fisher in 1992. Torbert & Fisher write persuasively o f ‘the role of autobiographical writing, conversation,

and awareness in the action inquiry paradigm o f social science’. My own Masters dissertation (Megginson, 1980) contributed to this way o f researching, and was entitled

The development o f personal autonomy, an idiographic experiment. McCracken, 1988, reinforces my perception of the value of the researcher as an instrument in qualitative research when he suggests that ‘the investigator cannot fulfil qualitative research objectives without using a broad range of his or her own experience, imagination, and intellect in ways that are various and unpredictable’.

I have adopted the convention of putting directly personal episodes or reflections into what I have called an ‘ipsative box’, which is surrounded by a single margin as illustrated below:

Ipsative boxes

Personal material will be placed into these boxes throughout the thesis. One trouble I face in adopting this convention is that, in a sense, everything I have written is ipsative. When citing a reference, I do it to reinforce or to challenge my current way of seeing the world. When I quote my respondents I select and arrange their quotations to further my own perspectives and arguments. Everything here is ipsative in another sense, because the topic of this thesis is about one of my central life concerns - establishing myself as an intellectual property developer.

However, the boxes will only be used to delineate material that is directly and explicitly autobiographical.

One o f the most powerful examples that I have found of that ‘use of self as an instrument of research’ referred to by McCracken (1988) is the approach of Moustakas, 1990, which he calls heuristic research. He means by this ‘a process of internal search through which one discovers the nature and meaning of experience and develops methods and

procedures for further investigation and analysis.’ During the period of writing this thesis I was immersed in examples of heuristic research carried out by Masters students on the University of Surrey’s MSc in Change Agent Skills and Strategies. I took on the

reflective, reflexive core of this method, but found that the risk for the students and, indeed, for the sources cited by Moustakas, discouraged me from wholehearted adoption of this methodology. These risks centred round an over-absorption in the self, which pushes the balance between self and other, and especially between self and environment, unhelpfully in the direction of the self. I found myself asking the question, ‘What is the self-disclosure for?’ When it serves the illumination of the topic it seems justified, when it provides opportunity for personal therapy, it is less beneficial to others, howsoever precious to the researchers themselves.

I see this work as adopting in part a social constructionist (Gergen & Thatchenkery, 1996) perspective, in that it rejects the assumptions of rational agency, empirical knowledge and language as representation, embedded in the modernist scientific

discourse. Communal agency, social construction and language as action replace these assumptions. Language as action relates to the tradition o f action research (Lewin, 1947), participative action research (Reason, 1994), action inquiry (Torbert, 1991) or action science (Argyris, et a l1985). This way of thinking underlies much of what is written here, although there is no claim that this work itself is an example of action science. I see this work as more constructionist than constructivist, for reasons briefly outlined below.

Constructionism I come to understand as emphasising the way knowledge is constructed between us; constructivism is is modelled on a sort of American individualism, where the independent, critical researcher can see properties of the existing situation not accessible to those embedded within is.

Gergen & Thatchenkery (1996), as constructionists, suggest that what we take to be the world does not dictate the terms on which the world is understood. These terms are social artefacts. A given form prevailing is a function of the vicissitudes of social processes rather than of empirical validity

Gergen & Thatchenkery (1996) concentrate on three assumptions of modernism - rational agency, empirical knowledge and language as representation. They problematise these assumptions before offering a way forward in using postmodern views. Their vehicles for doing this are communal rationality, social construction and language as action.

Von Glaserfeld (1995), as a constructivist, suggests that knowledge is actively built by the cognizing subject, not passively received. The function of cognitions is adaptive - tending towards fit. Cognition serves to give meaning to the subject’s own world not to the

discovery of objective ontological reality. While I have sympathy with this view, and in some ways it connects with the perspective of sensemaking discussed below, the dialogic nature of my encounters in this research were more susceptible to a constructionist perspective than a constructivist one.

I have also taken a step towards critical theory (Thomas, 1993; Rowan, 1994; Alvesson & Wilmott, 1996). Here, I have used a critical perspective intermittently throughout this work to remind myself that ‘differing value-commitments demarcated in terms of their assumptions about society and social science, result in different forms o f (organizational) analysis.’ (Alvesson & Wilmott, 1996, p.52). I also adopt a postmodern perspective (Legge, 1995; Derrida, 1973) in considering the relationship of author to text. Texts, post­ modernists such as Derrida (1973) argue, are undecidable. The primacy of the author’s reading is challenged by such deconstruction. By deconstruction, I mean taking apart with the intention o f revealing the power structures embedded in the text. Derrida talks about

differance, where the meaning of a word or phrase is isolated and settled only by

deferring other words or phrases that differ from itself. My current favourite illustrations (some collected, some invented) of this phenomenon at its most stark are:

Share as in ‘having in common’ (as in shared meaning or shared co-operative ownership) or as in ‘dividing up’ (e.g. a cake, equity in a conventional joint stock

company)

Collaborator as in co-worker or traitor

Receptivity is acceptance or threat (a sundew, drosera rotundifolia, or indeed a spider, is receptive to the flies it consumes)

Loyalty is both faithfulness and (like patriotism) the last refuge of scoundrels

Drug as in ‘healing, ethical pharmaceutical’- like Prozac or ‘harmful, illegal narcotic’ - like cannabis

Take to the altar as in marriage or sacrifice? And are there not senses in which the two occupy the same emotional space - ‘half in love with easeful death’ (Keats

Ode to a nightingale).

An implication of these insights for the current research is that meaning and utility should not, naively, be seen as resting with the author, but rather are a shared construction between author and reader, in the context o f the environments in which both are located. This implies that, whereas the authors’ views of their intellectual products are of interest, they are not the whole story. In this account we have authors saying they do not

particularly value their IPs and yet users responding to the AMED questionnaire argue that they are central to their way of working in the world.

Alvesson & Wilmott (1996) suggest that critical theory

can reside in the wings, taking centre stage in the text only when it has something of direct importance to say.... Through a process of critical signalling’, portions

o f text can point to problems by highlighting the linkages between management theory and capitalism, male domination, manipulation, distorted communication, privileged interests, repression, etc. The idea o f emancipation then enters by stealth, in the form of disruptive asides in the text (p. 182).

There is also in this text an element of feminist thinking (Coyle & Skinner, 1988; Davies, 1985; Gutek & Larwood, 1989; Hearn, et al., 1989; Hearn & Parkin, 1987; Powell, 1988; Rakow, 1992; Schaef; 1992). Burrell & Heam (1989) suggest that feminism can adopt four major ways of conceptualising sexuality and gender, as:

• Biological essences • Outcomes of social roles

• Fundamental political categories

• Communicative practices and discourses of power.

While it is inappropriate to reduce feminist discourse to other paradigms, this heuristic is helpful in highlighting the broad ways in which issues of gender might be addressed in this text. In practice, most discussions of gender herein are linked to the conceptualisation of communicative practices and discourses of power.

Some readers might say that there is not nearly enough reference to gender. Most of my respondents in the informal conversations early in my fieldwork were men, and all my interviewees in the third phase were men. When I am not citing these male respondents, I

am employing my own voice, which will be imbued with a sometimes-unconsidered male perspective. Men’s voices predominate throughout this thesis, and space will be made for specific feminist perspectives.

In this thesis, observations informed by a critical, postmodern or feminist perspective are placed into a ‘critical box’, with a double margin, in the text, thus:

Critical boxes

Throughout this thesis, observations that adopt a critical, postmodern or feminist perspective are placed in these critical boxes. It could be argued that such placement ghettoises them, and downplays their significance vis a vis the rest of the text. I argue, to the contrary, that this convention raises the significance of the perspectives so signalled, and reduces the chances that the reader will dismiss them as petulant asides, or that the writer will treat them thus lightly.

Thus, this study will follow an approach which, in summary, can be described as:

1. ethnographic in its concern to unravel shared knowledge in natural settings 2. emic in seeking the sense made by respondents, but also

3. etic in that I overtly and (I hope) transparently supply my own sense to shape the data 4. analytically inductive in testing rough descriptions against cases

5. idiographic in that the account of all that a person said or the whole of a story are kept together and understood as a whole before being analysed by theme

6. ipative in that I have grounded what I see and say in my experience of the field as participant as well as observer

7. heuristic in my willingness to engage in intense internal search

8. critical in giving attention to assumptions about societies and social studies held by participants and by myself

9. postmodern in my questioning of the relationship between text and author in relation to participants’ and ‘my own’ text

10 .feminist in examining the taken for granted male world that I occupy and is occupied by many of my respondents.

The account of this research is also sensemaking, and the implications of this will be given separate consideration later in this chapter