By exploring and reflecting on aspects of my background and experience this Essay presents my attempts to identify my professional meaning-making system and its sources.
Clearly, Kerry as a place entered largely into my meaning-making – a key element of which in effect was „Kerry‟ as a sense in itself. My purpose is so that readers can understand the demoralizing impact rural Ireland on many of its residents during the 1960‟s and for much of the latter part of the 20th century with life in rural Ireland. Many people experienced difficulty obtaining the necessary employment to live and earn a livelihood that would enable people to rear a family to an acceptable standard of living.
The account I provide here illustrates how I knew rural Ireland and how my knowing was strongly influenced by my environment and those that I was close to.
This account was influenced by my own experience of taking the emigrant ship and also from consideration of the extent to which this was normal for those living on the street where I lived. It shows that nearly two thirds of those born on my street emigrated and only one third of the emigrants were able to return to Ireland. This analysis highlights the extent of emigration in a small community. The writing makes the reader aware of some of the changes that occurred in Ireland during the latter part of the 20th century, where the economy changed from a low cost economy to an advanced economy. As the early years of the 21st century progressed the rise in productivity did not maintain the necessary increases in living standards to counteract rising costs and recent financial crisis have resulted in a drop in sustainable employment and increased emigration.
My journey around Kerry in the 1960‟s indicates the problems present during that period and the acceptance by many of these problems. The solution then was the acceptance of emigration, a path that I followed. Now I see a different answer to similar problems. The knowledge that is available within our community, for example, can help to change the uses of our resources. The resources needed must be made available to those that are charged with this task of increasing the output of our assets. I look at the years of the Celtic Tiger and question our treatment of those who came to our country looking for employment. It is possible their treatment was similar to that of our emigrants during the sixties and the eighties. We probably did not look at the potential of those who came to Ireland as offering a diversity that could yield opportunities for both them and us. Many of those who came searching for employment are still with us and these are some of what I consider as our underutilized productive resources. For now such assets include underutilized talents of those that are resident in our community – their skills, their contacts.
The Kerry of the 1960s offered here is as close to how I saw and experienced it at that time as I can remember. Focusing on these memories, and in the context of Kegan‟s theory of adult development, allows me to remove them to a „place‟ where I can reflect on them, where I consider them as having implications and linkages in a wider sphere where the Sense, as I understand it, creates unwritten, unidentified linkages between those who
„have‟ the sense of „Kerry‟.
I consider these experiences as evidence on the way I knew. For example, I accepted the educational system as I found it without considering what it was geared towards. Now I want the educational system to cater for the needs of those that want to up-skill. When the average Irish person went abroad in the 1960‟s most gravitated towards the manual intensive vacancies rather than „office jobs‟. My belief at that time was that most followed the money. Manual work offered the best return for their labour in the short term to emigrants. Now, however, I wonder if other considerations influenced our choices - if we were educationally fit for positions in the economies that we emigrated into.
My reflection reveals evidence of movement through those levels identified by Kegan and to push myself further in development terms my challenge now is to develop my thinking process so that I will know in a different way. Specifically, I want to drive an agenda that will contribute to my community in a lasting way. I want to join those that are of a similar mindset. I want to concentrate on objectives that are of benefit to the community in general, including consideration of in whose interest objectives are set. I want to use some of the knowledge that I have accumulated during my journey effectively. I know that time is a finite element and I want to use it effectively. My way of knowing Kerry must fit my objective of fostering an entrepreneurial platform that will create sustainable employment. I must increase my level of complexity to match the demands of the environment that I live in. I must use the experiences that I have encountered to learn how to develop an entrepreneurial platform that will help to create sustainable employment in Kerry. I have the desire to try and achieve this aim.
To this end I can consider relevant research and work through it to understand the concepts and think through their usefulness for applications to economic development. I appreciate that their benefit lies not in providing solutions to the requirements of creating an entrepreneurial platform. I understand that what is required is changes in my way of thinking to move on in meaning-making complexity, as explained by Kegan (1990). I can identify that since my journey into adult education began most recently, my approach to problems has become more contemplative. It is full of questions and is more willing to
„listen‟ to opinions. My search for opinions are directed to those who have knowledge and experience in the field that I am interested in. In becoming a more effective user of the concepts and theories that specific element of my meaning-making, i.e. theory use, is the focus of my development in the Essays that follow.
I conclude that „Kerry‟ is not determined solely by the physical borders of the county as is defined on maps. The sense of „Kerry‟ to many is as real on the streets of New York or London or in the Irish Embassy in Beijing as it is within its known or visible physical boundaries. This sense is hard to describe but for many it is a bond or an affinity that exists and can serve as a „passport‟ to provide an opportunity to exchange and explore their respective capabilities without normal formalities. It is reflected in sponsorship by a New York stockbroker for students from his alma mater of St. Brendan‟s, Killarney. It is reflected in the support of a Gaelic footballer who adopted the Australian rules football as a career to a young Kerry Gaelic football star who wished to follow this career in Australia.
The question I am left with as a result of this Essay is if and how this sense of Kerry can be utilised? Sometimes it may not achieve anything but at other times it can mean the
„difference‟. Those who believe in it will just know it in a particular way. Those who don‟t believe in it will just smile and regard it as „mist in the morning air‟.
ESSAY TWO: FROM ENGINEERING MIND-SET TO AN ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE
1. Introduction
This Essay reports on my selected Reading-for-Change programme which has as its aim to enhance my capacity and capability to think about economic development using some selected theories of relevance to the focus identified in Essay One. This is my change agenda and the specific aspect of my meaning making system I am working on relates to theories of competitiveness and economic development. I use these readings as the basis for conducting analysis in Essays Three and Four of this Portfolio. In this way Essay Two represents a means to further the development of my meaning making system by supporting the use and application the theories and concepts in Essays Three and Four where they are used to organise my thinking about competitiveness as it relates to Kerry and in general.
I have chosen to examine the cluster concept that emerges from Porter‟s work (e.g. 1990, 2008) and Section Two of this Essay considers the cluster in the overall context of Porter‟s approach to competitiveness to provide Porter‟s explanation not only of his concept of cluster but its relation to his overall theory of economic development as he presented it in his Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990), for example.
In Section Three I introduce writings from a broader set of authors since I do not want to use the cluster as the sole „prong‟ to guide my thinking about the development of an entrepreneurial platform to create sustainable employment in the Kerry region. Instead I complement my consideration of the cluster concept and use the ideas of a number of source thinkers to advance my understanding of how companies survive, and prosper in the sense of creating employment.
I report in this section on a series of readings by source thinkers such as Penrose (1995 [1959]) and Drucker (1966, 2005) which I have undertaken during this journey and which have helped me to add to my capacity to reflect on the microeconomic mechanisms within firms that can lead them to make greater use of their resources. In one sense these ideas appear beyond the boundary of the cluster concept and yet I found they provide a
structure for thinking about why individuals and individual firms face and surmount obstacles to their performance and competitiveness. Furthermore, reflections on Kegan‟s work following my reading of the writings of these source thinkers further reveals their appropriateness, in many cases, for identifying and removing „baggage‟ that causes the immunity to change system to block aspirations because of individuals‟ counter aspirations which protects their comfort zone. While this purpose is not explicitly evident in any of the above source thinkers‟ writings, I identify it in Kegan‟s work as crucial to understand real hindrances to change and to development that can stymie organisational growth and development (as well as that of individuals).
My goal is to become more effective in my use of the various theories and concepts considered here explicitly as tools in my thinking process to help me to „know‟ in a different way and to test or experiment with this new way of knowing in Essays Three and Four. It is my contention, or hypothesis, that if these theories can be mastered by me and used as an apparatus of thought I will be able to make a difference when seeking ways to foster the establishment of an entrepreneurial platform that will help to create sustainable employment. These theories and concepts cannot provide neat solutions in themselves but can help me to organise and structure my thinking about aspects of economic development.