Response to Questions Based on Constructing Enterprise Resource Planning Article by Shepherd C - Assignment Example

 Response to Questions Based on Shepherd C.'s “Constructing Enterprise Resource Planning: A Thoroughgoing InterpretivistPerspective on Technological Change” and Russel L's “It’s a Question of Trust: Balancing the Relationship between Students and Teachers in Ethnographic Fieldwork” Section A: Shepherd C.'s Article “Constructing Enterprise Resource Planning: A Thoroughgoing Interpretivist Perspective on Technological Change”. Question 1: What possible reasons could the members of the ERP “core team” possibly have had for implementing measures designed to restrict the author’s access to interview this group of employees? There are a number of key reasons that might have potentially contributed to attempts by the ERP core team to try and restrict access to the interviewing employees who had recently been given redundancy notices. In light of the tragic events of 11 Sept 2001, and the ongoing restructuring that was occurring in the company (Shepherd, 2006), the company might not have been in a position where it could be able to spare sufficient resources so as to aid researchers in interviewing this group and category of employees. Although the employees had received redundancy notices as allowing these employees to spend extra time in undergoing the interviews would translate into a further reduction in their general productivity. This reduction in productivity and time utilized by employees in undertaking some non-essential functions might have proven to be too costly for the company and hence necessitated the attempts by the company to try and restrict the author’s access to this particular group of individuals. The organization might also have been attempting to try and protect its confidentially (Brown and Regent’s College, 2008) and in an attempt to do this, might have chosen to refuse the research access to this particular company demographic section that the company might perceive to be particularly sensitive, for strategic purposes, the company might not have wished the author to access this particular group of employees as it happened to have primarily consisted of employees who happened to be among the most negatively affected by the implementation of the ERP system. If the author had conducted interviews on this group, the researcher might have been able to obtain information from these employees on the strategy and methodology used in the implementation of the ERP system in the organization. This information can be perceived to be extremely sensitive and the organization might not have wanted this information to leak out to its competitors as these competitors might have used this information to their advantage one the research study is completed, its results published and made easily available. However, the company should be given some form of credit to this end as it nevertheless allowed the author access to other groups of employees and hence obtain important data to use in his research. In restricting the author’s access to this group of employees, the ERP core team might have been trying to put into careful consideration the feelings of those employees that had received the redundancy notices. Their receipt of redundancy notices might naturally have caused these employees to become apprehensive of both the company and their future at the company. Engaging these employees in the research project investigating their opinion on the implementation of the ERP system might have caused these employees to logically provide the researcher with negative and highly biased information as the common perception among these employees might have been that the new ERP system might be solely responsible for their receipt of redundancy notices. Nowadays, companies are seen to be constantly be overwhelmed by a large number of researchers aiming to conduct a number of research projects on the organization. Brown and Regent’s College argue that researchers are often turned down or denied access to some parts of the company primarily because a similar research study might already have been conducted targeting the same group of employees. In light of this, the company might have denied the author access to this group probably because there had recently been a similar research conducted on this group (2008). Question 2: According to Alvesson (2003), romanticism, neo-positivism and localism are the three main approaches to interviews. Describe the three perspectives and explain the approach that seems to have been adopted by Shepherd in his paper. According to Symon and Cassell 2012),in a bid to try and ascertain the answer to the question of what exactly is an interview and what kinds of different knowledge claims that it happen to enable, Alvesson proposes three approaches to interviews. The Neo-Positivism Approach to Interviews Neo-positivism approaches the interview as a modified oral survey instrument via which the more softer forms of generalizable and objective knowledge can effectively be shared. By adopting this approach, researchers are seen to claim the capability of being able to effectively capture what happens to really be out there by essentially following a given research protocol and trying to gather the more relevant responses. All this is done while constantly trying to minimize both the influence that the researcher might unintentionally exert on the study and any source of bias. The prime interest of this approach is seen to primarily be geared towards establishing facts pertaining to practice, value behavior and attitude among other factors. The approach deems it to be extremely crucial to try and compile undistorted data that can be easily aggregated and compared with other data. It is thus seen that interviews conducted using a neo-positivism approach tend to be relatively tightly structured and very carefully planned allowing minimal deviation on the part of the researchers from the established protocol, hence providing a process marked by both neutrality and objectivity (Symon and Cassell, 2012). The Romanticism Approach to Interviews In this approach, the interview is viewed as being as being an authentic dialogue that can eventually result in drawing out (inter)subjective knowledge by attempting to form a relationship. By using this approach, researchers believe that they will essentially be able to draw quite near to the respondent and hence be able to ideally apprehend the real self. By establishing depth and closeness, it becomes possible to effectively establish the true and authentic as expressed in talk. The method is seen to mostly rely on the interviewee’s narrations about themselves as a means to better understand them (Symon and Cassell, 2012). The Localism Approach to Interviews Although being comparatively small as compared to neo-positivism and romanticism, localism is a growing branch of interviewing that attempts to try and break with the various goals and assumptions that are seen to be targeted by both the neo-positivism and romanticism approaches to interviews. The approach is seen to try and approach the interview as a uniquely situated social accomplishment that is seen to deserve critical study in its own right as opposed to what it happens to say pertaining to social life elsewhere. Whereas both romantics and neo-positivists often tend to treat interviews as being a natural method via which organizational realities beyond the interview can effectively be addressed, localism is seen to emphasize that the given interview statements must essentially be well understood in particular context to the situation in which they happened to have been produced (Symon and Cassell, 2012). What approach was adopted by Shepherd in his Paper? In his paper, Shepherd is seen to have primarily adopted the use of the neo-positive approach to interview. This is clearly exemplified by his use of interview statements which is one of the marked characteristics of the approach. The use of homogenous as opposed to mixed focus groups targeting only the employees working in a given department at a time is an indication the fact that the interviews were tightly structured which is also seen to be characteristic of the neo-positivism approach (Shepherd, 2006). Q 3: Why the Author discloses information pertaining to his positioning in the paper. Researchers have to consider a number of aspects when deciding on the information that they will be disseminating to a research study’s participants. In addition to informing the participants of the degree of confidentiality of the research project and the purpose of the research study, it is also important to provide participants with relevant contact information pertaining to who is primarily responsible for the research study as well as furnishing these participants with information on details on who should be contacted in the provision of additional information. It is also important for the research participants to be informed of the research project’s general goals and purpose. It is therefore considered to be good practice to try and motivate the enthusiasm of the participants by informing them on the kind of knowledge that the study seeks to establish and to what use and purpose it will eventually be utilized. However, it is not important to furnish the participants with detailed information regarding the hypotheses and study problem. By disclosing important information informing participant PM that he was a PhD student and was keenly interested in the psychological and social aspects of change management, (Shepherd, 2006), is seen to be making a positive attempt at pointing out that he undertook all the necessary precaution to try and uphold the ethical integrity of the research project. He is also seen to be attempting to clearly highlight his current position and interests in regards to this particular research study. While all research is seen to generally generate some amount of ethical issues, it is possible for the researcher to be able to carefully predict some of these ethical issues before the commencement of the research project and be able to effectively manage these concerns as the project proceeds. By highlighting this information in his paper (Shepherd, 2006), is seen to also attempting to point out his attempts at trying to safeguard the ethical and moral safeguards of his research study to PM, and hence be better positioned to be able to produce valid findings while treating the participant (PM) with respect. It is also possible that (Shepherd, 2006), is keen to point out this information so as to point out the potentially biased data that will be derived from the interview with subject PM who perceives the author to be an investigator. Does this Enhance or Detract from the Research Findings? The disclosing of this information does not in any way detract from the research findings as the information helps in highlighting that the author was keen to ensure that he furnished the subject with some of the basic information on what the research study sought to establish. It also helps show that Shepherd (2006) was careful to try and maintain proper research ethicsin addition to also providing insight on the perception of the participant toward the research study, this aspect establishes a foundation on which to judge the results obtained from the interview conducted on the participant. Far from detracting the research findings, the additional information is seen to further enhance the paper by providing important background information on some aspects of the study that might potentially have had a profound impact on the general results of the research study. Section B:Russel L's Article, “It’s a Question of Trust: Balancing the Relationship between Students and Teachers in Ethnographic Fieldwork”. Question 1: How Russell’s claims influenced her decision to undertake the ethnographic study, its influence on her data collection method and the sequence that she chose to use in the employment of these methods. According to Grenfell et al. (2003), is essentially a principled effort that is designed to try and attempt to describe the everyday, cultural life of a given social group. Ethnography seeks to examine the different aspects of the social group such as its activities, settings, domains, institutions and practices. Ethnography as a research study method is seen to have a number of key advantages that include the fact that it enables the researcher obtain very in-depth findings pertaining to human behavior in addition to its allowing of the researcher to be able to evolve and gradually explore any new lines of inquiry that might emerge (Mariampolski, 2006). However, ethnography is also seen to have a number of disadvantages the most significant of which is the long duration that it takes to conduct an effective ethnographic study as a result of its wholesome reliance on observation. It is also found to be possible for the research findings to be unintentionally altered by the observer’s ignorance or cultural bias. Russell is seen to opt to use ethnography in this research as it will enable her to sufficiently immerse herself into the way of life of her given subjects and thus be able to obtain in-depth information and data from her subjects that she would have otherwise been unable to obtain. Russell (2005) claims insinuating that to be able to effectively learn from students, it is necessary for trust to be effectively developed between the researcher and the researched, is seen to have influenced her decision to undertake the ethnographic study, her chosen method of data collection and the actual sequence that she is seen to have employed in these methods. Russell decided to undertake an ethnographic study as it would allow her to be able to create effective relationships with the students where the students would develop some form of confidence and trust in her and thus be able to easily talk to her and provide her with the data and information that she sought to establish in her study. Although it proved to be somewhat particularly tough for her, she is also seen to have attempted to try and create relationships with the teachers so as to be able to obtain an opinion from them pertaining to their views on the students she was researching on. In line with her views, Russell (2005) is seen to have adopted the method of participant-as-observer method of data collection that saw her shadow the respective students for periods averaging about 24 hours without undertaking to bombard them with a deluge of questions. This was in an attempt to cause the students to first develop utmost confidence in her before she could start to ask them a raft of questions. Russell carefully records her observations in a log file for future analysis and sometimes allows the students access to read her log files and particularly so, the aspects that she had written pertaining to the given student. Russell points out that by doing this, she was able to further enhance the trust that these students had in her. Her data collection is also seen to have been greatly influenced by her beliefs that it was necessary for the students to develop confidence in her in that although she was in the company of the students in some instances when they happened to disregard the school rules such as is evidenced by a number of incidents including one of the students kicking and banging a school vending machine while Russell was conducting the ethnographic study, Russell is seen to have chosen not to report any of these incidences due to her beliefs in a hope that by doing so, she would be able to effectively gain the trust of the students and therefore be able to gain trust from these students in line with her established beliefs (Russell, 2005). Needless to say, Russell would not have been able to gather some of the intimate details on the information and data that she was able to gather if she had opted to only utilize some of the other forms of data collection such as the use of questionnaires or interviews; however, she is able to sufficiently argument her data collection by using techniques such as conducting interviews. The trust that she managed to build and establish with the students saw the students divulge to her some intimate information that they would not have freely divulged to her if she had opted to use some of the other available data collection methods. Question 2: The roles that Russell adopted while undertaking to interact with the teachers and students and why she chose to adopt these roles in her fieldwork. In conducting her ethnographic study, Russell is seen to have chosen to adopt a number of different roles and functions, which were keenly selected primarily depending on a number of factors such as whether the current person she was interacting with happened to be a teacher or a student, as well as the emotional attachment that she happened to have developed with the participant in question. The roles she adopts are seen to aid her to better related with the given individual and thus be able to cultivate a relationship that enable her to easily obtain data in her ethnographic study. Role of Intermediary between a Teacher and Student: In associating with the student, Russell (2005) was seen to constantly try and adopt a role that would try to cause the student’s perception of herself to not be equated to that of a teacher. To this end, Russell was seen to often try and capitalize on the age difference between herself and the students which was relatively small. By her adoption of this role, the students seemed to accept Russell into their confidence and would often undertake to discuss aspects pertaining to their person that they might have found to be difficult to discuss in the presence of a teacher; this included discussions pertaining to their sexuality and boyfriends which were conversations that the female participants would often discuss while in the privacy of the female toilet. The Role of Frail Ignorant Student: Although she is seen to not adopt his role voluntarily, Russell’s relatively smallness in both height and build would often cause her subjects to feel particularly protective of her and act as her protector as they thought that she was not streetwise or tough enough, and it is thus seen that Russell was at times forced to adopt the role of the frail ignorant student. This perception by the students was also seen to be partly influenced by her apparent ignorance to some certain aspects such as her not knowing some specific information pertaining to who to or not to sit with during recess. By trying to advice Russell on some of these aspects, the students were seen to feel some sense of responsibility towards her. The student subjects were also seen to play this protective role in the yard when students who happened not to be participating in the study would threaten to inform the teachers that it was Russell who happened to give them permission to engage in smoking in the event that they happened to be caught while in her presence; however, Russell position was often defended by the students participating in the research study. The adoption of this role is seen to help Russell cultivate a tighter relationship with her subjects a fact that is seen to help her in her ethnographic data collection. The Complete Participant Supportive Role: Russell was also seen to at times adopt a supportive role when relating to some of the students during her field work and especially so in the case of a female student who happened to come from a background where her mother happened to be an alcoholic and the student was actually the one seen to be left with the difficult responsibility of running the household. Russell is seen to have been so engaged in this role that this particular subject found it hard to accept that Russell was through with her field study and had to leave (Russell 2005). The role is seen to enable Russell to be able to collect the relevant data while all along providing support to participants that might require it. The Constraints Posed by Russell’s Characteristics Russell’s own personal characteristics such as her ethnicity, quiet disposition, gender, age, smallness in both build and height as well as her relative inexperience as both a researcher and a teacher are at times seen to constrain her research efforts as the teachers are seen to at times not take her too seriously as although they expect her to help them in their dealings and handling of the students, she is unable to do so due to her inexperience as a teacher and researcher. The roles served to aid Russell in better integrating and forming a strong relationship with the subjects. Her small build and relatively young age in comparison to her subject is seen to cause Russell to not be taken seriously by some of her subjects, this is illustrated by the fact that due to her young age and youthful appearance, the male students would often try to hit on her by discussing subjects pertaining to their macho bravado. This was the case when one of the male participants would often undertake to joke about their being all alone together during the interviews. Question 3: What were some of the challenges faced by Russell in attempting to minimize potential harm to her participants during the study and were the measures she took to shield these participants from harm adequate. According to Bryman and Bell (2007), harm to a research study’s participants can potentially take a number of different facets including: the inducement of the study’s subjects to perform any of a number of various reprehensible acts, physical harm, stress andharming the subject’s future employment or career prospects. In conducting the research, Russell is seen to have faced a number of critical challenges in attempting to try and effectively minimize harm to her participants. Russell experienced challenges in protecting the confidenitality that hse has developed with her subjects, when some of her subjects enage in bending some of the rules. This is seen by her distress at seeing her subjects involve themselves in taking various forms of drugs while in her presence. She experienced considerable difficulty and felt that she was forced to choose between protecting their confidentiality by not informing the teachers of this tendency so as to protect her subjects from getting suspended or even expelled from the school and breaking her confidentiality by informing the teachers of this vice in a bit to try and protect the welfare of these students and prevent them from causing any harm to themselves, their families or even other students. Russell (2005), also experienced some challenges in attempting to try and preserve her standing among the students and the confidence that they had already established in her. This caused her to experience difficulties in arranging and conducting meetings with the parents as she did not want the students to alienate her when they saw her forming close relationships with the teachers. This is demonstrated by the discomfort she felt when she got called into the vice-principal’s office after her subjects had been late for class. However, this incident is seen to cause her to gain more acceptance by the subjects. In a similar incident, Russell was attempting to set up a meeting with the English teacher but found it to be uncomfortable to do so as while walking along with the English teacher, the teacher happened to ask Russell a question pertaining to one of her subject’s behavior while the subject was walking within ear-shot. This forced Russell to loudly give a favorable opinion to the teacher for the benefit of the student who was listening-in on the conversation. This was all done in an effort to try and shield the participant from any harm that might arise. Russell also experienced considerable challenges in that there were a number of occasions that involved the students committing serious offences such as truancy incidents, theft and the wrecking of school property as was seen by a participant who kicked and banged a school vending machine while Russell was conducting an interview. In an attempt to try and remain impartial, Russell was forced to go and sit some distance off from the student with her back turned to the student so as to show the student that she did not essentially condone what the student had done. Russell is seen to have been attempting to protect the student from any perceived inducement on her part to student encouraging the student to do the irreprehensible actions involving damage and theft of school property (Russell, 2005). The steps that Russell took in an attempt were quite appropriate as by the end of the study, none of the subject is reported to have experienced any direct harm as a result of the activities of the research study. Russell was also able to protect the female student subject who was taking care of her family as her mother was an alcoholic by ensuring that she would continue receiving appropriate aid from the teachers once Russell left the field studies. Bibliography Brown, A. and Regent's College (London, England)., 2008.Constructing enterprise resource planning: A thoroughgoing interpretivist perspective on technological change 7th European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies: Regent's College, London, UK, 19-20 June 2008. Reading: Academic. Bryman, A. and Bell, E., 2007. Business research methods.Oxford [u.a.] : Oxford Univ. Press. Grenfell, M., 2013. Language, Ethnography, and Education: Bridging New Literacy Studies and Bourdieu. Routledge. Mariampolski, H., 2006. Ethnography for marketers : a guide to consumer immersion. Thousand Oaks, Calif. : SAGE Publications. Russell L., 2005.It’s a question of trust: balancing the relationship between students and teachers in ethnographic fieldwork. Qualitative Research. May 2005 vol. 5 no. 2 181-199 Shepherd C., 2006. Constructing enterprise resource planning: A thoroughgoing interpretivist perspective on technologicalchange. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. (2006), 79, 357–376. Symon, G. and Cassell, C., 2012.Qualitative Organizational Research: Core Methods and Current Challenges. SAGE. Read More