And The Doctorate is OVER!

Yesterday was the day of my doctoral defence. As of 12:30 p.m., I became the very proud and grateful owner of a shiny new Ph.D., based on the defence of my research on organization theory, in Adult Education and Counselling Psychology. Notably, I earned a pass "as is" (the highest ranking) of my thesis, From BAH to ba: Valence theory and the future of organization. My external examiner was Dr. Brenda Zimmerman from York University's Schulich School of Business, whose research specialties include Healthcare Strategy and Leadership, and - most appropriately for my research - organizational complexity and emergence. Here's what she wrote in her appraisal of my thesis:

Mark Federman’s thesis is a comprehensive, well written document. It is a bold, ambitious undertaking and he makes several contributions to organization theory.

First, he makes a compelling case of the link between historical contexts and dominant organizational forms. Classical economic theory and the Industrial Organization school have dominated the literature which serves to explain organization forms. Both of these fields are ahistorical. Business historians rarely look to a time frame beyond decades. This thesis extends the temporal frame of business historians by reviewing the period from 500 BC to contemporary times. This thesis may serve as an impetus for business historians to extend their temporal frame and for organization theorists, particularly those versed in structural contingency theory, to look more deeply at historical factors that influence organization forms.

Second, the lens of the five valences will help give a more nuanced understanding of the nature of relationships in organizations. Relationship centred literature for organizations is extensive. This thesis provides researchers with a more nuanced understanding of a set of five relationships. A further differentiation between fungible and ba aspects for each of the five relationships should also be helpful in helping researchers discern the nature of the challenges facing organizations.

Third, the empirical research provides a rich comparison across the typology and in particular how the leadership co-evolves with the organization form. The transformation from one end of the continuum to the other provides insights into some of the challenges of transitions which is now becoming more prevalent in understanding scalability.

Fourth, he very effectively weaves the artistic self-reflective mode with the more analytic academic mode. By doing so, he more authentically demonstrates the challenges of writing about a subjective experience while maintaining academic rigour.

Fifth, the cargo cult phenomenon is well documented in Organization A and could be a standalone piece of work after the thesis. Mr. Federman both articulates the concept and demonstrates empirically well.

In short, this is an excellent thesis. It is thought provoking and I look forward to an interesting conversation at the defense.

The conversation at the defence was indeed interesting, wide-ranging, and challenging at times. However, according to Marilyn Laiken, my supervisor, there was no debate whatsoever about the final decision.

Let me once again offer my sincere gratitude to: my research participants and those in the five participant organizations who helped facilitate their participation; and to all of you who read this blog who contributed your comments, ideas, suggestions, and questions.

If your organization is seeking guidance in issues relating to leadership, or organization development, dynamics, change, or culture, and you would like the assistance of what is literally the very latest research in the area provided by an experienced consultant, facilitator, and organizational therapist, let's talk.


[Technorati tags: organization theory | organization development | organization dynamics | organization development | organization change | brenda zimmerman]

From BAH to ba: Public Thesis Defense Video

For those who weren't able to join either in person or via Skype, here is the video of last week's public thesis defense.


Mark Federman's Public Thesis Defense from Mark Federman on Vimeo.

[Technorati tags: thesis defense | valence theory]

Public Thesis Defence - You're Invited!

The thesis has just officially passed committee and, after a final check-the-commas read-through, will be on its way to the external examiner. My external is Dr. Brenda Zimmerman from Schulich School of Business at York University, co-author of Getting to Maybe: How the world is changed. She is well-known for social innovation and complexity models of organization, and I am quite honoured to have her as my external.

Although the official defence is three months away, I am planning to do a public, "department defence" to which everyone is invited, including you! Here's the notice for the event:

What do a social justice NGO, a New York City advertising agency, and a Japanese Zen philosopher have in common?

Come find out how these three, very different entities represent a common future for organizational transformation when Mark Federman publicly presents his doctoral thesis research in a department defence.

From BAH to ba: Valence Theory and the Future of Organization

Wednesday, March 24, from noon to 1:00
OISE Room 7-162
252 Bloor Street West
Toronto, ON

Everyone is welcome! If you're on Facebook, you can RSVP to the event

If you are, or will be, in Toronto, it would be great if you could join in person. If you are not in Toronto, there will be a Skype conference call (max 23 people), with preference given to research participants who would like to listen in. Please email me with your Skype ID to reserve your Skype slot.

[Technorati tags: valence theory | thesis | defence]

Let the Reflection on the Games Begin

Yes, it was a great hockey game yesterday, and not merely because Sidney Crosby finally lived up to hype surrounding his wunderkind-ness. But key among the many "real stories" of the Vancouver Olympics are the stories of all 206 Canadian athletes who have dedicated their lives over many years, and those of the families and friends of those 206. There is an important lesson to be taken from these games, I think: individual effort, dedication, perseverance, training, preparation can yield tremendous success that creates both direct, and vicarious pride and sense of accomplishment. Additionally, it is the tremendous and often selfless support, encouragement, advice, and sacrifices of those who care about the athlete in question that make a huge difference in whether the ultimate performance realizes the dreams and aspirations of the competitor.

Not to elevate myself or overstate my own experiences over the past six years, I am just completing a marathon not unlike those undertaken by Olympic-level performers. Like them, I have dedicated, persevered through adversity and challenge, prepared, and expended tremendous effort to the exclusion of many other pursuits to complete my Valence Theory research (which will be defended on Friday, June 11, 2010, beginning at 10:00 a.m.). Like them, I have enjoyed and am truly grateful for the often selfless support, encouragement, advice, and sacrifice of those who have cared about me and my work - support that has indeed made a huge difference in my ability to realize my goal. Here, then, are the Acknowledgements that are included in my thesis: 

A doctoral thesis is a marathon, and in many ways appears to be a solitary, isolating process. At the same time, to successfully complete this marathon requires the assistance and support of so many wonderful people that it truly cannot be considered as anything else but a collaboration, reflexively an emergent organization not unlike those about which I write.

Thank you to my doctoral committee—Marilyn Laiken, Derrick de Kerckhove, and Ann Armstrong. Marilyn has encouraged and mentored me throughout my two degrees at OISE, and provided one of the two key inspirations that formed the kernel of Valence Theory through her course on the History and Theory of Organization Development. She was the first to challenge me with the “obviousness” of Valence Theory, and hence, spurred me with the impetus to clearly articulate new thinking about that which everyone already sees. Derrick provided me the other inspiration—the incorporation of the Toronto School of Communication discourse, leading to the realization that I should be able to observe the emergence of new organization consistent with contemporary reality if I was able to notice the “effects that precede the cause.” Ann inspired me to carefully question not only the approach I was taking, but the approaches I was not taking so that I could better appreciate and comprehend the ground of my work. To the three of you, my heartfelt thanks for your guidance, inspiration, and friendship.

To my friends and colleagues at OISE, thank you for participating in making these the six best years of my life. Special thanks to the members of our thesis group – Soosan Latham, Tracey Lloyd, Bettina Boyle, Carole Chatalalsingh, Cristin Stephens-Wegner, and Alena Strauss – for your unwavering support, camaraderie, and encouragement. Thanks as well to all those who participated as core members of Students on Seven through my years here, who helped create a great environment in which to learn, think and play. A heartfelt thank you to Bonnie Burstow, who taught me everything I know about designing and conducting research from a ground of respect and equity.

To my participant organizations, I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude for granting me permission to connect with some of your members, and especially to the managers and executives in those organizations who facilitated the approval processes. Although I would love to thank you by name, respecting confidentiality does not permit. Sincere thanks to Adam, Frank, Karen, Robert, and Roxanne from Organization A; Aaron, Jeff and Matt from Organization F; Jean and Sam from Inter Pares; Mary, Mina, Sean, and Stan from Organization M; and Cindy, Frances, Loreen, and Roger from Unit 7. The gift of your time and insight is the foundation of this thesis and I will be eternally grateful for all that you have contributed.

Thanks to all those who participated and contributed to my thinking via my weblog and wiki. Taking the time to reflect on what I have been writing has enriched my understanding of this work. Thanks especially to Pam Rostal for pointing me to Nonaka’s use of ba, from which it was a small step to discover the work of Nishida Kitaro. A very special thank you to my dear friend, Christine Sorenson, who has contributed immeasurably to my research, writing, and state of mind throughout this entire process. Finally, thanks to my friends at Salsaholics Anonymous and Toronto Salsa Practice for helping to keep me sane and embodied, enabling me regularly to go out of my mind.

Last, but not least, thank you to my wife, Miriam, and the two, finest young adults I have the privilege to know – my children, David and Julie – for standing by me through the long hours, days, weeks, months, and years. I have been able to begin to realize my dream; I pray that you each will be able to realize yours.

[Technorati tags: olympics | 2010 | acknowledgements]

Final Thesis Section Now Posted

After five years of work, the journey now approaches its end. Today, I have posted the last section of my thesis on the Valence Theory Thesis Wiki.

This last section - Meaning: The interplay of figure and ground - describes Valence Theory specifically: the five valence relationships, the two valence forms, and the notion of "effective theory of action." It contextualizes the research findings (from the section, Figure), and describes some of the implications, including, The Nature of Leadership, and Effecting Organizational Transformation.

As with the other sections, each chapter is preceded with A Conversation with Nishida. In particular, the conversation, The Place, describes the philosophical foundation of basho ("place" in Japanese) from which some of the Valence Theory constructs are derived. The other Conversations are both entertaining and thought-provoking, setting up the mindframe for the content chapter to follow.

As always, I invite your comments, critiques, feedback, and suggestions. If you are a research participant, this is your last opportunity to provide input and guidance with respect to how your contributions are represented.

Thank you to all who have contributed their comments on the draft so far. And, once again, a special thanks to those organizations and individuals who participated in the research, without whom none of this would have been possible.

Happy reading!

[Technorati tags: valence theory | thesis]

Bureaucracy Kills

Today's National Post has an article by "Ishmael Jones" and "Michael Ross," respectively former operatives of the CIA and Mossad. They describe how the CIA's bureaucracy prevented information about the Christmas Underwear Bomber from properly being assessed and disseminated within the agency, and to those who needed to know at the TSA. They write:

There are so many managers and administrators, in so many separate and loosely organized chains of command, that not only is acquiring the intelligence a stroke of luck, but getting it to where it needs to go, on time, is almost impossible. This is in sharp contrast to the Israeli intelligence community, which has worked to eliminate unnecessary layers of bureaucracy and implemented clear lines of communication and guidelines for inter-agency intelligence sharing.

The Mossad’s organizational culture scorns bureaucracy because it recognizes the danger in excessive layers of management. Its counterterrorism division alone supervises and directs all terrorist-related intelligence obtained from overseas sources. The intelligence received is promptly assessed, analyzed and disseminated as an actionable product in accordance with strict terrorist-threat protocols. This information is put into the hands of end-users who will employ it to address the threat — such as allied intelligence agencies and aviation security officials. Israel’s intelligence community has learned from hard experience that bureaucracies and hierarchies are ineffectual in fighting terrorist networks.

Ironically, according to various permutations of Structural Contingency Theories, the internal structure of an organization is, more or less, supposed to match the external environment in which it exists, or to which it must respond. Ideally, then, the CIA should quickly transform into an amorphous, decentralized network in which "when nobody is in charge, everyone is in charge."

That last bit, by the way, is taken from my thesis draft, specifically from the next chapter to be posted (expected in about three to four weeks or so). In other words, the CIA would do well to begin thinking about a transformation towards becoming a more UCaPP organization. Perhaps that's why the Sitemeter tracker logged a hit from the CIA domain recently.

[Technorati tags: CIA | bureaucracy]

Valence Theory Findings Now Posted!

After an intense two months of writing, the Findings chapters are now available and posted to my Valence Theory thesis wiki.

I have restructured the thesis into three parts: Ground (the invisible context), Figure (what is noticed), and Meaning (the interplay of figure and ground). These newly posted chapters comprise Figure, and tell the stories of the five participant organizations, as well as providing a summary of the characteristic differences between BAH and UCaPP organizations in seven categories: Change, Coordination, Evaluation, Impetus, Power dynamics, Sense-making, and View of people.

Of course, I would be interested in hearing your feedback and thoughtful reflections on my analysis. Organizations that are seeking to transform or gain insight into their current situations may find the results gleaned from others instructive.

For quick reference, direct links to specific organizations are:
Organization M, Organization A, Organization F, Unit 7, and Inter Pares.

As a reminder, Organizations M and A are BAH organizations. Organization F was transitioning from being mostly a UCaPP organization to becoming more BAH in nature. Unit 7 has been transitioning in the other direction, becoming more UCaPP. And Inter Pares is the archetypal UCaPP organization.

As always, the Conversation with Nishida chapters are intended to set an appropriate mindframe for the analysis to follow.

PDFs for the three posted Figure chapters, and for each of the Conversations, are available for downloading at the site.

[Technorati tags: valence theory | findings]

Identity and Organization Change

From the emerging thesis draft:

Among the dominant effects of the Industrial Age were the concentration and importance of capital. As the modern BAH organization emerged amidst the effects of that environment, it is understandable that the Economic-valence relationship became situated as the primary driving force among modern organizations. The modern understanding of organization dynamics according to the instrumental, managerialist discourse has, at its core, a primary concern for economic considerations. On the other hand, the emerging humanist, relational organizational discourse of the 20th century – the line of reasoning that leads to the contemporary UCaPP organization – is arguably based on situating the individual simultaneously in relation to other individuals and in relation to organization as a distinct entity in itself. I suggest, therefore, that in a UCaPP societal environment the dominant driving force shifts from the extrinsic instrumentality of the Economic-valence relationship to the intrinsic relationality of the Identity-valence relationship.

In suggesting this profound shift in conception, I am not denying the ongoing importance of the Economic-valence relationship. The fact remains that many people can be induced to enact certain behaviours (including working at otherwise dehumanizing jobs) through direct financial incentive. Even among anti-capitalists, barter and exchange – non-monetary manifestations of Economic-valence relationships – still remain important forms of interaction. Economic gain, one’s salary, possessions, and other material displays of wealth are often proxy markers for social status and reinforcements of psychological self-worth – all material, external expressions of identity relative to any particular cultural conceptions of social location. Nevertheless, my previous research (Role*: A reconception of role and relationship in the workplace) confirms and extends Herzberg’s conclusion that economic compensation, beyond a certain level, becomes for the most part an issue of hygiene, rather than motivation.

I have argued elsewhere (No Educator Left Behind) that identity – the location of oneself in relation to one’s society at the time – has always been important, and indeed directly defines the role of education in a society. In the contemporary UCaPP world, however, identity being collaboratively constructed in the context of multiple, massively-interconnected networks of social relations takes on an even greater importance: the preservation or enhancement (or both) of identity becomes a critical consideration in effecting organizational change, be it as simple as a rearrangement of an organization chart, or as complex as transitioning from being a BAH organization to enacting a UCaPP organization. As was clearly demonstrated by Aaron in Organization F as it is transitioning to become more BAH, and by many departing individuals of various ranks in Unit 7 as it transitioned to become more UCaPP, a perceived threat to identity, a felt diminishment of Identity-valence relationship, is sufficient reason to seek employment elsewhere. The clichéd resistance-to-change is not a resistance to change per se, but rather a resistance to a change in identity. Conversely, it follows that the optimal strategy to effect organizational change of any sort is to first understand and account for the requisite change in Identity-valence, and then facilitate the changes among the other valence relationships.

[Technorati tags: organization change | identity]

Quote of the Day On, What Does an Organization Trust?

From the emerging thesis draft:

A BAH organization trusts its systems, not its people.

[Technorati tags: organization | trust]

The Fundamental Difference Between BAH and UCaPP Organizations

From the emerging thesis draft:

BAH organizations replace the complexity of human dynamics in social systems with the complication of machine-analogous procedures that enable individual independence, responsibility, and accountability. UCaPP organizations encourage and enable processes of continual emergence by valuing and promoting complex interactions even though doing so necessitates traditional, legitimated leadership ceding control in an environment of individual autonomy and agency, collective responsibility, and mutual accountability.

Neither approach is universally appropriate; nor should an organization fall blindly into one or the other without understanding the ramifications and desirability of becoming less (BAH) or more (UCaPP) consistent with contemporary society.

[Technorati tags: complexity | complication | organization change]

Seeking Female Research Participants in Hierarchical Organizations

No, not for me - one PhD research project is quite enough, thank you. This posting is for a colleague where I was a few years ago. But if you are a woman in a large, hierarchical organization, please read on!

WOMEN AND LIFELONG INNOVATIVE LEARNING:
ENGAGEMENT AND OPPORTUNITIES IN HIERARCHICAL ORGANIZATIONS

Despite their proportion of participation in the workplace, women particularly those from the ethnic minority groups have been disproportionately underrepresented in senior positions in hierarchical organizations. Most of these women are concentrated in low-paying and low-status occupations in these organizations regardless of their education and experience. Various structural and cultural constraints are ubiquitous in hierarchical organizations which limit their engagement and opportunities and compromise their career mobility. This study will investigate how learning in a self-directed and innovative way during the life course can be a constructive intervention for these women in overcoming obstacles arising directly or indirectly from the structure and culture of hierarchical organizations to their career. It further explores if learning through their experience at work will support these women in building new knowledge to improve their career opportunities and in becoming lifelong innovative learners. The study design includes discussions with women who are interested in this study and are able to share their experience relating to their experience in hierarchical organizations and their career development as well as their approach to learning.

If you are a member of the study population, i.e. women who have worked in an organization with over 50 employees for over five years and are interested in participating in this study, we would like to have an interview with you. Your participation in this study will enrich our understanding of the research questions with findings that may be instrumental in developing coping strategies to manage the careers of women and in promoting lifelong innovative learning as a constructive intervention.

The study is being conducted by Tammy Chan, a doctoral student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, under the supervision of Professor Peter Sawchuk.

If you wish to participate in the study, you will be interviewed at a time and place convenient to you. The interview will be conducted in two phases by the doctoral student personally and will take approximately two hours and, if necessary, a follow up discussion on any outstanding issues after reflection either in person or over the phone. Dialogues during the interviews will be audio-taped to enhance interpretability relating to the structural and cultural constraints experienced by participants, their career development and approaches to lifelong learning. All the information relating to the research questions collected during the interview will be kept in strict confidence which will only be used for the preparation of the thesis. If you would like to continue your discussion about your experience after the interviews, we will be able to refer you to other professional workers in the related areas.

Your name and name of your organization or any other information that may disclose your identify will not be used in the study. To maintain confidentiality, a pseudonym will be used for the report of the findings from your participation. All information about the organization that is discussed at the interview will be kept in confidence. The audio tapes and all related written records from the interviews will only be kept until the completion and approval of the thesis.

Your participation is completely voluntary and you may withdraw from the study without further obligations at any time up until the write up of the final analysis begins. Although there will be no financial compensation in participating in this study, we would like to recognize your contribution with a small token of a book certificate. A copy of the final analyses can also be provided to you upon request when available. Please fill in your contact information below if you would like to have a copy.

If you have any questions about the study at any time, you may contact us at the numbers below. Thank you for considering your participation in this study. I would also appreciate if you would forward this letter to others who might be interested in this study. Thanks again.

So if you have a couple of hours to spare and would like to help out a PhD candidate with her research (I can tell you that all of my participants really enjoyed the process and each learned something new about themselves and their individual situations), please contact Tammy Chan directly. Many thanks - recruiting is often the hardest part of the research process!

[Technorati tags: tammy chan | research | women | hierarchical organization]

Leadership, Reward, and Contrary Compensation

From the emerging thesis draft:

“If the spotlight is on you, then you’re not doing your job, especially in a leadership role…” says Roger, one of my research participants from a UCaPP organization. Given that the UCaPP organization ideally does not privilege one group or class over another, the espoused leadership concept of personal success only being achieved through group success permeates throughout all organization members, irrespective of their nominal position, role, or tenure with the organization. When considering more traditional organizations, the converse is perhaps more important: collaboration or teamwork that might be expected among the workers cannot be contradicted, neither by the otherwise well-intentioned actions of management, nor the formal and informal compensation and recognition systems in the organization.

Reward and recognition are often constructed as rivalrous resources based on the premise of there being beneficial value in creating internal competition in a BAH organization. However, the tacit but clear message received by organization members is that they are always and continually competing for their respective offices unless one has job security via a collective agreement, tenure, or other, similar arrangement. Teamwork becomes necessary in this environment, among other reasons, to establish concertive control in the absence of legitimated and explicit coercion.

The collaborative culture of a UCaPP organization decouples reward and status from contribution. In an environment of organization-ba – especially in the presence of strong Socio-psychological-ba and Identity-ba – organization members will contribute not only because it aligns with their personal values to do so, but because they feel valued - strong Economic-ba in doing so.

[Technorati tags: leadership | collaboration | teamwork | compensation]

Organizational Impetus

From the (emerging) thesis draft:

Every organization has an intrinsic motive force – the ideation which provides the impetus for the organization to move. For many organizations, its impetus is expressed by its mission statement that nominally captures its overall goals and objectives. For others, the impetus emerges from its members’ deeply held values that unify in the body of the organization. Regardless of its origin, impetus defines the processes of direction-setting and decision-making, and therefore informs and provides guidance to the mechanisms of management throughout the organization.

[Technorati tags: organization | impetus]

Organizational Effectiveness Homework Assignment

From the emerging thesis draft (well, the idea, anyway):

Setting and meeting objectives is considered important for organizational effectiveness. However, how those objectives are set relates to what we mean by effectiveness. Is it better to set objectives that create visibility for the intended effects and continual reflection on the values of an organization, but may not be quantifiable (and thus, cannot be conventionally measured); OR to set objectives that are quantifiable and therefore can be designed to be accomplished as set, but may not actually achieve the desired or intended effects?

Hint: One way is consistent with the practices of UCaPP organizations, the other with BAH organizations.

[Technorati tags: organizational effectiveness | evaluation]

Evaluation in the Contemporary Organization

From the (emerging) thesis draft (I expect these excerpts will be posted in a chapter in early December-ish):

With respect to evaluation in a UCaPP environment, the organization itself must be considered to be a distinct actant in relation with the individual and thus is, as well, a subject of evaluation along with the individual. It cannot be take as axiomatic that the organization is always correct in its often arbitrary selection of goals and objectives, and thus, individual goals and objectives derived via functional decomposition may well be contestable; indeed, in a UCaPP organization, they must be contested and negotiated. The fundamental evaluative concern of the UCaPP organization thus changes from that of the typical BAH organization, asking a different question: In what ways did the individual contribute to enabling and creating the organization's intended effects, and how well did the organization respond?

[Technorati tags: organization | evaluation | effectiveness]

Organizational Culture Change

From the (emerging) thesis draft:

Effecting cultural change in an organization must necessarily be a discursive undertaking, literally changing the vocabulary of attitudes, behaviours, characteristics, determinants, and ethos that create individual identity with respect to the organization, and organizational identity with respect to its members. The social and psychological location of this change is manifest in the valence relationships, and particularly with respect to enacting (or suppressing) the ba-forms of those relationships. The place of that enactment - the culture change venue - literally creates metaphysical "place" in the organization - basho.

[Technorati tags: organization | culture | change]

Bureaucracy, Complexity, and Complication

From the (emerging) thesis draft:

Bureaucracy, administrative control, and hierarchy fragment natural interpersonal interactions, thereby interrupting naturally occurring complexity in human social systems. As in the fashion of a Newtonian clockwork universe, that complexity is replaced by the complication of BAH procedures in an attempt to replicate an organic system of humanity with the equilibrium of non-human machinery.

[Technorati tags: organization | bureaucracy | administration | hierarchy]

Contemporary Organizational Effectiveness

From the (emerging) thesis draft:

To change the fundamental premise upon which organizations are constructed necessitates a change in our collective understanding of what it means to be effective. Simply put, to be effective in a ubiquitously connected and pervasively proximate world is to be cognizant of the effects one intends to create, and that one actually brings about in both the social and material - both natural and physically constructed - environments. As effects are substantially distinct from goals and outcomes, an organization concerned first and foremost with its effects must maintain a heightened awareness of its interactions amidst the social and material environments in which it participates. This logic brings an organization to having as its primary concern the relationships it creates, out of which intended effects emerge, followed by the goals, objectives, and outcomes towards which it strives.

[Technorati tags: organization | effectiveness]

John Willinsky on Open Access

As part of Open Access Week, John Willinsky, currently of Stanford University, regaled a large audience at OISE this noon hour. Open access, according to Willinsky, means free online access to peer-reviewed, published literature. The concept reflects the trust in which the public has invested among academics (particularly, but not necessarily exclusively) relative to human knowledge and the fundamental human right to know. Public education, after all, is primarily about access to knowledge: even in the K-12 system the focus is almost exclusively on basic reading, writing, and 'rithmetic skill-building (although that in itself is somewhat problematic) - all skills that enable access to knowledge.

Currently, only 20% of all scholarly articles are available through Open Access. The good news is that the percentage is going up, and it's going up thanks to three primary mechanisms. First, the major journals cartel (Elsevier, Springer, Taylor and Francis, Wiley-Blackwell) now grants the right for authors to post electronic versions of their final, peer-reviewed (but not copy-edited) draft on an institutional archive or private web repository (like a blog). Willinsky notes that an academic's responsibility to publish is only the beginning: there is also a responsibility to disseminate knowledge for everyone's benefit, especially since all academic research is conducted either through direct public funding of institutions and research grants, or indirect public funding through the tax-exempt status of (American) private universities. He observes that a recent study found that authors who archive their work for Open Access in this way are three times more likely to be cited than those who rely solely on being published in one of the slightly less than infinite number of academic journals that exist "out there."

The second piece of good news is that the number of Open Access academic journals is increasing, and increasing at a startling rate. He estimates that there are now about 5,000 online, Open Access journals covering every discipline in the academy. For example, the Public Library of Science boasts seven medical and scientific journals that publish leading and ground-breaking research in biology, medicine, computational biology, genetics, and others. The third piece of good news is that over 100 academic institutions have adopted a mandate that their respective scholarly production will be either published in Open Access journals, or archived for Open Access. In Canada, CIHR - the federal funding body for health research - requires Open Access publication for its funded projects. This, of course, makes sense: the research is publicly funded; the resulting knowledge should be publicly available. Willinsky calls for more institutions (like, say, OISE) to take a public stand on Open Access and declare a similar policy mandating its faculty and grad students to publish in Open Access journals, or to make drafts of their work publicly available.

The Open Access debate often becomes entwined with the copyright debate, and economics. The argument often follows that of the person who attempts to make a living from their creative output, like the fiction author, musician, painter, composer, or sculptor. However, academics are different in a significant way. Whereas the direct economic value provided by a work of fiction (arguably) diminishes (but not necessarily - Cory Doctorow, for example, argues convincingly against this) when the work is freely available, the value to an academic of her work becoming openly and freely available increases. The value of academic knowledge increases when it is shared: the value of one's learning is only measured by its consequential value to others.

As my regular readers know, I am a firm believer in Open Access. Most of my scholarly production has been posted via my blog under Creative Commons, and even my dissertation draft on Valence Theory is available, chapter by chapter, hot off the word processor. It's very simple, really: together, we're all smarter.

[Technorati tags: john willinsky | open access | academic journals]

Chapter 2 Now Available: Understanding Reality's Production

The thesis writing progresses! For those who are following along, the second chapter, Understanding Reality's Production: On methodology and method, is now posted to my Valence Theory thesis wiki. This chapter explains why I've chosen the particular methodology I'm using (constructivist grounded theory, for those playing along at home), and describes the research method, the participants, and other nitty gritties of what actually happened. Here's a taste:

Law draws on Latour and Woolgar’s seminal, 1986 examination of how scientific facts are produced in the context of “laboratory life” to make the argument that science produces the realities that it describes. This is not an arbitrary, “anything goes” epistemology, but rather the product of a rigorous and difficult process of what I describe as “adding to the cultural compendium of wisdom” (Federman, 2007). Heterogeneous research practices and diverse contexts contributed by both researchers and participants produce heterogeneous perspectives and interpretive realities – both of which are, arguably, imaginary constructs – that nonetheless manifest in multiple real effects and consequences. Law then proceeds to suggest that “perhaps there may be additional political reasons for preferring and enacting one kind of reality rather than another” (p. 13; emphasis in original).

In considering the researcher’s responsibility in his or her knowledge contribution, these “ontological politics,” as Law calls them, loom large, especially in the context of both affecting and effecting human behaviours in social settings. Peter Drucker differentiates between natural laws that operate irrespective of humanity’s often limited ability to understand and describe them, and the basic assumptions held by the particular select group of researchers and practitioners that,

…largely determine what the discipline assumes to be reality. … For a social discipline such as management, the assumptions are actually a good deal more important than are the paradigms for a natural science. The paradigm – that is, the prevailing general theory – has no impact on the natural universe. Whether the paradigm states that the sun rotates around the earth or that, on the contrary, the earth rotates around the sun has no effect on sun and earth. A natural science deals with the behavior of objects. But a social discipline such as management deals with the behavior of people and human institutions. Practitioners will therefore tend to act and to behave as the discipline's assumptions tell them to. Even more important, the reality of a natural science, the physical universe and its laws, do not change (or if they do only over eons rather than over centuries, let alone over decades). The social universe has no ‘natural laws’ of this kind. (Drucker, 2001, p. 69-70)

Don't forget to read the accompanying "Conversation with Nishida" on The Question, too.

PDFs for all chapters are available for downloading from the wiki's front page.

[Technorati tags: valence theory | organization]