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Managing organizational reward systems to increase retention: The gender factor
No full textThis dissertation examines how differing goals men and women bring to the workplace affect the
impact of corporate rewards intended to motivate and recognize performance and promote
retention. It focuses on gender because of the changing composition of the American workforce.
In 2010 women constituted 47% of the total U.S. employed workforce and 52% of the U.S.
professional workforce. An emerging body of research indicates that women in professional
positions increase the effectiveness of problem solving and the profitability of organizations.
Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to the impact of reward systems on retention,
especially for women. This dissertation explores the links among individual goals,
organizational rewards, and retention. Using social cognitive theory, it examines gender
differences in goals; identifies the types of rewards that are most effective for each group; and
proposes a model for determining effective reward structures. The dissertation conclusions are
these: (1) there are barriers to success for professional women and there is a need for
organizational support; (2) flexible work arrangements are a key antecedent to reduce turnover of
professional women; (3) mentoring of professional women is needed, but sponsorship is
required; and (4) to be a visionary organization that creates and sustains a competitive advantage
by retaining valuable human capital action has to be taken now.Running head: INCREASING RETENTION: THE GENDER FACTOR
Managing Organizational Reward Systems to Increase Retention: The Gender Factor
by
Laura K. St. Claire
A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty
of
University of Maryland University College
in Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for the Degree
of
Doctor of Management
Doctoral Committee: Dr. Sharon Hadary
Dr. Dennis Winters
Date Final Version Submitted: December 2012
INCREASING RETENTION: THE GENDER FACTOR 2
Abstract
This dissertation examines how differing goals men and women bring to the workplace affect the
impact of corporate rewards intended to motivate and recognize performance and promote
retention. It focuses on gender because of the changing composition of the American workforce.
In 2010 women constituted 47% of the total U.S. employed workforce and 52% of the U.S.
professional workforce. An emerging body of research indicates that women in professional
positions increase the effectiveness of problem solving and the profitability of organizations.
Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to the impact of reward systems on retention,
especially for women. This dissertation explores the links among individual goals,
organizational rewards, and retention. Using social cognitive theory, it examines gender
differences in goals; identifies the types of rewards that are most effective for each group; and
proposes a model for determining effective reward structures. The dissertation conclusions are
these: (1) there are barriers to success for professional women and there is a need for
organizational support; (2) flexible work arrangements are a key antecedent to reduce turnover of
professional women; (3) mentoring of professional women is needed, but sponsorship is
required; and (4) to be a visionary organization that creates and sustains a competitive advantage
by retaining valuable human capital action has to be taken now.
Keywords: flexible work arrangements, gender, goals, organizational rewards, retention,
and social cognitive theory
INCREASING RETENTION: THE GENDER FACTOR 3
Acknowledgement
My dissertation committee: Dr. Dennis Winters and Dr. Sharon Hadary. Dr. Winters
kept me focused on the theoretical. Dr. Hadary helped me bridge the practitioner role and kept
me on task.
My supervisor: Mark Levonian, senior deputy comptroller, Office of the Comptroller of
the Currency, for his direct support and encouragement.
My expert panel: Suzan Garabedian, Gwen Martin, and Laura Smith for their
knowledgeable advice and sharing their experiences.
My editor: Ann Prisland, who did so much more than proofread.
My children: Ally, Hannah, and Sam who accepted and supported my school-work-life
integration, especially these past few months when it must have seemed more like dissertation-work-
dissertation integration.
My husband, Jim, who knew the librarians at UMUC better than I did; picked up posters
for my entire class for SOARs; exiled himself to our home on Chebeague Island during comps
and intensive writing periods; and always, always kept the home fires burning.
My family and friends who accepted my “absence” of mind or body at too many special
events to count over the past four years.
My husband, my step-father, and my brother for providing role models that demonstrate
to the young men and women in our extended family that “real men” can and do take on their
full share of responsibility for home life. There are probably other men like them out there, and
maybe someday their influence will provide a new paradigm for work-life integration.
INCREASING RETENTION: THE GENDER FACTOR 4
Dedication
To my Mom:
Who knew? You Knew.
INCREASING RETENTION: THE GENDER FACTOR 5
Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... 2
Acknowledgement .......................................................................................................................... 3
Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... 4
Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................ 5
Tables ............................................................................................................................................. 6
Figures............................................................................................................................................ 7
Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................... 8
Chapter 2: Literature Review ........................................................................................................ 18
Chapter 3: Conceptual Framework ............................................................................................... 49
Chapter 4: Methodology ............................................................................................................... 61
Chapter 5: Analysis and Discussion ............................................................................................. 78
Chapter 6: Conclusions, Implications, and Trends ..................................................................... 102
References .................................................................................................................................. 111
INCREASING RETENTION: THE GENDER FACTOR 6
Tables
Table 1 Percent of Men and Women Earning a Bachelor’s Degree or Higher: 1940–2010 ....... 19
Table 2 Percent of Degrees Awarded to Women in 2008–2009 and Percent Increase from 1998–
2009.............................................................................................................................................. 19
Table 3 Effect of Board of Directors Gender Diversity on Financial Performance (2004–2008)
...................................................................................................................................................... 21
Table 4 Average Hours of Married Mothers and Fathers Doing Activities on an Average Day,
2007–2011.................................................................................................................................... 32
Table 5 Percent of Married Mothers and Fathers Doing Activities on an Average Day, 2007–
2011.............................................................................................................................................. 32
Table 6 Number of Search Results Within the Primary Category Professional Women and
Secondary Categories ................................................................................................................... 70
Table 7 Number of Search Results Within the Primary Category Professional Women and
Secondary Categories ................................................................................................................... 72
INCREASING RETENTION: THE GENDER FACTOR 7
Figures
Figure 1. Expectancy theory relationship of rewards and retention. ........................................... 22
Figure 2. Social cognitive theory in an organizational situation. ................................................ 34
Figure 3. Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory. ........................................................................ 39
Figure 4. Goal-setting theory. ...................................................................................................... 42
Figure 5. Conceptual framework for alignment of reward structures with individual goals. ..... 49
Figure 6. Organizational decision point: Reward structures and alignment with employee goals.
...................................................................................................................................................... 50
Figure 7. Success factor one: Reward structures are key. ........................................................... 51
Figure 8. Success factor two: Goals and gender differences ....................................................... 53
Figure 9. Success factor three: Rewards and gender differences. ............................................... 55
Figure 10. Success factor four: Ongoing evaluation and adjustment. ......................................... 58
Figure 11. Implementation of a reward system. .......................................................................... 59
INCREASING RETENTION: THE GENDER FACTOR 8
Chapter 1: Introduction
Organizations invest significant resources in identifying, developing, and rewarding
valuable human capital. Retention of this human capital is critical to sustainable competitive
advantage. Reward systems are the primary tools organizations use to promote and recognize
productive behavior and to retain their valuable human capital. These systems include traditional
(e.g., salary and promotions) and nontraditional rewards (e.g., flexible work places and career
mentoring). Unfortunately, most organizations have not taken full advantage of this leverage,
especially with respect to their professional women employees, even though women play a
significant and increasingly valuable role in the workforce. The purpose of this research is to
define how organizations can design their reward systems to retain valuable human capital,
specifically women professionals; identify the differences in individual goals due to gender; and
develop a theoretical model that links individual goals to retention through an organizational
rewards system.1
Generally, organizations follow an outdated model for their reward structures that fails to
recognize the diverse individual goals of their employees. When this disconnection is not
addressed, professionals may leave their organizations and look for alternative employment
opportunities (Shriver & Center for American Progress, 2009). Although during turbulent
economic times, such as those at the time of the writing of this dissertation, fewer people
voluntarily exit their jobs, more than two million workers quit their jobs in November 2012 (U.S.
Department of Labor, 2013). This exodus has a significant cost impact on organizations (Cascio,
2006) and is a suboptimal use of human capital.
1While discrimination in the workplace (based on many factors, including gender) is an issue in some organizations,
this research does not focus on discrimination. Rather, it provides a path for organizations to pursue when they
recognize the value of their professional women and are interested in realizing the full benefits of supporting and
retaining these resources.
INCREASING RETENTION: THE GENDER FACTOR 9
The outdated rewards model fails to accommodate the current societal realities that
people, especially women, juggle daily between their professional and personal lives. The
results are reduced retention, loss of knowledge and experience, and increased labor and training
costs. The model is outdated because of the changing landscape of the American workforce.
While these societal changes impact the entire workforce, this dissertation specifically focuses
on women for two reasons. First, they are the majority of the professional workforce. In 2010
women constituted 47% of the total U.S. employed workforce and 52% of the U.S. workforce
employed in management, professional, and related occupations (U.S. Department of Labor,
2011a). Second, women increase the effectiveness and bottom line of the organization. For
instance, regardless of the individual intelligence or skill of team members, having more women
on the team equates to more effective performance (Woolley, Chabris, Pentland, Hashmi, &
Malone, 2010). Further, organizations with women in executive positions are more profitable
(Adler, 2009; Carter & Wagner, 2011; Pine, 2011). Because men and women have different
personal and professional goals and motivations, reward systems that were designed to
accommodate the goals and motivations of professional men do not always appeal to
professional women.
Statement and Significance of the Problem
While organizations have long recognized the importance of their customer relationships
and devote immense time and effort into fully exploiting those relationships to gain market share
(Slater, Mohr, & Sengupta, 2009), they have not always recognized the importance and potential
competitive advantage of their internal human resources (Cappelli, Singh, Singh, & Useem,
2010). Although organizations invest significant resources in developing their human capital,
they do not focus on the effectiveness of their reward systems—and related management
INCREASING RETENTION: THE GENDER FACTOR 10
policies—in retaining and sustaining those resources (Pfeffer, 2010). The results are reduced
retention, increased labor costs for the organization, and missed opportunities for a competitive
edge. For example, it takes about 10 years for a professional employee to rise from an entry-level
position to partnership at a large consulting firm like Deloitte & Touche USA LLP. In the
1980s, Deloitte & Touche began filling the pipeline with women, but in 1992 management
noticed something profoundly disturbing. Despite 10 years of entry-level classes of 50%
women, the number of women applying for partnership actually declined. The firm was
concerned because the leadership recognized they were losing valuable human capital. They
learned that many of the women had gone to other companies rather than just leaving the
workforce. The reasons women left surprised them. Women left for predominantly three
reasons: Primarily, they left because of limited advancement opportunities. The second most
common reason was exclusion from mentoring and networking opportunities. Conflicts between
work and family responsibilities were among the reasons for leaving but ranked third, not first
(Flynn, 2005). If the company had paid more attention to its reward structure, it could have
addressed all three reasons.
When viewed as a key strategic objective, focusing on human capital is a crucial way to
boost the value of the organization (Holtom, Mitchell, & Lee, 2006). Organizations have long
recognized the significant costs associated with acquiring a new customer. In fact there is a
generally accepted rule of thumb across industries: Acquiring a new customer costs roughly five
times that of maintaining an existing one (Slater et al., 2009). However, to succeed in times of
rapid change and economic turbulence, organizations need to not only “know your customer” but
also “know your human capital.”
INCREASING RETENTION: THE GENDER FACTOR 11
Costs associated with identifying and hiring replacement employees may be quantified to
a certain extent. These may be considerable and have been estimated at 150% of the annual
compensation of the employee being replaced (Contino, 2002). This cost does not take into
account the loss of competitive edge when a fully trained and valuable employee moves to a
competitor. Replacement costs vary not only by industry but within each industry (and even
within organizations) due to job complexity (Dube, Freeman, & Reich, 2010; Tracey & Hinkin,
2008). During the past decade, replacement cost estimates ranged from 265,000 for a pediatrician (Oliva, 2008). A
more recent study still finds a wide range between occupations, even within a corporation. Dube
et al. (2010) surveyed California corporations and estimates a per employee replacement cost in
2003 dollars as ranging from 7,000 for those in
professional and managerial positions.
Employee replacement cost data is limited (Dube et al., 2010) and studies have not
identified cost differences between replacing men and women. However, studies have found that
women voluntarily leave (i.e., quit) for very different reasons than men (Donnelly & Quirin,
2006; Sicherman, 1996). Women are more likely than men to quit due to a shock event
(Donnelly & Quinn, 2006). A shock event is a specific incident in an employee’s life, which
may involve either personal or professional responsibilities, such that it triggers the employee to
reassess the complexities of work-life integration.
Identifying and hiring replacements are just two of the costs to the organization of
employee turnover; three other factors affect an organization’s bottom line when an employee
leaves: knowledge transfer, social capital, and training (Waters, 2003).
INCREASING RETENTION: THE GENDER FACTOR 12
Knowledge transfer reflects the movement of intellectual property. A professional
employee is a repository of technical knowledge and through his or her tenure at an organization
typically develops valuable institutional knowledge (Willman, 1996). When an employee quits
one organization to join another, knowledge is transferred from the “quit” organization to the
“joined” organization (Song, Almeida, & Wu, 2003). This may result in a competitive advantage
for the “joined” firm and a competitive disadvantage for the “quit” firm (Willman, 1996).
Social capital relates to the social network of internal and external alliances that affects
an employee’s productivity (Adler & Kwon, 2002). Internally, employee departures may affect
social capital by disrupting the functioning of the organization or its subunits (Holtom et al.,
2006; Waters, 2003). There are also external costs related to social capital loss, such as loss of
customers. For instance, when a firm loses staff, especially those who have interacted with the
public, customers may be more likely to leave too and many follow staff to their new
organization (Syrett, 1997).
Organizations make sizeable investments in training, and those costs are a substantial
portion of overall operating costs for the organization (Birati & Tziner, 1999). According to the
American Society for Training and Development (Miller, 2012), U.S. companies expended
approximately 88 billion on internal training. The actual figure may be even higher, given the high
amount of on-the-job training, especially for professional occupations. On-the-job training costs
are difficult to quantify but may be related to a form of knowledge transfer (Dubas & Hershey,
2007).
Retaining human capital is generally within the control of the organization. Those
organizations that take even small steps to address retention issues by increasing alignment of
INCREASING RETENTION: THE GENDER FACTOR 13
their reward systems with individual employee goals will enjoy a sustainable competitive
advantage because they are more likely to retain critical employees (Edelman, 2012).
Importance to the Field of Management
This research is important to the field of management for the two primary reasons. First,
retaining and managing human capital is a key strategic objective, and organizations benefit
when they focus on policies and practices that have the potential to increase retention of valued
employees. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to the impact of reward systems on
retention, especially for women. Yet organizations have the ability to adapt their reward systems
to encourage retention of valuable human capital. Second, a key population that is at risk under
today’s reward structures is professional women: Traditional reward systems do not meet their
individual goals, thereby increasing their propensity to leave. Managing reward systems to align
them with key populations—in this case women—is important to management to help retain this
critical segment of human capital.
It has been 40 years since Helen Reddy topped the charts with her anthem “I Am
Women.” Women have roared into the workforce during the past four decades, and while the
board room still largely eludes them (Dalton & Dalton, 2010), professional positions do not (U.S.
Department of Labor, 2011a). The future looks even brighter for women leaders as they did not
take to the streets to make their case, but to the universities. In 2008 women constituted 59% of
graduate school enrollment and more women than men received doctoral degrees (U.S.
Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, a
A theoretical model for designing an in-house community college department chair professional development program
No full textAcademic department chairs serve as front-line managers and leaders who perform a
wide variety of tasks. These tasks may include mundane chores, such as ordering office supplies,
or important ones, such as changing the department culture to one that embraces assessment. Too
often, however, individuals take on the chair position with little to no preparation or professional
development. It is therefore proposed that community colleges create their own, in-house, chair
professional development programs. Such programs have some advantages over any of the
external chair development “academies” in that 1) they are less expensive to create and maintain;
2) they can be administered on an ongoing basis, such that development does not need to be an
occasional or “one time” event; and 3) they allow for customization at the institution and
individual level.
This dissertation utilized Critical Interpretive Synthesis to study the role of the chair and
discern the knowledge, skills, and abilities that college chairs should possess and how they are
best learned. It then presents a theoretical, three-tiered research-based model, which can be used
to inform the creation of chair-specific professional development programming.DEPARTMENT CHAIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
A Theoretical Model for Designing an In-house Community College
Department Chair Professional Development Program
Jocelyn Eager Sirkis
A Thesis
Submitted to the
Graduate Faculty
of the
University of Maryland University College
in Partial Fulfillment of
The Requirements for the
Doctor of Management
Degree
Patricia Keir, Ph.D.
Ronald Head, Ph.D.
DEPARTMENT CHAIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
ABSTRACT
Academic department chairs serve as front-line managers and leaders who perform a
wide variety of tasks. These tasks may include mundane chores, such as ordering office supplies,
or important ones, such as changing the department culture to one that embraces assessment. Too
often, however, individuals take on the chair position with little to no preparation or professional
development. It is therefore proposed that community colleges create their own, in-house, chair
professional development programs. Such programs have some advantages over any of the
external chair development “academies” in that 1) they are less expensive to create and maintain;
2) they can be administered on an ongoing basis, such that development does not need to be an
occasional or “one time” event; and 3) they allow for customization at the institution and
individual level.
This dissertation utilized Critical Interpretive Synthesis to study the role of the chair and
discern the knowledge, skills, and abilities that college chairs should possess and how they are
best learned. It then presents a theoretical, three-tiered research-based model, which can be used
to inform the creation of chair-specific professional development programming.
DEPARTMENT CHAIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT iii
© COPYRIGHT BY
Jocelyn Eager Sirkis
2013
DEPARTMENT CHAIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT iv
Dedication
To my beloved husband, Michael Sirkis
and our three beautiful children:
Amy Sirkis and Thomas and Theodore Caputi.
I love you.
DEPARTMENT CHAIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT v
Acknowledgments
This dissertation could not have been written without the support of my loving family,
the steadfast encouragement and enthusiasm of Jill Garfinkle Weitz, and the guidance of my
prominent and esteemed advisors, Drs. Patricia Keir, Ronald Head, and Charlene Nunley. Thank
you all.
J. E. S.
DEPARTMENT CHAIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT vi
Table of Contents
Chapter
1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1
Statement of the Problem .......................................................................................... 1
Statement of Purpose ................................................................................................ 2
Context or Background Related to the Problem ................................................. 3
Theoretical Base ........................................................................................................ 5
Approach ................................................................................................................... 5
Research Questions ................................................................................................... 6
Definition of Terms ................................................................................................... 6
Significance ............................................................................................................... 9
2 LITERATURE REVIEW ......................................................................................... 12
Introduction to the Literature Review ....................................................................... 12
What KSAs and Responsibilities Are Key to the Chair Role? ................................. 12
What Leadership Styles Are Most Effective for Chairs? .......................................... 23
How Can Chair KSAs Be Arranged Into a Logical Framework for Professional
Development? .................................................................................................. 27
How Should Chair Learning Occur? What Learning Models Apply? ...................... 30
How Can the Effectiveness of Chair Development Be Measured? .......................... 35
Literature Review Conclusion .................................................................................. 38
3 THEORETICAL MODEL ........................................................................................ 40
Assumptions .............................................................................................................. 40
Hypothesis ................................................................................................................. 44
Model ........................................................................................................................ 44
Professional Development Delivery ................................................................ 50
Theoretical Model Conclusion .................................................................................. 53
4 METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................... 55
Introduction to the Research Methodology ............................................................... 55
Analysis ..................................................................................................................... 59
Identification of the Need for a Review ........................................................... 59
Development of a Review Protocol ................................................................. 60
Research Design ............................................................................................... 60
Literature Search Strategy ................................................................................ 62
Synthesis ................................................................................................................... 67
Interpretation ............................................................................................................. 69
DEPARTMENT CHAIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT vii
Chapter
4 Expert Review ........................................................................................................... 71
(cont’d) Subject Matter Review Process ....................................................................... 71
Reviewer One ................................................................................................... 73
Reviewer Two .................................................................................................. 73
Reviewer Three ................................................................................................ 73
Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 74
5 FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS ................................................................................. 76
Literature Review Findings ....................................................................................... 76
Research Validity ...................................................................................................... 77
Key Findings From the Literature Review ............................................................... 78
Expert Feedback ........................................................................................................ 79
Summary of Feedback ..................................................................................... 79
Changes Made Due to Reviewer Feedback ..................................................... 84
Additional Feedback ........................................................................................ 86
Findings and Conclusions ......................................................................................... 87
6 IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE, AREAS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH,
AND FINAL CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................ 94
The Model Is Supported by Research ....................................................................... 94
Best Practices for Implementation ............................................................................ 95
Implications of This Research for Community College Leaders .............................. 97
Department Chairs Require Special Skills ....................................................... 97
In-house Chair Development Programs Have Specific Benefits ..................... 98
The Chair Professional Development Model Might Be Applicable to
Other Roles ............................................................................................. 98
Areas for Future Research ........................................................................................ 98
Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 102
REFERENCES ......................................................................................................... 103
APPENDIX A: Reviewer Letter and Protocol .......................................................... 110
DEPARTMENT CHAIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT viii
LIST OF TABLES
Table
1 Summary of Notable Literature Concerning Department Chair Tasks and Roles .......... 14
2 Bedrow’s (2010) Department Chair Roles With Examples of Specific Tasks ............... 20
3 Example of Chair Training Programs (Enyeart, Hong, & Sethi, 2009) .......................... 22
4 Topics of KSAs Covered by the Department Chair Institute and Chair Academy
Programs for College and University Department Chairs .............................................. 34
5 Division of KSAs as Either Managerial or Leadership .................................................. 45
6 A Model for Discerning Chair KSAs Based Upon Two Criteria (Managerial and
Leadership) Across Three Dimensions: Universal, Institutional, and Department/
Individual ........................................................................................................................ 46
7 Department Chair Professional Development Needs Analysis Questions ..................... 47
8 Example Bases for Developing a Professional Development Program for Chairs ......... 48
9 Literature Review Database Search Process ................................................................... 62
10 Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria From Search of Online Databases .............................. 65
11 Dissertation Review Expertise ........................................................................................ 72
12 Examples of Some “Universal” Chair KSAs .................................................................. 88
DEPARTMENT CHAIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ix
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure
1 Berdrow’s (2010) department chair stakeholder map ..................................................... 29
2 Department chair professional development cycle ......................................................... 51
3 Major and Savin-Baden’s continuum of approaches to integrating qualitative
evidence .......................................................................................................................... 59
4 Weed’s example of a potential procedure for meta-interpretation ................................. 61
DEPARTMENT CHAIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 1
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
Statement of the Problem
Community college department chairs are often selected from among faculty members
who “take turns” serving, even though they have had no prior leadership experience (Berdrow,
2010; Chu, 2012; Wolverton, Ackerman, & Holt, 2005). Once appointed, elected, or rotated into
the position (Treadwell, 1997), most chairs receive little to no preparatory training or ongoing
training despite their new roles and considerable duties, including leadership duties (Gmelch &
Miskin, 1993; Treadwell, 1997). A survey of department chairs at Texas community colleges
found that only 10% were required to attend training (Smith & Stewart, 1999). Another study,
conducted by Gmelch and Miskin (2004), found that only 3% of 2,000 U.S. department chairs
surveyed said they received any leadership training at all. Thus, many department chair people
are ill prepared for their jobs (Gmelch & Miskin, 2003; Hecht, 2004; Wilson, 2001). This dearth
of specific professional development for department chair people is of concern since chairs have
vast and diverse responsibilities that, in whole or in part, present significant opportunity to
influence (for better or worse) academic department strategy, culture, quality, efficiency,
effectiveness, and reputation (Craig, 2005; Lucas, 2000). Specifically, Wolverton, Ackerman,
and Holt (2005) make note of the onerous “laundry list” (p. 228) of academic department chair
responsibilities compiled by researchers analyzing the chair role including a “staggering 97” (p.
228) tasks compiled by Creswell, Wheeler, Seagren, Ely, and Beyer (1990). Numbers aside, the
point is that department chairs have complex roles and perform a wide variety of both
managerial (administrative) and leadership duties. Chairs “influence institutional policies and
procedures; recommend faculty for appointment, promotion and tenure; control budgets, class
DEPARTMENT CHAIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 2
schedules and teaching assignments; affect student interaction with the institution; and establish
and maintain department culture” (Wolverton, Ackerman, & Holt, 2005, p. 228). Without
professional development, most chairs hold highly responsible positions within colleges without
knowing how to accomplish their goals (Whitsett, 2007).
While the literature acknowledges the importance of the department chair position (Chu,
2012), little attention has been paid to the preparation and continuous education of academic
chairs. Smith and Stewart (1999) investigated the preparation and development of 59 newly
appointed department chairs at community colleges across Texas and discovered, via surveys,
that the most frequently mentioned method of preparation for their new position occurred as
“informal, self-guided activities or from prior work experience” (p. 33). As a result of their
research, Smith and Stewart concluded that, as people whose positions are exceptionally
important to community colleges, department chairs should receive both initial and ongoing
professional development. In essence, a problem exists in that community college department
chairs are of critical importance to their institution, yet most receive little or no professional
development.
Statement of Purpose
The purpose of this dissertation was to design an effective and adaptable model for
creating a practical, executable, in-house professional development program for community
college department chairs based upon a needs analysis that examines chairs as both managers
and leaders. This model, which can be adapted across community colleges, was derived from
research including peer-reviewed journal articles and literature that analyzed existing department
chair roles and professional development programs, along with seminal works and expert
opinion. In addition to presenting a method for determining department chair professional
DEPARTMENT CHAIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 3
development needs, attention was given to the delivery of an in-house training and development
program.
Context or Background Related to the Problem
The selection of community college department chairs is usually performed haphazardly
and without the careful consideration and rigor given to typical academic hiring processes. When
candidates interview for faculty roles, the vetting process examines prior teaching experience
and scholarship in a particular field. Skills and experience associated with management and
leadership are not sought out or evaluated (Aziz et al., 2005; Treadwell, 1997; Whitsett, 2007).
Since department chairs are almost always selected internally from among full-time, tenured
faculty, the pool of candidates has master’s or doctorate degrees in specific disciplines but little
in the way of managerial or leadership credentials.
Treadwell (1997) described the appointment of department chairs as typically “election,
appointment or rotation” (p. 219). Whatever the mechanism of selection, newly appointed
community college chairs are typically former members of faculty rather than seasoned
administrators.1 Even in those instances where a faculty member decidedly wants to become a
department chair and campaigns for the position, it is unlikely that he or she will be well
prepared for the role (Whitsett, 2007). Whether appointment is voluntary or not, community
college department chairs come to the table (no pun intended) with little or no training at all
(Aziz et al., 2005). Once appointed, most chairs receive nothing more than on-the-job training in
1In some states, such as the Commonwealth of Virginia, community college department
chairs are appointed as administrative faculty rather than as teaching faculty taking on
administrative and leadership responsibilities. For the purpose of this dissertation, discussion was
limited to instances where department chairs were members of the faculty immediately prior to
their appointment.
DEPARTMENT CHAIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 4
a “sink or swim” work environment (Hecht, 2004). When training does occur, it is usually
informal and inadequate (Cullen & Harris, 2008). Left to guide their own development,
especially with no budget for off-site training, department chairs have few resources available
besides a paucity of guidebooks (Hecht, 2004), some of which may be inadequate in that they are
too general and do not address institution-specific circumstances.
Many newly appointed department chairs are unaware of the extensive responsibilities
required of the job. Often, not only does the chair not know what the job entails, but also his or
her direct supervisor (typically a dean or other academic administrator) might not know either
(Hancock, 2007). The position usually goes to a tenured member of the faculty (Hecht, 2004)
who thinks he or she knows the workings of the college and is then unhappily surprised to find
the position has responsibilities that are more complex than expected. The work of chairs goes
far beyond the purview of faculty affairs to include departmental affairs, academic affairs,
student affairs, external communications, budgetary affairs, office management, and personal
professional performance (Walzer, 1975). In essence, a community college faculty member
moves from a teaching role into a managerial/leadership one. This transition, to a position where
one is “caught in the middle,” can be especially difficult (Hancock, 2007; Tucker, 1984) since
academe places high value on “collegiality, autonomy and egalitarianism” (Jenkins, 2009).
Despite the obvious need for development, most chairs receive little to no formal
guidance, resources, materials or training to help them perform their jobs. While there are some
national department chair training programs, the cost of attendance can make these impractical
for many colleges, particularly when budgets are tight. Programs such as these have additional
shortcomings in that they are time-bound (rather than ongoing) and they may not be able to fully
address institutional and individual circumstances.
DEPARTMENT CHAIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 5
DEPARTMENT CHAIR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 6
Theoretical Base
While research specific to academic department chair leadership is somewhat limited,
there is extensive management, leadership, and professional development theory to apply when
considering the development of department chairpeople. General theories concerning
professional development including training, adult learning, and identification of KSAs (Aziz et
al., 2005) must be considered, but so too should theories regarding leadership styles for first-line
managers both inside and outside of academe. Collaborative or participative leadership (Yukl,
2010) and servant leadership (Greenleaf, 1971) are particularly important since college
department chairs do not typically have significant position power (Dedmon, 1985; Roach,
1991).
Effective department chairpeople, as leaders, should positively affect academic
department culture and planning (Bowman, 2002; Cullen & Harris, 2008; Kegley, 2002; Lucas,
2000; Schein, 2010; Treadwell, 1997) and so theories regarding leadership styles (Yukl, 2010)
will likely apply. While the argument can be made that the academic environment of department
chairs
Creating and implementing dynamic capabilities: An exploration of the senior manager's role
No full textThe purpose of this dissertation was to identify and assess what senior management actions (interventions, behaviors) facilitated the creation and implementation of dynamic capabilities (timely, purposeful change) within organizations. Dynamic capabilities (DCs), for this dissertation, were defined as the abilities of firms to systematically solve problems, formed by sensing opportunities and threats in order to make timely and market-oriented decisions, and to change their resource base (Barreto, 2010). Prior research suggested that organizations that created DCs were better positioned to adapt to changes in the marketplace and create and sustain competitive advantages than those firms that did not. While dynamic capabilities were extensively explored in the scholarly literature, the scholarship was scant on how DCs were created, from the senior manager point of view. This dissertation aimed to show what interventions and techniques senior managers had used to help their organizations develop dynamic capabilities in order to better adapt to change. Using a systematic review of the literature and applying thematic synthesis, this dissertation identified and analyzed a final set of 67 scholarly studies which revealed that senior managers devoted a significant amount of management focus on sensing (and sensemaking), repetitively reviewing the firm’s existing resource base and capabilities, and then optimizing (or balancing) strategic initiatives with tactical initiatives. In order to provide additional clarity to the specific activities where senior managers played a role, secondary behaviors, such as firm boundary reframing and alliance building, were also presented and evaluated.CREATING AND IMPLEMENTING DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES: AN EXPLORATION OF THE SENIOR MANAGER’S ROLE
By
Calvin Joel Martin
A Thesis Submitted To the Graduate Faculty of
University of Maryland University College in
Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of
Doctor of Management
Faculty Committee:
Kathleen F. Edwards, Ph.D.
James P. Gelatt, Ph.D.
2
3
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... 8
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... 9
Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................. 10
Background and Problem Statement ......................................................................................... 10
Purpose of Dissertation and Research Question ....................................................................... 18
Significance of the Problem and Importance to Management .................................................. 20
Propositions ............................................................................................................................... 21
Definitions of Key Terms .......................................................................................................... 22
Organization of Dissertation ..................................................................................................... 23
Chapter 2: Systematic Review of the Literature ........................................................................... 25
Chapter Overview ..................................................................................................................... 25
Evolution of the Dynamic Capabilities Concept ....................................................................... 25
Substantive Organizational Capabilities versus Dynamic Capabilities .................................... 29
The Theoretical Underpinnings of DCs as Management Mechanisms ..................................... 30
Absorptive Capacity Theory and DCs ................................................................................... 31
Resource-Based Theory and DCs .......................................................................................... 37
The Constructs of DCs: Bundles of Routines and Organizational Capabilities ........................ 40
Routines: The Building Blocks for Organizational Capabilities ........................................... 40
Organizational Capabilities: Building Blocks for DCs ......................................................... 42
The Advent of Dynamic Capabilities: An Evolution of Definitions ..................................... 53
Criticisms of the DCs Construct ............................................................................................ 56
Three Significant DCs: Senior Manager Mechanisms to Create and Implement DCs ............ 57
Organizational Ambidexterity (OA) ...................................................................................... 58
Organizational Agility (OAg) ................................................................................................ 78
Communication of Senior Management Vision (CoMV) ..................................................... 87
Creating and Implementing Dynamic Capabilities-Summary ................................................ 110
Support for Research Propositions .......................................................................................... 111 4
Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework .............................................................................................. 113
Introduction to Chapter 3 ........................................................................................................ 113
The Constructs of DCs ............................................................................................................ 114
The Origin of DCs and Historical Context.............................................................................. 115
DCs as an Organizational Construct ....................................................................................... 116
Three DCs: OA, OAg, and Senior Manager’s Communication of Vision .............................. 116
Organizational Ambidexterity ............................................................................................. 117
Organizational Agility ......................................................................................................... 118
Communication of Senior Management’s Vision ............................................................... 118
Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................................... 119
Model and Framework ............................................................................................................ 121
Innovative Change and Its Relationship to Kuhn and Popper ................................................ 122
Summary of Model and Framework ....................................................................................... 124
Chapter Four: Methodology ........................................................................................................ 125
Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 125
Identification of Evidence ....................................................................................................... 129
Search String Development ................................................................................................. 129
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria ......................................................................................... 131
Examining the Evidence.......................................................................................................... 134
PRISMA Diagram ................................................................................................................... 135
Evaluation of Quality of Research .......................................................................................... 136
Data Extraction .................................................................................................................... 136
Qualifying the Evidence by Research Type ........................................................................ 140
Expert Panel Feedback Discussion ......................................................................................... 142
Chapter 5: Findings ..................................................................................................................... 146
Introduction to Chapter Five ................................................................................................... 146
Scholarly Review Process ....................................................................................................... 147
Identification of Themes ...................................................................................................... 151
Synthesis of Primary Themes .................................................................................................. 151
Environmental Scanning...................................................................................................... 153
Existing Capabilities Assessment ........................................................................................ 159 5
Secondary Themes ............................................................................................................... 160
Links to Systems and Complexity Theories ............................................................................ 162
Weak Links and Alternative Views Found in the Literature .................................................. 163
Support for Propositions.......................................................................................................... 164
Summary of Findings .............................................................................................................. 165
Chapter 6: Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 167
Introduction to Chapter 6 ........................................................................................................ 167
Overall Conclusions ................................................................................................................ 167
Implications of Management Trends....................................................................................... 168
Implications for Management Practice ................................................................................... 169
Implications for Management Theory ..................................................................................... 170
Thoughts on Kuhnian versus Popperian Innovation and DCs Development .......................... 172
Implications for Future Research ............................................................................................ 174
Limitations of this Dissertation ............................................................................................... 176
Summary of the Dissertation ................................................................................................... 177
Appendix A: Selected Papers for Preliminary Literature Review for Search Strings ................ 178
Appendix B: Search Strings ........................................................................................................ 180
Appendix C: Data Abstraction Template ................................................................................... 181
Appendix D: Data Abstraction Example ................................................................................... 182
References .................................................................................................................................. 184
6
List of Figures
Figure 1: Antecedents to Dynamic Capability Theory (partially adapted from Coh, 2005) ..... 26
Figure 2: How Senior Managers Create and Implement Dynamic Capabilities ...................... 122
Figure 3: Theoretical Model Featuring Kuhnian and Popperian Change ................................ 123
Figure 4: Raw DCs Related Search Terms Harvested from the Scholarly Literature ............. 129
Figure 5: PRISMA Diagram .................................................................................................... 135
Figure 6: Incorporated Studies by Firm Locations by Continent (N=67) ................................ 147
Figure 7: Distribution of Included Studies by Year of Publication (N=67) ............................ 149
Figure 8: Distribution of Sample Sizes in Included Studies (N=67) ....................................... 150
Figure 9: Sample Distribution by Included Study Type (N=67) ............................................. 151
Figure 10: Number of Themes Found in Included Studies ........................................................ 175 7
List of Tables
Table 1: Key Term Definitions .................................................................................................. 22
Table 2: Key Definitions of DCs from Extant Literature .......................................................... 54
Table 3: Synthesized Definitions from Key Systematic Reviews ............................................. 55
Table 4: Senior Leaders’ Perception of the Agility of Their Organizations .............................. 78
Table 5: Organizational Agility Definitions Proposed in Scholarly Literature ......................... 79
Table 6: Doz-Kosonen Model with Evidence (Doz & Kosonen, 2010) .................................... 83
Table 7: Sample for Search Strings Use in Thematic Synthesis .............................................. 130
Table 8: Inclusion Criteria (Adapted from Lock, Silverman, & Spirduso, 2010) ................... 132
Table 9: Data Extraction Tool (Adapted from Newbert, 2007) ............................................... 137
Table 10: Quality of Research Model (adapted from Newbert, 2007) ...................................... 140
Table 11: Evidence Type Weights ............................................................................................. 140
Table 12: Sample of Final Qualification of Evidence Scoring .................................................. 141
Table 13: Key Senior Manager Behavior Discussed in the Literature Reviewed for this Dissertation ................................................................................................................................ 152
Table 14: Secondary Literature Themes Found that Linked to Primary Themes ...................... 161
Table 15: Illustrative Examples Characterizing the Primary Themes Found in the Literature . 162
8
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to my faculty advisors, Dr. Kathleen F. Edwards and Dr. James P. Gelatt, who both provided tremendous mentorship for me during the dissertation process. I would also like to thank Dr. Deborah M. Wharff for her scholarly advice and encouragement throughout this process. I am grateful for you all because you pushed me when I needed to be pushed. Without your desire to see me succeed, I would not have completed my dissertation journey.
I would also like to thank my family, friends, and coworkers who all made great sacrifices during this process that enabled me to be successful in this endeavor. I am extremely blessed to have people like you in my life.
9
Abstract
The purpose of this dissertation was to identify and assess what senior management actions (interventions, behaviors) facilitated the creation and implementation of dynamic capabilities (timely, purposeful change) within organizations. Dynamic capabilities (DCs), for this dissertation, were defined as the abilities of firms to systematically solve problems, formed by sensing opportunities and threats in order to make timely and market-oriented decisions, and to change their resource base (Barreto, 2010). Prior research suggested that organizations that created DCs were better positioned to adapt to changes in the marketplace and create and sustain competitive advantages than those firms that did not. While dynamic capabilities were extensively explored in the scholarly literature, the scholarship was scant on how DCs were created, from the senior manager point of view. This dissertation aimed to show what interventions and techniques senior managers had used to help their organizations develop dynamic capabilities in order to better adapt to change. Using a systematic review of the literature and applying thematic synthesis, this dissertation identified and analyzed a final set of 67 scholarly studies which revealed that senior managers devoted a significant amount of management focus on sensing (and sensemaking), repetitively reviewing the firm’s existing resource base and capabilities, and then optimizing (or balancing) strategic initiatives with tactical initiatives. In order to provide additional clarity to the specific activities where senior managers played a role, secondary behaviors, such as firm boundary reframing and alliance building, were also presented and evaluated.
Key words: Dynamic capabilities, organizational agility, organizational ambidexterity, strategic management, senior manager 10
Chapter 1: Introduction
Background and Problem Statement
The environments in which organizations function are increasingly changing (Adner, 2002). Much of the environmental dynamism in which organizations operate stems from relentless competition, new technologies, and globalized economies (Ambosini, Bowman, & Collier, 2009). Even the most stable industries have entered into extremely aggressive competitions between established firms and so-called nimble start-ups (e.g., the personal computing industry) (Judge & Elenkov, 2005). There are even those that believe that what constitutes stable industries has morphed in recent times (Teece, 2012). The boundaries of competition have also changed dramatically (Keupp, Palmie, & Gassman, 2012) and firms are experiencing threats from new competitors from very different, unanticipated sectors (Fulsang & Mattsson, 2011). A recent, prominent example of this phenomenon included Amazon.com morphing from an online book sales company to a full service retail supplier of many consumer products (e.g., clothes, toys, jewelry, etc.).
Changing environments greatly affect an organization’s ability to sustain satisfactory performance. The resultant routine for organizations, therefore, is one of complexity and unpredictability (Ford, 2008; Hazy, 2011). The need to adapt to change, while seemingly a straightforward concept, is troublesome for many organizations simply because they do not know how to do it and therefore are unsuccessful at it (Wernerfelt, 1984). Some believe that the firms are not able to adapt because of a poor understanding of how their market(s) are changing as well as a lack of awareness of the value of their internal resources to meet change (Wernerfelt, 11
1984; Stebbings & Braganza, 2009). An abundance of recent research also suggests that many organizations simply do not have the proper managerial mechanisms in place to sense (identify a pending change or potential opportunity), seize (strategically plan for change), or react (reconfigure resources to match the change) to environmental stimuli such as new market entrants or significant changes in customer behavior patterns (Augier & Teece, 2009; Gebauer, 2011). Because of this growing importance between an organization’s strategic maneuvers and its changing operating environment, academics and scholar-practitioners have developed an increasing interest in understanding the link between the two (Augier & Teece, 2009). The standing question that has been posed by scholars and practitioners has been, in the face of these identified challenges to firm survival, ‘how does a firm develop sustained competitive advantages?’ In recent years, then, it has been seen that scholarly literature has placed much emphasis on how organizations need to strategize to enable flexibility and sustainability to address these environmental dynamics (Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997; Helfat, Finkelstein, Mitchell, Peteraf, Singh, Teece, & Winters, 2007).
Many management theorists believe that senior managers (e.g., decision makers) play a pivotal role in organizational performance (Nelson & Winter, 1982; Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2010; Augier & Teece, 2011; James & Lahti, 2011) in rapidly change environments. Senior managers, for the purposes of this dissertation, are defined as managers that operate at the C-level (i.e., CEO, CTO, CFO, etc.) or have multiple tiers of management under their purview.
Some even suggest that more than ever, senior managers need to act entrepreneurially (Roy & Khokhle, 2011) and execute change maneuvers at the firm level with very few errors in judgment (Corbett & Neck, 2010). Given the scholarly research performed around senior managers’ role in creating and recognizing opportunities, this issue of managing adaptive change produces a 12
research problem suitable for both evidence based management (EBMgt) and evidence based research (EBR).
Briner, Denyer, and Rousseau (2009) propose that EBMgt is concerned with making decisions based on a variety of evidence including existing expertise, judgment, local evidence (previous corporate experience), stakeholder perspectives, and evaluation of available research. EBR efforts, such as this dissertation, attempt to tie management research to practical management problems and sometimes are even conducted at the request of management practitioners. Ideally, this dissertation will inform theory and contribute to the creation
Career advancement in the manufacturing sector: Implications of technical versus business education preparation
No full textThe purpose of this study is to determine the effects of possessing a technical or business degree on managerial promotions in the manufacturing sector. In determining these effects, the research focuses on: (1) employee academic preparation for employment in the manufacturing sector; (2) differences in career-development patterns a; (3) the rate of employee promotions, by examining the differences between employees with a technical versus business and management degrees; and (4) employee technical or business management skill attainment.
The study uses the narrative synthesis format of a systematic review to layout the approach used to conduct the review and to synthesize the findings of multiple studies. Utilization of a narrative synthesis allows the researcher to synthesize the findings of previous qualitative and quantitative studies on technology and management education, career development, and skill development. Although this methodology could involve the manipulation of data, data treatment is not the intent because this study is meant to be a textual description versus a presentation of second-hand statistical information that would require the reader to interpret data.
This narrative synthesis comprises four main elements: (a) development of a theoretical framework of how promotions, education, skill possession, and self-efficacy interconnect to support professional growth; (b) development of an initial combination of findings specific to reviewed studies; (c) an exploration of possible relationships between findings; and (d) an assessment of the strength of the process.
The analysis of 38 articles that met the inclusion/exclusion criteria provided evidence that promotions in the manufacturing sector are not skewed in favor of personnel with a technical education background. The evidence from this study suggests that employees working for a
supervisor with this career background are less likely to receive managerial promotions, while the promotion rate for employees working for managers with a dual-background or a business only background is about 10 percentage points higher. Taken together, these findings suggest there is a limited positive impact of technical education on promotion success when compared to business management education in the manufacturing sector.
The implications of this study are that current and future employees seeking managerial positions in manufacturing organizations should, at a minimum, possess a science degree, if previously earned, along with a business management-related degree, in order to be competitive for managerial promotions. Further, employees seeking managerial promotions can be more effective at influencing their opportunities by seeking positions in which they report directly to a manager or technical supervisor who has a career background in both management and technical fields, versus working for a supervisor who has a pure technical background. These implications directly align with the research hypotheses and support the overall argument and findings presented in the latter part of this study.ACADEMICS & SKILL: FACTORS FOR PROMOTION
Career Advancement in the Manufacturing Sector: Implications of Technical versus Business Education Preparation
By
Wade M. McCollin
A Dissertation Submitted to the
Graduate Faculty of the
University of Maryland University College in
Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Management
Advisory Committee:
Dr. Tom Mierzwa
Dr. Kimberly Kelley
December, 2013ACADEMICS & SKILL: FACTORS FOR PROMOTION ii
Dedication
I wish to thank my wife, Diné, and my daughters, Diantha, Alana, and Taylor. It was certainly due to their unconditional love and support that I was able to complete this multi-year endeavor. Their understanding and encouragement was with me every step of the way, and they each contributed to this accomplishment. Dine deserves praise not just for her daily actions to keep our home together while I was secluded away in my office after work, seven days a week, but for her tireless support each time there was the need to proof, correct aspects of this dissertation, and conduct mandatory residency travel while enrolled in the program. Finally, I would like to dedicate this to my mother who passed away when I was thirteen years of age. I complete this journey with the hope that she is proud of her son for accomplishing a baccalaureate degree, three master degrees, and a doctoral degree, all while serving as a member of the United States Armed Forces in two major wars spanning three different decades. ACADEMICS & SKILL: FACTORS FOR PROMOTION iii
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Thomas Mierzwa and Dr. Kimberley Kelley whose coaching forced me to go deeper, enabled me to learn more, and facilitated the delivery of a quality product. The time spent learning from them through constructive criticism and significant mental development has led me to consider their roles as greater than that of the trusted advisors who guided me through the dissertation process.
To Dr. Thomas Mierzwa, I am especially grateful for your guidance through the entire duration of the program. I know your schedule was extremely busy, but you took time to make sure my document made sense; you fine-tuned the focus of the research by asking probing questions that made me assess what I wrote against the reality of what was occurring in the global environment. To Dr. Kimberley Kelley, I am grateful for her subject expertise, critical questioning, and encouragement. I thank both advisors for their questioning, guidance, their contributions to my learning throughout this research and the foundation of thinking they instilled within me that will serve me well for the rest of my life.
Finally, I wish to thank the members of my cohort for all their success throughout this journey. I especially wish to thank Jenese McFadden for her unwavering support throughout our academic journey.ACADEMICS & SKILL: FACTORS FOR PROMOTION iv
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of possessing a technical or business degree on managerial promotions in the manufacturing sector. In determining these effects, the research focuses on: (1) employee academic preparation for employment in the manufacturing sector; (2) differences in career-development patterns a; (3) the rate of employee promotions, by examining the differences between employees with a technical versus business and management degrees; and (4) employee technical or business management skill attainment.
The study uses the narrative synthesis format of a systematic review to layout the approach used to conduct the review and to synthesize the findings of multiple studies. Utilization of a narrative synthesis allows the researcher to synthesize the findings of previous qualitative and quantitative studies on technology and management education, career development, and skill development. Although this methodology could involve the manipulation of data, data treatment is not the intent because this study is meant to be a textual description versus a presentation of second-hand statistical information that would require the reader to interpret data.
This narrative synthesis comprises four main elements: (a) development of a theoretical framework of how promotions, education, skill possession, and self-efficacy interconnect to support professional growth; (b) development of an initial combination of findings specific to reviewed studies; (c) an exploration of possible relationships between findings; and (d) an assessment of the strength of the process.
The analysis of 38 articles that met the inclusion/exclusion criteria provided evidence that promotions in the manufacturing sector are not skewed in favor of personnel with a technical education background. The evidence from this study suggests that employees working for a ACADEMICS & SKILL: FACTORS FOR PROMOTION v
supervisor with this career background are less likely to receive managerial promotions, while the promotion rate for employees working for managers with a dual-background or a business only background is about 10 percentage points higher. Taken together, these findings suggest there is a limited positive impact of technical education on promotion success when compared to business management education in the manufacturing sector.
The implications of this study are that current and future employees seeking managerial positions in manufacturing organizations should, at a minimum, possess a science degree, if previously earned, along with a business management-related degree, in order to be competitive for managerial promotions. Further, employees seeking managerial promotions can be more effective at influencing their opportunities by seeking positions in which they report directly to a manager or technical supervisor who has a career background in both management and technical fields, versus working for a supervisor who has a pure technical background. These implications directly align with the research hypotheses and support the overall argument and findings presented in the latter part of this study. ACADEMICS & SKILL: FACTORS FOR PROMOTION vi
Table of Contents
Dedication...................................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgements....................................................................................................................... iii
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iv
Table of Contents.......................................................................................................................... vi
List of Appendices .......................................................................................................................... x
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ xi
List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... xii
Chapter 1: Introduction................................................................................................................... 1
Background................................................................................................................................ 1
Statement of the Problem............................................................................................................ 4
Problem Context ......................................................................................................................... 4
Manufacturing skill requirements ................................................................................................... 5
Manufacturing competency gaps .................................................................................................... 6
STEM Education...................................................................................................................... 12
Impact of degree conferment trends on manufacturing ................................................................ 14
Dual-Ladder Career Path .......................................................................................................... 16
Influences of knowledge and service economies.......................................................................... 18
Significance of the Study.......................................................................................................... 19
Research Gap ............................................................................................................................ 21
Purpose of the Study................................................................................................................. 25
Research Questions................................................................................................................... 28
Study Scope .............................................................................................................................. 28 ACADEMICS & SKILL: FACTORS FOR PROMOTION vii
Study Limitations..................................................................................................................... 29
Discussion of Key Terms.......................................................................................................... 30
Dissertation Chapters................................................................................................................ 32
Chapter 2: Literature Review........................................................................................................ 34
Academics, Professional Competence, and Career Development............................................ 34
Theoretical Lenses for this Study ............................................................................................. 36
Human capital and skill development........................................................................................... 37
Career development and perspectives about success.................................................................... 38
Influence of Management Competence .................................................................................... 40
Influence of Academic Preparation .......................................................................................... 43
The influence of management of technology (MOT) education. ................................................. 47
The growing significance of management education ................................................................... 54
Manufacturing Sector Employment considerations.................................................................. 57
Career Development influences................................................................................................ 59
Career path determinants .............................................................................................................. 61
Influence of employee motivation ................................................................................................ 64
Dual-ladder career pathways to promotion................................................................................... 65
Decision-making competency and career goal orientation........................................................... 69
The Influence of Tacit and Explicit Knowledge Development on Professional Growth ......... 72
Managerial Promotion potential ............................................................................................... 74
Summary.................................................................................................................................. 78
Chapter 3: Conceptual Framework ............................................................................................... 83
Conceptual Framework............................................................................................................. 83 ACADEMICS & SKILL: FACTORS FOR PROMOTION viii
Theoretical Perspectives ........................................................................................................... 86
Human capital ............................................................................................................................... 86
Career development ...................................................................................................................... 88
Hypotheses............................................................................................................................... 90
Summary.................................................................................................................................. 91
Chapter 4: Research Approach ..................................................................................................... 93
Research Design ....................................................................................................................... 94
Systematic Review Methodology ............................................................................................. 95
Journal Selection Criteria.......................................................................................................... 97
Search Process ........................................................................................................................ 100
Validity and Reliability........................................................................................................... 101
Chapter 5: Findings..................................................................................................................... 104
Introduction............................................................................................................................ 104
Results.................................................................................................................................... 106
Dual-ladder - Technical vs. Business Management Career-Development ............................. 109
Skill development ....................................................................................................................... 111
Managerial promotions ............................................................................................................... 114
Promotion Comparisons Results - Technical vs. Business Management Education.............. 121
Skill development and career progression. ................................................................................. 122
Knowledge development and promotions .................................................................................. 126
Conceptual Model Validation................................................................................................. 132
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 135
Chapter 6: Implications for Management ................................................................................... 139 ACADEMICS & SKILL: FACTORS FOR PROMOTION ix
Implications for Management Theory .................................................................................... 140
Management theories. ................................................................................................................. 140
Education and skill development. ............................................................................................... 141
Career development. ................................................................................................................... 143
Implications for Management Practice ................................................................................... 144
Requirements of managers and supervisors in a dual-ladder environment ................................ 144
Employee efficacy towards labor force KSA development........................................................ 149
Organizational commitment........................................................................................................ 153
Performance measurement.......................................................................................................... 155
Implications for Management Education................................................................................ 160
Management of technology education curricula......................................................................... 160
Business management education curricula. ................................................................................ 162
Implications for Future Trends ............................................................................................... 163
Ability of technical employees to move to the managerial track................................................ 164
Long-term efficacy of the technical career track. ....................................................................... 165
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 166
References.................................................................................................................................. 168 ACADEMICS & SKILL: FACTORS FOR PROMOTION x
List of Appendices
Appendix A: Research Study Selection Criteria Table............................................................... 187
Appendix B: Subject Matter Expert Evaluations........................................................................ 200
Appendix B1: Dissertation Synopsis for Subject Matter Expert Evaluation.......................... 200
Appendix B2: Subject Matter Expert Reviewer Request Cover Letter (Template) ............... 204
Appendix B3: Subject Matter Expert Evaluation Form (Template)....................................... 205
Appendix C ................................................................................................................................ 207
Appendix C1: Subject Matter Expert Evaluation Form (Scholar #1)..................................... 207
Appendix C2: Subject Matter Expert Evaluation Form (Scholar #2 / Practitioner #1).......... 209
Appendix C3: Subject Matter Expert Evaluation Form (Practitioner #2) .............................. 212
Appendix C4: Subject Matter Expert Evaluation Form (Practitioner #3) .............................. 215
Appendix C5: Subject Matter Expert Evaluation Form (Practitioner #4) ..................
Keeping up with a transformative global economy: A best practice model for short-term experiential study abroad programs that develops global competence in career and technical education students
No full textThe purpose of this study was to systematically review the literature on the study abroad program models that exist for career and technical education students, and to develop a normative, best practices model to cultivate global competence in Career and Technical Education (CTE) students. There is a lack of study abroad program models that meet the unique needs of CTE students by offering hands-on, experiential, paid opportunities abroad.
This dissertation examines the characteristics and variables associated with best practices and successful approaches for study abroad program models in higher education that improve global competence and support the growth of human capital, especially in an ever-transformative economy. At state and federal levels of government, stakeholders have given a call for the democratization of study abroad for all undergraduate students, encouraging community colleges specifically to take an active role in opening doors for students to embrace international knowledge and increase global cognizance in terms of the United State's position in the world and its impact on the economy related to decisions made at the highest level with regards to resource allotment towards program support not ignoring industry trends.
The methodological approach utilized in this systematic review included a review of qualitative and quantitative studies from peer-reviewed resources, in addition to current white papers by experts in the field. The amount of information available about study abroad opportunities specifically designed for CTE students was not plentiful in the research. The focus was on traditional study abroad programs for four-year undergraduate students. Several case studies were available that focused on CTE students and the need for their global competence development.
The results of this study inform all higher education stakeholders at all levels that are interested in global competence and experiential opportunities for CTE students. The literature did reveal the benefits of study abroad through meaningful, effectual program designs, although not specifically directed towards CTE students. The product model incorporates additional, effective characteristics that include continued, consistent faculty involvement, administrative and leadership accountability and support, and an experiential study abroad plan that benefits CTE students, ensuring a successful contribution to human capital to spur the economy.A BEST PRACTICE MODEL FOR SHORT-TERM EXPERIENTIAL STUDY ABROAD
PROGRAMS THAT DEVELOPS GLOBAL COMPETENCE IN CTE STUDENTS
1
KEEPING UP WITH A TRANSFORMATIVE GLOBAL ECONOMY:
A BEST PRACTICE MODEL FOR SHORT-TERM EXPERIENTIAL STUDY ABROAD
PROGRAMS THAT DEVELOPS GLOBAL COMPETENCE IN CAREER AND TECHNICAL
EDUCATION STUDENTS
Claudia Clereese Epps-Timmann
A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty
of
University of Maryland University College
in Partial Fulfillment of
The Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Management
James D. Tschechtelin, Ed.D.
Patricia Keir, Ed.D.
A BEST PRACTICE MODEL FOR SHORT-TERM EXPERIENTIAL STUDY ABROAD
PROGRAMS THAT DEVELOPS GLOBAL COMPETENCE IN CTE STUDENTS
2
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to systematically review the literature on the study abroad
program models that exist for career and technical education students, and to develop a
normative, best practices model to cultivate global competence in Career and Technical
Education (CTE) students. There is a lack of study abroad program models that meet the unique
needs of CTE students in terms of offering hands-on, experiential, paid opportunities abroad.
This dissertation examines the characteristics and variables associated with best practices and
successful approaches for study abroad program models in higher education that improve global
competence and support the growth of human capital, especially in an ever-transformative
economy. At state and federal levels of government, stakeholders have given a call for the
democratization of study abroad for all undergraduate students, encouraging community colleges
specifically to take an active role in opening doors for students to embrace international
knowledge and increase global cognizance in terms of the United State’s position in the world
and its impact on the economy related to decisions made at the highest level with regards to
resource allotment towards program support not ignoring industry trends.
The methodological approach utilized in this systematic review included a review of qualitative
and quantitative studies from peer-reviewed resources, in addition to current white papers by
experts in the field. The amount of information available about study abroad opportunities
specifically designed for CTE students was not plentiful in the research. The focus was on
traditional study abroad programs for four-year undergraduate students. Several case studies
were available that focused on CTE students and the need for their global competence
development.
The results of this study inform all higher education stakeholders at all levels that are interested
in global competence and experiential opportunities for CTE students. The literature did reveal
the benefits of study abroad through meaningful, effectual program designs, although not
specifically directed towards CTE students. The product model incorporates additional, effective
characteristics that include continued, consistent faculty involvement, administrative and
leadership accountability and support, and an experiential study abroad plan that benefits CTE
students, ensuring a successful contribution to human capital to spur the economy.
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© COPYRIGHT BY
Claudia Clereese Epps Timmann
2013
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Dedication
This dissertation is dedicated to many who supported me throughout the years, thought
about me during this journey, and encouraged the completion of a doctorate degree. I dedicate
this dissertation to my immigrant mother from Jamaica, West Indies - Jean Anita Lawrence
Epps, whose U.S. dream has always been for her children to gain a quality higher education. I
further dedicate this dissertation to my southern U.S. born father who has shared his pride and
appreciation regarding my adventure to anyone who would listen. His time in college was a
contributor to my determination to complete my doctoral journey, in addition to my personal
motto “when the pathway gets rough, fight the urge to quit and just finish.” I dedicate this
dissertation to my Jamaican aunts and uncle. Over the years, I have been quietly impressed with
their drive to complete their education and academic goals, some at community colleges, others
at university. I will never forget the community college and university commencement
ceremonies I attended for my aunts. They inspire me. I further dedicate this work to Neisha
Weston, my very special cousin, who encouraged me to finish as she, too, accomplished
challenging academic goals.
I dedicate this paragraph to those very near me who have received the sacrificing end of
my doctoral journey. My husband Glen weathered the experience - he was the one to make the
bread por la mano that I no longer could take the time to make. He did all the food shopping for
four years so that I could squeeze the most out of a day to do coursework. Other contributors to
my determination are my three lovely, overactive, young children: Aidan Michael St. James (9),
Nadia Clereese Elisabet (7), and Aaron Joseph Conrad (4). It has been difficult for them to
understand why many times mommy was in the office when they went to bed and still in the
office when they awoke in the morning. They helped me to persist and never give up!
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Acknowledgements
This dissertation reflects all efforts associated with my journey and final completion of
my doctoral studies at the University of Maryland University College. Several have given me
support and encouragement along way that has led to the fruition of this dissertation. My utmost
heartfelt gratitude I extend to Dr. James Tschechtelin who sent a plethora – no – a deluge – of
messages every week, posted to the course room, in addition to a flood of email messages of
equal encouragement in the form of anecdotes and pithy apothegms. I am especially thankful
for his critical eye and attention to the details of this dissertation. I also sincerely appreciate the
support received from Dr. Patricia Keir, Dr. Martha Romero, and Dr. Trudy Bers, all who played
very different roles in my growth as a doctoral student and ultimately a scholar, and yet very
beneficial to my successful completion of the program. Thank you, and thank you again!
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Table of Contents
Chapter One: Introduction ........................................................................................................... 12
Background and Context ........................................................................................................... 17
Statement of the Problem .......................................................................................................... 20
Human Capital ...................................................................................................................... 22
International competitiveness ............................................................................................... 23
National security ................................................................................................................... 24
Significance of the Study .......................................................................................................... 25
Importance to Management and Educational Administration .................................................. 27
Management Theory ................................................................................................................. 29
Definition of Key Terms ........................................................................................................... 32
Thesis ....................................................................................................................................... 36
Research questions .................................................................................................................... 37
Statement of Purpose and Organization of Dissertation ........................................................... 37
Chapter Two: Literature Review ................................................................................................. 39
Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 39
Overview ...................................................................................................................................... 40
History and Mission of the Community College ...................................................................... 40
Evolution of Vocational Education and Career and Technical Education ............................... 46
Evolution and Purpose of Study Abroad in the Community College ....................................... 53
Summary of the History of Study Abroad at Community Colleges ......................................... 59
Study Abroad Program Models and CTE students ................................................................... 60
The Definition of Study Abroad ............................................................................................... 60
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Traditional and Nontraditional Study Abroad Practices at Community Colleges ........................ 62
Case Study #1: Fox Valley Technical College ......................................................................... 73
Case Study #2: Brookdale Community College ....................................................................... 76
Case Study #3: Tidewater Community College and Mid Atlantic Consortium: NSEP Vietnam
Project ...................................................................................................................................... 80
Barriers to Study Abroad .............................................................................................................. 87
Lack of Institutional support ..................................................................................................... 88
Funding challenges ................................................................................................................... 91
Lack of stakeholder support ...................................................................................................... 94
Summary of Barriers to Study Abroad ..................................................................................... 95
Current Practices of Study Abroad Programs ............................................................................... 95
International Education ............................................................................................................. 95
Short-Term Study Abroad Program Models ........................................................................... 110
Global Competence ..................................................................................................................... 115
Human Capital theory ................................................................................................................. 121
Summary of Chapter Two ....................................................................................................... 132
Chapter Three: Conceptual Model .............................................................................................. 134
Background ............................................................................................................................. 134
Concept of Knowledge Economy and Educonomy ................................................................ 136
Conceptual Frameworks ......................................................................................................... 139
Service Learning Domain ................................................................................................... 140
Study Abroad Domain ........................................................................................................ 142
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International Education Domain ......................................................................................... 144
Academic Program Structure .............................................................................................. 147
Residential Program Structure ............................................................................................ 149
Global Competence Frameworks ............................................................................................ 150
Conceptual Model ................................................................................................................... 152
Propositions ............................................................................................................................. 154
Conclusions for Conceptual Framework ................................................................................ 156
Summary ................................................................................................................................ 157
Chapter 4: Methodology ............................................................................................................ 158
Introduction and Research Methodology ................................................................................ 158
Research Design Overview ..................................................................................................... 160
Keywords and Search Criteria ................................................................................................ 161
Research and Retrieval ........................................................................................................... 163
Literature Evaluation .............................................................................................................. 169
Surveys and summaries of surveys ......................................................................................... 170
Expert opinion resources evaluation ....................................................................................... 173
Documents of best practice ..................................................................................................... 177
Criteria for Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) Evaluation ......................................................... 179
Summary ................................................................................................................................ 183
Chapter Five: Findings and Analysis ......................................................................................... 185
Analysis of Subject Matter Experts Review ........................................................................... 186
Subject Matter Expert Ratings ............................................................................................ 186
Summary of Subject Matter Expert Reviews .......................................................................... 191
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Analysis of the Literature Review Findings ........................................................................... 192
Expert Opinion Articles, Reports, and Books ..................................................................... 193
Summaries of Surveys ........................................................................................................ 194
Best Practices ...................................................................................................................... 196
Findings and Conclusions ....................................................................................................... 198
Research Question One ....................................................................................................... 199
Research Question Two ...................................................................................................... 200
Research Question Three .................................................................................................... 201
Research Question Four ...................................................................................................... 203
Research Question Five ...................................................................................................... 204
Limitations of the Study .......................................................................................................... 205
Summary ................................................................................................................................ 206
Chapter Six: Implications and Need for Future Research ......................................................... 209
Product Model for Nontraditional Experiential Study Abroad Programs .............................. 209
Development Phase ............................................................................................................. 211
Implementation Phase ......................................................................................................... 215
Supportive Phase ................................................................................................................. 218
Implications for Management Practice ................................................................................... 228
Areas for Future Research ...................................................................................................... 231
Final Conclusions .................................................................................................................... 232
Appendix A: Evaluation Form .................................................................................................... 234
LIST OF TABLES ...................................................................................................................... 237
LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................... 238
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References .................................................................................................................................. 239
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Chapter One: Introduction
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high
with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew,
UMUC - European Division - Mason G Daly - AF Education Conference: Tradition and Modernity - April 12 1966 - Toul Air Base
No full textEurope;Hoffmann, RosemaryToul Air Base
Dr. Mason G. Daly
AF Education Conference Director, European Division
12 April 1966 University of Maryland
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
-Tradition and Modernity
The title as announced here in the program is not my own. It came to me in the mail from USAFE. Although I suppose a title can be a loaded, even a dangerous thing, it is a relief not to have to dream one up. And there is a challenge involved going at it this way , for the speech which follows a title should be related to it without undue strain. Now when I first got the speech assignment and the title I thought it seemed hardly fair that the USC and Boston representatives, who are given the same amount of time, were not also given a title with such seeming implications and connotations, were not given something that structured their presentations as mine seems to be structured. But I thought about the title and decided it was as good as any and probably better than anything I could come up with. The real challenge remains – to discover what I am supposed to talk about and make it relate. I could have asked, I suppose, but that hardly seemed sporting. Certainly it was sporting of USAFE to give me a title and then let me hook my own speech to it. If I had asked what it all meant I might have been told, and then the whole sporting arraignment would have collapsed.
Maryland, then, Tradition and Modernity, is my jumping off point. Let’s just see how sporting the exercise is.
Like USAFe and USAFI, the U of Md has been around long enough to come up with a few traditions. USAFI predates USAFE by quite a few years, but Maryland reaches back its cow college and land-grant days, and that’s long enough to collect a few barnacles of tradition, a few crusts of conservatism. . And although barnacles and crusts can shine in the right light, they do, from time to time, need brining to light, sometimes scraping in public. Even Maryland in Europe has been characterized as having a middle-aged spread and a conservative stance. Either quality may be taken to mean we have too much tradition or too many anxieties or too little imagination. It may only be that Maryland’s fall-guy in Europe is the real middle-aged factor, ever more angular and crusty in his stance, with some spread showing here in the area of the middle years. He takes some comfort in knowing that if he is Mr. Maryland in this gathering, in this Europe, Mr. USAFE, and Mr. USAFI, Jr., also present, have been around a long time too, and, like him, are showing signs of a slightly rearranged distribution of weight and or hair line. Larry Gates and Joe Elam move their headquarters far too often to let any barnacles form; Doug Beakes moves much too fast to worry about middle age, is far too harassed by changing regulations and changing budgets to assume anything like a static stance. I do not envy Joe his musical headquarters (he’s an expert on how to lift a filled filing cabinet), but I do often envy Doug Beakes his energy, his determination, and his sense of conviction. The creative ad-ministrator has been described as “a man of curiosity and discontent, with unlimited enthusiasm for his job. He is restless, intense, strongly mo-tivated, He creates an atmosphere of excitement and urgency among his associates. He is open-minded and listens to new ideas. He is unorthodox and questions conventional ideas.” If that description of a creative administrator fits anyone present, middle-aged or not, I suggest that it fits Mr. USAFE best of all.
Mr. USAFE, in his last USAFE-wide conference, quoted Admiral Rickover – another questioner of the orthodox, the conventional, the traditional – to the effect that “at different stages in history, different kinds of education are needed. Education either advances or retreats, and it will retreat if it stands still. For these reasons,” says Rickover and Mr. USAFE, “education must continually be kept under close scrutiny to insure that it will always produce the kind of people needed at a given moment in time.” We can all say amen to that, amen to this impulse to scrutinize our current programs and plan others that are more in harmony with the times.
You see, the first Beatitude according to Beakes is one with which we all fully agree: Blessed is the outfit that fears not innovation and change. Although Mr. USAFE and Mr. Maryland have recently been stalled in communi-cation reference language teaching by the complexities and cross-currents of their separate outfits, they have had no real conflict in principle, they are beleaguered by many of the same uncertainties, and they believe in the same beatitudes.
I ran into an article the other day in the Phi Delta Kappan magazine, written by a wag from the U of Illinois who made good sense and good humor in discussing some Beatitudes for Beleaguered Bigwigs, some worthy declarations of assaulted persons of consequence. I believe some of his beatitudes can be varied to apply here and I will, of course, introduce several of my own.
In the jargon of Biblical beatitudes, the first for today reads; “Blessed is the outfit which relies both on compasses and anchors in fulfilling its purpose.” Compasses are for going places; anchors are for staying places. It takes a cool outfit to live through the emergencies we all experience here – being deGaulled, Vietnamed out of funds an students, bomb-dropped in to excessive dropouts, that sort of thing. It takes a steady eye on the compass and a quick hand on the anchor chain to live amidst the excitement and turmoil and pedagogical testing and probing into new techniques and new materials and new teaching devices and new directives. To drag the anchor now and then may be the true mark of dynamic leadership. It is better to have the anchor at the ready then to settle for any port in the storm. Dynamic leadership calls for deliberation with caution are certainly as it calls for action with decision and promptness. It is just at this old middle-0aged outfit can some times suffer from too much caution, can seem to deliberate forever, can seem to fail to act at all.
Is it the anchor, then, for tradition, the compass for modernity? Maybe. Lord knows that’s abstract, but it sounds like we are at least still afloat around here, even in our present stormy seas.
“Blessed is the outfit which has a good oracle.”
Great outfits of the ancient past had it easy. When faced with emergencies, like deGaulle, they were not absolutely at a loss. If Alexander the Great, for example, wanted to know whether a chariot charge or a charge of shielded footmen was the best approach to a battle, he merely consulted the oracle. Today we rarely seem to have consultant help of such high calibre. When our university officials turn to us about next year’s budget, the size of next year’s faculty, to what oracle do we turn? Well, Doug Beakes is an oracle of some real repute, and there are one to two others in Europe to whom we can turn. They in turn, I guess, turn to higher oracles, like Karacik and Quick and Zeff, and finally it is oracle right up to the great McNamara and the Great LBJ and the Great Society, and God knows that outfit needs cracular help. I’d like to see the innards of the freshly killed sheep they must be digging around in just now – like the men of old – seeking some hint about better results in Vietnam and better results with l’gènèral. They may claim to be stirring the innards of some scientific computer, but surely they are desperate enough by now to be using more primitive methods too. I know I am. When I think that the new GI bill is almost upon us, that it is already being cinched into one of the most complex of bureaucracies, the VA, which has had 150 years or more to tangle up its procedures, I am ready to settle for the quick reading of the innards of a humble chicken. Do you realize we Marylanders haven’t even had a chance to compound and complicate our already myriad registra-tion forms; and you haven’t had time to put another column on the quarterly report.
We had indeed better try to sight together over the rim of the unknown in education in Europe, whatever oracular means the Gods happen to grant us.
“Blessed is the outfit whose communication is clear and cogent.”
It is not true that the greatest gap in existence is the one between two minds, a gap which only successful communication can close There are times when the greatest gap in existence is right between these two ears, but that is hereditary an can go unnoticed, especially if you keep your mouth shut. But the basis of communication is, I guess, speech, gesture, writing, language, and, to be sure, the temperament or temper revealed through it all. It is also that which is not said at all, either because of the hereditary gap or because of censorship or because the oracle didn’t provide a reading that could be articulated. Communication can be obfuscated (and that word itself will wreck communication), can be obscured by a lack of knowledge. Lacking enough facts, we usually give out infor-mation, ask and answer questions with something less than clarity and cogency. In today’s dictionary one finds, “dramamine: relieves seasick-ness.” Years ago before a cure was known dictionaries took a page or two to cover the subject inadequately. The best, most memorable Supreme Court decisions are apt to be the simplest: “A drunken man is as much entitled to a safe street as a sober one – and much more in need of it.” This account of a busy administration’s message to his wife upon arrival home after a hard day of letters and reports and directives is communication gone haywire:
Herewith my hat and coat. Please file them for future reference Has dinner been finalized? Good. Please hold it in abeyance until further advised. An associate has furnished me with the formula for a revolutionary kind of long, cool one with the request that I research it and report my findings at the earliest opportunity. Therefore, this project requires my immediate attention However, should you require my presence to discuss any [urgent] problems, feel free to contact me. I will be in executive session in the basement. Be assured that I will alert you before completion of my undertaking so that you will have ample time to bring your efforts to a successful conclusion, after which I will be happy to attend the regular meeting with you at table.
Yes, communication between a man and wife can break down. When it isn’t restored it can result in long-term unhappiness and sleepless nights in twin beds. Communication among these agencies in Europe which are ful-filling the somewhat distinct, always vital, and inevitably interlocking and complicated education requirements of Americans stations abroad, should be as maximum as possible, and, to be sure, as friendly as frequent as possible-for surely one important beatitude, which needs no illustration, is: “Blessed is the grand lit.”
And another is: “Blessed is the outfit which listens with big ears and a big open mind.”
And another is: “Blessed is the outfit which shrinks not in hot water.” The US Geological Survey report that the earth is just about the same size now that it was 200,000,000 years ago surely explodes the theory that everything shrinks in hot water. Just as surely the good traditions and philosophies of good education do not have to shrink in the hot water of exploding populations and exploding knowledge, do not have to shrink in the hot water of political chaos and hot war and hot controversy.
Certainly another beatitude is: “Blessed is the outfit which nurtures as a fragile violet its sense of humor.” Because humor is philosophy. The two, as pointed out by Will Durant, are intrinsically related. Each is the essence of the other. The stuffed scholar, the stuffed administrator, if he lacks humor probably lacks philosophy. Pope took a jab at the stuffed ones with a satirical couplet:
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head.
My head is by no means loaded with learned lumber, but I find it hard to be playful in these times, in our present circumstance, and so do most of you. If humor is the freedom flag of the human mind, the flag is too often – in me – at half mast, if on the pole at all. To see the headlines about NATO and curtailments, to dwell in the limbo of uncertainties about next year, next registration, next TDY patch, next week, tomorrow, makes it hard to be philosophical if humor is part of philosophy. But then, God Himself must have been somewhat of a humorist – else why the duck-billed platypus? Else why the education advisor? Else why the Maryland administrator?
And that leads to a far out and fairly useless beatitude: “Blessed is the outfit which understand the works of Mother Nature.” As we have just noted, Mother Nature has created some odd ones, including the duck-billed platypus and, sitting here, this hybrid, or throwback, or – I like to think – this brand new, important breed of educator. Us. We may be middle-aged, some of us, but in the evolutionary pattern perhaps this breed of education cat, or platypus, or whatever we are, may be rather new and a little promising. We are sometimes reminded in military circles, even in civilian personnel circles, that we are neither fish nor fowl. The albatross, an odd bird, is said to have the widest wing-spread of all birds in relation to body size. Thus it can fly on and on. It occurs to me that many administrators here have large wingspreads in relation to body size, enabling us to sever on and on. Because the sloth, another odd creature, spends most of its time upside down, its fur lies in the opposite direction to that of other animals, toward its back instead of down from it. So when the torrential rains come, the moisture merely drops off instead of soaking in. If we do not live in an upside down position, at least some of us have learned, haven’t we, to survive veritable deluges. And I have still another nature note under this beatitude – How to capture a porcupine: Wait until you can catch one out in the open; then, watching out for his slapping tail, rush in quickly and pop a large wash tub over him. This gives you something to sit on while you figure out your next move!
I said that beatitude was far out, and there really isn’t anywhere to go with it. It is merely descriptive and philosophically loaded, of course, with good humor.
Now let me pass to two more beatitudes before I quit this scriptural pattern.
“Blessed is the outfit which knows when to throw down the gauntlet.” and, “Blessed is the outfit which knows when to pick it up.”
These outfits, and I am speaking mainly about USAFE and Maryland now, are blessed with having to work together, with having to share the grand lit. Whether a gauntlet is, in fact, a mailed fist or a gloved and – or just a figure of speech – it has a good purpose in any good relationship, although it may not belong in bed. Most of our existence together we have bedded down rather tidily. We’ve handled our gauntlets, however mailed, well enough. Indeed, we have worked hand in glove, and we still work hand in glove.
The fact that the gauntlet was tossed down concerning graduate study in USAFE (and likewise in USAREUR) and that we fumbled in picking it up, has not been in the least damaging to our joint morale or our joint purpose. We have probably never served Air Force personnel and their dependents and their civilian affiliates more or better than since that particular gauntlet was picked up by someone else. I doubt that confrontation and its results really show us to be transfixed in one point in time by crusty tradition. I think it only showed that in taking up the gauntlet we did not find the right formula for action. Our compass was functioning alright, but our anchor chain was too long, Our history credits us with enough good sailing to be forgiven for this.
There have not been many gauntlets we have failed to pick up, and I doubt if there will be many in the future.
We have made it possible for USAFE to lead the Air Force world in the non-terminal TDY program, if we are, as we seem to be, temporarily stalled in the language element of that TDY program – because the gauntlet is being flung about over a misunderstanding about materials and over a two-way breakdown of communication – we still see more TDY challenges arising in physics and in mathematics. In addition to the now historic 14 language TDYs, we have had TDYs in history and business and automatic data processing, and we have seen the system work for the lone student who TDYs to reach other subjects to finish a degree, quite outside the TDY institutes we jointly sponsor.
If any outfit 0 and I certainly include USAFE in the judgment has spent more time, energy, adrenalin, and money in updating (modernizing, if you will) its philosophy of teaching language (and math), show me the outfit. Good heavens, in absolute defiance of fate and the great, Charles, we held a French faculty institute in the heartland of deGaulle last week. The results of this time and adrenalin and money are, we assert, already evident, and in step with the best academic and Air Force goals. If it is tradition which causes us to move ahead with deliberate speed in this field, if it is tradition which makes up insist on the very best available in materials (and none has yet found the ultimate in language teaching materials or methods), if it is tradition which makes us insist that those materials be tried out by us in our circumstance of teaching, if it is tradition which makes us insist that those materials be avail-able and used on our pedagogical terms, then tradition it is. If there are barnacles on that tradition, they look pretty good when help up to the light. If that gauntlet was tossed to us, we most emphatically picked it up.
Together USAFE and Maryland have for 17 years managed to intellectually stimulate tens of thousands of air men and officers in their gathering in of credits and degrees. If we have lagged here and there in becoming modern, our sense of tradition has kept the academic fabric of what we are doing whole and untarnished. If our credits are blessed in all temples of learning, it is because we strive to accommodate tradition and modernity.
The accommodation is sometimes painful and prolonged, but it is there, it is going on. Like most schools, for instance, we are slow in finding this means to develop non-lab science teaching, presuming – as many of us do – that there is an important place for that kind of science teaching in a university program. But we have now brought Geology successfully into this program, and together we will find what else can be done. Obviously there is a crying need for a sound course in the history and philosophy of science, but in this age of fracturing specializations where on earth would one find the teacher. This immediately suggests the camera and several canned teacher experts on a reel, I guess. Our powers of accommodation have managed to increase our offering in the humanities rather dramatically in the last few years, enriching what had been a too-social-science-centered curriculum.
Our modernizing with the times and the realities of a changing world and changing student body has resulted in the phasing out of the old degree program designed for upgrading old Air Force officers. It is no longer needed and no longer valid for the younger student body we have now, a student body which will duck a terminal-sounding degree, even though there is abundant evidence that no degree is really terminal for an intelligent and determined adult.
It may not be modern, but it is a present need, and we have continued to assist hundreds each year to get those magic, teaching-certifying Education credits, even though we are not one of the two universities who can take overseas personnel to graduate degree in Education.
Because we have your invaluable and always uncalculated and essentially unrewarded assistance in councelling and registering students, especially because we have the budgeting genius of Doug Beakes and the logistical genius of Marshall Boarman at USAFE level, in absolute resistance to modernity and modern trends, we are managing to hold tuition charges down for at least another year, Yet we are managing if only just to compete for teaching talent in the States and we have raised part-time teaches’ salaries 35% in four years.
With something of a modern stance we have encouraged the campus to send Dr. Aylward at the invitation of USAFE to this conference to see if we have yet another gauntlet to pick up reference credit courses via television.
We may have a useful modern idea to share with you reference a tiresome traditional problem of teaching freshman English. Certainly that course continues to be the despair of freshman (especially adult freshman), of colleges everywhere, and it is our shared despair wherever Maryland is over here. I will ask that the last few minutes of the 30 allowed to me be given to our English Supervisor, Dr. Bob Speckhard, who never despairs. He wills suggest this new approach and, since it has to do with programmed learning, it is modern enough; since it has to do with grammar, it is yet traditional. And after Dr. Speckhard you hear from Dr. Beyer about our joint struggle with the modern math.
Pascal once characterized man as “a chimera,” “a novelty,” “a chaos,” and “a contradiction.” The University of Maryland in Europe, even in middle-age, is still something of a chimera, a novelty, a chaos, and a contradiction. It is a simple, yet complex arrangement, it is a study in consistency and in contrasts. About it you have all been both op-timistic and pessimistic; you have found it enlightened
UMUC - European Division - Mason G Daly - The Language of Discontent from A Captain of Erudition - July 1963
No full textEurope;Hoffmann, RosemaryDr. Mason G. Daly
Director
European Division
University of Maryland
The Language of Discontent
From
A Captain of Erudition
I am, at this moment, acutely aware of a label, an image, a condition which I think I carry with me as a kind of executive head of a kind of republic of learning. And I think you suffer from the same image and condition.
There is little doubt that I have managed to inherit and sometimes encourage the idea that my executive position and administrative responsibilities have made me what Thorstein Veblen, that critic and conscience of organization and disorganization and malorganization in our society, has called a “captain of erudition”, and I suggest that you are all, like me, “captains of erudition.” That is a frightful label, it is at least partly deserved, it is almost impossible to shed, and it is hard to live with. It is that label and condition which really accounts for my presence here this noon, and it is that label and condition which will, I hope, invest this speech, my conscience, and perhaps your thoughts, with a sense of discontent. What I have to say, then, is properly titled “The Language of Discontent”, from A Captain of Erudition.
There is the mounting conviction in me that I am called on to speak here, as elsewhere, because of the image.
As soon as organizations holding meetings, festivals, commencements, inaugurations, dedications, conferences, and the like, have run through the usual higher echelons who suffer even more from a similar image – i.e. ambassadors and generals, even colonels – they get right down to us, the captains of erudition. We are the ones who can be counted on for some kind of quasi-scholarly homiletical discourse, perhaps edifying, probably solemn, all too often voluminous and vacant. We usually have a few, presumably ingenuous, statistics to toss off touching on the volume of work we are doing and the challenge that lies ahead. Because of the frequency of our discourses, because we do become a sort of itinerant dispensary of salutary verbiage, we become indispensable for the effusion of graceful speech at all sorts of gatherings. Now ambassadors and generals and most colonels have a great advantage over us. They have ghost writers. The usual captain of erudition, because his status is so much lower and he commands with so much less authority, rarely has a ghost. And by definition, a captain of erudition is presumed to always have an extensive knowledge, of a bookish kind at least, and is not expected to need any outside help. Indeed, he half believes the definition is correct, accepts yet another invitation to make an address, and only when he gets down to readying the speech realizes he has very little knowledge at all and that he hasn’t read a book since he became an administrator.
I would not really have expected you academic executives, who by image and practice, are also captains of erudition, to have called upon another of your own kind for an address – at least not to address you on a full stomach in this rather flamboyant, unacademic setting. You really should have known better, I think. It puts you in great danger of hearing one of your own warmed over addresses. But surely if you showed a lack of judgement in inviting me here today, I showed greater misjudgement in accepting the invitation to speak to my own pers. I must surely suffer from the same brand of executive megalomania that you sometimes do; i.e. a kind of disordered mental state in which an executive develops grandiose delusions about his importance, and comes to believe conveniently that he is all things to all audiences, even comes to believe in his own utterances.
How can I possibly hope to do much to throw you sufficiently off balance to divert and delude you into thinking you have heard an important or edifying address when we occupy the same place in the academic universe, when my affection of scholastic eminence is immediately known by you to be counterfeit, when my deepest solemnities will only be tired platitudes you have used yourself.
You see, don’t you, the trap we are in here at this moment?
Well, there isn’t a darn thing you can do about it. You trapped yourselves, by asking for me, no doubt after the ambassadors and generals and that echelon begged of, and I trapped you by succumbing to the megalomania we all suffer from. It is up to me, therefore, I feel, to admit the circumstances, accept the image, and get on with this speaking enterprise.
To avoid giving any variation of your own talks to a conference crowd with full stomachs, I should start off with one of Jack Kennedy’s better homilies about getting the nation on the move to survival through vigah, and education, one of his endorsements of our existence as educators. I should then allude to this great moment of challenge to the American intellect, the greatest moment of challenge, of course, that we have ever faced or ever will face. I must then display the usual concern for technological advancement, and express the usual fear that we may get the balance all out of whack by over-emphasizing technology and underplaying the old usual – you know, social sciences, humanities, the arts – whatever your kick or discipline happens to be. That much, just that much, will get you settled down and nodding bored agreement, while it assures your full stomach of the quiet digestive time it just now deserves.
No wonder I speak in language of discontent. I have so far shown my discontent with the label, the image, the trap that got me into this situation. I have lamented the fact that we are peers, that my best anecdote, most overpowering statistic, most thoroughly dusted-off speech will, of necessity, be part of your own repertoire.
I have further reason to speak a language of discontent, and since you are my peers, I will try to continue to do so in a forthright and honest manner, as stripped as possible of executive megalomania, with no delusions about fooling you as I might another kind of audience. I intend to focus my language of discontent, from this point on, upon my mounting certainty that you and I, so-called academic administrators, are probably not carrying our full share in the in the renaissance, rebirth, revival, regenerative revolution in American education which is now upon us. (Whoa there, Daly, you are rolling out the round phrases, the verbiage that sounds too much like the usual captain of erudition. Well, surely you don’t expect me to break entirely with the image.) Let me try it again – more simply. I say that you and I should be doing more than we are to take advantage of the surge of panic which is causing our nation to pay attention to education.
I’m convinced we administrators are by no means leading the legions of educational reformers (as usual everyone from the corner cop to the President of the United States), not leading and influencing all those who think they are all fired up about educational reformation. In the United States we’ve finally found our greatest ally for getting more and better classrooms, better teachers and teacher training, better salaries, a respectable and respected status for teachers in our society. And we are permitting others, often far less qualified but quit properly disturbed – legislators, city councilmen, PTA’s, pressure groups, yes, even military hierarchies – to be the ones who insist on breaking exiting patterns, trends, barriers, out-moded practices. We all know this great ally is the divided world. The basis for the surge of panic and for the resulting modern criticism is the claim that the Soviets are doing it all better. To this they helpfully agree. There is also a retired admiral who has been something of an ally in stirring up change, but really, we found our ally and first recognized him in the beeps and barks coming out of early Russian satellites.
Since the first, now primitive, object inaugurated the Space Age in the fall of 1957, the Russians and American have orbited a couple of the hundred objects of increasing sophistication, always with the Russians managing the mere dramatic. And Americans – in various states of terror – have never ceased to criticize their educational system as being largely if not entirely to blame, while wisely admitting that salvation and superiority will only be achieved through an improved and revitalized system. The first step toward improvement, the main hope for a renaissance, is to expose fully what is wrong, and it is not always wise to admit that anything is right. But who is exposing, and who is salvaging the right, and who is leading the way? Because I am not at all sure that we are the ones – though I am convinced that we should be – I speak a language of discontent.
There is much about my own educational background and experience about which I have a right to be discontented, and there have been a few items in my heritage which were terribly right. In this closed circle of peers I am sure I can safely expose the discontent, and at least suggest some of the heritage which has been mine which must be salvaged in even the most revolutionary changes now facing us.
I started life in a sod floored, sod roofed log house in western South Dakota, in 1921, the son of a rancher who had made it through 5th grade in a country school, a mother who went through country school, graduated in three years from a tiny high school at Ft. Pierre, South Dakota, went to Normal School for one summer (6 weeks), and was certified a teacher. Whether or not she would have been a good one was never really discovered because she lasted only until Christmas when she quit to marry my father. I attended country school in a made-over claim shack, going through eight years which no one else in the same grade and only two other children in the school. South Dakota teachers were better trained by that time. I even had one who had two full years in a Normal School, and once, only once, I had one who had more than the year’s experience as a teacher. The others (I saw their salaries go up from 90 while I was there) had one year in Normal School. An under-developed, under-populated western state, a state still suffering from some of that lack of development and population in its elementary system. At least I should be grateful, and I am, that in the United States we have the world’s oldest system of universal primary education, so firmly a part of our way of life from the beginning of our nation, that something at least was available to me, something which could and can be built upon a consolidated and improved – even as is true at this moment in the deepest slum or most blighted southern area of America today.
To go on. High School was good enough by most standards of the day. Rapid City in the Black Hills of South Dakota was standard American for a town of 15,000 people. Latin had already died a national enough death in the curriculum. I was delighted and relieved to be able to elect my way out of any modern language and out of physics and chemistry. Too standard for the time. But I got fair doses of English, history, mathematics, economics, sociology, American government, and I enjoyed time spent in journalism and drama classes. Standard American. As bad as my experience was, we have, we can certainly demonstrate, within the United States, the world’s most diverse and imaginative and, here and there at least, most highly developed and ultimately promising system of secondary education.
To wind up this educational biography as painlessly as possible: I had a couple of breaks and got a bachelor of arts by attending two small liberal arts church colleges in need of student janitorial service, one of which was next to a meat packing plant in need of cheap hourly labor. During my first two years, in fear that they would be all that I would get, I took a teaching curriculum to get certified for elementary school teaching. In the last two year, again for an insurance policy, I took more teaching courses in order to be certified for high school teaching in my state. Oh – I took a belly-full of education courses of the most tedious nature. I felt lucky that I also found time to major in something else, that I did in fact get together enough other credits to be admitted later to a graduate school. I hasten to admit that I resented, even hated the time I spent on education courses. The war came just in time, even rushed my graduation and when it was over I had plenty of G-1 to get me through graduate school at Northwestern. My teaching experience has been six years on the university level (no education courses required), my administrative experience is in its tenth year, also on the university level (no education courses required). While exposing my not very secure progress to some sort of academic status, while exposing some of my prejudices about the pr9oper content of a university education, I have also illustrated that American colleges and universities, thank goodness for me, were the first in the world to make higher education a democratic right. Until the US system did that, university education had always been the privilege of a minute intellectual aristocracy or a financial elite which would never have included me and, I suspect, most of you.
I do not doubt that each one of us in this room can, by briefly outlining his own American education as I just did, sketch in much that is wrong and some of what is right with our system. No type of American should be better able to analyze the right and the wrong in the system that you and I. But I often believe we administrators are too much engaged in scholastic routine, bureaucratic organization and a system of scholastic accountancy to be a propwer voice in the present renaissance.
I know, and so do you, that educational revolution can be excessive. We now speculate that one revolution of this century left more bad results than good ones, that we may have created an educational vacuum which damaged a couple of generations with too much of the so-called “progressive” in which we out-Deweyed Dewey. Before the “progressive revolution” we may recall that the acquisition of knowledge was a painful business, hard work from the first grade on. Some of us can recall when punishment was capital, punishment compounded by an additional beating at home for getting a school beating. Few of us would wish to reinstitute such punishment or go back to pre-Dewey days, but few of us are quite sure that the revolution is not greatly to blame for some of the shocking inadequacies in American political, scientific and social scene today. We know the overhaul is underway, that a sterner, more effective elementary and secondary system of education will result. We are already gratified to hear a Cal Tech man say that freshmen of only ten years ago would dismally fail in competition with freshmen of today. We suspect that Cal Tech had better be saying exactly that same thing a decade from today.
Is our voice, yours and mine, really a voice to contend with in this present development, revolution, if you please? Are we among the reformers, really or are we, bogged down as we are in budgets and scholastic record-keeping (and erudite speech making), letting industry and various foundations and governments – all the way from a federal department to a school board – demand the change? Are we not sometimes even guilty of letting student unrest and dissatisfaction alter a curriculum? We, the University of Maryland, just awoke to the elimination of a whole course of study, a whole degree program, not by faculty or administrative action, but by the students, students who are the same as they were, so far as we can see, except in one very vital way: they are scared, by Russia, I guess, into wanting more than just a terminal-type baccalaureate, they now want something on which they can build still more degrees and specialization. How much credit do you administrators honestly deserve for recent eliminations of fringe electives and sloppy trade school courses in the process of getting youngsters ready for the new freshmen class at Cal Tech?
How much credit, I say in my discontented way to you my peers, do we deserve for what I maintain is still bogged down, seriously delayed revitalization of our teacher training system in the United States. Indeed, in moments of despair, I am convinced that it is the academic administrator who can be blamed for the delay. I can really use the language of discontent when I get going on this item!
Why are others, the isolated school board or PTA, the occasional city or district, and only just now the entire state of California, forcing the issue that too many American teachers are overtrained in how to be teachers and undertrained in what to teach? Are we afraid to admit the vacuums, big vacuums, created by the strangle-hold the teacher training institutions of America have managed to get on our school systems! My history is sloppy here, but I’m reasonably correct when I say such institutions were originally thought up for short courses in a few principles of discipline – discipline for keeping restless young Americans sitting on hard benches in dreary school rooms. And the six weeks to a year spent on these principles were no doubt well spent. I don’t propose to trace the advance of these institutions from such modest beginnings to Columbia Teachers’ College, and the infinite teachers’ training institutions which no have a firm grip on most of the elementary and secondary systems of America, a grip that specifies all teacher requirements, dictates to accrediting agencies, orders every public school into place and scares every private school into forms of conformity or into subterfuge in order to exist. I’m not saying my mother got anything like enough training in six weeks at a little normal school. I am saying that that same normal school is now an overblown, overpowerful, overinfluential, and overtypical teachers’ college. It now gives a Master’s degree in Education, but with all its additional courses and degree arrangements it is wide open for inquiry – inquiry about its power to transmit a general order of knowledge, about its ability to transmit the traditions and disciplines that support a civilized life.
Are we the leaders in the re-evaluation of these institutions and of teacher training at every level; or are we letting outside pressures shake up the system, perhaps shake it up too much; are we ever voicing concern about the proliferation of methods and gimmicks and, yes, administrative courses so that any return to a campus for more study is apt to be a return for more tiresome credits in the nuts and bolts of teaching and administration? Do you think you rekindle a love for learning among your teachers by a system that forces them back for certificate renewals based on the adding up of a column of credits usually headed Education? Have you ever thumped for them to have time off from teaching for research and scholarship? Have you managed pay-raises for quality of teaching alone, never mind longevity and more credits from schools of education? Of course you have, here and there, now and then. But most of youa re like me, more involved with counting credits and checking the union card, in fear of the system.
I have no doubt that the day is coming when every high school teacher will have to have a MA in a subject area, every elementary teacher a four-year bachelor that will by no means be a degree in teaching. Renewing and refreshing credits will one day have little to do with anything other than the breathless business of keeping up with developments in math or physics or linguistic competence or depth of historical understanding. Methods and testing and administrative courses will not be scrapped. They will be sorted out, consolidated, and given appropriate priority as was once the intention – if we are among the leaders in the present reformation.
All of this is a bit glib, I grant you. The language of discontent is necessarily emotional and subjective. It oversimplifies and overstates. When it is voiced in a time of change and revolution, it can cause distress and disagreement even among peers.
Are we all sufficiently alerted to another phase of the present scare-renaissance we are in, to take full advantage of it? For the first time, probably in our entire history we have our chance for status and for status of all of those who work with us. Get this [?], which is both social and financial – and in that [?] and we won’t have to despair of getting the very best into the teaching business and of getting them there to stay. America, until right now, just would not buy a decent teaching staff, give it respect and professional status and a living wage. Let’s face it, America (and any society like it) really never gets on the move about anything until it is half scared out of its wits, whether we are talking about integration, putting men on the moon, raising an army, building a submarine, or eliminating polio. For heaven’s sake, the time has finally come when teachers are not the butt of TV and Radio jokes, when the popular program is not “Our Miss Brooks” featuring a delightful, but rattle-brained obviously frustrated old-maid, a nut of a science teacher who was not enough of a man to be frustrated and an ogre of a principal whose obvious IQ insulted us all and amused the entire nation. We’ve got our chance to outlive the “mucker, anti-intellectual pose” which inevitably got started in our tough, frontier society, and which we never got around to eliminating. Who knows, if we move in on this opportunity we may catch up with teachers’ status in Scotland, where the wife of
Exploring entry master's-level adult learner distance education graduate student use of library-provided resources in coursework-related information seeking processes
No full textPrevious ethnographic studies undertaken regarding the information seeking processes of college students by libraries were for the purpose of gaining knowledge and understanding of how traditional-age college students (i.e., 18-22 year olds) conduct their research when using library resources and services of a traditional college campus.
Not only is there a dearth of information available regarding adult distance learners, this is especially true with entry master’s level graduate students. Studies of distance learning graduate students in their use of library resources has pertained to doctoral students or did not make a distinction between undergraduate and graduate students.
This project was conceived as a pilot to study the library-provided resources information seeking habits of entry master’s level adult distance learners at UMUC. The research was conducted using the ethnographic technique of retrospective interviewing.Exploring Entry Master’s-level Adult Learner Distance Education Graduate Student Use of Library-provided Resources in Coursework-related Information Seeking Processes
Barbara Mann and Julie Harding
Previous ethnographic studies undertaken regarding the information seeking processes of college students by libraries were for the purpose of gaining knowledge and understanding of how traditional-age college students (i.e., 18-22 year olds) conduct their research when using library resources and services of a traditional college campus.
Not only is there a dearth of information available regarding adult distance learners, this is especially true with entry master’s level graduate students. Studies of distance learning graduate students in their use of library resources has pertained to doctoral students or did not make a distinction between undergraduate and graduate students.
This project was conceived as a pilot to study the library-provided resources information seeking habits of entry master’s level adult distance learners at UMUC. The research was conducted using the ethnographic technique of retrospective interviewing.
As business and management is a major focus of The Graduate School, the course chosen to study was the entry-level management class, Organizational Theory (MGMT610). The first major assignment for this course, due in week 4, is to “select a case study from the resources available in the UMUC library databases, design a research question to apply to that case and develop an annotated reference list of no fewer than five articles from peer-reviewed journals found in the UMUC library databases ” (Hallion, 2013, p.6). This prepares the students for the next major assignment which is to write a research paper based on the assignment in week 4. For our research we retrospectively interviewed students regarding the steps they used to complete the assignment.
The purpose of the study was to not only inform the UMUC Library regarding the resources and services offered to ensure they met the course needs, but to also help inform the MGMT610 Program Director and faculty regarding any necessary revisions to the course assignment based on what is learned through this process. In addition, the co-principal investigators want to contribute to the literature and fill in gaps on this topic.
We first worked with Dr. Harriet Smith, Interdisciplinary Studies in Management Program Director, to get an overview of the course and to get her perceptions of the assignment and what she hoped we would learn. In preparation Dr. Smith had sent a questionnaire to the faculty who teach the course asking 3 main questions: How did they feel students were doing on this assignment? What did they wish they were doing better with the assignment? Was there any feedback from students regarding the library resources related to the assignment? Comments reflected that students have varying levels of proficiency in conducting the research and writing the annotations and that the use of and understanding of library resources also varied.
This information was then used to frame the ten questions asked regarding the steps used by the students to complete the assignment. The questions asked how students selected the case study; were there instructions/help provided by the instructor; how they determined the research question, keywords, and resources to search; what kind of results were obtained; were Library resources sufficient; did students use resources outside of the Library; did students use the Ask a Librarian service; and did students have any additional comments?
The participants were not always local and as working adults were not able to physically come to the Library. Therefore, we used the web conferencing software WebEx to conduct the interviews. This also allowed us to record the sessions and use the recordings to transcribe the interviews.
Originally we were seeking thirty students, five each from six sections of MGMT610, randomly-selected. As this course is offered with three staggered start dates our goal was to get two sections from each of these different starting online sessions. We originally targeted two instructors for each online starting time. However, it became apparent early on that this was not going to work. While the course instructors were very helpful in posting class announcements using the text we had drafted, as well as sending private messages to each student in their classes through the LMS, we were not getting enough participants. We then opened it up to the entire MGMT610 faculty and asked them to post the announcement. In addition, a small change was made to the wording, changing the wording that it would take an hour to complete the assignment, to just twenty minutes. This also made a difference in obtaining more respondents.
As many of these students are also simultaneously taking UCSP611, Introduction to Graduate Library Research Skills, and both of us teach this course, we also asked our students, who might be taking both courses at the same time, to participate. Ms. Harding also asked other UCSP611 instructors to post the announcement regarding the study. Five students were netted through this process.
Because UMUC limits what we can be given as an incentive to some sort of UMUC memorabilia under $20, this also may have made a difference as well as the fact that, due to the virtual nature of UMUC, there were no other avenues available to solicit volunteers.
We ended up with sixteen respondents: four from OL1 representing two out of eight sections and two of the seven instructors; five from OL2 representing three of the seven sections and three of the seven instructors; four from OL2 Hybrid for a total of three out of six sections and representing three of the five instructors; and three from OL3 representing two out of six sections and two out of five instructors.
A major finding that was not asked as one of our interview questions, but came out over and over again in the interviews, was how much of what was learned in UCSP611 was employed in conducting this assignment. UCSP611 has as its final assignment the completion of an annotated bibliography, of which two of the required five sources are annotated. Students drew on their knowledge of creating and revising research questions, choosing keywords and relevant databases, and evaluation skills used for the UCSP611 assignment demonstrating the transferability of skills and understanding. Most of the students interviewed had either just completed UCSP611 or were currently taking it.
The main themes of the research indicated that:
Students chose topics of interest, which means they are more engaged in the topic as it pertains to their career field or what is going on in their jobs.
There were problems in getting started, especially in those classes that did not provide additional information on how to locate a case study. This is especially interesting as there is a required library module to be completed in each section, which includes information on how to locate case studies and how to complete an annotated bibliography. Only two students made vague references to it.
Students did a good job of taking keywords from their questions, using synonyms with some even reporting using thesauri, revising their search terms based on what they found, including looking at subject headings.
Some targeted specific databases, some used the subject guides, and some were less focused and reported using our discovery service, or searching all the databases.
Overwhelmingly, the students reported that the library resources were indeed sufficient to meet the needs of this assignment. All of the students reported that they were able to find relevant articles. Only one student reported not being able to find enough for their topic. All students reported the use of evaluation skills to discern relevancy.
While a few of the respondents went to Google first, this was more for background reading and/or to find citations and then look for the article within the library databases. However, one of the main reasons for not going outside of the Library was due to instructor restrictions. A handful of respondents used the Ask a Librarian service and it was helpful. Reasons reported for using the service were to find case studies and help with their research question.
The respondents reported an appreciation for library resources and this assignment helped with the comfort level in using library resources.
We have found this study to be quite useful. This report will be shared with Harriet Smith. One theme that was repeated is the need for instructor-included assignment help for future iterations. For the library, while the resources appear to be sufficient we will use this information to revise and further promote the relevant resources and revise the instructional module based on the feedback as a mechanism for collaborating on the instructor-supplied help. Hallion, M. (2013). Project descriptions: Assignment four [Class syllabus]. Document posted in University of Maryland University College MGMT 610 1141 online classroom, archived at: http://webtycho.umuc.edu
Appendix
MGMT 610 Research Grant Interview Questions
1. How did you go about selecting your case study?
2. Did your course instructor provide any kind of instructions/help to assist you in better understanding how to complete this assignment? If so, what kind of help was included, did you use them, were they indeed helpful?
3. How did you determine what would be your research question to complete this assignment? Did you have to revise your question? If so, how did you go about doing this?
4. How did you determine the keywords to use to begin searching for resources needed to complete this assignment? Did you have to revise your search terms? If so, how did you go about doing this?
5. How did you determine where to begin your search? What databases did you search? How did you go about deciding which one(s) to use?
6. What kind of results did you get from your searching? Were these relevant to your topic? How did you know?
7. Were the available library resources sufficient to meet your research needs to complete this assignment?
8. Did you use any resources outside of the library to complete this assignment? If so, what were they? Why did you go outside of the library?
9. Did you ever use any of the Ask Librarian service methods to obtain research help? If so, why did you choose to do this? Was it helpful? If so, why?
10. Is there anything else you want to share regarding completing this assignment
Developing a model corporate intelligence program and assessing its utility and potential for integration within UMUC's Intelligence Management Studies program
No full textObjective: This project seeks to identify and define the salient characteristics of a “corporate intelligence program”, provide a functional differentiation and typology for the various activities that are considered “intelligence” by the private sector, and provide a generic model of a corporate intelligence. It is anticipated that both the model and the process of developing it will be fully integrated within the INMS courses, thereby partially addressing current curriculum needs.
Research Question: Can a model corporate intelligence program, derived from the Megacommunity concept, offer an opportunity to improve performance in intelligence management, specifically against intractable problems that continue to limit the effectiveness of collaboration among intelligence entities?1
Developing a Model Corporate Intelligence Program and Assessing its Utility and Potential for Integration within UMUC’s Intelligence Management Studies Program
Principal Investigator: Thomas McWeeney, Ph.D. Submitted: May 31, 2013 Research Assistant: Margaret E. McWeeney, M.A.
Overview and Problem Statement
Megacommunities. In 2011-2012, Dr. Thomas McWeeney, Adjunct Professor of Intelligence Management Studies (INMS) in the UMUC Graduate School, received a faculty research grant to assess the applicability of a “Megacommunities” model of inter-sector collaboration – developed Mark Gerencser (UMUC Board of Visitors) - to the INMS curriculum. Dr. McWeeney concluded that the model did not adequately address the many institutional barriers existing that continue to reinforce the status quo in the law enforcement community and suggested that research efforts continue to identify areas where the model does apply, because of the obvious value that UMUC’s INMS curriculum places on leadership and collaboration.
Corporate Intelligence. In 2013, Dr. McWeeney was awarded a second research grant to continue the inquiry by examining “business” or “corporate” intelligence -- another area within the INMS program that is in need of refinement. Although the official INMS program description indicates that the program is designed for both “private and public settings”, the overwhelming focus of the INMS curriculum is on government intelligence programs, thus limiting its range and quality and unnecessarily restricting markets.
Objective. This project seeks to identify and define the salient characteristics of a “corporate intelligence program”, provide a functional differentiation and typology for the various activities that are considered “intelligence” by the private sector, and provide a generic model of a corporate intelligence. It is anticipated that both the model and the process of developing it will be fully integrated within the INMS courses, thereby partially addressing current curriculum needs.
Research Question. Can a model corporate intelligence program, derived from the Megacommunity concept, offer an opportunity to improve performance in intelligence management, specifically against intractable problems that continue to limit the effectiveness of collaboration among intelligence entities?
Methodology.
The methodology for the project was divided into two parts. The research portion, which is responsive to the grant, included a brief review of selected publications (attached), data collection activities, the establishment of a stakeholder working group, a series of discussions with working group members, and the collation of their views into definitions and functional descriptions for the various categories of “intelligence”. Following the submission of the findings, Part two will continue with the working group (The Leadership Advisory Group - LAG) continuing discussions and working towards the identification of best practices, quality standards, and a model corporate structure.1 All of this will be presented to the INMS program director for inclusion as course material for the 2013 Fall Semester.
Findings
A. Definitions and Functional Differentiation. Drawing upon previous work, Dr. McWeeney offered a definition of intelligence that is narrows the range of activities conducted under the intelligence imprimatur:
1 Participants include Mike Dorsey (Dell Technologies), Dale Watson (Booz Allen Hamilton); John Slattery (BAE Systems); Greg Scovel (CACI); Tom Mahlik (Raytheon). 2
“Information, produced and legitimized by sound mythologies, that provides insight and knowledge not therwise known, which would not otherwise be obtained, and which provides support for organizational decisions.”
This definition was intended to eliminate much of the activity that currently conducted under the banner of “intelligence”, but which amounts to no more than recycling or regurgitation of public source or well known information, and is of little use in decision-making. It also is intended to exclude information that has no intrinsic value and was seemingly collected for its own sake. With this definition as the foundation, the LAG considered the various activities and agreed on an overall typology. Below are the resultant categories:
1. Corporate Strategic Intelligence - a broad range of actions in the collection, processing, analysis, and dissemination of intelligence (Maccoby, 2001). This includes recognizing new and emerging technologies, changing political landscapes, or any force that impacts future opportunities of the business.
2. Competitive Intelligence - the action of gathering, analyzing, and distributing intelligence about products, customers, competitors or any aspect of the external environment to support decision-making in a business.
3. Corporate Counterintelligence - the process of understanding the competitive financial and security vulnerabilities of an organization. Specifically, which competitor’s are directing activities against the company, , what information are they interested in obtaining, and what techniques they are using (McWeeney, 2008).
4. Industrial Espionage - the illegal act of espionage for commercial purposes. It can include the acquisition of intellectual property and technologies or insider information on significant company changes such as personnel decisions, prospective bids, and planning and marketing strategies ("Industrial Espionage," 2008).
5. Support to Government Intelligence Programs - the practice where private sector organizations utilize their resources, information, or practices to support or instruct government programs. This includes companies selling the intelligence they collect on domestic and international cyber threats to government agencies (Dorsey, 2013).
6. Cyber Intelligence – a myriad of activities which collect, process, and analyze all identifiable key cyber behavior. This can vary from competitive intelligence strategies such as monitoring social media to criminal activities such as hacking into a private network ("Cyber Intelligence: Setting," 2011).
7. Political Intelligence - Information “derived by a person from direct communications with an executive branch employee, a Member of Congress, or an employee of Congress; and provided in exchange for financial compensation to a client who intends to use the information to inform investment decisions.” (Shafer, 2013).
B. A Model Program. In defining the basic functions of current corporate intelligence programs, all of which have been verified through interviews with corporate executives, it became evident that corporations employ each of these tactics at disparate levels of intensity and generally without structure or accountability. The LAG agreed that a model corporate intelligence program for companies that are involved in work relevant to intelligence community (which includes national security, homeland security, and cyber security) would promote greater collaboration against a shared and growing threat.
Although many collaborative organizations are currently in place, such as the National Security Business Alliance Council (NSBAC) and the Defense Industrial Base Network (DIBNET), companies whose mission is centered in national security, homeland security, and cyber security have yet to conclusively design an effective and definitive model for corporate intelligence. Research indicates that the greatest obstacle to private-sector collaboration was the unwillingness of private organizations to cross borders, begin candid exchanges, and share practices in front of their main client (the Federal Government) who can award or withdraw contracts.
The Megacommunity Model provides a framework for collaboration between sectors through the guiding principles of sharing a common problem and an interest in the solution. To create this environment of mutual trust among corporate intelligence entities, private sector companies must be given the opportunity to interact among one another without government involvement. Government must be a stakeholder and serve an advisory role – per the Megacommunity Model, but government involvement during the initial stages of development contributes to a competitive environment among the participating private companies and has proven an insurmountable obstacle to true collaboration. Much like the findings from the 2012 UMUC Research project, the Megacommunity Model, while conceptually valid, must be substantially refined in order to be relevant.
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C. The Driving Issue: Cyber. The growing cyber threat to American industry is clearly the preeminent concern in any discussion about developing a more cohesive approach to corporate intelligence. The concern extends far beyond the intelligence obtained in the aftermath of a cyber intrusion or attack. Individual companies, such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, CACI, and Dell Technologies are aggressively developing their own intelligence programs, assessing best practices, testing new counter–technologies, and using the information both as intelligence for their internal purposes and to sell to their customers, both in the government and the private sector. But they do not collaborate and their breadth of their programs are generally to their own experiences and knowledge, which is depriving the community and the American public with the level of protection that could otherwise be provided.
As reported by the Economist (Economist: 4/06/2013), a successful intrusion generally permits the intruder to remain undetected inside the systems of American corporations for many months. The damage resulting from these intrusions is incalculable and is cited by the discussants as having the potential to drive major change, but the lessons learned are narrowly disseminated.
The LAG agreed that a collaborative effort, which may not be possible on intelligence issues generally because of the inherent completion among companies, will ultimately be necessary because of the scope and magnitude of the threat, the costs associated with addressing cyber intrusions, and the ever growing cost of preventive programs. As such, the need for a common approach to defining and structuring cyber programs – and sharing information that would benefit all companies – will increasingly be sought by the private sector.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Taken together, the two faculty research projects add a nuanced dimension to the Megacommunity Model of collaboration. The approach suggested herein allows for necessary adjustments to overcome intractable obstacles and begin a dialogue. This could prove a model for other intractable areas and sectors of intelligence management that have limited collaboration and inclusive discussion on matters of critical importance Recommendations submitted to the INMS Program Director are set forth below:
1. The LAG should continue to meet under the auspices of this project and submit to UMUC a white paper describing the model intelligence program. The White Paper would include primary function, scope of activities, and practical approaches and to common problems.
2. Revisions to the basic course lecture for the INMS 600 and 660 program should be included for inclusion in the Fall 2013 classes. The revisions, which will be submitted to the INMS Program Director, will incorporate the problem statement, the common definitions, and the work of the LAG.
3. The White Paper prepared will be submitted to senior executives of each of the participating organizations represented on the LAG, by September 1, 2013.
4. Venues for wider publication in relevant journals and trade magazines should be pursued by INMS and UMUC officials.
5. INMS and UMUC officials should begin a marketing initiative designed to significantly increase the enrollment from the private sector into the INMS program.
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ATTACHMENT: Works Consulted
China’s state-sponsored hackers are ubiquitous—and totally unabashed. The Economist. (4/06/2013).
Competitive intelligence. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_intelligence
Industrial espionage. (2008). Retrieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_espionage
Intelligence and National Security Alliance, (2011). Cyber
intelligence: Setting the landscape for an emerging discipline. Retrieved from website: http://www.oss-institute.org/storage/documents/Resources/studies/insa_cyber_intelligence_2011.pdf
Lieberthal, K.G. Cybersecurity and China, Up Front, The Brookings Institute, (2013). Retrieved from website: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2013/02/22-cybersecurity-china-lieberthal
Maccoby, M. (2001). Successful leaders employ strategic
intelligence. Research technology management, 44(3), 58-60. Retrieved from http://www.maccoby.com/Articles/StratInt.shtml
McWeeney, T. (2008). Corporate counterintelligence. Retrieved
from http://www.csmweb.com/corporateci.html
Shafer, J. (2013, May 08). The dumb war on political intelligence.
Retrieved from http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/2013/05/08/the-dumb-war-on-political-intelligence
Collaboration across organizational boundaries leading the development of competitive clusters
No full textA competitive advantage can be created in a geographic concentration of independent organizations that operate in the same industry and share overlapping interest. This advantage can be manifested through the utilization of existing resources and/ or the development of new resources. Furthermore, effective interorganizational leadership can positively impact organization performance.Collaboration Across Organizational Boundaries
Leading the development of competitive clusters
Jack W. Hawkins III
Candidate for Doctorate in Management
Purpose and Scope of the Research
The purpose of this study was to reveal how informal collaboration develops across organizational boundaries and to provide insight into the leadership of these informal relationships. This insight can help other regions develop their own economic advantages and stimulate efficiencies in interorganizational relationships. Research Questions
What does interorganizational leadership look like and why/when/how does collaboration impact organizational performance?
Can a concentration of independent organizations that operate in the same industry and share overlapping interests create competitive advantages? If so, are these advantages presented through the availability of existing resources and/or are they presented through new resources that are developed through these informal relationships? Significance of this Research for Management
This study is significant because it builds clarity in the discussion on informal interorganizational relationships. This research can stimulate efficiencies in interorganizational relationships and make these increasingly attractive relationships more valuable for their participants. This information can also provide useful insight in strategic management, the administration of governments, politics and economics. For example, this study may help managers and politicians to develop a system that encourages economic development. It may also help identify the actions that can reignite competitive vigor in a dying industry. Main Literature Themes and Authors
Interorganizational Relationships
Das, T. K., & Teng, B. S. (resource-based theory)
Dyer, J. H., & Singh, H. (relational theory)
Gulati, R. (alliances and networks)
Krugman, P. (agglomeration)
Porter, M. E. (clusters)
Rosenthal, S. S., & Strange, W. C. (agglomeration)
Leadership
Huxham, C., & Vangen, S. (leadership in collaboration)
Ring, P. S., & Van de Ven, A. H. (leadership)
Yammarino, F.J., Dionne, S.D., Chun, J.U., & Dansereau, F. (leadership) Key Propositions Distilled from the Literature
There are three main theories on interorganizational collaboration, which are the theories exposed through transaction cost economics, the resource based theory, and the relational theory. These theories agree that selective interorganizational collaboration can produce competitive advantages, but disagree on the specific source of that competitive advantage.
Regarding leadership, there is a consensus between scholars that the prevailing leadership theories (i.e. charismatic, transformational, etc.) have largely neglect nonhierarchical leadership situations. Complex leadership theories have recently been introduced, which provide some insight into leadership in interorganizational relationships. Conceptual Framework
Figure 1. Anatomy of the California Wine Cluster (Porter, 1998, p. 79).
Thesis statement
A competitive advantage can be created in a geographic concentration of independent organizations that operate in the same industry and share overlapping interest. This advantage can be manifested through the utilization of existing resources and/ or the development of new resources. Furthermore, effective interorganizational leadership can positively impact organization performance. Research Approach & Formation of Argument
This study was validated through an extensive review of the scholarly literature relating to leadership in loose interorganizational collaborations, such as clusters. This literature review exposed the associations in the literature that was collected and illustrated in this literature review was extrapolated and built upon. Findings
The influence of interorganizational relationships has become a important characteristic of modern competition. This development has created a unique and complex challenge for practitioners. Scholars have found that these relationships can provide and/ or produce valuable resources. However, the development and leadership of these relationships is outside the control of the any single actor or organization. Scholars have largely neglected this leadership challenge. Furthermore, the majority of leadership theories reflect hierarchical structures, which don’t reflect the looser and more informal leadership present in these interorganizational relationships. Implications for Management Practice
Practitioners can be assured that selective and well structured interorganizational relationships can increase the utilization of existing resources and encourage the development of new resources, which can assists participating organizations achieve a competitive advantage. However, practitioners will be it challenging to lead these complex relationships. Future Research Agendas
Future research should:
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Give more attention to leadership in non-hierarchical relationships
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Develop empirical evidence to explain the presence and benefits of clusters
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Expand on theory of complex leadership
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Provide an illustration of the various interorganizational relationships and their connection with each othe