QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS cc INF5220.pdf*Title: (Required field)

7/29/2019 QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS cc INF5220.pdf*Title: (Required field)

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INF5220 Qualitative Research Methods

Spring 2006 Page 1 of 24

UNIVERSITY OF OSLOFaculty of Mathematics and NaturalSciences

INF5220 Qualitative ResearchMethods

Spring 2006 (intensive course)Initial draft for PhD upgrade document.

Working title: Making scientific

management more scientific: On the

application of action research in quality

management and process improvement

Written by:Petter gland

Delivered:June 15th, 2006


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Table of Contents1 Introduction................................................................................................................. 3

1.1 Background......................................................................................................... 31.2 Research setting .................................................................................................. 3

1.3 Research problems.............................................................................................. 4

1.4 Intended readership and expected results ........................................................... 5

2 Related research.......................................................................................................... 62.1 Various types of action research......................................................................... 6

2.2 Problems of action research................................................................................ 6

2.3 Action research and the Shewhart cycle ............................................................. 6

2.4 Action research and systems thinking................................................................. 72.5 Action research and statistical thinking.............................................................. 8

2.6 Flow .................................................................................................................... 8

3 Methodology............................................................................................................. 103.1 Population and data........................................................................................... 10

3.2 Apparatus and materials.................................................................................... 10

3.3 Procedures......................................................................................................... 114 Current status ............................................................................................................ 12

4.1 The COBOL programmers at NTAX ............................................................... 12

4.2 The software documentation process at NTAX................................................ 13

4.3 The NTAX management information system................................................... 134.4 Quality management outside NTAX ................................................................ 14

5 Future plans............................................................................................................... 15

5.1 Philosophy of science ....................................................................................... 15

5.2 Knowledge management................................................................................... 165.3 Process improvement........................................................................................ 17

5.4 Information infrastructures ............................................................................... 18

5.5 Next version of upgrade document................................................................... 18

References......................................................................................................................... 21


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1 Introduction

The activity of quality control and process improvement is very similar to doing research,and the main drive behind my PhD is how to improve the process of quality management

by making the process gradually more and more similar to academic research.

1.1 Background

To my knowledge, there are two major issues that seem to put the development and

maintenance of quality management systems in danger:

The traditional way of installing systems top-down is not a robust way ofintroducing a new way of thinking, and such TQM-programs often fail.

People performing quality management are seldom good at taking their ownmedicine, i.e. they are not good at controlling and improving their own processesin a systematic and scientific fashion.

In 1996 I had been working on a mismanaged software development water-fall projectfor some years. By chance I got hold of Kevin Kellys Out of control (1994), and my

perspective on quality control and software management changed completely. From then

on I started thinking of software development as managing complex adaptive systems

(CAS) and of the programmer as an integrated part of the system being developed. As itis difficult to plan and measure progress when following a CAS approach, it struck me

that the best way of monitoring and improving my own progress would be by thinking of

the process as of doing scientific research.

In 2000 I tried applying the same methodology for organizing quality management at theNorwegian Directorate of Taxes, and read the management theories of Taylor, Shewhart,

Deming and others who saw (quality) management as a way of doing research.

In 2005 I was given the opportunity to work more closely with academia to develop themethod of doing action research in ones own organization.

1.2 Research setting

My research is funded by NTAX, and according to my contract with NTAX the researchis expected to contribute to adding to international quality management certifications.

In writing the PhD thesis Im drawing upon past experiences from The Norwegian

Meteorological Institute (DNMI) and The Norwegian Directorate of Taxes (NTAX). I

also continue to perform some minor quality control experiments at NTAX in order totest and experiment with new insights evolving during the PhD research period.

I also plan to carry out some experiments and evaluations in respect of how quality

management is carried out at the University of Oslo, and I also have a second supervisorat Det Norske Veritas that may give me access to certain aspects of how quality

management is carried out at the organization.


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1.3 Research problems

In my experience, what seems to be the best way to deal with (1) the lack of robustness in

top-down development of TQM projects and (2) the lack of rigor in how qualitymanagement is being carried out, is to research the problem of improving the qualityimprovement processes that are being managed within the organization. In ISO

9000:2000 and other bodies of quality management knowledge, such processes are often

referred to as plan-do-check-act cycles (PDCA-cycles), an industrial parallel to what isreferred to as action research (AR) in academia.

What I see as the key issue for improving TQM programs is to improve the way AR isdesigned and implemented. I describe the research questions as follows:

Is it possible to use the framework of total quality management for producingacademic research?

If possible, how does one implement research in a simple and efficient manner?I see four major aspects that motivates seeing process improvement from the perspectiveof action research:

1) The PDCA-cycle and similar cycles for managing continuous improvement in

organizations is similar to Kurt Lewins action research cycle. Taylor (1911) wanted todevelop a scientific way of managing organizations. Shewhart (1938) saw strong

resemblences between performing quality control and testing hypoteses in empirical

research. As quality management is about predicting processes and cataloguing errors in

order to improve the system, the aim of action research and TQM in an organization issimilar. In TQM new knowledge must be relevant and useful for improving the

organization, in action research new knowledge must be relevant and useful for

academia.

2) Even if an organization were to adopt the formula of action research rather than TQM,literature on action research reveals that one of the major problems with the paradigm is

the problem of making interesting theoretical contributions when solving interesting

practical problems or solving interesting practical problems when trying to make

interesting theoretical contributions. Adding insight on how to do academic researchwithin the TQM framework could consequently add to the understanding of how to

succeed with action research.

3) One of the aims of TQM is to learn from other organizations, e.g. through use ofbenchmarks. Making it possible for the organization to tap into the continuously

evolving body of knowledge of academic management theory could be of practical use

for the organization.

4) The peering review quality control of academic research seems like a relevant

mechanism for applying quality control on the people responsible for organizationalquality management.


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1.4 Intended readership and expected results

Although people working with quality management may be isolated in organizations,

there are journals and conferences for sharing insights. Personally Im a member of theAmerican Sociey for Quality and meet annually with the Norwegian forum for QualityProfessionals (QUALIS). Apart from wanting to contribute to the Information Systems

research community, where both AR and Management Information Systems (MIS) such

as quality management systems are important issues, I have the particular audience ofquality management professionals in mind as an intended readers.

Figure 1 illustrates the five phases of doing AR and how each cycle in the method isexpected to add clearer insight as scope is narrowed down with each iteration.

The expected results of the research will be an interpretation of the AR model in the

context of doing quality management. This will be done by adding guidelines andstructure on how to apply the AR model in an efficient manner.

Figure 1. Action research spiral (Routio, 2005).

There are two problems often associated with action research:

Failing in terms of research: AR becomes too focused on action, thus producingnot too interesting research.

Failing in terms of action: Organizational change and improvements break downthe moment the AR is completed.

It is the aim of the PhD research to add insights on how to minimize these two risks whenimplementing AR for doing quality management.


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2 Related research

The term action research seems to have been first used by Kurt Lewin (1946), todescribe a cyclic approach for doing research that includes planning, acting, observing

and reflecting. Due to various issues, such as problems related to objectivity and

repeatability, there have been some controversy in academia as to whether AR is aframework for doing science.

2.1 Various types of action research

Various styles of action research has evolved, such as Canonical Action Research (CAR),Participatory Action Research (PAR) and various styles where the number of steps in the

cycles and the implications of each step varies (Robson, 1993: pp. 438-443). The aim of

my thesis is to investigate aspects of AR that may prove useful from the point of view of

quality control, and thus I use this chapter to indicate some of the aspects that seem torelate to Demings philosophy of quality management (Deming, 1986; 1992).

Yet I have not been able to classify and map the different types AR, but in order to dealmore deeply with the differences and similarities between the Lewin-inspired action

research and the Deming-inspired process improvement style, more literature research is

needed.

2.2 Problems of action research

Due to problems with traditional (positivist) research in organizations, Susman andEvered (1978) argue the need for action research and suggest strict formal procedures for

doing action research in a controllable and repeatable manner. Whether it is possible toput action research into the Webern iron cage of making it compliant with the ISO

9001:2000 requirements is something I have not seen being asked yet, although this is anidea I try to follow at the Norwegian Directorate of Taxes (SKD, 2006).

There seems to be two major problems in AR that we have noticed in several books andarticles:

AR consists of Action and Research, but often AR projects ends up as eitherAction or Research.

The purpose of the researcher in an AR team may be to help some changemanagement program, but often all change ends when the research ends. Creatingsustainable change is difficult.

I need to do more focused literature research on AR in order to classify problems and tryto figure out to which extent I believe the TQM approach to AR might be helpful.

2.3 Action research and the Shewhart cycle

Action Research (AR), as originally conceptualized by Lewin, operates within an

epistemology that links knowing with doing or knowing with change. Originally the

research paradigm was made to fit with Lewins force field theory for obtaining change,


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but there are now different schools of AR each defining the ideology and methodology of

the approach in slightly different ways. One way of creating a fusion between AR and

TQM, may perhaps be to follow the epistemology of Shewhart and Deming, looking at

AR from the perspective of American pragmatism.

The action research approach in TQM, as defined as the PDCA-cycle in the ISO

9000:2000 standards, and the Shewhart-cycle by Deming (1986), looks as illustrated in

the diagram below.

Figure 2. The action research model for quality improvement (Deming, 1986).

2.4 Action research and systems thinkingLilienfelds ideological analysis of systems theory (1978) is interesting. He links aspectsof power and hierarchy with the systems view of the world, but he does not take complex

adaptive systems into account, and neither does he talk about second order cybernetics

where the observer is a part of the system to be observed.

Figure 3. Illustration of the organization as a system (Deming, 1986).

The main focus in Demings The New Economy (1992) is the view of the organizationas a system, and, as I understand it, what he means by a system is that what he illustrates


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in the figure above. Seeing artifacts and people flowing through the processes, implies an

ontology that makes statistical thinking suited as a standard epistemology.

Checkland (1981) has written on systems thinking and action research. The way Iunderstand him, is that he manages to produce an ontology similar to that of Actor-

Network Theory (ANT) by including the observer into the system that is being observed.

If the researcher is manipulating the reality of the people being researched, we get into

the situation of a (post-modern) self-referential system as basis for ontology andepistemology.

2.5 Action research and statistical thinking

While Lewins theories of action research and organizational change were based on the

metaphor of mathematical models for explaining force fields in physics, my impression isthat action research is mostly conducted as a way of combining qualitative research and

action, although I get the impression that quantitative methods may be included. The

Shewhart-cycle, on the other hand, has statistical experiments in the organization as the

starting point, but may also include qualitative studies if this is appropriate for theunderstanding of the processes to be investigated.

As pointed out by Gitlow (1992), even though Deming was a statistician, often he did not

apply numbers at all. Statistical thinking may be more powerful than statistical practice.These insights seem to be similar to what we see in people like John Urry trying to

explain social phenomena through use of mathematical concepts of fluids and dynamic

systems theory, although strictly from a metaphorical point of view.

When Deming talks about statistical process control, this is done for the purpose of

investigating whether a process is stable or not. Normally the process is expected to be

stable, and statistical methods are applied for collecting data and finding out whetherthere are signals indicating the process is not stable.

The question of stability and instability plays an important role in the development ofcomplexity theory, such as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), where a different systems

approach may be used for evolving systems or networks of systems when traditional

systems engineering methods are less efficient.

CAS may also prove to be an interesting design strategy for building quality management

systems. Goldstein (1994) has suggested some ways of doing action research in unstable

organizations, applying the Lewins standard framework, but rather thinking along

models of CAS than those of force fields for gaining insights on what may producesustainable change.

2.6 Flow

Deming (1992) summarized his quality management philosophy to consist of (1)

appreciation for a system, (2) understanding variation, (3) theory of knowledge, and (4)psychology. In the subsections above, I have addressed his first three issues. The points


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he makes about psychology, strikes me as similar to those of Csikszentmihalyi (1990),

focusing on the inner motivation of people in order to achieve high quality output.

Figure 4. Conditions for optimal subjective performance (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).

There may be some insights on the meaning of quality in books like Computers in

context (Dahlbom & Mathiassen, 1993), perhaps adding more to the understanding of

epistemological and ontological issues for understanding process improvement through

the process of action research.


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3 Methodology

The main purpose of this chapter is describe how I plan to investigate the research AR ina systematic manner, making it possible for other researchers to check and repeat the

procedures in order to verify the results or criticize the approach.

3.1 Population and data

When investigating a method rather than investigating people or a phenomenon, it seems

to me the natural perspective should be the perspective of hermeneutics, i.e. trying to

interpret the various writings on AR and TQM in hermeneutic circles that are supposed togradually converge into a theory, a framework or a model for applying AR in a TQM

context.

However, for testing whether this model will be able to improve the quality andefficiency of implementing and maintaining TQM in organizations, not only literature

studies will be done, but also practical tests, evaluating people doing AR in a TQM

context for investigating what are the problems they are struggling with and how can weimprove the framework for doing AR in order to solve of compensate such problems.

Furthermore, in addition to carrying out experiments, the relevance of AR in a TQMsetting should also be investigated through interviewing people in the TQM community.

Do the TQM practitioners see them selves as researchers, like Taylor, Shewhart and

Deming did, or do they think of themselves more like engineers or use other metaphors

for understanding their own work?

The population to be studied in this research is the mathematical set S of all possible

ways to construct a cyclic process improvement program. Lewins original concept of

AR and Demings PDCA cycle could represent two pointsx andy in S. The quest wouldbe to identify what relevant structures that may turn Sinto a topological space and then tofind a method z that satisfies the criteria of being an optimal or close to optimal AR

strategy for doing TQM.

3.2 Apparatus and materials

As we want to describe the space of action research cycles in a mathematical or semi-

mathematical language, the soft systems thinking approach of Checkland (1981) seems

like a good starting model for building ideas.

Choosing hermeneutics as a research framework, the ontology consists of how concepts

are related and the corresponding epistemology will be that of trying to attain a subjective

understanding and to try to convey this understanding through the use of language and

signs.

As a mental model evolves, showing how the various ideas and concepts fit together, the

model will be challenged through thought-experiments and probably also by real

experiments in organizations, in order to check whether the new insights will result inmajor changes in how the action research projects are designed and implemented.


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Further testing of the ideas will then be done by interviewing action research experts and

quality control experts, in order to identify similarities and differences between what the

new model suggests and what we observe is being done in practice.

3.3 Procedures

As a part of the aspect of testing the new AR models in the organization, a typical way of

installing ISO 9001:2000 through AR could be to have the action researcher define

flowcharts, measurements, statistics and procedures for his own part of the system, andthen gradually spin a co-web of TQM around the people and units he is researching,

resulting in the ISO 9001:2000 practices remaining and improving even after the AR is

completed.

In the diagram below is an illustration of the hermeneutic circle as I plan to use it for

gradually increasing in-depth understanding of the AR method.

Figure 5. Hermeneutic circle (Grassie, 1994).

The point of the illustration is not to explain the principles of hermeneutics, nor to say

that I have chosen one hermeneutical approach rather than another, but simply to point

out that hermeneutics can be thought of as a procedure for managing meaning throughlife and text. In other words, in order to avoid confusion between the two scientific

paradigms, I want a graphical illustration that says that AR is the object for research

(figure 1) and the hermeneutic circle is the method of research (figure 5).


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4 Current status

The thesis is currently expected to be comprised of 5-6 papers, addressing various issuesrelated to action research in the context of quality management and process improvement.

So far Ive written one paper on COBOL programming for the IRIS 29 conference inHelsingr 12.-15. August 2006. While still collecting data for further updates on the

COBOL paper, Im also collecting data as part of an experiment on software

documentation. Wanting to see how these two separate quality processes can be linked,

After than I plan to look at some high-level part of the NTAX management system, andIm also planning to interview some quality management professionals.

4.1 The COBOL programmers at NTAX

Ive written an IRIS article on the COBOL programmers, but its a problematic paperbecause, even though the empirical data may be interesting, the paper is not clear on what

research questions it is trying to solve. The focus of the paper is on the sociology of

COBOL programmers, managers and quality management. Rather than problemizing theuse of action research, it serves more as an example of how the action research approach

was used for gaining insights on programmer psychology by seeing how and why they

reacted to being part of a SPI process.

The process of writing the paper has been very useful for learning about writing in

general, discussing ideas, submitting, getting reviews, reviewing other papers and

understanding various practical issues related to be a research scientist.

There are many ideas in the COBOL paper, but the major reason for making it

problematic is that it is written from the perspective of the action researcher inside the

NTAX organization, researching the sociology of the IT department in order to betterunderstand whether the COBOL quality management system is under control and find outwhat to do in order to make it work even better. This is, however, not the same problem

that Im trying to address through this thesis. In this thesis I want to look at how action

researchers (like the person in NTAX) are applying the method of action research, and to

draw insights from this to understand and improve action research as a TQMmethodology. If I were to follow the path of the current COBOL paper, I would be

writing a thesis on programmer psychology (or programmer sociology), not a thesis on

quality management and process improvement.

Nevertheless, as Ive now written a piece of action research on COBOL programmers, I

could now use this paper as one of several papers of people applying action research for

achieving process improvement and thus try to generalize and learn something from it.

My vision for this PhD research is to make quality practitioners in all organizations intoaction researchers, contributing papers similar to the COBOL paper, to be judged by peer

reviews for relevant journals and conferences.


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4.2 The software documentation process at NTAX

In the case of the COBOL programmers, I had seven years of data, showing continuous

improvement. For the documentation process I have about five years of observations, butunlike the programmers and their managers, who all felt unhappy being monitored bytheir own standards and own measurement programs, the psychology or sociological

patterns of the people writing technical documentation is different.

The people writing technical documentation are also responsible for running the

programs made by the programmers, and they get very little feedback for what they are

doing, except when there are breakdowns or problems. Being monitored and measuredagainst documentation standards has been well received both by the people writing the

documentation and their managers. The results of the measurements show that they are

good and improving. Everybody are happy. The Hawthorn effect seems to be working

nicely.

Given a more positive environment for exploring the methods of quality control, my aim

has been to gradually remove myself from the part of the quality control by assessing

others doing quality control rather than doing the control myself. The measurements in

this case is increasingly becoming meta-measurements, checking to which extent thequality control within this environment (how the people are checking and measuring each

other) seems to work as a stable process.

While I have just started writing a paper on this, I need to figure out how I can address

the population of people doing quality control rather than the people doing the actual

work.

4.3 The NTAX management information system

The two processes Ive discussed so far are interesting in illustrating problems and

aspects of establishing quality control routines, but the processes are rather remote to the

core business processes of NTAX. In order to measure what counts, I need to look at the

indicators that the Department of Finance are using for monitoring NTAX.

Having previously focused on this from a practical point of view, I have twelve years of

data showing the annual inflow of taxes and the outflow of NTAX production costs. As

one should expect this quotient to decrease over time, due to efficiency increases at

NTAX, or at least remain stable, I have used this indicator as a total business index.However, as this may be sensitive data (even though it is publicly accessible), Im not

sure as to whether I should focus on this index or find other indices that might be less

sensitive.

Once again, it is the action research process that I want to address, and not the object that

the action researcher is studying. However, in order to achieve success in qualitymanagement it is generally recommended that one tries focusing on improving processes

that matters to those who are responsible for the quality of the organization (e.g. Oakland,

1999: 21-43; ISO, 2000b: chapter 5). How to select targets for process improvementseems to be relevant and interesting question when performing action research. Based on


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my personal experience, I would say that this is perhaps the most important and

challenging questions of all AR questions in the context of TQM.

4.4 Quality management outside NTAXWorking as a quality management professional, Ive subscribed to various quality

management journals, participated in conferences, visited other organizations, spokenwith other quality professionals, participated in electronic discussion forums etc., in order

to learn and share experiences on how to improve organizational performance.

Investigating the population of quality managers, what should one expect to find?

Deming (1986: 469-470) expects the following:

What would be the minimum qualifications for this job? (1) equivalent of a masters degree in

statistical theory; (2) experience in industry or in government; (3) authorship of published papers

in theory and in practice of statistical methodology; (4) demonstrated ability to teach and to leadtop management toward constant improvement of quality and productivity. He himself will

constantly improve his education.

Although I have not performed any formal investigations, I have only met a few people

who seem to fit this description, although none so far in Norway. In fact, most of the

people I meet as quality managers for NTAX subcontractors, at quality managementconferences or elsewhere, seem unfit for quality management according to the Deming

criteria.

Not expecting to learn much about quality management from interviewing quality

managers, one could nevertheless learn something about what quality managers tend tosee as the most challenging aspects of improving organizations, what has been most

successful, what has been least successful etc.

In august I plan to participate in the annual Norwegian conference for EOQ certified

quality managers. I am now in the process of planning questionnaires and interviews.

I am also hope to be meeting with my second supervisor at Det Norske Veritas as quickly

as possible, in order to ask whether he can put me in contact with the internal quality

management at DNV for discussing the research project.

Being a PhD student makes me a part of academia and consequently an observer ofvarious initiatives and processes aimed at improving the PhD process and the quality of

research. As the approach for doing so seems far more consistent with the ideas ofDeming and TQM than what I have observed in industry, it seems like a golden

opportunity to try to document and research how this part of the UiO quality management

system works.


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5 Future plans

As a part of the PhD studies, I have planned for a theoretical curriculum consisting offour courses. I have used these courses as structure for this final chapter.

5.1 Philosophy of science

For me, the most useful aspects of the course INF5220, apart from the practical aspects,

were the issues related to the philosophy of science. Talking about systems thinking,

Checkland (1981: 101) makes some comments on the observer making systems

descriptions that seems equally relevant for a researcher building theory regardless offramework:

Our observer may have various motives for making his systems description, and the latter will

reflect the nature of his motivation. He may be motivated by curiosity, aiming only to observe anddescribe in order to ascertain whether clear and intelligible descriptions are possible in systems

terms. or he may want to make use of a systems description in some kind of problem-solving. Or

he may want to bring about changes in a part of reality, his motive may be one of design. These

motivations reflect three different roles for the observer. he may be a natural historian,

describing and classifying, a manager or an engineer.

From my current understanding of how action research is being used as a framework forresearch within the IS group at UiO, I get the impression that it is mostly implemented

with an ontology corresponding to how a natural historian would see the world, rather

than through the lens of a manager or an engineer.

When applying the action research paradigm to total quality control, there are similarconsideration to take. Should we select and ontology and epistemology corresponding tothat of a manager, as Deming (1986; 1992) does, or to that of an engineer, as Juran

(1964) does, or that of a natural historian, as Crosby (1979) does. Each of these three

quality gurus see the problems and issues of quality management differently, and offer

different solutions.

However, the different approaches may be of different use depending on what kind of

problem is currently at focus. If it is a problem of enrolling people into an ideology of

quality then the storytelling manners of Crosby may be the right approach. It if is actionand design of the quality management system that is important, then Juran may be the

greater authority, while Deming may have the best insights when it comes to issues ofmanagement, prediction and control.

While Deming, Juran and Crosby are always mentioned in introductory courses and

books on quality management, representing different approaches to quality, sometimes

indicating that their ways may be similar to that of a scientist, an engineer and asalesperson, Ive never seen anybody going more deeply into their respective

epistemologies and indicating how the different approaches may be useful in various

iterations of the action research, depending on what of problem one is trying to solve.


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Rather to the contrary, I get the impression that some people (e.g. Avison, Lau, Myers &

Nielsen, 1999) see academia as a war between qualitative and quantitative research and

that AR is one of the weapons used by the qualitative researchers. This, however, strikes

me as contradictory to the original ideas of Lewin (1946), where he talks about thedifficulty of progressing if we do not have benchmarks for measuring progress.

Burrell and Morgan (1979) has written an influential book on how various research

paradigms add different perspectives on problems and there is no true perspective onanything before we understand the intentions of the observer. To which extent scientists

performing action research are changing their epistemologies corresponding to the

problems they investigate, or whether they are brainwashed into seeing the world froma singular perspective, is something I think would be interesting looking into, both from

the perspective of quality management practitioners and people doing action research in

academia.

5.2 Knowledge management

In the first report I made for the INF5190 course, I tried to understand the KM conceptsfrom the perspective of TQM, and thus focusing on explicit knowledge rather than on the

tacit knowledge which was what the course mainly focused on. Through this perspective,

however, I gain a very clear understanding of the difference between data, information

and knowledge, linking the KM concepts with the information theory of Shannon andWeaver (1949) and the philosophy of science as used in quality control by people like

Shewhart (1938) and Deming (1986; 1992).

In the next report I prepared for the course, I tried to figure out how Nonaka & Takeuchi(1995) and Kuhn (1962) both used Polanyis concept of tacit knowledge in what

seemed to be natural interpretations, and yet they seemed to about two completely

different things. The un-articulate knowledge in performing something like swimming orriding a bike is different from the un-articulate knowledge in a mythology, making people

behave in accordance with certain values and beliefs.

What I suggested in the report, is that there seems to be need for another dimension in

addition to the line between tacit and explicit. In retrospect I wonder if this additional

dimension is what defines the Burrell and Morgan matrix (1979), but I have not yet come

across any explicit discussion of this. On the contrary, to me it seems like people in KMliterature are confusing the concepts of tacit knowledge in action and ideas. However I

need to consider more carefully what consequences (the so what) in KM when these

issues are confused before considering whether it might be relevant planning for an

article on knowledge management.

A third idea struck me shortly before the exam, and that relates to how the word

knowledge is used in KM. Rather than restricting the use of the word to justified true

beliefs or the epistemology of Popper, Kuhn or similar, when it comes to the problem ofmanaging knowledge, knowledge appears to be any idea, belief or behaviour. In fact,the whole of KM looks very much like memetics (Brodie, 1996) from this perspective,


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an insight that made it remarkably more easy to understand the problems and various

solutions to knowledge management (creation, codification and transfer of knowledge).

Im not currently aware of to which extent there is an established relationship betweenmemetics and KM in academic literature. Before going deeper into this, I should need to

look more into role of KM in TQM, i.e. how does KM or memetics seem relevant for

managing knowledge about errors, knowledge about problem, knowledge about how to

solve problems etc. To which extent would it for instance be interesting to study thesimilarities of Crosbys ideas on culture and motivation (1979) and what Dawkins (1976)

has to say on brainwashing and religious beliefs?

There may be potentially many things to discuss within the IS community here, as there

is a strong focus on communities of practice, globalization, information infrastructures,

situated learning, culture etc., but I need to see how the possible insights could relate to

action research before looking more deeply into this.

5.3 Process improvement

Although I havent taken this course yet, Ive gone through some of the INF5180 lecture

notes and read some of the course literature. Much of it relates to quality management. It

uses CMMI as a framework for discussing processes improvement, and it seems to place

CMMI in the context of scientific management and total quality management. In otherwords, this is the course that corresponds more or less directly to my current way of

thinking, and it uses the same models and methods that I would use for improving

processes. I do not expect many new insights.

It could be interesting to try to contribute something to the theory being discussed here,

but the way of designing waterfall projects for installing process improvement systems

etc is not the way I prefer to work and neither is it a way I believe is a particularly goodway of working with these issues. Current experience from how DNV is trying to aid

NTAX in getting certified to the ISO 9001:2000 standard, and my experience with the

Wipro CMM assessment, tells me that the traditional top-down way of installing a qualitymanagement system through the use of some great project is not the best way of doing it.

It may perhaps be a good way of getting the infrastructure for running the quality

management system, but it doesnt take into account that it is difficult to know how to

design quality indicators and know what to measure.

As I start gaining insights into the AR process, viewing the organization from a CAS

perspective (e.g. Battram, 1996; Axelrod, 2000) could prove a good way of seeing how

one should think strategically for aligning the development of the ManagementInformation System (MIS) with the hostile and continuously changing environment.

Insights or ideas from the information infrastructure literature may be useful (e.g. Ciborra

et al, 2000).

Im not yet sure to which extent Lean Management (Womack & Jones, 2003; Liker,2004) will be a part of the course, but if there is one major management fad to contain


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some very good ideas for improving quality management and implementing the Deming

perspective on quality, it seems to be this one (cf. Seddon, 1997).

5.4 Information infrastructuresINF5210 is another course I havent taken yet, but as Ive read some of the literature that

is used in the course, I feel I have a sufficient working knowledge to know what thetheory is about. In fact, some of the most insightful comments Ive read on II are the

review comments Hanseth and Lyttainen received when trying to have his latest II article

published in ISR, asking about how II relates to CAS and whether it makes sense to linkANT with CAS (as the authors try to do).

In a recent PhD trial lecture (Nielsen, 2006), the candidate talked on the relationship

between information systems and information infrastructures, viewing informationsystems from the perspective of general systems theory (e.g. Lilienfeld, 1978; Checkland,

1981), characterizing systems thinking on one hand and information infrastructure

thinking on the other. While being an interesting presentation, I think he was basically

wrong in seeing the structures as different. In my current understanding of the concepts,information infrastructures is a special case of CAS, applied on information systems, and

CAS in itself is a part of the systems theory.

However, there are those who disagree (e.g. Stacey et al, 2000), seeing complexitythinking (e.g. CAS) as radically different from systems thinking. I need to go deeper into

their arguments, but my initial feeling is that Stacey and the information infrastructure

people are either not very well read on systems thinking or are (deliberately?)

misunderstanding some of the core ideas of systems theory. Due to my critical commentsand interest in systems theory, I have been asked by Nielsen to contribute on a paper on

information systems and information infrastructures.

Im not critical of information infrastructure as a concept per se, however. In the PhD

proposal, I focused on the complexity of large bureaucracies, such as the Norwegian

Directorate of Taxes, and how Information Infrastructure theory (or Complex AdaptiveSystems, CAS) might be a good approach for a robust quality management system

(QMS) design.

5.5 Next version of upgrade document

This is what the PhD Manual (UiO, 2006) says about the upgrade document:

By the end of the first year, the student shall develop and present a 1st

year report that will make their

research visible to the group and assure that they are, or alternatively provide apt support to make

them, on course to successfully complete their PhD. The content of the 1st

year report should include

the following (8,000-12,000 words in total):

Thesis title Introduction Problem Area Description, and Research questions The significance of the issue to be discussed by the proposed research, and why further

research on the issue is required.

How the research issue related to/draws upon existing research and is discussed in therelevant literature which should be critically reviewed.


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The theoretical approach/framework being followed and how this compares with possiblealternative approaches.

Any preliminary fieldwork that has been carried out or previous work done by the studentwith is being drawn upon.

Research design and methodology to be employed, as well as a justification for this approach. Intended plan for fieldwork, if relevant, including arrangements for access. Anticipated outcomes of the proposed research.

As I got my PhD proposal accepted on the 9 th of March 2006, it feels a bit early

presenting an upgrade document, as I have not yet a full overview of related research andI do not even have a full understanding of the research question Im trying to answer.

When I wrote the initial PhD proposal, I had only a superficial understanding of theculture and ideas of the Information Systems Group at the Institute of Informatics at the

University of Oslo. My ambition for doing a PhD in quality management has been that

of having a background in industrial mathematics from 1991 and working in the field of

software engineering and quality control for 15 years.

When working with quality control and process improvement, the mode of working

seems to be to be similar to that of doing action research. However, unlike the researchtradition of information systems (IS), my approach has not been qualitative. It has been a

mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods, with a focus on applying quantitative

methods due to the belief of what gets measured gets done.

However, as I gradually get to know the IS community, I get the impression that the kind

of problems that I need to address in order to be a part of this community are the socio-

technical problems that may have implications for design of information systems, or inmy case Management Information Systems (MIS).

Consequently, in this first attempt to write an upgrade document, I have tried to refocus

my research problem from problems related to the role of the quality manager of large

public organizations to the problems of designing and continually redesigningManagement Information Systems in compliance with the requirements and guideless of

the ISO 9000 series and additional international, regional and de factor standards such as

EFQM, CMMI, TickIT, ITIL and CobiT.

Designing management information systems is a non-trivial task. In my research

proposal I tried to characterize the MIS from the perspective of CAS in order to stimulatea distributed approach for growing information systems rather than the traditional top-

down approach. Such a change implies a change in control strategy, moving from central

control to distributed control (preferably some kind of self-control) as can be seen in

how an ant colony or a bee swarm seem to function (Kelly, 1994).

In this initial draft of the PhD upgrade document, I have tried to reformulate the original

research question by focusing how one should control the people responsible for quality

control (or improve the people responsible for process improvement) by aligning qualitymanagement (interpreted as industrial research) with academic research.


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At the moment, I see this as a major improvement on my PhD research design. No

matter what might be the findings after three years of research, investigating and

evaluating how other scientists are using action research, I believe it could be of interestboth for the research community, the quality management community and certainly of

high personal interest for me.

Although I hope to make some further modifications on this document for presenting thestatus of my research on the 11 th PhD Days Workshop in September 2006, my aim is to

complete and present the PhD upgrade document as soon as I have completed the exams

at the end of the fall semester 2006.


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Documents

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS cc INF5220.pdf*Title: (Required field)