research

Statistics Canada Cutbacks: The Death of More Evidence

A few weeks ago, Canadian scientists went to Parliament Hill to hold a protest rally that they dubbed “the Death of Evidence“. The speakers at the event outlined the effects of the federal government’s research funding cutbacks. They pointed out that research supported by government funding actually saves money, because it produces reliable evidence that helps government make sound decisions. They also emphasized the difficulty or impossibility of restarting their work if it ends.

My own research isn’t in the “hard” sciences, so the cutbacks protested at the Death of Evidence rally don’t directly harm my work. But my colleagues whose research will be affected are mad and very frustrated, because they know the value of the work they do.
And personally I’m angry about the disrespectful way that these researchers learned they were losing their funding. (more…)

Misreporting is Worse than ‘Self-Plagiarism’

In the last few weeks, science writer Jonah Lehrer has been under fire in media circles for “self-plagiarism”. A number of investigators have discovered close similarities or identical wording in the texts of articles and speeches he’s written or delivered. However, there’s another aspect of the Lehrer situation that I find more concerning than the allegations of “self-plagiarism” – and that’s the alleged errors in his reporting about scientific research. (more…)

Business School Research That Might Surprise You: Part 2

In this second installment, I’m going to talk about two research papers that were presented at the recent Administrative Sciences Association of Canada conference. Conference papers are often the first time that a researcher presents a particular piece of work in public, so a lot of ideas in conference papers are in an early formative stage – but it’s exciting to hear these ideas and to see how they might develop further. I like these two papers because they both investigate relevant and timely workplace issues, but do so from unconventional perspectives. (more…)

Business School Research that Might Surprise You: Part 1

I’ve been teaching in university business programs and doing research for more than 20 years, and obviously I enjoy my work or I wouldn’t still be doing it. But I’m always annoyed by misconceptions about the kind of research that goes on in business schools.

A lot of people think business school research is only trying to find better ways for managers to exploit their employees, and/or to reinforce the hierarchical capitalist system. There’s also a common misconception – one that’s often mindlessly spouted by academics in other disciplines – that researchers in business schools just have to ask and their corporate masters will hand over tons of money to support their work. I know I’m not the only person who wishes this were true so they didn’t have to spend so much time writing grant applications. In reality, business school researchers struggle just as much as researchers in any other discipline to get funding for their work.

In this post and its sequel, I’m going to highlight some research from business schools that goes against these misconceptions, either in the choice of research subjects or in the research questions that were investigated – and which, as far as I know, wasn’t funded by any corporation. (more…)

Award

I’m delighted to announce that Organizational Legitimacy and Identities in Canadian Post-Secondary Education: Investigating Students’ Perceptions, a research paper I  co-authored with Dr. Kai Lamertz (Concordia University) and Dr. Alex Kondra (Athabasca University), has been named Best Paper in the Organization Theory division of the 2012 Administrative Sciences Association of Canada (ASAC) Conference. (more…)

Organizational Citizenship and the BC Teachers’ Dispute

The BC Labour Relations Board case about whether teachers withdrawing their volunteer work constitutes strike action got me thinking about organizational citizenship – a concept that doesn’t get much attention outside academic research, but which explains a lot about the impact of behaviour on workplaces. (more…)

Is Twitter Killing Discussion at Conferences?: Notes from the Field

In my work world right around now, the regular academic year winds up and the rush toward convocation begins. And it’s also the start of conference season. The hard work of getting to conferences started long ago – early January is usually the deadline for submitting papers to summertime conferences. But now it’s time to agonize over your Powerpoints, jump on the plane, and stand up in front of your peers and talk about your research. (more…)

Thinking about Success: A Perspective from Skating

It’s been my pleasure over the last couple of months to transcribe interview highlights for the Manleywoman Skatecast, a free podcast created by my fellow adult skater Allison Manley. Allison undertook this venture five years ago out of frustration with “fluffy” coverage of figure skating that focused on “what Johnny Weir ate last week, or what shoes Michelle Kwan is wearing”. To date Allison has interviewed more than 50 people associated with figure skating – and, proudly, has done so only with funding from listener donations. (more…)

Stuck + Out of Date = Successful

One of the messages in many theories of organizations – and in a lot of business media  – is that to be successful, an organization has to continually change. If your organization isn’t doing new things first, and if you’re not using cutting-edge methodology, you are doomed (usually followed by dire references to things like buggy whips and telex machines).

Ironically, a lot of this nonsense comes from people and institutions that preach the importance of adaptability, flexibility, and quick response, but who haven’t changed their own tune even after events like the 2008 financial meltdown. That catastrophe should have shown that growth and innovation just because that’s what organizations are supposed to do is neither sensible or infinitely sustainable. So as my little counter-response to this ongoing carnival of hype, let me draw your attention to two articles in this week’s New York Times magazine which illustrate quite beautifully how organizations who deliberately choose not to change can survive and succeed. (more…)

No, Really, Are You Happy?: How the Media Misreports Workplace Research

A couple of days ago, while driving around, I heard a news item on a couple of local radio stations saying that fewer than half of all workers are satisfied with their jobs, but were unwilling to look for something else. This caught my ear because something I learned really quickly when I started doing job satisfaction research is that it’s very difficult to measure job satisfaction accurately, and it’s even more difficult to make broad generalizations about it. (more…)