Compensation in ‘respectability’ – the Doctoral Pursuit

Corporations are competitive places to survive in. They house employees who are perceived to align with corporate objectives. They have been to reward the more aligned, based on what is now bandied about as ‘performance’. There are also those nooks and corners in corporations, where performance is incidental to the employee’s presence. Some of these employees are seen as ‘solid citizens’ and are some of the most procedurally compliant lot. They acquire onerous goodwill due to their dependable character and predictable nature. You don’t mess with these people if you know that they have a place in your heart.

But, they are not as satiated as their top managements may like them to be. So, the guy was given this office near the men’s room corner, and a pay grade lower than the executive cadres - with a title that could at best win the respect of a campus recruit. Denied the status and the merit based promotion cycle he is left wondering what aspect of loyalty failed him the next title and pay-grade.

Compensation in ‘self-worth’ – the ‘elixir’ of philosophy

So he rationalises it to be his pedigree – not the ivy league college degree, or the mother-tongue accented English conversation, or for that matter neglected acts of fine dining when hosting clients or government officials. So he decides to earn a title beyond the workplace. This time its going beyond the evening MBA. It’s a full doctoral program, course-work, and mini-thesis all rolled into an ongoing corporate problem that needs a fresh insight.

Numerous nouveau-riche institutions, make the beeline for retired executives and retiring ones with a noble exterior of respectability. Education plays the great leveller, after all, with knowledge having no favourites among learners. And learning is a virtue, that corporations can live with. Consumptive knowledge brings one closer to monetary value. But learning for learning sake does not necessarily guarantee more money instantly. Yet, it can salvage lost pride, as such is the inherent virtue of the transformations of learning.

Old habits die-hard

And when I saw an online appeal for ‘executive MBA’ students to help in the literature surveys, it was quick to get my attention. The learner in me awakened. To my horror, the posting was on behalf of Research scholars, who wished to outsource their literature survey, design of questionnaire for interviews, and interactions with industry leaders! Wow, some scholars these – even the methods of enquiry are finalised before the literature survey has ended. Rich students paying lesser students in the guise of learning! I can well imagine, how lost both outsourcer and the outsourced would be. To make matters crisp, let me lay out the following.

1.       Outsourcing a research project assumes that the researchers are trained and competent to design the research process, collect data, analyse information and makes inferences that are consistent with the method of science.

2.       Expecting untrained literature surveyors to execute research is like a surgeon expecting a barber to perform surgery for want of resources, including that of time.

3.        A PhD is about the method of science, and not the execution of procedural tasks bereft of the scientific mind-set.

4.       Internalizing the method of science within the researcher is a major differentiator in the research process. Why otherwise would a research scholar attempt trial-and-error research efforts with novices?

5.       A quest for a title cannot be unanchored in principle, purpose or ethics of the discipline. Can an aspiring guitarist ask free hands to tune strings without one’s will to strum it?

Parting Questions : 

1. How is the method of science different from other forms of knowing, for which you truly aspire to be a research scholar?

2. What's even more important to you than your self-worth, and the pleasure of learning for which you are taking up a research question in a scientific process?

The noise about Research in Human Resources in India

The noise about Research in Human Resources

The recent NHRDN Conference featured a session devoted to research in Human Resources. The presentations made indicated a curiosity in areas that needs sincere inquiry. However, I had some observations about 'research’ as a student of such disciplines. I was pained that attendance at these sessions dropped merely because it was placed for the last day of the conference.

After serving as a reviewer on journals, I have now a few jarring noises to make on the way research enterprise is brazenly unchecked. In fact, my gut for the notes here is agitated further by the collusion of academia in the 2008 financial collapse that shook the world. (http://www.theotherschoolofeconomics.org/?p=2499). That is a 2 hour documentary, and not a scientific treatise in itself. Yet, the evidence it makes inspires me to write as below.

1.       A report does not research make. Method in inquiry does. Not any kind of method – but those that observe the canons of science.

2.       Print and electronic media like to splash opinion, given the mediocrity in discernment of science. Such a market of opinion is not the method, but merely the yearning for a voice. An opinion is a fact of opinion, not always the fact of methodical enquiry. Verifiable science too is generalizable under the certainty of specified conditions. Human Resources Development is more akin to a social science, where the laws of generalisation and universality are more circumspect. Moreover, the level of abstraction and inter-subjectivity in social sciences require a community of practice to safeguard research standards as also to promote relevant enquiry.

3.       A presentation does not make a research, and it is in fact impoverished by a lack of curiosity. Similarly, a book of collection of procedures from organisational practices does not make for a construct of scientific reality, howsoever symptomatic of a phenomenon or two they may be. Testing of constructs requires a temperament of methodical experimentation.

4.       The authority of an office is not to be confused for the authority of a subject matter. Social hierarchy often denigrates the merit of fact, especially if the conviction of enquiry and the method of communication do not help the cause of research. Scientific endeavour is no cakewalk. The art of enquiry is only eased with the practice of rigor. If you are a knowledge worker in a service industry, you may even experience the obfuscation of organisational truths when irrational procedures are foisted down the hierarchy in the name of standardisation.

5.       Several consulting brands claim to have a research focus. They also do not always acknowledge the bias of commerce in the choice of research and methods that drive research towards commerce. Practices in such commercial research would often be unconscious of compromise in research designs. Slavish to a numerical algorithm, or a framework, issues of collinearity and discriminant validity hardly matter to the ‘consultant’. Worse still, the research design gets less and less innovative and stuck between the fulcrum extremes of quantitative and qualitative planes. Contextual maps for coherent enquiry are required to make meaning of evidence in ways the subjects experience phenomena. So calls for indigenous research for example do not find takers, if science cannot be framed in service of that idea.

6.       If you intend to do a Doctoral Program in India, be aware that the quality of your investment in inquiry is not just dependent on the standards of the University or academic institution, but also on the larger ecosystem. A data-shy corporation, an oversensitive field guide or a weakly tempered supervisor can jeopardise your motivation for science itself. Research in educational institutions is hardly encouraged.  Be more prepared for the program than you care to for a job interview, for a cross examination from your side helps.

So much for now, I would think. A noise that cancels out another will not make music, I assume. If there’s a way in which educational institutions wish to up their research capabilities, I would like to learn of it.