Phd Research Proposal Project Management Text

Jonathan Friesen - Writing Coach

Faculty of management dependent variable of study + 29 independnet variables of study. Dependent or outcome variable of study y success: successful completion of project yes, no list of 29 independent or explanatory variables of study x1, x2, …. It tends to be organized in distributed, heterogeneous networks rather than in modular hierarchies such as those marx described 1990. Whereas modular organization encouraged silos with rigid hierarchical separations and few connections, knowledge work encourages proliferating connections across trades, fields, and disciplines, connections across which texts circulate.

These connections lead to more flexibility and collaboration within networked organizations, but also more communication problems: workers from historically separated activities suddenly must interact, collaborate, and learn enough of each others' social languages and genres to work together. Complexities become more difficult to manage, and everyone needs to learn a little about everyone else's work. High tech organizations, such as software and web services companies, fit this description. Yet little research on project management has been done in the field of professional writing, particularly for knowledge work organizations such as those described here. In this exploratory qualitative study, i seek insight into how such organizations manage their projects in the course of performing knowledge work. Particularly, i want to know what tools and practices they use, to what extent they use them in the course of collaboration and planning, and to what extent these have changed other aspects of their organizations. note:  change this section to reflect your own research methods.

    data collection involves these methods for exploring consultants’ training and practices:
    site interviews:  researcher will conduct one short average.5 hour semistructured interview with a manager before contacting participants.

    pre observational interviews:  researcher will conduct one short average.25 hour semistructured interview with each participant immediately before each observation to collect information about their professional biography and history with project management, collaboration, and related tools and practices. Researcher will visit participants at work and conduct 1 2 short average 1 hour observations of each participant's work. During the observations, researcher will record events relating to project management, collaboration, information sharing, and training. Participants will be asked to  optionally  use system monitoring software rescuetime rescuetime.com for two weeks, starting with the observation and proceeding continuously until the end of the two week period.  this software will record use of applications and websites and allow participants to tag these applications according to use. To preserve privacy, participants will be allowed to delete application and website data before turning over data.

    Researcher will conduct one semistructured interview with each participant immediately after each observation average.5 hours. Researcher will collect artifacts from the designer's workplace that are related to project management, collaboration, information sharing, and training. Artifacts might include copies or photos of project lists, to do lists, training documentation, generic contracts, screen shots, and email. To ensure privacy of others, participants will redact artifacts before turning the artifacts over to researcher see appendix b for redaction protocol.

researchers will analyze the  observational, interview, and artifact  data using v isual representations activity system diagrams, genre ecology models, communicative event models, sociotechnical graphs, operations tables, and contradiction discoordination breakdown tables a.

Researcher will recruit up to 5 participants per organization through contacts with up to 5 local high tech organizations. Participants will be company employees working in various web related and software related areas, such as search engines, search engine optimization, social media, and web development. Researcher will contact participants through his personal connections with local high tech companies. Researcher will observe participants in their work settings approximately 1 2 times observations will be for approximately one hour. Researcher will conduct 15 minute interviews immediately before and 30 minute interviews immediately after each observation. Total involvement time will be 1.75 3.25 hours per participant, plus two weeks' system monitoring if the participant and organization agree.

During interviews and observations, researcher will identify artifacts of interest participants will redact these artifacts and present them to the researcher. Participants can choose to discontinue participation at any time if they choose to do so, their data will be destroyed. Researcher will refer to participant with a pseudonym and redact any identifying characteristics in reports. No publications resulting from this research will include identifiers of participants or their organizations. Finally, the researcher will explain to management it is entirely up to team members whether they wish to participate in the study the organization will not require team members to participate, and team members can drop out of the study at any time, for any reason. Research data will be kept in a locked cabinet at researcher's office, on an encrypted laptop hard drive, and backed up to a secure server account to which only the researcher has access.

For interviews, a the interviews will be audiorecorded b the digital files will be coded so that no personally identifying information is visible on them c they will be digitally secured with a password d they will be heard or viewed only for research purposes by researcher and e after they are transcribed or coded, they will be destroyed. Including digital voice recorders and server space, will be provided by t he computer writing and research lab. The research may uncover weaknesses as well as strengths in the participants’ work. Reports will remind readers that this should happen and that the role of this research is to better understand the organizations' project management as a whole, not to evaluate individual work styles. In addition, the participants’ identities and organizational affiliations will be kept secret.

This study will have implications for understanding p roject management and collaboration in technology studies. In addition, the project should serve as a way for participants to articulate, reflect upon, and justify or improve their p roject management practices respective to knowledge work. Understanding moral emotions, ethical behaviour and organisations the proposed phd project seeks to examine moral emotions, how they shape and influence ethical behaviour at work, and how this affects organising as a process as well as a variety of organisational outcomes. Moral emotions are defined as emotions that are linked to the interests or welfare either of society as a whole or at least of persons other than the judge or agent haidt 2003: 276, italics added. Since ethics to a significant degree comprise a concern for others solomon 1993 , moral emotions are an integral constituent of ethical behaviour in organisations. As zajonc 1980 reminds us, emotions inform our value judgments that lead to approach or avoidance decisions.