Dalvir Samra-Fredericks

Doing Boards-in-Action Research; An Ethnographic Approach for the Capture and Analysis of Directors and Senior Managers Interactive Routines

This paper is the first of two papers which will introduce a research approach where groups of directors and senior managers have, not only been observed, but also captured interacting with each other on audio tape recordings. It represents a move from asking board members questions during interviews to seeing and hearing them interactively perform in the boardroom (and elsewhere) over a period of time. When we undertake such ethnographic research what we primarily see is directors and senior managers talking to each other. We suggest that through a close study of their talk-based interpersonal routines, a detailed account of their skills and how factors such as knowledge or know-how and experience are deployed to influence boardroom process is possible. In this first paper our objective is limited to: making a case for a focus upon talk-based interpersonal routines in the boardroom/top management team (TMT); an introductory outline of our theoretical and analytical infrastructure drawn from sociology and; reproducing one illustrative extract of directors; talk to show what this data looks like. We conclude by outlining an emerging alternative avenue for developing boards/TMTs in a grounded and reflective fashion.

Managerial elites making rhetorical and linguistic ‘moves’ for a moving (emotional) display

This article contributes to sociological studies of emotions in organizations. It resides upon an innovative move to extend the ethnographic approach to include audio-recording, in this case managerial elites’ naturally occurring interactions, to provide the basis for an ‘empirical filling out’ of emotions research. Furthermore, theoretically to develop this field in ways that encompass the simultaneous speaking of emotionality and rationality, Nash’s account of rhetoric as emotion is drawn upon. In particular, the four discursive constituents which orators are said to need for ‘moving an audience’ are deployed to analytically trace how elites intertwine emotional expressiveness and a rhetoric of rationality to influence management/strategic processes. These four constituents are empathetic matter/great theme, stance, utterance design (taxis) and utterance relation (lexis). Three brief transcribed extracts of elites-at-talk are reproduced from one ethnography to illustrate the scope of a fine-grained analysis of elites’ assembly of emotional displays – two are abstracted from the ebband-flow of interaction to illustrate everyday ‘mini-speeches’ of ‘great’ oratory and the third specifically illustrates the intricate nature of inter action revealing the ways emotion can be likened to a ‘barometer of moral and relational ethics’.

An Analysis of the Behavioural Dynamics of Corporate Governance – a talk‐based ethnography of a UK manufacturing ‘board‐in‐action’

This article draws upon research conducted in a UK manufacturing company where a group of directors and senior managers (managerial elites) interacting with each other were observed and captured on audio and video tape recordings. From detailed analysis of their talk-based interpersonal routines, the nature of their linguistic skills and how factors such as knowledge, know-how and experience were deployed to influence boardroom process was explored. They also simultaneously sought to preserve the protocols of human interaction. The objective here is to reproduce a small set of typical interactive routines between this group of managerial elites to illustrate aspects of this analysis. In particular, we illustrate their use of two basic micro-linguistic resources; the display of feelings and emotions, and; the routine selection of lexemes which activate arenas of expertise and knowledge. The laminated effect of successive interactive exchanges of the sort reproduced in this paper allowed for a range of board tasks to be executed alongside the concurrent assembly of an effective (or not) competent performance in the boardroom. Taken together this paper and our prior one provides a basis for developing a systematic and rigourous approach for the study of the behavioural dynamics of corporate governance.

Desperately seeking fixedness: Practitioners’ accounts of ‘becoming doctoral researchers’

We draw upon the concept of liminality to explore the experiences of practitioners enrolled on a UK Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) programme. We analyse 20 practitioners’ reflective journals to detail how the Doctor of Business Administration liminal space was negotiated. More specifically, we describe how practitioners deal with their struggles of identity incoherence or ‘monsters of doubt’ which are amplified in the Doctor of Business Administration context owing to the complex nature of the separation phase of liminality. We identify three broad methods deployed in this endeavour – ‘scaffolding’, ‘putting the past to work’ and ‘bracketing’ – which evidence practitioners ‘desperately seeking fixedness’. We make three contributions. First, we provide empirical insights into the experiences of the increasingly significant, but still under-researched, Doctor of Business Administration student. Second, we develop our understandings of monsters of doubt through illustrating how these are negotiated for learning to progress. Finally, we contribute to wider discussions of ‘becoming’ to demonstrate the simultaneous and paradoxical importance of movement and fixedness in order to learn and become.