Article A4.1 Training for Research Jacob D Vakkayil Doctoral Scholar, Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, INDIA jacobdvakkayil[at]yahoo.com It was a sultry day in mid-August. I got up from my work place to give a long overdue break to my watery eyes, and stiff back. Some small talk and chit-chat followed, and soon, I found myself in an interesting conversation with one of my colleagues on the challenges of doing doctoral work in a business school. We discussed, for example, how one could make most of a coursework that is specially designed to groom managers. Managers and researchers seem to differ in their ways considerably. I listed a few obvious differences. While managers seek to avoid problems, researchers actively seek out problems to solve. While managers find refuge in simple assumptions, and perpetuate the use of models based on these, researchers constantly challenge each others’ assumptions, and models. While managers resort to shortcuts to obtain fast results, researchers celebrate the uncompromising severity of science, as is evident for example, in the peer review process. My colleague added yet another dissimilarity. While managers deliver fast, workable results cost-effectively, researchers often take too long to achieve seemingly insignificant or impractical results at exorbitant costs. Perhaps, I agreed. In any case, these differences probably explain why there are so few MBA students attending our research training seminars. We broke off the discussion and resumed our work. However, retreating in to the cocoon of my work station, I began to have doubts about my affirmations. Firstly, many researchers often try to avoid problems than actively seek them out. Many indeed select problems that are likely to give them no problems. Many would not take up a problem unless they “know” the solution in advance! I often hear exhortations to avoid controversial areas and not to try anything too radical in my research. There is also the constant pressure to stick to dominant research methodologies so that the work becomes acceptable for examiners. Secondly, assumptions are not easily broken among researchers too. Many researchers hold on to their assumptions and continue to work with these even after they are “disproved”. Thirdly, the severity of science is not without the idiosyncrasies that are characteristically human. For example, the peer review process may be uncompromising, but researchers know that it certainly pays to speak the language of a particular group of reviewers and to pamper their ideological rigidities. May be, mangers are not so different from researchers after all. Moreover, just like some researchers, it is certainly true that many managers deliver too little, too late, and for too much. Sitting through a research training seminar led by a corporate researcher that afternoon, I realized that such dichotomous categorizations are too simplistic to be useful. It is probably true that good managers would have a number of researcher-like qualities and good researchers have certain managerial competencies. For doctoral scholars, finishing a PhD project successfully involves some judicious management of time and resources. Such managerial expertise was also in evidence in the organisation of a season of research training seminars. This has certainly been made easier by the fact that, the seminar series attracts many researchers in the country and many others who pass by. Their willingness to be part of this enterprise has yielded rich dividends. As in previous years, we have had a range of seminar leaders – from world renowned academics sharing insights gathered over a life-time of research to cautious doctoral scholars presenting their work with much tentativeness. A certain amount of tentativeness and trepidation seems to be the hall mark of most discussions in these seminars. Of course, we attempt to fit the world into the pigeon holes of our categories and construct, demolish and reconstruct frameworks, and models. However, the discussions at the seminars point to the essential arbitrariness of these results. Consequently, we tend to become increasingly aware of our limits as researchers. However, this awareness does not numb us. Rather, it enables us to go beyond our own domains and vigorously seek promising threads from diverse realms of inquiry. The declared topics and the prepared presentations of the seminars are often starting points for the introduction of a variety of topics into these discussions. Invariably these discussions reflect the inescapable messiness of any research enterprise. Often, when issues weigh on us too heavily, we break for tea. It is therefore not surprising that there is very little visible “training” in these “research training seminars”. But, the “learning” hits you right between the eyes. For example, we observe how researchers in different domains work with different sets of assumptions. We note how they often struggle to talk to a non-specialist audience about their work. We see the similarities of problems in many disciplines and how it is difficult to solve many of these using the approaches afforded by a single discipline. Clearly, I am not talking about the type of learning that comes by reading an advanced text book in research methodology. I am referring to the type of understanding that can come only from being together, doing together, and struggling together as co-inquirers. May our paths meet on this quest! March 12, 2007 Copyleft Xavier Institute of Management, Xavier Square, Bhubaneswar 751013, India Research World (ISSN 0974-2379) http://www1.ximb.ac.in/RW.nsf/pages/Home |
