Academic writing and publishing – issues, challenges and trajectories

1. Academic writing and publishing – issues, challenges and trajectories Prof Peter Stokes PhD MBA PGCertRDS PGCertTLHE PGCertCCOP BA(Hons) FHEA FEMBRI Editor: International Journal of Organizational Analysis UK Country Director: EuroMed Business Research Institute, Cyprus Ambassador–UK: Association Francophone de Gestion des Ressources Humaines, France Track Chair: Sustainable and Responsible Business SIG – British Academy of Management , UK

2. Prof. Peter Stokes - Profile • Professor Peter Stokes (PhD MBA PGCertRDS PGCertTLHE PGCertCCOP BA(Hons) HEA Fellow) is Professor and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Business, Enterprise and Lifelong Learning, University of Chester, UK. • Researched and published widely including: Management Philosophy, Critical Management Studies, Outdoor Management Development, Training and Development, French Management Development, Competencies, Research Methodology and Ethics, Doctoral Education Processes, Military/Genocide and Organization, Talent Management, Trust. Reviews extensively for a number of world-class journals. Published books including: Critical Concepts in Management and Organization Studies [Palgrave] and Key Concepts in Business and Management Research Methods [Palgrave]. • Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Organizational Analysis and serves on journal boards including the EuroMed Journal of Business.

3. Prof. Peter Stokes - Profile Applications and Roles • Applied work through knowledge transfer and consultancy projects across a range of business and industrial sectors encompassing diplomatic services, Olympic bids, utilities, construction, publishing, aerospace, manufacturing, public relations, emergency services, UK local government, marketing agencies, radio, tourism. • Holds positions on international bodies including UK Country Director for the EuroMed Research Business Institute and UK Ambassador for the Association de Gestion des Ressources Humaines (French Academic HR Association). • Visiting lecturer and academic advisor roles for universities and institutes in France, Spain, Germany, Senegal, Vietnam, Morocco, Hong Kong, India and Dubai. • General Chair and Key Note Speaker at AIMSEC 2011 (Artificial Intelligence, Management Science and Electronic Commerce) Conference, Zhengzhou, Henan Polytechnic University, China, August 8-10.

4. A Foreword: The Role of Autobiography – Personal Journeys • What happens to you? • What do you make happen? • Serendipity – creating fortunate accidents. • Building up a ‘Career’ – what is that? • Hard work and pretending ‘to work hard’. • ‘De l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujoursl’audace!’. [Danton 1759-1794] ‘Audacity, yet more audacity, always audacity!’ • Ethics and spirit.

5. Publish or Perish: Dialectic or Synergy? • Research versus other demands • Research and institutional cultures • Equilibrium internal administration and committees vs externality • Publishing for publishing sake or a mission?

6. The Virtuous Cycle

7. Serendipity • Turn teaching into research. • Turn research into teaching. • Turn teaching into income generation/consultancy. • Turn income generation/consultancy into teaching and research.

8. Case Studies. • Customer Service NVQ Level 3 Pgm • Consultancy • Coaching qualification • PhD Supervision qualification – two papers • Managing a department – paper • Managing a school and teaching – book • Fresh Field Research – ‘Values, Beliefs and Attitudes (VBA)’

9. Mentor, Coaches and Role Models for Research • Supervisors – roles, responsibilities, procedures • ‘Good supervisor’/ ‘Bad supervisors’. • Supporting associations - Vitae, UK • Finding other mentors, coaches and collaborators? – Empathy, affinity, mutual respect, comparable work ethic.

10. The Virtual Faculty • Living beyond your faculty environment. • Conferences - good and bad sides. • Associations - attend and participate. • Internet – How to use it?

11. Failed Collaborations? • The phoenix book - Critical Concepts….. • The Paper – Web 2.0 and Trades Unions. • The Book that never got written. • Determination, resilience, courage, resolve, sheer hard work, learning, marketing and connecting.

12. Starting Points - PhD and Beyond • The power of the supervisor(McCulloch and Stokes, 2008) • Extracting/developing papers from the PhD: - One /papers on various themes/contributions; - One possibly on methodological aspects; - Other papers – laterally connecting and creativity.

13. PhD Papers - Case Study 1 • PhD - Investors in People (IiP) and Relevance ‘The Investors in People Standard: Performance claims, dichotomies and lived experience’ Employee Relations (2*) ‘Signs and Wonders: Exploring the Effects and Impact of the Investors in People Logo and Symbols’ – Journal of Vocational Education and Training (1*) Thinking creatively – Transformational Leadership.

14. PhD Papers - Case Study 2 • PhD – Counterfeiting and Servicescapes • Papers ‘An Investigation into Consumers’ Perception Formation Counterfeit Products and their Servicescapes’ ‘Human Variables and Servicescapes’ ‘Focus Groups and Visual Methodologies – Consumer and Servicescapes’

15. Targeting Journals • Rankings (Anna Wil-Harzingwww.harzing.com) Association of Business Schools, UK national – e.g. France CNRS, institutional). • Disciplinary fields-customs and traditions. • Epistemological, ontological and philosophical predilections. • Clubs and cliques. • Politics and pressures.

16. Targeting Conferences • Which to attend? • Your national academy or institution/ regional conferences • SE Asian, N America – Academy of Management • European Conferences – well-established: - European Group on Organizational Studies - European Academy of Management - British Academy of Management - International Critical Management Studies

17. Modernism, Postmodernism and Paradigms Modernism Postmodernism Structuralism Post-structuralism

18. Quantity and Quality? • Quantity – Early stage – ‘runs on board’. • Quality: • Strategy? • Timeline – story of two papers.

19. Quantity with Quality – Carpe Diem Moore and Stokes (2012) ‘Elite interviewing and the role of sector context: an organizational case from the football industry’; Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 15(4): 438-464. PhD Thesis ....and Introduction to EuroMed Stokes, P and Harris, P. (2012), The Janus Dialectic of Sustainability and Unsustainability – Notions of Micro-Moments, Choice and Responsibility in Organizational Change and Transformation, The Journal of Organizational Change Management. Written for the ARC2 Ashridge Conference

20. Quality Trajectories – Marathon Running • Stokes, P. and Gabriel, Y. (2010) Engaging with Genocide: the Challenge for Organization and Management Studies, Organization, 17(4): 461-481. [3* journal, ABS Guide] • 2005 SCOS Conference (Holland)/ 2007 EGOS conference (Vienna)/ Abortive Special Issue/ Publication in 2010 – four rounds of review. • Stokes, P. and Martin, L. (2008) ‘Reading Lists: A Study of Tutor and Student Perceptions, Expectations and Realities’, Studies in Higher Education, Vol.33, No.2, pp.113-125.[4* journal, ABS Guide] • Created following a discussion in a car park in 2004/ research conducted in the Faculty/ 2 rounds of review – publication.

21. Connections from unexpected quarters

22. Special Issues • Identify: • A gap in the literature; • A relatively new and evolving area; • An area that has not already been covered by a journal; • Collaborate – across institutions/countries; Good way to gain access to journals.

25. Power as a rugby ball – exertion and diffusion (Latour, 1986)

26. The ‘rhizome’ and the ‘root-tree’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987)

27. Rhizomatic Movement • “…a tangled mass of randomly developing connections following no logical pattern.” (Jackson & Carter, 2000: 252) • Creativity and potential – always exploring new connections • Rhizome always moving ‘beneath the surface’ of structures - a constituent part of structures, but also a constant movement with the potential to transgress and destroy structures. • Implications for research, writing and publishing – there is not ‘one way’ to build a writing and publishing career.

28. Journal Editors and Reviewers • Tremendous variety. • ‘Quality’ journals: - awareness of all the literature on a topic; - very well-crafted argument and prose; - contribution; - robust methodological approach; - willingness to undertake multiple reviews.

29. What Frustrates Editors and Reviewers? • When a paper is submitted but is not yet ready. • When the English in a paper is badly written and has many errors. • When the literature is out-of-date, irrelevant or underworked. • When there is no originality or contribution. • On resubmission, when you have not engaged with or implemented the reviewers comments. • When you have not responded to the reviewers’ comments and explained what you have done to address them.

30. Some Final Thoughts on Writing • Look over papers in the journal/target for which you are writing – style/format. • Critical analysis – weighing things up, narrative • Proportions: Introduction, literature review, methodology, findings and discussion, conclusion.

31. New Information Follows Old Information • Try to remember the principle of logic that ‘new information should always follow old information (Hickey, 1993; Hickey and Stewart, 2005). This means that we put things we are saying in the appropriate and correct order. • Here follows a series of simplified statements for the purposes of demonstration:

32. An Illustration • Sam ran away • John shouted out aloud. • John has a dog. • Sam likes bones. • Sam bit John. • The dog is called Sam

33. An Illustration – New Information Follows Old. • John has a dog. • The dog is called Sam. • Sam likes bones. • Sam bit John. • John shouted out aloud • Sam ran away.

34. Critical Perspectives & Foci DISCOURSE SexualityLanguage Identity Postmodernism Power SubjectivitySocial Constructionism Rhizomes Poststructuralism

35. Dereli and Stokes (2007) Philosophy of Management 6(2) pp117-126

36. Academic and Sociological Language

37. Research Methods and Methodology

40. Concluding Thoughts • It takes time. • There will be slow periods and failures. • Be busy, energetic, focused, prolific, open to all. • Be wary of being too specialised, too dogmatic. • Do not depend one or two people for your career development. • Remember to build the virtual faculty. • Occupy the commanding heights of the publishing battlefields. • Be a ‘sharer’ – don’t be protective and defensive. • There is not ‘one way/method’ to a writing/academic career. • Work with orthodoxies – but do not be a slave to them. • Work incredibly hard and be driven – make time, not excuses.

41. References • Hickey, L.(1993) ‘Stylistics, pragmatics and pragmastylistics’, Revue Belge de Philologie and Pragmastylistics, 71 (71-3): 573-586. • Hickey, L and Stewart, M. (2005) Politeness in Europe, Ontario, Multilingual Matters Ltd. • McCulloch, A. and Stokes P. (2008) Meeting the Needs of Part-Time Students, SRHE Postgraduate Guide Series, London, Society for Research in Higher Education. • Stokes, P. (2011) Critical Concepts in Management and OrganizationStudies Basingstoke, Palgrave-Macmillan. • Stokes, P. (2011) Key Concepts in Business and Management Research Methods, Basingstoke, Palgrave-Macmillan. • Stokes, P, Harris, P., Millar, C, and Moss, D. (2012) Chester Forum II: Sustainable Business and Public Affairs, Chester Business School.

43. Thank you for your attention Questions and comments please Professor Peter Stokes p.stokes@chester.ac.uk