Just reading Repko’s book on Interdisciplinary Research. Very interesting to consider that,’ Interdisciplinary research is a decision-making process that is heuristic, iterative, and reflexive. Each of these terms – decision-making, process, heuristic, iterative, and reflexive-requires explanation.’

I’m finding this very intriguing, especially in relation to one of our courseworks that involves outlining the process involved in searching for and (hopefully) finding material on a randomly selected question that has something to do with the web at its heart. It is interesting that although we think of searching as ‘seeking’ there is sometimes an element of filtering or of looking for material that might reinforce one’s original ideas.

Have also been reading on economics in Afghanistan, Intelligent Agents (not secret ones), hypermedia, (just discovered The Humument – an old favourite of mine is about to be released as an app) bots (including narrative bots and social bots – here’s one I made earlier) and privacy. At present these don’t strictly appear to be to do with my original question, but some of the topics keep re-presenting themselves to me and so I’m keeping an eye on them, to see if they might develop into a personal theme. Have also been reading on spimes, hyperreality and skeuomorphs, and came across this blog from Matt Jones on The Internet of Things.

Have a good introduction to Sociology (Giddens) but need to also check to see what isn’t in it, as it’s quite an old copy.

Last week I wrote about organization contexts. This week I wanted to change tack to consider business planning and marketing, and how they fit within the competitive process (in particular, in the online world). Changes in the external world create uncertainty and management planning is a systematic way to cope with that and to adapt to new conditions.

Strategic plans apply to the whole organization or business unit, setting out the long-term goals and objectives of an enterprise (effectively, where it wants to be and how to get there). It will usually combine an analysis of external environmental factors with an internal analysis of the organization’s strengths and weaknesses. This can be referred to as a SWOT assessment (bringing together reflection on internal Strengths and Weaknesses and external Opportunities and Threats). It includes drawing information as described in last week’s post as Porter’s five forces analysis of the competitive environment in which organizations are situated.

Forecasting is relevant in dynamic and complex situations but encounters problems when the sector is marked by rapidly changing trends. So-called scenario planning is an attempt to create coherent and credible alternative stories about the future. For example, consideration might be given to how the internet (as a major force in the external environment) might affect a company’s business over the next 5-10 years. According to Boddy, this process can bring together new ideas about the environment into the heads of managers, thus enabling them to recognize new and previously unthinkable possibilities. This, in turn, facilitates the development of contingency plans to cope with outcomes that depart from the most likely scenario. On the downside, the scenario planning process is time-consuming and costly.

Once a plan has been formulated, the next stage is to identify what needs to be done by whom. New technological projects often fail, for example, because planners pay too much attention to the technological aspects and too little to the human aspects of structure, culture and people. Good communication and implementation structure are therefore key.

Hand-in-hand with planning is the topic of decision-making under management theory, including the ability to recognize a problem and set objectives in trying to find a solution. A company facing rapidly changing technological and business conditions needs to be able to make decisions quickly. Boddy gives the example of managers at Microsoft being slow to realize that Linux software was a serious threat which caused a delay in competitive reaction.

There are various decision-making management models, including: computational strategy (rational model); compromise strategy (political model); judgmental strategy (incremental model); and, inspirational strategy (garbage can model). It is interesting to make comparisons between economics and the first aforementioned model which suggests that the manager’s role is to maximize economic return to the company by making decisions based on economically rational criteria. Developments in technology have encouraged some observers, says Boddy, to anticipate that computers would be able to take over certain types of decisions from managers. It is true that new applications are used in many organizational settings when decisions depend on the rapid analysis of large quantities of data with complex relationships by using rational, quantitative methods (such as in utility companies). Such automated decision-making systems “sense online data or conditions, apply codified knowledge or logic and make decisions – all with minimum amounts of human intervention” (Davenport and Harris, 2005). Of course, a behavioral theory of management decision-making – as well as economics in general – is also possible.

Understanding strategic management decisions also helps to analyze an organization’s perceived relationship with the outside world set against the particular features of the market in which it competes. In the early stages of a market’s growth, there are often few barriers to entry and establishing customer loyalty is all-important, but this changes as the market matures and customers become familiar with the products being sold. Markets also vary in their rate of technological change. At one extreme, firms experience a slow accumulation of minor changes, while at the other they face a constant stream of radical new technologies that change the basis of competition. Managers need to identify the core competences that an organization has or needs to compete effectively. Analysis of the separate activities in the value chain can assist in this respect: the firm’s cost position and its basis of differentiation from its competitors to add value being two main sources of competitive advantage.

It is a moot question to what extent strategy perspectives developed when the competitive landscape contained only offline firms are still relevant in the internet age. The Web allows firms to overcome barriers of time and distance, to serve large audiences more efficiently while also targeting groups with specific needs, and to reduce many operating costs. However, it has been argued (Kim 2004) that some things stay the same – such as the need to invest in a clear and viable strategy. On that basis, generic strategies of differentiation and cost leadership still apply to online business. Nonetheless, a focus strategy (involving targeting a narrow market segment, either by consumer group or geography) is not as relevant to online firms as it is to offline ones because the Web enables companies to reach both large and tightly defined companies very cheaply. Indeed, Kim (2004) argues that online strategies may be proposed as forming a continuum of cost leadership and differentiation as an integrated competitive strategy rather than as alternatives as they are sometimes conceived (think of how Ryanair and British Airways now compete in closer proximity to one another due to the online effect).

Marketing has been defined as a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want through creating and exchanging products and value with each other (Kotler and Keller 2006). Its basic function is to attract and retain customers at a profit.

In order to identify customers, and select the marketing mix that will satisfy customer demands and succeed in achieving organizational objectives, managers need information about consumer demands, competitor strategies and changes in the marketing environment. Marketing is, therefore, an information-intensive activity involving understanding buyer behavior. Aware of a need, consumers also search for information that will help them decide which product to buy.

A marketing channel decision for companies is whether to make purchases of their products available online. This channel allows easy gathering of data for marketing purposes. This decision has been embraced by many businesses such as easyjet and lastminute.com. Using electronic channels of distribution is a differentiation tool, on the grounds that consumers prefer online convenience and see this as a product feature. Indeed, for many companies, online product distribution is a complementary channel used to widen product access to geographically remote markets (e.g. supermarkets, which often offer discounts over store prices).

This point ties in more generally to issues around how existing physical businesses can take advantage of the opportunities that the Web offers. For example, Virgin managers were quick to pick up on the fact that their businesses were ideally suited to e-commerce in the early internet years. To exploit this potential, they decided to streamline their online services with a single Virgin web address. This general topic is one to which I would like to return (in particular, I have taken out a book from the library by Groucutt and Griseri entitled ‘Mastering e-business’ which I would like to work through).

However, in the interests of balance, next week I turn to my other discipline and field of interest: economics 101.

After some time looking across the surface of a few subjects; logic, statistics, game theory and the psychology of group dynamics, I have found a focus for the two subject areas of interest. Game theory is tough, very tough and the maths leaves me out of my depth in 3 out of four library loans. But I will persist with it as I am more and more convinced of its value to post-data visualisation work, which is at the centre of my studies this year. The subject which sits at the front of the workflow is becoming more clear, the concepts within statistics and logic provide a set of resources to aid in the formation and collection of data and information. This requires me to spend more and more time on Khan Academy brushing up on A-level (and post-A-level maths – ouch).

I know I shouldn’t be looking to understand these subjects completely, that would be impossible, but reaching conscious incompetence is equally challenging. I will attempt to give an overview of Game Theory on the next post.. (!)

(Note: I am posting this in advance to compensate for the fact that I will be attending a 2-day conference later this week and may not be able to contribute to the blog according to the normal schedule. In other words, I have done double reading this week and I am posting this one week in advance.)

Social perception starts off with very simple ideas. To start with, these theoretical model says people perceive the world with categorised ideas, which is known as schema. These schemas include categories for people, self, events, and roles. These schemas are fairly self-explanatory. For example, person schemas contain all the abstract conceptual models of personality trades or person prototypes that allows a person to categorise and make conclusions from past experience of interacting with other people who are in this category. A typical statement will be, ‘ so you are a farmer, I have met a farmer before and he was like these are like that ’.

Regarding self-schemas, is how we look at ourselves, our past experience, and how we relate to the world around us. Event schemas is concerned with the sequential organisation of events in everyday activities. These would include anticipating events, setting aims and objectives, and making plans. Finally, role schemas are concerned with behaviour and traits of people with specific rule positions in society.

Schemas and stereotype and prejudice

This is an interesting concept. If fundamentally the way we process and understand the world is by categorisation and the use of schemas as suggested, then generalisation is unavoidable. For example, we may have a role schema for a senior medical consultant, or we may have a role schema for a young teenager. Each of these roles would have different characteristics and personalities, and likely as these characters are mentioned, each and everyone of us would have formed a picture of what we think these characters would look, dress, and behave. Under this understanding, stereotyping is both normal and necessary.

However, stereotyping is generally thought of negatively. For example, racism is a form of stereotyping. Discrimination of any kind has an element of stereotyping. Commonly, schoolchildren are taught not to judge a book by its cover so to speak. This creates a necessary conflict between theoretical models, human behaviour and generally excepted moral norms. The question is, does this mean we have to natural tendency to discriminate?

Fortunately, this is not always the case. It is argued that categorising in itself does not automatically mean discrimination. It is largely dependent on and the attitude of the individual towards members of the category. In other words, does it make any difference whether people are categorised according to age, gender or nationality? People are being put into categories all the time. In most cases, categorisation has not caused any problems. However, problems arise when unfair or even aggressive attitude is shown towards a particular group.

Take skin colour for an example. In a country where both the black and white mix well and see no distinction between themselves, skin colour categorisation has no problem. However, in countries where the blacks are seen as born to be slaves, categorisation becomes a problem. Or in a company where all the women are considered less capable and dedicated than their male colleagues, categorisation becomes a problem. Therefore, it is argued that attitudes is the determining factor.

Moving on

I am thoroughly intrigued by the idea of schemas and perception and attitudes. I will be following this up and see what I can find about formation of attitudes.

Social cognition is all about the cognitive activities and processes in the context of social relationships. The broad categories in social cognition would include things like social perception, attitudes, attributions, self and identity, prejudice and ideology. In this blog, I will focus on the some of the theoretical foundations of social cognition. This will be followed by a separate post discussing some of the broad categories mentioned above.

There are several main ideas under cognitive models. One of which is how we can use metaphors to describe the cognitive processes. For example, these processes can be described as an information processor. Another metaphor also commonly used is a naive scientist model. Under this model, people I said to understand the world around them in the manner of a scientist. They make observations, to hypothesise, they observe again, and eventually coming to a conclusion. Although many other metaphors are also used, information processor and the naive scientist model are by far the most common.

Another approach is called perceptual cognitivism. Under this theory, nothing sensed by the person can be said to be true or absolute truth. Everything sensed by any person is a perception of reality. However, it is argued that given the enormous amount of stimulus around us, it will be impossible to process them all. Therefore, it was proposed that schemas exist to allow categorisation of different stimulus, which in turns allows the person to reduce the amount of processing. This is called mental representations.

Under identity theory, a distinction between personal identity and social identity is made. Fundamentally, personal identity is strictly personal and does not involve any other individuals. For example, statements such as ‘ I am hungry ’, ‘ I am hot ’ and ‘ I love swimming ’ are strictly rational and does not involve any other individuals. By contrast, statements such as ‘ I am Chinese ’and ‘ I am a web scientist ’ shows aspects of social identity. Social identity is concerned with how an individual views his or her own relationships with other members of the group.

It has been shown that where categorisation exist, typical expectation or stereotype within the category is often exaggerated while those that are counter stereotyped behaviour are often underestimated. It has also been known that depending on how the individual perceive he or she compares with the other members of the social group, he or she may evaluate him or herself differently.

Moving on

I will be summarising what I have learned about social perception and attitudes in the next blog.

Collaborating with other disciplines

Starting from the essential bibliography for this research, there are some elemental concepts that the readings from Frederick Brooks (1995), Peter Harris  (2008) and Brian Wilson (2001).  The methodological process to undertake this project will be very important.  The interdisciplinary quality will bring big challenges in the managerial aspect of the project. At this early stage, I believe the project being an intrinsic part of Web Science will invite collaborative work from Computer Science, Museology, Business Management and Visual Communication among others.

Developing Software?

I will argue that the project will contain a product similar to a computer software product.  This product I believe will be develop similar to software, by this I mean a “collection of programs and the algorithms they represent” (Brookshear, 2010).

The complexity within the development of any kind of software of application requires an understanding of the methodology and the environment in which these products are created. It is also important to learn how to communicate with the team and how to make the team communicate with each other as a managerial task (Brooks, 1995). In the development of software, Brooks (1995) defines some essential tasks:

• Planning
• Coding
• Component test and early system test
• System test, all components in hand

Its about time!

It is important to know how to calculate the time needed for the development of the project and the time needed for each one of the tasks, not only for the implementation of these digital tools, but also for all the research tasks of the project.  If there are some ‘hold backs’ within the project, Brooks (1995) explains that bringing more man work will not only be the solutions due to the tasks required for the development of software.  Therefore it is important to analyse and understand all the different solutions applied within the Computer Science discipline and all the other disciplines involved.

It is recommended to use as little people as possible for the construction of a ‘soft system’. This is due to the managerial problems that big teams create. But sometimes small teams won’t be able to cope with the workload. Based on this, I will argue that it is also important to plan correctly the size of the teams in order for the research project to flow smoothly and with minimum communicative problems.

Assembling the team

It is my perception that is important to understand how a big system team is built in order to continue or to blend the methodological process into that work structure.

Although there are other organizational proposals, the one that seems more traditional is where we find a chief programmer defining the original program and codes and even testing the software. Followed by a co-pilot working as a second hand. There are other team members like the administrator, the editor, secretaries, program clerk, toolsmith, language lawyer and the tester (Brooks, 1995).

Problem solving

The main objective of a program or software is to solve a problem (Brooks, 1995; Wilson, 2001; Harris, 2008).  For this it is essential to define the problem.  What is this set of tools or applications going to solve. Wilson (2001), defines two types of problems: hard problems and soft problems. “The design of a piece of software to meet a given specification is a hard problem (as long as the specification is ‘a given’) whereas the specification of information requirements to meet business needs is a soft problem…”.  The perception of what is a problems is also important.  Being a multidisciplinary project means that what seems to be a problem, it could not mean anything to the person working in the museum or the audience or even the cultural heritage manager.  To solve this, Wilson (2001) suggest that instead of trying to solve a problem, it would be more helpful to try to solve the situation that is creating the problem. For this he proposes the next methodology.

1. Define the situation that is problematic
2. Express the situation (top mapping, rich picture, etc.)
3. Select concepts that may be relevant
4. Assemble concepts into an intellectual structure
5. Use this structure to explore the situation
6. Define changes to the situation (i.e problems to be tackled)
7. Implement change processes

Its all about the good manners.

Both Wilson (2001) and Brooks (1995) express the importance of the way to communicate with other team members.  The ‘hierarchical’ level of communication. During the production of this research project (and any other), which I completely agree is to break the ‘tree’ system in which one person is the boss and the people below are reporting or working for this person.  The responsibilities have been already defined and in the communicative structure, everybody is allowed to participate and to provide solutions to the situation problem solving.

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I pick up from where I left off last week – in particular, consideration of the field of management studies from the perspective of an organization (to be managed) as an ‘open system’. This conceptualization implies that various sub-systems should be considered from a management engagement viewpoint: the internal (towards maintenance of the system) and external (towards the competitive position of the system). One of the challenges under management theory is how to balance these competing values upon management time: in particular, how to trade-off the encouragement of flexibility and change, while still retaining control to ensure employees act appropriately.

In returning to the main research focus – how the Web/Internet is changing the nature of competition between businesses – an open system emphasizes how objectives, plans and solutions must adjust rapidly to changes in the external environment. These changes can come from a variety of sources. Boddy gives examples of the increasingly global nature of the economic system at large, deregulation in certain industries, the closer integration between many different areas of business (such as telecoms and entertainment), increasing consumer expectations and computer-based information systems. Many modern-day organizations operate in non-linear systems in which small changes are amplified through many interactions with other variables so that the eventual effect is unpredictable. In other words, management decisions should be grounded in the external context in which the organization is situated and the long-term consequences of a management decision can be majorly disrupted by circumstances in the outside world in an unforeseen manner.

Boddy goes on to introduce the idea of the competitive environment (defined as “the industry-specific environment comprising the organization’s customers, suppliers and competitors” or “micro-environment”). He distinguishes it from the “general environment (defined as the “political, economical, social, technological, (natural) environment and legal factors that affect all organizations” or “macro-environment”), as illustrated below:

Together, they make up the “external environment” or “external context”. Forces in the external environment become part of an organization’s agenda when internal or external stakeholders pay attention to them and act to place them on the management agenda. In turn, these demand a response (see next week for more on management theory related to the type of response).

In terms of analyzing the competitive environment, Porter put forward a theory of five forces which most directly affect management and the ability to earn an acceptable return. These are also found in economic theory and competition law: the ability of new competitors to enter the industry, the threat of substitutable products, the bargaining power of buyers, the bargaining power of suppliers and the rivalry amongst existing competitors. This analysis can also be applied at an industry level to determine overall profitability, being factors which influence prices, costs and investment requirements, as illustrated below:

To give one example, technological change can affect the proximity of competition between products which in turn can constrain a firm’s ability to raise price (Boddy gives the example of YouTube threatening established media companies and online recruitment threatening the revenues that newspapers receive from job advertisements).

Where management differs from economics is the nature of the response. Through analyzing the forces in the competitive environment, managers aim to seize opportunities, counter threats and generally improve their position relative to their firm’s competitors in the future. Like economics, however, management also looks at trends, such as the state of the economy which is a major influence on consumer spending and capital investment plans. Sociological trends can also be relevant. For example, many consumer businesses are changing direction from a strategy aimed at mass market towards developing much small brands directed at small, distinctive groups of consumers. This reflects the growing diversity of the population, with many personal and individual preferences more apparent (such as through the Web). Again, in turn, this shift has severe implications for media that relied on advertising from mass market advertising. There are also many examples of digital technologies affecting established markets (such as DVDs, MP3s, broadband services offering delivering online content, VoIP and digital photography).

In summary, critical reflection on business environment conditions is essential to the type of management strategy adopted. Next week I turn to theories of generic management activities of planning and decision-making, including strategy and marketing (to lead into discussions of how e-marketing has revolutionized the business world).

What is sociology? Sociology is the systematic, sceptical and critical study of the social. It studies the way people do things together. [..] it becomes a form of consciousness, a way of thinking, a critical way of seeing the social. Sociology, a global introduction, Macionis and Plummer. As I was reading Chapter 6. Groups, organisations and the rise of the network society, Manuel Castells‘s ideas about the network society and the Information Age (this is the name of his 3 books on this topic) were described: people, cities, businesses and states are nodes in networks through which information, money and people flow. These flows make time become a perpetual present and space becomes global, being everywhere at the same time. A guide to this trilogy is David Bell’s Cyberculture Theorists which discusses the ideas of Castells and Haraway.

Haraway, the other theorist besides Castell discussed by Bell, is a professor at the University of California in the History of Consciousness. She published in 1985 a cyborg manifesto suggesting enhancing our human bodies to transgress the boundaries of nature. She is recently interested in the links between humans and animals.

A quick browsing through the Cyberculture Theorists google book http://goo.gl/yS4n1 brought me to Carl Popper‘s World 3 about which I read last year. Popper’s elegant philosophy explains the world on 3 levels:

World 1: the world of physical things
World 2: the world of mental events and objects
World 3: the world of abstract objects produced by the mind such as scientific theories

Bell states that world 3 is sometimes referred to when cyberspace is discussed. Cyberspace is a term coined by William Gibson in his novel Neuromancer. In this novel cyberspace is entered as disembodied consciousness by joining the network which is the battleground over ownership and access to data, much like today’s internet where Google, Facebook and other players are crunching user data to provide the best sponsored ads.

People like to spread information and social networks, microblogging  helps them do that easily through webpages like Twitter or status updates on Facebook. For example, 100 billion updates are processed each day on Facebook. People care what others think, more than what Google thinks. This is why rating appeared recently on Wikipedia and that is what the Facebook Like button is all about. Socialnomics, Erik Qualman

The Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, our common consciousness is the one leading us in this connected, common, social direction.

By selectively reading through these books, I think that the most comprehensive is the Sociology book. I was particularly interested in the chapters about the future of society and the internet. It contains valuable information regarding these topics. I have the feeling they are all predicting the future. We don’t really realize where we are heading, but the change is already here, we are already this cybersociety.

I also read 3 chapters on Social Marketing (Marketing to the Social Web – Larry Weber), but I couldn’t find some valuable information, something that Qualman didn’t mention in his book – the main idea emphasized is what I already mentioned in my previous post – that the new marketer’s perspective should take into account the customer,  he should be an aggregator and not a broadcaster.

I will keep on reading about Social Marketing and Sociology.