INF5220 Qualitative Research Methods

UNIVERSITY OF OSLO Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences

INF5220 Qualitative Research Methods Spring 2006 (intensive course) Initial draft for PhD upgrade document. Working title: Making scientific management more scientific: On the application of action research in quality management and process improvement

Written by: Petter gland Delivered: June 15th, 2006

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Table of Contents
1 Introduction................................................................................................................. 3 1.1 Background ......................................................................................................... 3 1.2 Research setting .................................................................................................. 3 1.3 Research problems .............................................................................................. 4 1.4 Intended readership and expected results ........................................................... 5 2 Related research .......................................................................................................... 6 2.1 Various types of action research ......................................................................... 6 2.2 Problems of action research ................................................................................ 6 2.3 Action research and the Shewhart cycle ............................................................. 6 2.4 Action research and systems thinking................................................................. 7 2.5 Action research and statistical thinking .............................................................. 8 2.6 Flow .................................................................................................................... 8 3 Methodology ............................................................................................................. 10 3.1 Population and data........................................................................................... 10 3.2 Apparatus and materials.................................................................................... 10 3.3 Procedures......................................................................................................... 11 4 Current status ............................................................................................................ 12 4.1 The COBOL programmers at NTAX ............................................................... 12 4.2 The software documentation process at NTAX................................................ 13 4.3 The NTAX management information system................................................... 13 4.4 Quality management outside NTAX ................................................................ 14 5 Future plans............................................................................................................... 15 5.1 Philosophy of science ....................................................................................... 15 5.2 Knowledge management................................................................................... 16 5.3 Process improvement ........................................................................................ 17 5.4 Information infrastructures ............................................................................... 18 5.5 Next version of upgrade document ................................................................... 18 References......................................................................................................................... 21

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1 Introduction
The activity of quality control and process improvement is very similar to doing research, and the main drive behind my PhD is how to improve the process of quality management by making the process gradually more and more similar to academic research.

1.1 Background
To my knowledge, there are two major issues that seem to put the development and maintenance of quality management systems in danger: The traditional way of installing systems top-down is not a robust way of introducing a new way of thinking, and such TQM-programs often fail. People performing quality management are seldom good at taking their own medicine, i.e. they are not good at controlling and improving their own processes in a systematic and scientific fashion.

In 1996 I had been working on a mismanaged software development water-fall project for some years. By chance I got hold of Kevin Kellys Out of control (1994), and my perspective on quality control and software management changed completely. From then on I started thinking of software development as managing complex adaptive systems (CAS) and of the programmer as an integrated part of the system being developed. As it is difficult to plan and measure progress when following a CAS approach, it struck me that the best way of monitoring and improving my own progress would be by thinking of the process as of doing scientific research. In 2000 I tried applying the same methodology for organizing quality management at the Norwegian Directorate of Taxes, and read the management theories of Taylor, Shewhart, Deming and others who saw (quality) management as a way of doing research. In 2005 I was given the opportunity to work more closely with academia to develop the method of doing action research in ones own organization.

1.2 Research setting

My research is funded by NTAX, and according to my contract with NTAX the research is expected to contribute to adding to international quality management certifications. In writing the PhD thesis Im drawing upon past experiences from The Norwegian Meteorological Institute (DNMI) and The Norwegian Directorate of Taxes (NTAX). I also continue to perform some minor quality control experiments at NTAX in order to test and experiment with new insights evolving during the PhD research period. I also plan to carry out some experiments and evaluations in respect of how quality management is carried out at the University of Oslo, and I also have a second supervisor at Det Norske Veritas that may give me access to certain aspects of how quality management is carried out at the organization.

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1.3 Research problems

In my experience, what seems to be the best way to deal with (1) the lack of robustness in top-down development of TQM projects and (2) the lack of rigor in how quality management is being carried out, is to research the problem of improving the quality improvement processes that are being managed within the organization. In ISO 9000:2000 and other bodies of quality management knowledge, such processes are often referred to as plan-do-check-act cycles (PDCA-cycles), an industrial parallel to what is referred to as action research (AR) in academia. What I see as the key issue for improving TQM programs is to improve the way AR is designed and implemented. I describe the research questions as follows: Is it possible to use the framework of total quality management for producing academic research? If possible, how does one implement research in a simple and efficient manner?

I see four major aspects that motivates seeing process improvement from the perspective of action research: 1) The PDCA-cycle and similar cycles for managing continuous improvement in organizations is similar to Kurt Lewins action research cycle. Taylor (1911) wanted to develop a scientific way of managing organizations. Shewhart (1938) saw strong resemblences between performing quality control and testing hypoteses in empirical research. As quality management is about predicting processes and cataloguing errors in order to improve the system, the aim of action research and TQM in an organization is similar. In TQM new knowledge must be relevant and useful for improving the organization, in action research new knowledge must be relevant and useful for academia. 2) Even if an organization were to adopt the formula of action research rather than TQM, literature on action research reveals that one of the major problems with the paradigm is the problem of making interesting theoretical contributions when solving interesting practical problems or solving interesting practical problems when trying to make interesting theoretical contributions. Adding insight on how to do academic research within the TQM framework could consequently add to the understanding of how to succeed with action research. 3) One of the aims of TQM is to learn from other organizations, e.g. through use of benchmarks. Making it possible for the organization to tap into the continuously evolving body of knowledge of academic management theory could be of practical use for the organization. 4) The peering review quality control of academic research seems like a relevant mechanism for applying quality control on the people responsible for organizational quality management.

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1.4 Intended readership and expected results

Although people working with quality management may be isolated in organizations, there are journals and conferences for sharing insights. Personally Im a member of the American Sociey for Quality and meet annually with the Norwegian forum for Quality Professionals (QUALIS). Apart from wanting to contribute to the Information Systems research community, where both AR and Management Information Systems (MIS) such as quality management systems are important issues, I have the particular audience of quality management professionals in mind as an intended readers. Figure 1 illustrates the five phases of doing AR and how each cycle in the method is expected to add clearer insight as scope is narrowed down with each iteration. The expected results of the research will be an interpretation of the AR model in the context of doing quality management. This will be done by adding guidelines and structure on how to apply the AR model in an efficient manner.

Figure 1. Action research spiral (Routio, 2005). There are two problems often associated with action research: Failing in terms of research: AR becomes too focused on action, thus producing not too interesting research. Failing in terms of action: Organizational change and improvements break down the moment the AR is completed.

It is the aim of the PhD research to add insights on how to minimize these two risks when implementing AR for doing quality management.

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2 Related research
The term action research seems to have been first used by Kurt Lewin (1946), to describe a cyclic approach for doing research that includes planning, acting, observing and reflecting. Due to various issues, such as problems related to objectivity and repeatability, there have been some controversy in academia as to whether AR is a framework for doing science.

2.1 Various types of action research

Various styles of action research has evolved, such as Canonical Action Research (CAR), Participatory Action Research (PAR) and various styles where the number of steps in the cycles and the implications of each step varies (Robson, 1993: pp. 438-443). The aim of my thesis is to investigate aspects of AR that may prove useful from the point of view of quality control, and thus I use this chapter to indicate some of the aspects that seem to relate to Demings philosophy of quality management (Deming, 1986; 1992). Yet I have not been able to classify and map the different types AR, but in order to deal more deeply with the differences and similarities between the Lewin-inspired action research and the Deming-inspired process improvement style, more literature research is needed.

2.2 Problems of action research

Due to problems with traditional (positivist) research in organizations, Susman and Evered (1978) argue the need for action research and suggest strict formal procedures for doing action research in a controllable and repeatable manner. Whether it is possible to put action research into the Webern iron cage of making it compliant with the ISO 9001:2000 requirements is something I have not seen being asked yet, although this is an idea I try to follow at the Norwegian Directorate of Taxes (SKD, 2006). There seems to be two major problems in AR that we have noticed in several books and articles: AR consists of Action and Research, but often AR projects ends up as either Action or Research. The purpose of the researcher in an AR team may be to help some change management program, but often all change ends when the research ends. Creating sustainable change is difficult.

I need to do more focused literature research on AR in order to classify problems and try to figure out to which extent I believe the TQM approach to AR might be helpful.

2.3 Action research and the Shewhart cycle

Action Research (AR), as originally conceptualized by Lewin, operates within an epistemology that links knowing with doing or knowing with change. Originally the research paradigm was made to fit with Lewins force field theory for obtaining change,

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INF5220 Qualitative Research Methods but there are now different schools of AR each defining the ideology and methodology of the approach in slightly different ways. One way of creating a fusion between AR and TQM, may perhaps be to follow the epistemology of Shewhart and Deming, looking at AR from the perspective of American pragmatism. The action research approach in TQM, as defined as the PDCA-cycle in the ISO 9000:2000 standards, and the Shewhart-cycle by Deming (1986), looks as illustrated in the diagram below.

Figure 2. The action research model for quality improvement (Deming, 1986).

2.4 Action research and systems thinking

Lilienfelds ideological analysis of systems theory (1978) is interesting. He links aspects of power and hierarchy with the systems view of the world, but he does not take complex adaptive systems into account, and neither does he talk about second order cybernetics where the observer is a part of the system to be observed.

Figure 3. Illustration of the organization as a system (Deming, 1986). The main focus in Demings The New Economy (1992) is the view of the organization as a system, and, as I understand it, what he means by a system is that what he illustrates Spring 2006 Page 7 of 24

INF5220 Qualitative Research Methods in the figure above. Seeing artifacts and people flowing through the processes, implies an ontology that makes statistical thinking suited as a standard epistemology. Checkland (1981) has written on systems thinking and action research. The way I understand him, is that he manages to produce an ontology similar to that of ActorNetwork Theory (ANT) by including the observer into the system that is being observed. If the researcher is manipulating the reality of the people being researched, we get into the situation of a (post-modern) self-referential system as basis for ontology and epistemology.

2.5 Action research and statistical thinking

While Lewins theories of action research and organizational change were based on the metaphor of mathematical models for explaining force fields in physics, my impression is that action research is mostly conducted as a way of combining qualitative research and action, although I get the impression that quantitative methods may be included. The Shewhart-cycle, on the other hand, has statistical experiments in the organization as the starting point, but may also include qualitative studies if this is appropriate for the understanding of the processes to be investigated. As pointed out by Gitlow (1992), even though Deming was a statistician, often he did not apply numbers at all. Statistical thinking may be more powerful than statistical practice. These insights seem to be similar to what we see in people like John Urry trying to explain social phenomena through use of mathematical concepts of fluids and dynamic systems theory, although strictly from a metaphorical point of view. When Deming talks about statistical process control, this is done for the purpose of investigating whether a process is stable or not. Normally the process is expected to be stable, and statistical methods are applied for collecting data and finding out whether there are signals indicating the process is not stable. The question of stability and instability plays an important role in the development of complexity theory, such as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), where a different systems approach may be used for evolving systems or networks of systems when traditional systems engineering methods are less efficient. CAS may also prove to be an interesting design strategy for building quality management systems. Goldstein (1994) has suggested some ways of doing action research in unstable organizations, applying the Lewins standard framework, but rather thinking along models of CAS than those of force fields for gaining insights on what may produce sustainable change.

2.6 Flow
Deming (1992) summarized his quality management philosophy to consist of (1) appreciation for a system, (2) understanding variation, (3) theory of knowledge, and (4) psychology. In the subsections above, I have addressed his first three issues. The points

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INF5220 Qualitative Research Methods he makes about psychology, strikes me as similar to those of Csikszentmihalyi (1990), focusing on the inner motivation of people in order to achieve high quality output.

Figure 4. Conditions for optimal subjective performance (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). There may be some insights on the meaning of quality in books like Computers in context (Dahlbom & Mathiassen, 1993), perhaps adding more to the understanding of epistemological and ontological issues for understanding process improvement through the process of action research.

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3 Methodology
The main purpose of this chapter is describe how I plan to investigate the research AR in a systematic manner, making it possible for other researchers to check and repeat the procedures in order to verify the results or criticize the approach.

3.1 Population and data

When investigating a method rather than investigating people or a phenomenon, it seems to me the natural perspective should be the perspective of hermeneutics, i.e. trying to interpret the various writings on AR and TQM in hermeneutic circles that are supposed to gradually converge into a theory, a framework or a model for applying AR in a TQM context. However, for testing whether this model will be able to improve the quality and efficiency of implementing and maintaining TQM in organizations, not only literature studies will be done, but also practical tests, evaluating people doing AR in a TQM context for investigating what are the problems they are struggling with and how can we improve the framework for doing AR in order to solve of compensate such problems. Furthermore, in addition to carrying out experiments, the relevance of AR in a TQM setting should also be investigated through interviewing people in the TQM community. Do the TQM practitioners see them selves as researchers, like Taylor, Shewhart and Deming did, or do they think of themselves more like engineers or use other metaphors for understanding their own work? The population to be studied in this research is the mathematical set S of all possible ways to construct a cyclic process improvement program. Lewins original concept of AR and Demings PDCA cycle could represent two points x and y in S. The quest would be to identify what relevant structures that may turn S into a topological space and then to find a method z that satisfies the criteria of being an optimal or close to optimal AR strategy for doing TQM.

3.2 Apparatus and materials

As we want to describe the space of action research cycles in a mathematical or semimathematical language, the soft systems thinking approach of Checkland (1981) seems like a good starting model for building ideas. Choosing hermeneutics as a research framework, the ontology consists of how concepts are related and the corresponding epistemology will be that of trying to attain a subjective understanding and to try to convey this understanding through the use of language and signs. As a mental model evolves, showing how the various ideas and concepts fit together, the model will be challenged through thought-experiments and probably also by real experiments in organizations, in order to check whether the new insights will result in major changes in how the action research projects are designed and implemented. Spring 2006 Page 10 of 24

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Further testing of the ideas will then be done by interviewing action research experts and quality control experts, in order to identify similarities and differences between what the new model suggests and what we observe is being done in practice.

3.3 Procedures
As a part of the aspect of testing the new AR models in the organization, a typical way of installing ISO 9001:2000 through AR could be to have the action researcher define flowcharts, measurements, statistics and procedures for his own part of the system, and then gradually spin a co-web of TQM around the people and units he is researching, resulting in the ISO 9001:2000 practices remaining and improving even after the AR is completed. In the diagram below is an illustration of the hermeneutic circle as I plan to use it for gradually increasing in-depth understanding of the AR method.

Figure 5. Hermeneutic circle (Grassie, 1994). The point of the illustration is not to explain the principles of hermeneutics, nor to say that I have chosen one hermeneutical approach rather than another, but simply to point out that hermeneutics can be thought of as a procedure for managing meaning through life and text. In other words, in order to avoid confusion between the two scientific paradigms, I want a graphical illustration that says that AR is the object for research (figure 1) and the hermeneutic circle is the method of research (figure 5).

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4 Current status
The thesis is currently expected to be comprised of 5-6 papers, addressing various issues related to action research in the context of quality management and process improvement. So far Ive written one paper on COBOL programming for the IRIS 29 conference in Helsingr 12.-15. August 2006. While still collecting data for further updates on the COBOL paper, Im also collecting data as part of an experiment on software documentation. Wanting to see how these two separate quality processes can be linked, After than I plan to look at some high-level part of the NTAX management system, and Im also planning to interview some quality management professionals.

4.1 The COBOL programmers at NTAX

Ive written an IRIS article on the COBOL programmers, but its a problematic paper because, even though the empirical data may be interesting, the paper is not clear on what research questions it is trying to solve. The focus of the paper is on the sociology of COBOL programmers, managers and quality management. Rather than problemizing the use of action research, it serves more as an example of how the action research approach was used for gaining insights on programmer psychology by seeing how and why they reacted to being part of a SPI process. The process of writing the paper has been very useful for learning about writing in general, discussing ideas, submitting, getting reviews, reviewing other papers and understanding various practical issues related to be a research scientist. There are many ideas in the COBOL paper, but the major reason for making it problematic is that it is written from the perspective of the action researcher inside the NTAX organization, researching the sociology of the IT department in order to better understand whether the COBOL quality management system is under control and find out what to do in order to make it work even better. This is, however, not the same problem that Im trying to address through this thesis. In this thesis I want to look at how action researchers (like the person in NTAX) are applying the method of action research, and to draw insights from this to understand and improve action research as a TQM methodology. If I were to follow the path of the current COBOL paper, I would be writing a thesis on programmer psychology (or programmer sociology), not a thesis on quality management and process improvement. Nevertheless, as Ive now written a piece of action research on COBOL programmers, I could now use this paper as one of several papers of people applying action research for achieving process improvement and thus try to generalize and learn something from it. My vision for this PhD research is to make quality practitioners in all organizations into action researchers, contributing papers similar to the COBOL paper, to be judged by peer reviews for relevant journals and conferences.

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4.2 The software documentation process at NTAX

In the case of the COBOL programmers, I had seven years of data, showing continuous improvement. For the documentation process I have about five years of observations, but unlike the programmers and their managers, who all felt unhappy being monitored by their own standards and own measurement programs, the psychology or sociological patterns of the people writing technical documentation is different. The people writing technical documentation are also responsible for running the programs made by the programmers, and they get very little feedback for what they are doing, except when there are breakdowns or problems. Being monitored and measured against documentation standards has been well received both by the people writing the documentation and their managers. The results of the measurements show that they are good and improving. Everybody are happy. The Hawthorn effect seems to be working nicely. Given a more positive environment for exploring the methods of quality control, my aim has been to gradually remove myself from the part of the quality control by assessing others doing quality control rather than doing the control myself. The measurements in this case is increasingly becoming meta-measurements, checking to which extent the quality control within this environment (how the people are checking and measuring each other) seems to work as a stable process. While I have just started writing a paper on this, I need to figure out how I can address the population of people doing quality control rather than the people doing the actual work.

4.3 The NTAX management information system

The two processes Ive discussed so far are interesting in illustrating problems and aspects of establishing quality control routines, but the processes are rather remote to the core business processes of NTAX. In order to measure what counts, I need to look at the indicators that the Department of Finance are using for monitoring NTAX. Having previously focused on this from a practical point of view, I have twelve years of data showing the annual inflow of taxes and the outflow of NTAX production costs. As one should expect this quotient to decrease over time, due to efficiency increases at NTAX, or at least remain stable, I have used this indicator as a total business index. However, as this may be sensitive data (even though it is publicly accessible), Im not sure as to whether I should focus on this index or find other indices that might be less sensitive. Once again, it is the action research process that I want to address, and not the object that the action researcher is studying. However, in order to achieve success in quality management it is generally recommended that one tries focusing on improving processes that matters to those who are responsible for the quality of the organization (e.g. Oakland, 1999: 21-43; ISO, 2000b: chapter 5). How to select targets for process improvement seems to be relevant and interesting question when performing action research. Based on

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INF5220 Qualitative Research Methods my personal experience, I would say that this is perhaps the most important and challenging questions of all AR questions in the context of TQM.

4.4 Quality management outside NTAX

Working as a quality management professional, Ive subscribed to various quality management journals, participated in conferences, visited other organizations, spoken with other quality professionals, participated in electronic discussion forums etc., in order to learn and share experiences on how to improve organizational performance. Investigating the population of quality managers, what should one expect to find? Deming (1986: 469-470) expects the following:
What would be the minimum qualifications for this job? (1) equivalent of a masters degree in statistical theory; (2) experience in industry or in government; (3) authorship of published papers in theory and in practice of statistical methodology; (4) demonstrated ability to teach and to lead top management toward constant improvement of quality and productivity. He himself will constantly improve his education.

Although I have not performed any formal investigations, I have only met a few people who seem to fit this description, although none so far in Norway. In fact, most of the people I meet as quality managers for NTAX subcontractors, at quality management conferences or elsewhere, seem unfit for quality management according to the Deming criteria. Not expecting to learn much about quality management from interviewing quality managers, one could nevertheless learn something about what quality managers tend to see as the most challenging aspects of improving organizations, what has been most successful, what has been least successful etc. In august I plan to participate in the annual Norwegian conference for EOQ certified quality managers. I am now in the process of planning questionnaires and interviews. I am also hope to be meeting with my second supervisor at Det Norske Veritas as quickly as possible, in order to ask whether he can put me in contact with the internal quality management at DNV for discussing the research project. Being a PhD student makes me a part of academia and consequently an observer of various initiatives and processes aimed at improving the PhD process and the quality of research. As the approach for doing so seems far more consistent with the ideas of Deming and TQM than what I have observed in industry, it seems like a golden opportunity to try to document and research how this part of the UiO quality management system works.

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5 Future plans
As a part of the PhD studies, I have planned for a theoretical curriculum consisting of four courses. I have used these courses as structure for this final chapter.

5.1 Philosophy of science

For me, the most useful aspects of the course INF5220, apart from the practical aspects, were the issues related to the philosophy of science. Talking about systems thinking, Checkland (1981: 101) makes some comments on the observer making systems descriptions that seems equally relevant for a researcher building theory regardless of framework:
Our observer may have various motives for making his systems description, and the latter will reflect the nature of his motivation. He may be motivated by curiosity, aiming only to observe and describe in order to ascertain whether clear and intelligible descriptions are possible in systems terms. or he may want to make use of a systems description in some kind of problem-solving. Or he may want to bring about changes in a part of reality, his motive may be one of design. These motivations reflect three different roles for the observer. he may be a natural historian, describing and classifying, a manager or an engineer.

From my current understanding of how action research is being used as a framework for research within the IS group at UiO, I get the impression that it is mostly implemented with an ontology corresponding to how a natural historian would see the world, rather than through the lens of a manager or an engineer. When applying the action research paradigm to total quality control, there are similar consideration to take. Should we select and ontology and epistemology corresponding to that of a manager, as Deming (1986; 1992) does, or to that of an engineer, as Juran (1964) does, or that of a natural historian, as Crosby (1979) does. Each of these three quality gurus see the problems and issues of quality management differently, and offer different solutions. However, the different approaches may be of different use depending on what kind of problem is currently at focus. If it is a problem of enrolling people into an ideology of quality then the storytelling manners of Crosby may be the right approach. It if is action and design of the quality management system that is important, then Juran may be the greater authority, while Deming may have the best insights when it comes to issues of management, prediction and control. While Deming, Juran and Crosby are always mentioned in introductory courses and books on quality management, representing different approaches to quality, sometimes indicating that their ways may be similar to that of a scientist, an engineer and a salesperson, Ive never seen anybody going more deeply into their respective epistemologies and indicating how the different approaches may be useful in various iterations of the action research, depending on what of problem one is trying to solve.

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INF5220 Qualitative Research Methods Rather to the contrary, I get the impression that some people (e.g. Avison, Lau, Myers & Nielsen, 1999) see academia as a war between qualitative and quantitative research and that AR is one of the weapons used by the qualitative researchers. This, however, strikes me as contradictory to the original ideas of Lewin (1946), where he talks about the difficulty of progressing if we do not have benchmarks for measuring progress. Burrell and Morgan (1979) has written an influential book on how various research paradigms add different perspectives on problems and there is no true perspective on anything before we understand the intentions of the observer. To which extent scientists performing action research are changing their epistemologies corresponding to the problems they investigate, or whether they are brainwashed into seeing the world from a singular perspective, is something I think would be interesting looking into, both from the perspective of quality management practitioners and people doing action research in academia.

5.2 Knowledge management

In the first report I made for the INF5190 course, I tried to understand the KM concepts from the perspective of TQM, and thus focusing on explicit knowledge rather than on the tacit knowledge which was what the course mainly focused on. Through this perspective, however, I gain a very clear understanding of the difference between data, information and knowledge, linking the KM concepts with the information theory of Shannon and Weaver (1949) and the philosophy of science as used in quality control by people like Shewhart (1938) and Deming (1986; 1992). In the next report I prepared for the course, I tried to figure out how Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995) and Kuhn (1962) both used Polanyis concept of tacit knowledge in what seemed to be natural interpretations, and yet they seemed to about two completely different things. The un-articulate knowledge in performing something like swimming or riding a bike is different from the un-articulate knowledge in a mythology, making people behave in accordance with certain values and beliefs. What I suggested in the report, is that there seems to be need for another dimension in addition to the line between tacit and explicit. In retrospect I wonder if this additional dimension is what defines the Burrell and Morgan matrix (1979), but I have not yet come across any explicit discussion of this. On the contrary, to me it seems like people in KM literature are confusing the concepts of tacit knowledge in action and ideas. However I need to consider more carefully what consequences (the so what) in KM when these issues are confused before considering whether it might be relevant planning for an article on knowledge management. A third idea struck me shortly before the exam, and that relates to how the word knowledge is used in KM. Rather than restricting the use of the word to justified true beliefs or the epistemology of Popper, Kuhn or similar, when it comes to the problem of managing knowledge, knowledge appears to be any idea, belief or behaviour. In fact, the whole of KM looks very much like memetics (Brodie, 1996) from this perspective,

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INF5220 Qualitative Research Methods an insight that made it remarkably more easy to understand the problems and various solutions to knowledge management (creation, codification and transfer of knowledge). Im not currently aware of to which extent there is an established relationship between memetics and KM in academic literature. Before going deeper into this, I should need to look more into role of KM in TQM, i.e. how does KM or memetics seem relevant for managing knowledge about errors, knowledge about problem, knowledge about how to solve problems etc. To which extent would it for instance be interesting to study the similarities of Crosbys ideas on culture and motivation (1979) and what Dawkins (1976) has to say on brainwashing and religious beliefs? There may be potentially many things to discuss within the IS community here, as there is a strong focus on communities of practice, globalization, information infrastructures, situated learning, culture etc., but I need to see how the possible insights could relate to action research before looking more deeply into this.

5.3 Process improvement

Although I havent taken this course yet, Ive gone through some of the INF5180 lecture notes and read some of the course literature. Much of it relates to quality management. It uses CMMI as a framework for discussing processes improvement, and it seems to place CMMI in the context of scientific management and total quality management. In other words, this is the course that corresponds more or less directly to my current way of thinking, and it uses the same models and methods that I would use for improving processes. I do not expect many new insights. It could be interesting to try to contribute something to the theory being discussed here, but the way of designing waterfall projects for installing process improvement systems etc is not the way I prefer to work and neither is it a way I believe is a particularly good way of working with these issues. Current experience from how DNV is trying to aid NTAX in getting certified to the ISO 9001:2000 standard, and my experience with the Wipro CMM assessment, tells me that the traditional top-down way of installing a quality management system through the use of some great project is not the best way of doing it. It may perhaps be a good way of getting the infrastructure for running the quality management system, but it doesnt take into account that it is difficult to know how to design quality indicators and know what to measure. As I start gaining insights into the AR process, viewing the organization from a CAS perspective (e.g. Battram, 1996; Axelrod, 2000) could prove a good way of seeing how one should think strategically for aligning the development of the Management Information System (MIS) with the hostile and continuously changing environment. Insights or ideas from the information infrastructure literature may be useful (e.g. Ciborra et al, 2000). Im not yet sure to which extent Lean Management (Womack & Jones, 2003; Liker, 2004) will be a part of the course, but if there is one major management fad to contain

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INF5220 Qualitative Research Methods some very good ideas for improving quality management and implementing the Deming perspective on quality, it seems to be this one (cf. Seddon, 1997).

5.4 Information infrastructures

INF5210 is another course I havent taken yet, but as Ive read some of the literature that is used in the course, I feel I have a sufficient working knowledge to know what the theory is about. In fact, some of the most insightful comments Ive read on II are the review comments Hanseth and Lyttainen received when trying to have his latest II article published in ISR, asking about how II relates to CAS and whether it makes sense to link ANT with CAS (as the authors try to do). In a recent PhD trial lecture (Nielsen, 2006), the candidate talked on the relationship between information systems and information infrastructures, viewing information systems from the perspective of general systems theory (e.g. Lilienfeld, 1978; Checkland, 1981), characterizing systems thinking on one hand and information infrastructure thinking on the other. While being an interesting presentation, I think he was basically wrong in seeing the structures as different. In my current understanding of the concepts, information infrastructures is a special case of CAS, applied on information systems, and CAS in itself is a part of the systems theory. However, there are those who disagree (e.g. Stacey et al, 2000), seeing complexity thinking (e.g. CAS) as radically different from systems thinking. I need to go deeper into their arguments, but my initial feeling is that Stacey and the information infrastructure people are either not very well read on systems thinking or are (deliberately?) misunderstanding some of the core ideas of systems theory. Due to my critical comments and interest in systems theory, I have been asked by Nielsen to contribute on a paper on information systems and information infrastructures. Im not critical of information infrastructure as a concept per se, however. In the PhD proposal, I focused on the complexity of large bureaucracies, such as the Norwegian Directorate of Taxes, and how Information Infrastructure theory (or Complex Adaptive Systems, CAS) might be a good approach for a robust quality management system (QMS) design.

5.5 Next version of upgrade document

This is what the PhD Manual (UiO, 2006) says about the upgrade document:
By the end of the first year, the student shall develop and present a 1st year report that will make their research visible to the group and assure that they are, or alternatively provide apt support to make them, on course to successfully complete their PhD. The content of the 1st year report should include the following (8,000-12,000 words in total): Thesis title Introduction Problem Area Description, and Research questions The significance of the issue to be discussed by the proposed research, and why further research on the issue is required. How the research issue related to/draws upon existing research and is discussed in the relevant literature which should be critically reviewed.

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The theoretical approach/framework being followed and how this compares with possible alternative approaches. Any preliminary fieldwork that has been carried out or previous work done by the student with is being drawn upon. Research design and methodology to be employed, as well as a justification for this approach. Intended plan for fieldwork, if relevant, including arrangements for access. Anticipated outcomes of the proposed research.

As I got my PhD proposal accepted on the 9th of March 2006, it feels a bit early presenting an upgrade document, as I have not yet a full overview of related research and I do not even have a full understanding of the research question Im trying to answer. When I wrote the initial PhD proposal, I had only a superficial understanding of the culture and ideas of the Information Systems Group at the Institute of Informatics at the University of Oslo. My ambition for doing a PhD in quality management has been that of having a background in industrial mathematics from 1991 and working in the field of software engineering and quality control for 15 years. When working with quality control and process improvement, the mode of working seems to be to be similar to that of doing action research. However, unlike the research tradition of information systems (IS), my approach has not been qualitative. It has been a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods, with a focus on applying quantitative methods due to the belief of what gets measured gets done. However, as I gradually get to know the IS community, I get the impression that the kind of problems that I need to address in order to be a part of this community are the sociotechnical problems that may have implications for design of information systems, or in my case Management Information Systems (MIS). Consequently, in this first attempt to write an upgrade document, I have tried to refocus my research problem from problems related to the role of the quality manager of large public organizations to the problems of designing and continually redesigning Management Information Systems in compliance with the requirements and guideless of the ISO 9000 series and additional international, regional and de factor standards such as EFQM, CMMI, TickIT, ITIL and CobiT. Designing management information systems is a non-trivial task. In my research proposal I tried to characterize the MIS from the perspective of CAS in order to stimulate a distributed approach for growing information systems rather than the traditional topdown approach. Such a change implies a change in control strategy, moving from central control to distributed control (preferably some kind of self-control) as can be seen in how an ant colony or a bee swarm seem to function (Kelly, 1994). In this initial draft of the PhD upgrade document, I have tried to reformulate the original research question by focusing how one should control the people responsible for quality control (or improve the people responsible for process improvement) by aligning quality management (interpreted as industrial research) with academic research.

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At the moment, I see this as a major improvement on my PhD research design. No matter what might be the findings after three years of research, investigating and evaluating how other scientists are using action research, I believe it could be of interest both for the research community, the quality management community and certainly of high personal interest for me. Although I hope to make some further modifications on this document for presenting the status of my research on the 11th PhD Days Workshop in September 2006, my aim is to complete and present the PhD upgrade document as soon as I have completed the exams at the end of the fall semester 2006.

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References
Avison, D., Lau, F., Myers, M. and Nielsen, P. A. (1999). Action Research, Communications of the ACM, 42(1), 94-97. Axelrod, R. and Cohen, M. D. (2000). Harnessing complexity: Organizational implications of a scientific frontier. Free Press: New York. Brodie, R. (1996). Virus of the Mind: An introduction to the field of memetics, Integral Press: New York. Burrell,G. and Morgan, G. (1979). Sociological Paradigms and Organisational Analysis: Elements of the Sociology of Corporate Life, Heinemann: London. Csikzentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row: New York. Ciborra. C. et al (2000). From control to drift: The dynamics of corporate information infrastructures. Oxford University Press: Oxford. Coghlan, D. & Brannick, T. (2001). Doing Action Research in Your Own Organization, SAGE: London. Crosby, P. B. (1979). Quality is Free: The art of making quality certain. Mentor: New York. Easterby-Smith, M., Thorpe, R. and Lowe, A. (2002). Management Research: An Introduction. Second Edition. Sage Publications: London. Battram, A. (1996). Navigating Complexity: The Essential Guide to Complexity Theory in Business and Management, The Industrial Society: London. Checkland, P. (1981). Systems Thinking, Systems Practice. Wiley: Chichester. Ciborra, C. U. (2000). From Control To Drift: The Dynamics of Corporate Information Infrastructures, Oxford University Press: Oxford. Collis, J. and Hussey, R. (2003). Business Research: A practical guide for undergraduate and postgraduate students, 2nd Edition, Palgrave Macmillan: New York. Dahlbom, B. and Mathiassen, L. (1993). Computers in Context: The Philosophy and Practice of Systems Design, Blackwell: Oxford. Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press: Oxford. Deming, W. E. (1986). Out of the Crisis. MIT Press: Cambridge.

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Deming, W. E. (1992). The New Economics. Second Edition. MIT Press: Cambridge. DNV (2005). Kvalitetsarbeid i IT-funksjonen, Vurdering av systemet for kvalitetsstyring i IT-funksjonen i Skattedirektoratet, Rapport unntatt offentlighet, 03.10.2005, Det Norske Veritas: Hvik. Dooley, K. (2002). Organizatonal Complexity, International Encyclopedia of Business and Management, M. Warner (ed.), Thompson Learning: London, p. 5013-5022. Dooley, K., T. Johnson, and D. Bush (1995). TQM, chaos, and complexity, Human Systems Management, 14(4): 1-16. Gitlow, H. S. (1992). Thanks for the Michi in Voehl, F. (1992) Deming: The Way We Knew Him. Goldstein, J. (1994). The unshackled organization: Facing the challenge of unpredictability through spontanous reorganization, Productivity Press. Grassie, W. (1994). Reinventing Nature: Science Narratives as Myths for an Endangered Planet (chapter 3), http://www.voicenet.com/~grassie/essays/ch3.html. Hanseth, O. (2005). Globally Scaleable Information Structures presentation at PhD Days Workshop in Information systems, 30 Sept 1 Oct 2005, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo: Oslo. ISO (2000a). Quality management systems Fundamentals and vocabulary (ISO 9000:2000), International Standards Organization: Geneve. ISO (2000b). Quality management systems Requirements (ISO 9001:2000), International Standards Organization: Geneve. ISO (2000c). Quality management systems Guidelines for performance improvements (ISO 9004:2000), International Standards Organization: Geneve. Juran, J. M. (1964). Managerial Breakthrough. McGraw-Hill: New York. Kelly, K. (1994). Out Of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economics World, Addison-Wesley: New York. Kuhn, T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press: Chicago. Lewin, K. (1946). Action Research and Minority Problems. Journal of Social Issues, 2, 34-36. 286, 438.

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INF5220 Qualitative Research Methods Liker, J. (2004). The Toyota Way, Addison-Wesley: New York. Lilienfeld, R. (1978). The Rise of Systems Theory: An Ideological Analysis, WileyInterscience: New York. Morgan, G. (1997). Images of Organization, SAGE Publishing: London. Nielsen, P. (2006). Systems theory and information infrastructure. Trial lecture for the PhD defense committee. Oakland, J. S. (1999). Total Organizational Excellence: Achieving world-class performance. Butterworth-Heinemann: Oxford. Mintzberg, H. (1983). Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations, PrenticeHall: Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Nonaka, I. and Takeuchi, H. (1995). The Knowledge-Creating Company. Oxford University Press: Oxford. NTAX (1997). Strategi, politikk og standarder for IT-sikkerhet i Skatteetaten, Version 2.1, SKD no. 6/96, Directorate of Taxes: Oslo. NTAX (1998). Strategisk plan for bruk av IT i Skatteetaten, Version 1.3, SKD no. 62/96, Directorate of Taxes: Oslo. NTAX (2001). Stillingsbeskrivelse Kvalitetssjef (underdirektr), Notat 21.03.01, Directorate of Taxes, IT department: Oslo. NTAX (2006). Opprydding og standardisering av COBOL-programvare. Versjon 0.9. 24.01.2006, Directorate of Taxes, IT department: Oslo. Oakland, J.S. (2001). Total Organizational Excellence: Achieving World-Class Performance, Butterworth-Heinemann: Oxford. Power, M. (1997). The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. Oxford University Press: Oxford. Robson, C. (1993). Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner-Researchers, Blackwell: Oxford UK & Cambridge US. Routio, P. (2005). Methods of arteology: Developing a task, http://www.uiah.fi/projects/metodi/120.htm (accessed June 13th, 2006). Shannon, C. E. and Weaver, W. (1949). The Mathematical Theory of Communication. University of Illinois Press: Chicago.

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INF5220 Qualitative Research Methods Shewhart, W. A. (1938). Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control. Dover: New York. Seddon, J. (1997). In pursuit of quality: The case against ISO 9000. Oak Tree PressBooks: London. Stacey, R., Griffin, D. and Shaw, P. (2000). Complexity and Management: Fad or Radical Challenge? Routledge: London. Statskonsult (2002). Organisering av IT-funksjonen i Skatteetaten, Statskonsult: Oslo. Urry, J. (2003) Global Complexity, Polity: Cambridge. Susman, G. and Evered, R. (1978). An assessment of the scientific merits of action research. Administrative Science Quarterly 23, 528-603. Taylor, F. W. (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management. Harper & Row: New York. UiO (2006). Phd Manual, Information Systems Group, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, http://www.ifi.uio.no/forskning/grupper/is/docs/PhDManual.pdf. Voehl, F. (1992) Deming: The Way We Knew Him, St. Lucie Press: Delray Beach, Florida. Womack, J.P. and Jones, D.T. (2003). Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, 2nd Edition, Free Press Business.

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