Impact Analysis

How Research Can Enter Application and Make A Difference

Laurie Larwood, Urs E. Gattiker, Laurie Larwood, Urs E. Gattiker

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 1999
• eBook ISBN: 9781135691615
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Throughout the social sciences, the gap between research and application is a reminder that the goals of scholars and practitioners are not always one and the same. Still, the best scholarship is often acknowledged to be that which informs practice, and the best practice--whether defined in terms of efficiency, flexibility, long-term vision, or even profit--is often that which is based on relevant research. This book presents a discussion among eminent researchers, practitioners, and consultants of the new field of "Impact Analysis." They address three central issues:
*the practical ways in which scholars can better ensure that their work has an important influence on practice;
*the pros and cons in forging a closer connection between research, consulting, and practice; and
*how, despite potential drawbacks, a closer relationship between research and practice can be mutually beneficial. In addition to practical advice, the participants offer predictions that will be of interest to applied researchers in this field and business-oriented professionals.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Making an Impact

Laurie Larwood
Urs E.Gattiker

Obviously, a man’s judgment cannot be better than the information on which he has based it.

—Arthur Hays Sulzberger, address to the New York State Publishers Association (August 30, 1948)

The editors engage in an annual ritual with doctoral students. “What,” the students ask, “is the value of doing all this research?” As one example, we point them toward a body of recent work, most prominently identified with a single scholar. “Not only did the author open this new area of research, but she changed U.S. government legislation and influenced corporate policy worldwide.” Just one instance; not bad.

We invited that particular scholar to write a major contribution for this book, but she demurred. We thought she was successful. She had concluded instead that her work had failed, and said that she wished she knew how to publicize her work and affect policy. She had quit that line of research. This book concerns both objective and perceived success in translating good research into reality. The issue is how scholars with new ideas can and do make an impact.

The manner in which scholarly ideas make an impact on the public mind and on practice is far from a simple issue. First, it assumes a directionality of cause and effect that has still to be demonstrated. This book focuses primarily on ideas that are created by researchers and that researchers want to see move into common acceptance and practice. None-theless, important ideas also arise directly from practice. They are created by a harried manager or an experienced consultant in answer to a problem. Flextime and other variable work week arrangements were solutions to the obvious needs of working families (Maharaj, 1998). If the new ideas seem to work, they may eventually come to the attention of scholars for testing and academic research.

Although it is usually said that good ideas will eventually be widely adopted, the process of obtaining this acceptance is often tenuous and unreliable. The process of adoption is two-way and not necessarily either direct or swift. The recent worldwide emphasis on total quality management seems to have originated in the minds of a small number of academics and consultants such as Deming shortly after the Second World War. Unable to interest American managers or most academics, they saw their work embraced instead by Japanese manufacturers desperate to penetrate world markets. The resulting competition from successful Japanese manufacturers in turn forced the interest of Western firms…ultimately catching the attention of scholars. As a somewhat different illustration, the first published research of one of the editors was selected for a story in a national U.S. Sunday newspaper supplement. The work, examining the effects of gender role conflict in the workplace, was described by the supplement as showing that only women should be hired as bank tellers. The actual results found that each gender was preferred under certain circumstances (Larwood, Zalkind, & Legault, 1975).

By contrast, the idealized concept of information flow and consequent impact is simple. If the information is to be applied appropriately, the trail of information must be accurately maintained between the scholar and the public or the practitioner. Anyone who once played the game in which each child whispers a message in the ear of the next child along a chain understands that information is rarely transmitted with this kind of fidelity. Each linking person is a filter, with different reasons for being selective, and new opinions to add. The Sunday supplement in the example was looking for something exciting to say involving gender and freely added its own interpretation by ignoring the more meaningful but also more complex central findings. Beyond even the possibility of misinterpretation, each such link adds its own delay for processing the information before passing it along.

STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS OF THE FIELD

The authors and editors of this volume are seeking to come to grips with what we think of as a new area of inquiry: Impact Analysis. We define Impact Analysis as the process by which research and new ideas enter application and thereby appear to make a lasting difference in the direction of later thinking and practice. As might be inferred from this definition, we can offer only a few tentative hypotheses here—and even these are subject to the dispute and modification of the contributors to this volume:

• Creation of new ideas is itself insufficient to ensure that they will be applied.
• pplication of ideas is insufficient to assure their propagation.
• But although both creation and application are useful, even both of these together may not successfully influence the future of thinking and application elsewhere.

As already noted, the process is seldom straightforward. There seem to be five structural elements in the process of making an impact. The particular role that each can play, and the way that each is linked to the other elements, are still open questions for exploration. And we don’t yet see any fixed relationship that guarantees impact.

Creator/Scholar. The scholar is often one of the originators of an idea or new technology but is unlikely to be able to apply it directly (see Fig. 1.1). Nonetheless, impact analysis cannot be limited to scholars as creators.

They may have cobbled an idea together from a series of sources, such as discovering it already in use within a specific application. They may have generalized from a narrow observation made elsewhere, and neither the original creator of the idea nor the generalizing scholar may recognize where the idea actually arose.

When a potentially important idea is identified, a number of further issues must be considered. Among them, what motivates apparent creators and how do they understand their goals? For academics, it is an article of faith that some of our colleagues view their goals as merely teaching students. Alternatively, a smaller number focus on writing. For either, wider distribution of the new idea requires a coupling with additional elements over an extended time. For example, as happened prominently with the theory of organizational behavior modification, a student may employ the new idea successfully, thereby beginning the process of publicizing the idea through its broader use. In contrast, other scholars vigorously undertake to ensure impact themselves. For example, Hamel and Prahalad (1994) and Kanter, Stein, and Jick (1992) had substantial success in promoting some of their ideas through consulting, speaking publicly, and through the distribution of books that are intended partly for a nonacademic audience.

FIG. 1.1. Structural elements of impact analysis.

Note: This figure shows the most likely relationship between creativity and application for each of the structural elements. The figure does not suggest where a particular individual or organization might rest. In order to project outward toward having an impact on practice and thinking, both source and application appear useful. Nonetheless, they cannot be considered as sufficient together.

Institution. The institution or organizational home of the creator provides a second important element toward making an impact. When faced with a new idea developed by one of their personnel, some institutions are unprepared or unwilling to react in any meaningful manner. A small college may make no creative demands on its faculty, and may be unwilling to use its limited resources to assist those faculty who do produce new ideas. In contrast, “research” universities such as University of Chicago or University of California at Berkeley in the United States may not only insist on the production of scholarship, but may have institutional structures firmly in place to take advantage of new ideas. Some institutions have policies in which they assist with publication, develop active in-house executive education programs for transfer of the information to a high-powered paying audience, and institutionalize speaking tours. Although we generally think of universities as occupying this niche, many firms also organize such opportunities for particular personnel, and firms having common interests may cluster together to provide such services. AT&T and IBM both encourage outreach in a number of ways; industry groups such as mining, broadcast, and gaming industry associations provide similar opportunities.

Consultant. Consultants are often the pollinating bees of impact analysis. As shown in Fig. 1.1, they are in the unusual position of being able to sift new ideas, picking them up from one location, and carrying them along to application elsewhere. Without their intervention, many good ideas might be overlooked by local managers who are unaware of them, unclear as to how the ideas work in practice, or who see the new ideas in terms of their risks rather than their advantages. The pollination metaphor hides a complex process, however. Somehow the consultant must learn of the new idea or technology and must feel sufficiently secure with it to suggest the idea to the client. Many of the ideas may be original to the consultant and may be ad hoc solutions to a perceived problem; in such cases the consultant may be unaware of their multiple sources, and the ideas may never be spread beyond their immediate single use. In other cases, the consultant may find an idea at one organization that can be usefully applied elsewhere; in still others, the consultant may have read or heard about interesting new ideas, and may become interested in evangelizing the new technology. The choice between these possibilities is partly a reflection of the background of the consultant, his or her acceptance by the client base, and the consultant’s self-assurance and experience.

In some instances, of course, the scholar does double duty. On the one hand, he or she creates or somehow derives a new idea. On the other, he or she works with clients directly as a consultant in applying the new idea. Although seemingly simple, performing both functions may come with a high cost.

Media. At one level, the needs of the media are obvious. Print and broadcast media sell their product. In a competitive environment, sales require the element of novelty. Some members of the media are able to take ideas to both the public at large and to the client organizations that might apply them. Others distribute their books, articles, and discussions to consultants or other scholars. In each case, the level of complexity of the analysis must suit the needs of the reader, both in style and in content. As a result, media that publish trade books for a broad general market have little patience for the type of jargon, highly qualified presentation, and voluminous back-up support that are frequently required in an academic work.

Writing in a newspaper or trade or news magazines, often uses even less…or at least less obvious…jargon. Explanations during interviews with the media may need sentence-by-sentence telegram style with the use of catch phrases and keywords if they are to make it into print. Television is more extreme, soundbites need to seem important enough to be provocative while fitting the newsmaker’s needs and desires to grab viewers’ attention.

Each medium functions differently, with the result that an idea that is perfectly pitched for one medium may miss the others entirely. Although they are not required, the media can be extremely valuable in the process of distributing ideas. For instance, a scholar might be able to have his or her idea published in a scholarly journal first, while a subsequent mentioning of the article or quotation in a trade publication or news magazine might provide the distribution to a wider audience; in turn, such outcomes encourage further the transfer of knowledge from the research environment to the public. Sometimes, a scholar might simply see his or her ideas quickly distributed by the media when the idea seems to fit the latter’s need to provide insights and quotable words for a hot new story that is breaking. Here the media encourages “experts” to offer ideas and opinions in order to seem to its audience as leading edge, urgent, and up-to-date. For example, the merger of Compaq and Digital Equipment brought opportunities for discussion of labor relations, technology, and efficiency. Changing socioeconomic and environmental conditions provide an opportunity for scholars to talk about ideas and accelerate their distribution if not their application.

Client. In a sense, the client for the consultant, for the media, and for the scholar or researcher developing new ideas is the same: The client is the end user of the newly developed technology. Despite this similarity, the point of contact within the client organization that is reached by the consultant, media, or scholar may be a different individual, and reacts in a different manner. The client of the management consultant seeks a degree of expertise, assurance, and independent effort that probably requires consultants not to admit using speculative ideas unless the situation is desperate. The client looking toward the media is actively searching for ideas and probably has at least a modest level of expertise in being able to apply the ideas directly. The client who is in direct contact with the researcher seems most likely to be someone who is conversant with the types of work that the researcher has undertaken. The latter might well be an older student in an executive program, or an individual who has earned an advanced degree, is comfortable serving as a direct link in the evaluation and transfer of technology, and is willing to champion or apply it. In consequence of their differing needs, each of these client contacts is likely to behave in a different manner when faced with the same new information.

On the surface, it seems sensible that all five of these structural elements should be used simultaneously in order to most rapidly convert new ideas and technologies into use. Intentionally harnessing all of them at the same time seems improbable, however, and is probably rarely achieved. Each element requires a different type of expertise as well as an important commitment of time. To some extent, each element also speaks a different language: Each has different needs; the ability to inspire one’s home institution may be very different from the ability to directly gain entrée to, work with, and inspire clients who will eventually apply the idea. For these reasons, making an impact often requires interesting different elements individually, with the understanding that the eventual message may not be identical with that which is intended.

RECOGNIZED CONCEPTS RELATED TO IMPACT ANALYSIS

The interrelations between the components described in Fig. 1.1 appear potentially very complex. On its face, there are hundreds of ways the five elements can interconnect. Or they may not interconnect at all. Fortunately, although it is itself new, impact analysis takes in some territory that is already recognized in existing theories and models. In part, our inquiry deals with technology transfer…we are looking at the relatively simple issue of how new information is passed from the its creator to the next link of the chain (cf. Eveland, 1986). This is the same issue faced by an inventor of a new process for etching silicon chips when trying to interest a manufacturer of the chips to buy into it. A portion of the examination of technology transfer is concerned with communication theory. There may be a number of links between the scholar and the user of the new ideas, and each link taxes the process by slowing it, filtering it, and altering it somewhat.

There are other aspects to impact analysis. Diffusion of information has been studied for several decades. The theory concerning diffusion suggests that people with special socioeconomic needs adopt potentially relevant new ideas more rapidly than laggards, with particular consequences for the different adoption groups and for society as a whole (Rogers, 1995). We are also concerned with managerial aspects of psychology. Here we are examining a variety of interrelated issues. For example, how does the scholar’s drive in creating ideas fit with the requirements of those who might employ them? How do those charged with selecting the best ideas for their application go about making their decisions?

PROJECTING INTO A DYNAMIC FUTURE

There is also an “unrecognized” concept. That is, we are examining today how to reliably influence the future. The safest bet in predicting the future is a straight line projection of current trends, but straight line projections can only be offered when the possibility of new ideas is ignored. Instead, the future is neither fixed nor entirely knowable.

In applying new research and theory, we are intentionally trying to take the projection into a new direction. If we were the only ones trying to effect a change, projection would still be relatively simple. But of course we are not. Complicating matters further, predictions must deal with the “law” of unintended results…by adopting one intended change, we may trigger a cascade of other unwelcome changes. Burack (1975) notes that some organizational responses to competition may seem good at first, but have unintended consequences making the firm ultimately less competitive than before. Further, many events and trends are multidetermined. Enacting a good new idea may leave the end result unaffected, because it is still contingent on or propped up by a number of other sources. Empowering employees to supervise themselves appears only to actually produce favorable motivation with employees who are ready for a greater commitment to their jobs (cf. Hackman & Oldham, 1980).

Finally, some trends are dynamic and subject to catastrophic change. In these circumstances, the new ideas, when they are put into motion, may so substantially change the nature of the trend that the idea itself is quickly made irrelevant. In the process, the creators of the events starting the change process may be forgotten about in the onrush of other changes. How, for example, did the concept of the virtual office come about (cf. AACSB-International Association for Management Education, 1998)? And what part did changes in technology, the need for efficiency, and changing concepts of supervision and selfmotivation play in it?

Together, these phenomena offer an unsettling conclusion. The model proposed in Fig. 1.1 is only a beginning. Having the creative idea, and being able to apply it, may seem to be a very positive start toward making an impact. Whether an impact will be made depends as well on important, difficult to recognize, externalities. The externalities do not include chance, and do not operate at random; but they may appear to be random in the absence of better information. Some contributors to this book focus on these phenomena.

HOW IMPORTANT IS IMPACT? THE INFORMATION PARADOX

A continuing war for our attention is taking place. Before Gutenberg’s invention of movable type, the key problem with information was that of getting it out. At the time, each new idea had to be physically communicated from one person to another, or someone needed to be co...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: MAKING AN IMPACT
• PART I VIEWS FROM THE FRONT LINE: UNDERSTANDING THE ISSUES… KEYNOTE ARTICLES
• PART II IS KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER AND APPLICATION A PROBLEM? DIFFERING CONSIDERATIONS
• PART III HOW YOU CAN MAKE AN IMPACT: GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS
• PART IV MODELING THE IMPACT: WHAT ARE THE GUIDING PRINCIPLES?
• PART V MAKING THE IMPACT: CONCLUSIONS FOR THEORY AND PRACTICE
• CONTRIBUTORS