In this video I explain the two ways in which I use masters’ theses to write academic papers.
Below is the abstract of two of the three papers that I discussed in the video.
Paper on choir leadership:
There is not much help in management research for leaders who need to improve employye performance while ensuring retention. Research on business organizations has addressed retention and performance management as separate challenges. Research on vonlunteer organizations does discuss the link between performance and retention, but argues that there is a trade-off between these two leadership goals. We use a qualitative study of maestros of amateur choirs to explain how leaders can improve employee performance while ensuring retention. Leaders can do so by enacting a virtous cycle of self-development where they enforce performance to make their organization an effective context for the self-development of volunteers, thereby ensuring retention. This cycle of self-development specifies a relationship of mutual constitution between peformance and retention which may also help managers in business organizations.
Paper on the analytics team of a major fashion house:
The upward flow of analysis in organizations is often described as an automatic process whereby technology reveals patterns and insights from the data in an organization’s information systems. This study draws on an ethnography of the analyst team in the product management department of a global fashion brand to introduce agency in the upward flow of analysis in organizations. It specifies a three-stage model of the upward flow of analysis where it is people rather than information technologies (IT) who transform data into reports. The broader contribution of this model is to open up the production side of the effective use of IT. I show how effective use of IT can be a collective accomplishment that depends not only on people’s ability to use analyses (the consumption side of effective use) but also on their ability to provide analyses (the production side of effective use.