Reading :: Service-Dominant Logic

Service-Dominant Logic: Premises, Perspectives, Possibilities
By Robert F. Lusch and Stephen L. Vargo

If you had told me a few years ago that I would be reading marketing books, I would not have believed you. But marketing turns out to be a fascinating and oddly parallel area of study for someone interested in professional communication—and it's also a vital field for me to understand due to the research study I'm currently conducting.

Like any other field, marketing has differences, disagreements, and controversies. One recent fissure has been in how people define the value proposition, which is (roughly) the promise of value that a good or service can offer a customer. The value proposition is often discussed, but rarely defined or investigated rigorously in the marketing literature; it's a rather vague term, like "context." But traditionally, ever since the term was first used in the 1980s, the value proposition has been understood as built into the good or service by the supplier, then offered to customers, who might then accept or reject it.

But in 2004, Vargo and Lusch published an article that challenged this understanding of the value proposition and the logic that defined it:

Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2004). Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing. Journal of Marketing, 68(1), 1–17.

In their 2004 piece, Vargo and Lusch argued that marketing had assumed what they call goods-dominant logic (GDL) in which value was embedded in goods and offered to consumers. Instead, they argued, marketing should be understood in terms of service-dominant logic (SDL), in which value emerged from a dialogue among resource integrators. They and others developed this line of thinking in a series of articles. In this book, they summarize and extend the discussion further.

In Chapter 1, they argue:

Problems emerge immediately when constructing simple theories of exchange, business, and society. Arguably, the most difficult of these problems is the dominance of an institutional logic with serious limitations, which is deeply rooted in a discipline and thus monopolizes associated thought processes. One such worldview is G-D [goods-dominant] logic. This logic frames the world of exchange in terms of units of output (goods). Others have referred to it as “old enterprise logic,” “manufacturing logic,” and other, similarly descriptive tags. 

G-D logic views the production and exchange of goods as the central components of business and economics. That is, it frames the purpose of the firm and the function of economic exchange in terms of making and distributing products – units of output, usually tangible. It is closely aligned with neoclassical economics, which views actors as rational, firms as profit-maximizing, customers as utility-maximizing, information and resources as flowing easily among economic actors, and markets as equilibrium-seeking – scholars within and outside economics have challenged all these perspectives. (p.4)

G-D logic, they say, developed from economics and inherited economics' focus on exchange-value, a focus that can be traced back to the limitations and peculiarities that Adam Smith dealt with in his famous treatise The Wealth of Nations (pp.6-7). But, the authors argue, Smith used exchange-value as a proxy for use-value:

The early scholars, including Smith in his original analysis of economic exchange, had it right all along: value is created at the point of what we have been calling “consumption” and, more recently, “experience”, rather than during production. (p.7)

Focusing on use-value means that we must acknowledge that "value is cocreated" among all entities involved in the transaction (p.8). That entails seeing each transaction as a service rather than a good, a service in which we must recognize "the most important resources being integrated and doing the integration – human actors with their skills, knowledge, and innovative and entrepreneurial abilities. What is needed is a logic that, rather than abandoning goods logic, transcends it, by recognizing the primacy of human resources applied for the benefit of others (and ourselves) – service" (p.8). Whereas G-D Logic saw the relationship as being between producers and consumers, S-D Logic removes that distinction: "Fundamentally, all actors (e.g., business firms, nonprofit and government organizations, individuals, and households) have a common purpose: value cocreation through resource integration and service-for-service exchange" (p.10). For instance, rather than focusing on the goods being exchanged (say, a fisherman and a farmer exchange fish for grain), we should examine the services that are involved (say, "the application of protein-producing competences for the application of carbohydrate-producing competences," p.11). "This service-oriented interpretation focuses attention on the only resource the actors really possess to take to market: their own knowledge and skills" (p.11). And thus, the authors say, we get to the key difference in understanding the business process: between "selling things to people and understanding it as serving the exchange partner's needs. This difference is a key difference between G-D and S-D logic" (p.11).  

Following from this distinction are four axioms:

• "Service is the fundamental basis for exchange"— implying that "(1) goods are appliances for service provision, (2) all businesses are service businesses, and (3) all economies are service economies."
• "The customer is always a cocreator of value."
• "All social and economic actors are resource integrators," that is, agents in combining and integrating resources to produce value.
• "Value is always uniquely and phenomenologically determined by the beneficiary" (pp.15-16)

Let's pause here. When I first began reading the marketing literature to better understand the value proposition, I was struck by three things: how vague the term was, how it was understood as built into the good, and how it was consistently discussed within the dichotomy of producers (sellers) and consumers (buyers). Scholars in rhetoric and writing studies may see parallels with the term "meaning" in our field, a vague term for something that was once understood as embedded in the text, unilaterally communicated from writer to reader. Eventually, rhetoric and writing scholars shifted to the consensus that meaning is cocreated in communicative interactions: meaning was eventually seen not as a noun, a quality embedded in a material, but rather the result of a verb, an interaction across many participants and media. That is, the shift to S-D logic described in this book sounds a lot like the interpretive turn that rhetoric and writing took in the 1980s. So Vargo and Lusch's 2004 article and this 2014 book seem very familiar to me in large chunks of the argument.

Some of their cites do as well, although they don't engage with these to the extent that I think they should. For instance, they cite Callon on performativity on p.18. But Callon has much more to say about economic interactions that would be even more directly relevant: his work on interessement, for instance, could provide a strong theoretical basis for discussing how various stakeholders are locked into place around an emergent value proposition. On p.46, they cite Zuboff and Maxmin's 2002 book, pointing out that Z&M describe a shift from "enterprise logic" to "relational logic" and acknowledging that this is essentially the shift from G-D to S-D logic; but they do this through a drive-by cite rather than spending much time exploring the parallels. However, they do draw on Giddens' structuration theory (p.23 et passim), a framework that is familiar to professional communication types via Orlikowski and Yates. 

This brings us back to the book's argument. Via structuration theory, the authors describe how actors create the environmental structure for their activities, and the environment then structures their future actions:

To capture these dualistic, dynamic, resource-integrating (through service exchange), enabling, and constraining value-( co-) creating structures, we use the term “service ecosystems.” A service ecosystem is a relatively self-contained, self-adjusting system of resource-integrating actors that are connected by shared institutional logics and mutual value creation through service exchange. By including shared institutional logics we point towards a link between S-D logic and structuration theory which describes human actions within social systems as enabled and constrained by social structures – that is, as contextual and contingent. (pp.24-25)

If we view things in this way, "the strategic advantage of a firm can be recast from a logic that focuses on making better products to increase market share in existing markets to one of redefining existing markets for strategic advantage or defining and thus creating new markets" (p.25). That is, the authors claim that using S-D logic pushes us away from what are elsewhere called "red ocean" markets (established commodities) and toward "blue ocean" markets (innovations). 

At this point of the review, I pause and note that everything I've quoted is in the introduction. Rather than going through the entire book in this detail, I'll pull out some highlights.

First, the authors define the value proposition:

 Therefore, a value proposition under S-D logic is how an actor co-proposes to positively affect another actor. This recognizes that value is obtained when an actor experiences through engagement with the firm the unfolding of the interactive market offering. Stated alternatively, firms and other actors can offer potential value through value propositions; however, they cannot create value but only cocreate it.  

Value propositions are therefore promises but they must be fulfilled. Firms and actors, in general in developing exchange relationships, should view their role as offering more compelling value propositions than other competing actors but then making sure, to the extent possible, that actual value as experienced by the beneficiary meets or exceeds promised value. (pp.72)

Elsewhere, the authors argue that a value proposition is an invitation to engage (p.187). The value is always co-created, but phenomenologically determined by the beneficiary (p.187).

If the beneficiary co-creates value, we must shift from "marketing-to" to "marketing-with" (p.78). And rather than seeing relationships as B2B, B2C, etc., Lusch and Vargo therefore see all relationships as "A2A" or actor-to-actor (p.89). In Chapter 5, "It's all actor-to-actor (A2A)," the authors distinguish among different types of exchange institutions: reciprocity ("an exchange of obligations between actors," p.108), redistribution ("when an authority or central actor gathers or takes the goods and service capacity of actors and allocates back to actors according to some type of custom, tradition, rule, or simply fiat," p.109), and market exchange (in which "the actors interface to establish the value-in-exchange for tradable resources," p.110). The authors also discuss hybrid exchange systems, which combine two or more of the above. Readers of this blog may see similarities with typologies of work organization, such as Heckscher and Adler's, Ronfeldt's, and Boisot's.  

I could go on and on, but you get the gist. This is an interesting and, I think, important book for summarizing the SDL position. Although it primarily functions as a summary for the growing body of work on SDL, it does also contribute some new and elaborated discussion of the position. And it's an easy read. If you have even the remotest interest in marketing, value creation, or innovation, take a look.

(Now get Topsight for less)

In January 2013, I published Topsight via Amazon CreateSpace. Since then, it's been used in graduate and undergraduate courses in technical communication across the country and I've had the pleasure of talking with people in person and on Skype about how the book has been useful to them. The response has been better than I hoped.

If you haven't picked up Topsight yet, this is a good time to do so: I just lowered the price of the print version from $24.99 to $19.99, making it even easier to pick the book up out of curiosity, assign it to classes, or hand it out as a party favor at a research-themed party. The Kindle version should also drop in price in the near future.

(Responsivity)

I'm a featured speaker at the upcoming Watson Conference. This year the conference's them is "responsivity," or "what it means for teacher/scholars of rhetoric and composition to be responsive to communities both within and beyond the academy." As a featured speaker, I was asked to make a short video about the theme. That video has just been posted along with other speakers' videos.

The video is below—but make sure to click through to the other speakers' videos as well!



Responsivity - Clay Spinuzzi from Watson Conference on Vimeo.

Reading :: Learning from the Field

Learning from the Field: A Guide from Experience
By William Foote Whyte

Willliam Foote Whyte wrote several landmark pieces in sociological fieldwork, including the 1943 classic Street Corner Society. In this 1984 book, he put together a guide for conducting such fieldwork, a "guide from experience," as the subtitle explains. This experiential guide, like Van Maanen's Tales of the Field or Becker's Tricks of the Trade, is liberally illustrated with the author's own fieldwork; it amounts to a series of points plus dos-and-don'ts plus extended examples. I found it fascinating.

In the early chapters of the book, Whyte tackles subjects such as participant observation (Ch.2), planning the project and entering the field (Ch.3), field relations (Ch.4), observational methods (Ch.5), and interviewing strategies and tactics (Ch.6), all of which draw on the author's great experience and wiles to make the field research a success. For instance, in Chapter 3 he discusses how to decide whether you need to change your research design midstream - and how to commit to it. In Chapter 4, he discusses how to determine when to ask questions, what questions to ask, and how to present one's research to participants. In Chapter 6, he discusses how to subtly direct interviews. Whyte clearly has a deep bag of tricks.

He also has a broad understanding of the field. Street Corner Society was published in 1943, based on fieldwork in the late 1930s. But in Learning from the Field, published over 40 years after his first, groundbreaking study, Whyte addresses then-contemporary developments such as participatory action research (p.168) and network analysis (p.248). By addressing these developments, he situates the book more broadly and makes it more contemporary than it otherwise might have been.

All in all, this is a fascinating and valuable book. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the nuts and bolts of fieldwork, perhaps over Van Maanen or Becker.

Reading :: The Scientific Revolution

The Scientific Revolution
By Steven Shapin

Steven Shapin's name is familiar to me because he coauthored Leviathan and the Air-Pump with Simon Schaeffer. That book, a history of the development of the experimental method in the conflicts between Hobbes and Boyle, was extensively discussed in Latour's We Have Never Been Modern. So when I saw this book at the used bookstore, I had to pick it up—especially after I opened the front cover and saw that it had been previously owned by Maxine Hairston.

Unlike Leviathan and the Air-Pump, The Scientific Revolution is a history meant for a lay audience. It describes a period that only gained an identity in retrospect: as Shapin says in his first sentence, "There was no such think as the Scientific Revolution, and this is a book about it" (p.1). The phrase "the Scientific Revolution" was coined in the early to mid 20th century (p.2) and used in retrospect to draw together "four interrelated aspects of changes in knowledge about the natural world and changes in means of securing that knowledge" (p.13): the mechanization of nature (i.e., using mechanical metaphors to understand natural phenomena); the depersonalization of natural knowledge (i.e., separating what we subjectively sense from what objectively occurs); the attempted mechanization of knowledge-making (i.e., using rules or methods to lead us to objective understandings); and "the aspiration to use the resulting reformed natural knowledge to achieve moral, social, and political ends" (p.13).

These were indeed big changes. As Shapin explains in Ch.1, one of the most revolutionary things about Galileo's work was that he described sunspots. In Aristotelian thinking, the earth was imperfect and the heavens were perfect and unchanging, so imperfect phenomena such as sunspots (as well as irregularly moving phenomena such as comets) were construed as either in the atmosphere or below the moon (p.17). That is, the doctrine came before the observation (p.18). "Pre-Copernican cosmology was literally anthropocentric," Shapin explains, but not in a way that connoted special virtue: the perfect rose to the heavens, the imperfect sank to the earth, and the real center of the cosmos was under the earth - in Hell (p.24).

Furthermore, for Aristotle, "all natural motion had a developmental character" (p.29): bodies moved to where they should naturally be. "Aristotelian physics was in that sense modeled on biology and employed explanatory categories similar to those used to comprehend living things" (p.29). But for the modern philosophers, a more attractive metaphor was that of the machine (p.30), especially the clock (p.32). Applying this metaphor led them to this analogic thinking:

clock : clockmaker :: nature : intelligence

The clock metaphor led philosophers to think of matter, not as active (as in the biological metaphor), but as inert (p.44). They began distinguishing between primary qualities, which belonged to the object (size, shape, motion), and secondary qualities, which were derived from primary quantities (e.g., color, sweetness, warmth) (p.53). This separation is better known as objective vs. subjective: a wedge between philosophical legitimacy and common sense, one that disallowed sensory experience as a reliable guide (p.53). Boyle went on to say that forms were figments of the human mind (p.54).

As Shapin points out, mechanical philosophy did not explain as much as it claimed to; adherents were convinced that the mechanical explanation was superior to alternatives (p.57) and began to see God as a master mathematician (p.66).

In Chapter 2, Shapin asks: How was it known? At the beginning of the Scientific Revolution, the existing philosophical traditions rested on human textual authority—such as the works of Aristotle—rather than on evidence of natural reality (p.68). By the end, they were looking at a different "book"—the "book of nature" (p.69; notice the metaphor). The transition was eased because although people were convinced at the beginning of the period that the ancients knew more than moderns ever would, the extant texts were clearly corrupted and two copies of the same text would diverge. Which corrupted source was the most accurate? They began comparing the texts to direct observations to find out (p.76). As the Protestant Reformation went on, laypeople could read the Scripture for themselves; analogically, they decided that they could also read God's other book, the Book of Nature (p.78). Yet people sometimes saw different things in that "book." Eventually, Boyle and the Royal Society developed the experimental method to discern causes from effects—a development that was violently opposed by philosophers such as Hobbes (p.110).

In Chapter 3, Shapin asks: What was the knowledge for? Eventually, reading the Book of Nature began to be understood as a contribution equal to that of the theologian (p.138). This chapter traces that development, examining how it changed the dynamics of the period.


If you're interested in the development of scientific thought, definitely pick up this interesting and readable book.

Reading :: The Interpretation of Cultures

The Interpretation Of Cultures
By Clifford Geertz

Confession: I am really not a fan of Geertz. I recognize that I only have that luxury because his work was groundbreaking enough that it can seem obvious in retrospect. But I would still rather read derivative work, which tends to show more economy of writing that Geertz's.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's focus on the most often cited essay in this book: "Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture." Here, Geertz discusses the notion of thick description, borrowed from Ryle (p.6) and elaborated. Geertz distinguishes between thin description (what is someone doing?) and thick description (what does that action mean in terms of cultural categories?) (p.7). The example here is that of a man rapidly contracting his eyelid (thin description) as a burlesque wink (thin description). Thick description, Geertz argues, distinguishes good ethnography from bad (p.16).

That's a very (ahem) thin description of the essay, but it's the gist of what—I concede—you probably should read for yourself. Although I find Geertz's prose to be a chore, he does provide a thorough, example-laden argument for understanding description as an interpretive move that ethnographers have to embrace and practice. If you're interested in doing field research, ethnography or not, this essay should help you to understand and sift through some of the layers of meaning you'll need to describe. For that reason, yes, read Geertz.

Reading :: Strategy as Practice

Strategy as Practice: An Activity Based Approach
By Paula Jarzabkowski

Management studies have not drawn much on activity theory -- in fact, from what I can tell, there's not much beyond Blackler's articles and Jarzabkowski's work. And Jarzabkowski's work is best summed up by the author herself: "This framework is informed by activity theory ... but it is not a faithful representation of activity theory in its entirety. Rather, it draws on activity theory principles of mediated interaction between actors and their social community in the production of shared activity" (p.35). For me, it was an interestingly heterodox take on activity theory, one that taught me a lot about how the field of management sees strategy-as-practice.

First, let's talk about the triangle diagram that Jarzabkowski deploys throughout. Activity theorists are well acquainted with triangles, which in AT typically represent the following points: subjects, TOOLS, objects, RULES, community, and DIVISION OF LABOR. In a typical AT triangle, the all-caps words are the corners, essentially mediating among the other terms. For instance, a subject uses a TOOL to realize the object; a subject uses RULES to mediate between herself and the community; the community uses the DIVISION OF LABOR to mediate between itself and the object.

In Jarzabkowski's triangles, there are only three terms, and they're on the corners: subject, community, and goal-directed activity. In the middle, symbolizing what they produce together, is "Situated practices of mediation" (p.35).

This triangle and Jarzabkowski's take on activity theory both seem heterodox. Why change things so much? Jarzabkowski is interested in understanding business strategy, which she defines as "a pattern in a stream of goal-directed activity over time" (p.43). So she's specifically interested in how top managers (subjects) work with an organizational community to develop strategy over time, strategy that yields the outcome of realized strategy content. To put it another way, she wants to look at a specific type of activity (strategy), not as a planned phenomenon but as an emergent one. That is, Jarzabkowski wants to understand strategy-as-practice in terms that would perhaps be more familiar to readers of Suchman or Weick. Activity theory, at least in this incarnation, gives her the conceptual vocabulary to discuss and describe this understanding of strategy-as-practice.

For instance, Jazabkowski examines strategy in a case set in a university context. In this case, the activity is distributed because divergent interests lead to goal ambiguity; thus actors are fragmented in their objectives and do not lend much attention to strategy as a collective organizational activity (p.70). In such cases, organizations experience a tension between institutionalized rules and organizational practices, leading to procedural and interactive strategizing (Ch.4). The latter half of the book addresses how to construct strategies in such an environment, using a strategizing matrix based on the triangle (p.104). This work yields a heuristic for understanding how strategy unfolds under different conditions. The author identifies five patterns through this matrix: "introducing localized activity into mainstream strategy; changing existing strategy; stabilizing activity; unresolved activity; and inertial activity" (p.109). And she uses the matrix to describe changing activity system dynamics: reframing, re-embedding, and chronic restructuring (p.124).

In all, I found it to be a fascinating book. I am not sure how I feel about the application of activity theory here—Jarzabkowski seems to be using it very differently, but then again, she is looking at phenomena that AT has not traditionally examined. But I'm intrigued by how she uses the matrix to identify and describe developing patterns, and I wish I had read it before developing my own typology recently. There's a lot to think through in this book. If you're interested in new and unusual developments in activity theory, it's definitely worth reading.

Reading :: Blue Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
By W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne

Blue Ocean Strategy is an international bestseller on strategically developing new market space. The authors invite us to consider a "marketing universe composed of two sorts of oceans: red oceans and blue oceans" (p.4).

Red oceans are existing, known market spaces in which rules are known; in these spaces, products are commodities, competition is fierce, and margins become thinner (p.4). Here, the rule is incremental improvement and the competition makes it a battlespace (p.7).

Blue oceans, in contrast, are untapped market spaces in which rules are in the process of being made, competition is thin, and margins are consequently fat (p.5). Blue oceans are more profitable (p.7). They require value innovation, in which "instead of focusing on beating the competition, you focus on making the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for buyers and your company, thereby opening up new and uncontested market space" (p.12).

The authors include multiple examples of blue ocean strategy, most memorably Cirque de Soleil, which made traditional circuses irrelevant by eliminating, reducing, and raising certain aspects of the traditional circus while creating new value in the experience. Another example is [yellow tail], the Australian wine that was marketed in sharp contrast to other wines in the US market. In these and other examples, the authors use analytical tools to demonstrate how the cases contrasted sharply with existing products, allowing them to create blue oceans.

The notion of creating a new market is not especially revolutionary. But the book provides several linked heuristics that allow readers to analyze the current market, see possibilities, develop strategy, and execute it. That, I think, is what made it such a valuable book. Like most bestsellers, this one is now available very cheaply on the used book market (which is where I got my copy). But it's still valuable if you're planning to market a product, or even if you're thinking about analogous ways to distinguish your work from others. (I can imagine academics using some of these heuristics to identify large research holes and gaps in current theory, for instance.) The book is readable, easy to grasp, and well illustrated with examples. If marketing is interesting to you, I suggest picking it up.

Writing :: Chapters in the Handbook of Writing and Textual Production

Handbook of Writing and Text Production
Ed. Eva-Maria Jakobs and Daniel Perrin

Here's another entry in my series on writing publications.

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, in 2011, I met Eva-Maria Jakobs at the Writing Research Across Borders conference in Washington, DC. She and coeditor Daniel Perrin were trying to recruit authors for a visionary collection on writing and textual production, one in which each chapter would be coauthored by two scholars from different continents. My mentor David R. Russell introduced us, and we hit it off immediately—we chatted about the proposed structure, discussed what scholars to approach for some of the chapters, and agreed that I would coauthor one of the chapters (on writing in professional domains) with her.

When we got back to our respective institutions, we began Skyping and sharing drafts, and quickly discovered that we had the same approach to scholarly writing—write quickly, iterate rapidly, read and cite extensively. We coauthored the chapter, but also the introduction to the section in which it appeared:

• Jakobs, E.-M. & Spinuzzi, C. (2014). The domain perspective in text production research. Handbook of Writing and Text Production, ed. Jakobs, E.M. & Perrin, D. De Gruyter: Berlin/New York. 325-332.
• Jakobs, E.-M. & Spinuzzi, C. (2014). Professional domains: Writing as creation of economic value. Handbook of Writing and Text Production, ed. Jakobs, E.M. & Perrin, D. De Gruyter: Berlin/New York. 359-384.

I greatly enjoyed this collaboration, and I'm especially happy with the work we did on "Professional Domains," which synthesizes work on professional writing across Europe and North America and suggests future developments. Sometimes collaborations don't go well, and sometimes they are adequate, but this collaboration really worked brilliantly for at least three reasons:

• We both made it a priority. People have lots of demands on their time, and often a collaborative writing project will take a back seat to other priorities. In this case, Eva and I both made these chapters a priority. We had frequent Skype meetings in which we agreed upon writing and research tasks, then faithfully executed those tasks before the next meeting. More than that, we read and commented on each others' writing and we suggested sources and read each others' sources. And we kept a calendar of changes so we always knew where the endpoint was.
• We appreciated each others' work while still providing critical comments. It's sometimes tricky to critique people's work, but in this collaboration, it was easy. We respected each others' expertise and collaboratively developed angles that we wouldn't have been able to provide on our own.
• We read widely. Eva reads English and French; I unfortunately read only English. But Eva was great at providing me with appropriate translations and pointing to English works that I hadn't read yet; I was able to tie in some work in English that she hadn't seen. In our Skype meetings, we worked to integrate all of this scholarship and prune redundant work as appropriate. The result was a pair of chapters that crossconnected a lot of research across two continents.

Overall, it was a great collaboration, and I hope you'll find the resulting chapters to be useful too.

Reading :: Journey to the West

Monkey - Journey to the West
By Wu Cheng'en

Journey to the West is a famous collection of stories about Sun Wukong, a monkey who achieves immortality and then creates chaos in Heaven, only to be sent back to Earth to pay for his crimes. He is imprisoned for 500 years underneath a mountain, then tasked with accompanying a monk on his journey to the West (India) to fetch the Buddhist scriptures. Like any fairy tale, it's full of magic and lots and lots of killing. It also satirizes inept bureaucracy—the version of Heaven described here seems pretty ineffectual.

Journey to the West has been produced many times, in many different versions. (For instance, the Japanese version of the name Sun Wukong is Son Goku, who should sound familiar if you've ever watched Dragon Ball Z.)

In fact, stop reading this review right now and go search YouTube for Journey to the West.

Are you back? Yeah. Whatever video you clicked on, that is exactly what the book was like. Supposedly someone refilms the story in Asia at least once a year. Here's the latest one, with Chow-Yun Fat in the starring role.

The book itself is an odd mixture of Grimm's Fairy Tales and Pilgrim's Progress. But, as I mentioned earlier, it's much more violent. If that appeals to you, check it out—or just watch more of those hallucinogenic YouTube videos.

Reading :: Babylonians and Assyrians: Life and Customs

Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs
By the Rev. A.H. Sayce

I was looking for some pleasure reading a couple of months ago, so I downloaded this public domain book on Kindle. It's what you might expect from a book published in 1899, with phrases such as "Of this there is no proof" and lots of superfluous hyphens. Still, it paints an interesting and entertaining portrait of the Babylonians and Assyrians as they were then understood.

The book covers what was then known about Babylonia and its inhabitants; the family; education and death; slavery and free labor; manners and customs; trades and land; banking; government; law; writing; and religion. I was particularly interested in the last two.

Can I recommend this book? Not as scholarship—it's too dated and too imprecise. Not as entertainment—it's not really a page turner. But if you're the kind of person who becomes curious about a particular topic, such as Babylonian religion, and finds himself spending way too much time reading about it on Wikipedia, this might be a good way to learn a little more about it for free.

Reading :: 76 Fallacies

76 Fallacies
By Michael LaBossiere

Some people like to learn about, name, and examine logical fallacies in detail. I confess that I'm not one of them. Identifying fallacies is a detail-oriented proposition, and although I can focus on details, I tend to look at the big picture first. So, clearly, I needed to read a book like this one. And 76 Fallacies is only 99 cents on Kindle.

I'm glad I did. Although I won't be memorizing the names of all 76 fallacies anytime soon, I enjoyed the spare text and clear examples supplied by the author. In paging through the fallacies, I gained some appreciation for what makes a fallacy a fallacy, how fallacies relate, and how one might use a reference such as this one to spot them.

If you're interested in fallacies—or even, like me, just interested in gaining some appreciation for their pursuit—take a look.

Reading :: Totemism

Totemism
By Claude Levi-Strauss

"Totemism is like hysteria," Levi-Strauss says in the first sentence of this slim book, "in that once we are persuaded to doubt that it is possible arbitrarily to isolate certain phenomena and to group them together as diagnostic signs of an illness, or of an objective institution, the symptoms themselves vanish or appear refractory to any identifying interpretation" (p.1). Like hysteria, he says, totemism involves bracketing certain phenomena as outside one's own moral universe (p.1).

Levi-Strauss develops this argument throughout the book, as here: "it is not because they are totemic that such systems must be regarded as irregular; it is because they are irregular that they can only be totemic" (p.53). Through a careful examination of the then-extant work on totemism, Levi-Strauss developed this influential work, calling into question what was up to that point a broadly held assumption about how "savage culture" worked.

I'm not an anthropologist, so although I enjoy Levi-Strauss' works, I can't evaluate the argument directly. But as a scholar of rhetoric and writing, I do recognize the approach—identifying a well known concept, taking it apart, and seeing how well it stands up to scrutiny. Levi-Strauss does this well and methodically, and as a result, the concept of totemism (at least, as a universal phenomenon) declined after this book made its impact. If you're interested in totemism—or in how concepts disintegrate—take a look.

Reading :: The Schlumberger Adventure

The Schlumberger Adventure
By Anne Gruner Schlumberger

Just a brief review here. In 1997, I came to Austin to intern with Schlumberger Well Services at their Austin Product Center—a very rewarding experience, leading to my first qualitative research project and three publications. The APC, alas, has been closed for a while, but I think of it fondly. I reminisced about it when I read Geoff Bowker's Science on the Run, in which he described the history of the company based on its archives and ancillary sources. Although I don't have the book at hand, I'm pretty sure one of them was The Schlumberger Adventure. So when I saw it at a used bookstore, I snapped it up.

The Schlumberger Adventure was written by Anne Gruner Schlumberger, the daughter of one of the brothers who founded the company and (for a while) the wife of Henri Doll, one of the key leaders in the company. It's not a history so much as a memoir of how the company grew from a couple of brothers conducting experiments in a bathtub to a multinational corporation. The author treats everyone evenhandedly, noting both their strengths and their foibles, and focusing more on the difficulties than the triumphs. The book is a collection of moments: driving across Oklahoma in an unreliable car; seeing their Russian partners become more withdrawn and agentless as Stalin took hold, then finally disappearing; trying to avoid the Second World War. It's a fast read and a sensitive portrait. If you're interested in the history of the company, I'd recommend it.

Reading :: Swarmwise

Swarmwise: The Tactical Manual for Changing the World
By Rick Falkvinge

His bio says "Rick Falkvinge is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, which has representation in the European parliament and has spawned Pirate Parties in more than 60 other countries." And in this book, accessible as a free download (PDF) and a printed book, he discusses how he founded it, organized it, grew it, and led it to victory.

Specifically, he discusses how leading a swarm is different from leading other sorts of organizations:

A swarm organization is a decentralized, collaborative effort of volunteers that looks like a hierarchical, traditional organization from the outside. It is built by a small core of people that construct a scaffolding of go-to people, enabling a large number of volunteers to cooperate on a common goal in quantities of people not possible before the net was available. (p.14).

Swarms, he says, are not leaderless—they need leaders. But that leadership involves articulating and projecting values and then persuading others—anyone who chooses to join the swarm—to take them up in specific projects:

A key aspect of the swarm is that it is open to all people who want to share in the workload. Actually, it is more than open — everybody in the whole world is encouraged to pick work items off a public list, without asking anybody’s permission, and just start doing them. There is no recruitment process. Anybody who wants to contribute to the goal, in his or her own way and according to his or her own capacity, is welcome to do so. (p.19).

Another key aspect is that it is transparent—in values, participation, operation, etc. Falkvinge does a nice job of alternating between describing such principles and telling the story of the Pirate Party, a story that nicely illustrates his points. Throughout the rest of the book, he describes how to launch and organize a swarm, how to control the vision without controlling the message, lead the swarm daily, avoid the traps of too much democracy (getting bogged down in votes) or too much bureaucracy, and managing radical growth. Each chapter is clear, concise, engaging, and well illustrated.

If you've been following this blog, you may see a lot of overlap with Arquilla & Ronfeldt's work, although there are differences as well. Arguably, Falkvinge's is a more radical concept, but I can certainly see productive contact points. Compared to that earlier work, this book is less scholarly, less analytical, and more of a how-to.

It's also very easy to read and engaging. Although the PDF is about 300pp, I read nearly all of it in one sitting. If you're interested in developing and leading swarms, or just in how they might operate, you should too.

Upcoming seminar: Writing persuasive business proposals

If you're in Austin, consider my November seminar on writing persuasive business proposals. It's offered through the Human Dimensions of Organizations program here at UT, and it should give you a solid background for structuring your own proposals.

Questions? Email me!

Topsight > Book Signing

Sorry for the late notice, but if you're at SXSWedu today, please swing by my book signing for Topsight. Here's the details:

Monday, March 3
4:30PM - 4:50PM
Austin Convention Center BR D Pre-Function Area
500 East Cesar Chavez Street

Topsight > A year of Topsight, and thoughts on the second edition

A little over a year ago, I launched my book Topsight: A Guide to Studying, Diagnosing, and Fixing Information Flow in Organizations. In the intervening year, I've been really pleased with how things have unfolded.

Topsight is an introductory text for field researchers who are interested in how information flows through an organization, where it gets stuck, and how to get it unstuck. It's based on my own research approach, but also on years of teaching field research to writing majors. One of the things I have really liked about writing Topsight, and teaching from it, is that I have been able to express what's fun and intriguing about field research. Sure, not every part is fun—I don't enjoy putting together consent forms, for instance—but most of it is. And it gets more fun when you have enough guidance to get you through the rough spots: pitching your project to a site, getting stakeholders on board, writing a research proposal that will pass the IRB but still be flexible enough to address unexpected contingencies, and coding the mountain of data you gather, for instance.

Since I launched Topsight in January 2013, I've used it for four courses (three undergraduate, one MA). I've Skyped with two graduate courses at different universities about it. I've received emails from several graduate students whose advisors suggest they read Topsight. And I've been really happy with the response.

At the same time, a book can always be improved. I've been keeping a running list of things I want to revise for the (eventual) second edition. Some improvements include:

• Streamlining the research proposal, consent form, and protocol examples.
• Revising the interim report example to better illustrate the principles in the chapter.
• Revising the coding chapter to emphasize process, provide more grounding on coding, and refer to solid coding resources such as Saldana's Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers.
• Discussing organization types and organizational lifecycles in a dedicated chapter.
• Framing the analytical models within the larger qualitative research tradition of analytical models, e.g., in Miles, Huberman, & Saldana's Qualitative Data Analysis 3ed.
• Developing an overview of participatory design techniques for testing recommendations.
• Addressing miscellaneous typos and formatting issues.
• Perhaps going to larger book dimensions.

If you've used Topsight, I'm sure you also have suggestions. Please don't hesitate to send me your suggestions or comments!

Reading :: Digital Detroit

Digital Detroit: Rhetoric and Space in the Age of the Network
By Jeff Rice

First, a confession: When I read Jeff Rice's first book, I don't think I really got his project. Rice was patient enough to explain it a bit in the comments. I suspect that I wasn't the first person he had to wearily correct.

Over the intervening years, I've become better acquainted with Rice's trajectory and his writing style (which Cynthia Haynes describes as "a cross between Rod Serling and Bob Dylan") and am perhaps in a better position to get what he's doing. In this book, he's interested in applying the concept of network to Detroit—network in the sense of associational links—to analyze how implicit and explicit arguments can resonate across these associations. As he says in the introduction, after name-checking chora:

I am... networking Detroit by tracing its accounts. Despite the possible readerly discomfort, I find this method advantageous for how it allows me new kinds of opportunities to explore a space; by using a network to examine Detroit as a digital concept, I am made aware of connections I would not have discovered otherwise. The disadvantage of this method, however, is that it can, at times, feel confusing. (p.13)

At times, yes. In fact, Rice's writing style is sometimes arresting, relying sometimes on repeating the same noun at the end of subsequent sentences, putting the emphasis on old rather than new information, sometimes sounding weary. Haynes hears Rod Serling in this voice; I hear Andy Rooney. Either way, it's a very different style, one that often seems to circle around to (or build slowly to) the point. This style is sometimes disrupted by uncharacteristic, heavy forecasting and other metadiscourse—I suspect that these are due to reviewers' comments rather than being organic to Rice's style. Too bad. Although I'm a big fan of clear signaling and forecasting, there's something to be said for following along at the pace the author sets.

And that style and pace are well suited for what Rice is trying to do here. Rather than describing a phenomenon out there, a shared social phenomenon, he is describing an idiosyncratic understanding based on associations:

All of my information is a network. All of my information I gather and assemble is internal to that network. These previous references—a contemporary op-ed, a 1940s historical book, a kitschy song, a novelist's travel memoirs, a car commercial—are database items within that network. Everything I produce, therefore, is a network as well. ... This book is an exploration and creation of that network. It attempts to be an information system. (p.24)

Readers might naturally wonder why the idiosyncratic network of associations that Rice describes could be useful to them. What's intrinsically more interesting about the network of associations that Rice pieces together about a specific time and place, versus, say, our own associations? Essentially this is the question that I asked about the year 1963 when I reviewed The Rhetoric of Cool. The answer that I was too task-oriented to see back then, but that I think I see now, is this: What's interesting is not the topic around how the network forms, nor the person who has assembled the network, but how such networks work, both for individuals and communities. In particular, how they function rhetorically, persuading and shaping perceptions. "Indeed, as I will argue throughout each chapter of this book," Rice adds halfway through, "networks move and are moved; they transform and translate experiences and ideas as they form and break connections. They do things" (p.70).

In his earlier book, Rice discussed such associations via the notion of chora. In this one, he draws on Latour, particularly Reassembling the Social. But whereas others in writing studies have applied Latour to empirical studies, Rice applies Latour to circulating rerepresentations in much broader, more idiosyncratic ways. As he does so, he opens the possibilities for applying such associational insights to rhetoric, demonstrating how they can help us to understand why these associations can be so persuasive in shaping our understanding of identities. Detroit is the case, but the real contribution of the book is the approach. I hope I've done justice to it—and if you're interested in networked rhetoric, I recommend you read the book.

Reading :: An Inquiry into Modes of Existence

An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns
By Bruno Latour

I've cited Latour quite a bit in my scholarship and reviewed his works on this blog, so when I found out this book was being published, I bought it immediately, along with Rejoicing. The book is respectably thick, 486 pages—which is actually much shorter than it could have been, since Latour omitted parenthetical citations and did not include a bibliography. You can see the citations at the book's website, which also hosts the book's glossary, visual materials, notes, and articles, as well as a column for readers' commentary and critiques. (If you want an index, too bad, use the online search function.) It's an interesting, though quite centralized and controlled, experiment.

For now, though, I'll keep my critique decentralized on this blog. But what a daunting challenge it is to critique a thick book by a world-renowned scholar. Especially when the scholar draws on such a broad set of significant works. Especially when the scholar writes in ways that often seem oblique and metaphorical, And especially when the resulting book seems like a capstone, one that reviews practically all of the author's scholarly output. That's essentially what the book is, from what I can tell: an attempt to tie all of this previous scholarship together into a single broad-based inquiry.

So what is this inquiry? Essentially, it's a taxonomy of different processes that yield different, yet internally coherent, contexts or meanings. Throughout his career, Latour has studied how meaning and knowledge are produced in the sciences, in technology, in law, in religion, in economics, and in politics. Here, he argues that these represent separate processes for developing meaning, processes that are internally consistent but that appear at odds when they come into contact. Those processes are all ways for making meanings and truth—ways with different logics, aims, and standards of proof. But it's difficult to get these modes of existence to interact well for two reasons.

First, it's easy to make category mistakes, mixing up their separate felicity conditions.

Second, and related, it's easy to assume that the different modes of existence are essentially compatible, boiling down to the same mode of existence and ideally following the same logics, aims, and standards of proof (something that Latour describes using the figure of "double click"). For instance, when someone tries to apply the felicity conditions of science to politics, or those of technology to religion, s/he is invoking the "double click," assuming that there can be transportation without transformation.

With that in mind, Latour patiently discusses each mode of existence, then how those modes interact. Patiently, but not economically, because Latour is not an economical writer. Fortunately for us, he lists the modes of existence in the back of the book:

• reproduction
• metamorphosis
• habit
• technology
• fiction
• reference
• politics
• law
• religion
• attachment
• organization
• morality
• network
• preposition
• double-click

Each has its own hiatus (loosely speaking, a disruptive condition), trajectory (i.e., results of transformations), felicity/infelicity conditions (when they thrive vs. when they crash), beings to institute (i.e., objectives to produce), and alteration (i.e., the way in which they are transformed). (I'm not sure how happy Latour would be with my parenthetical explanations, but since he has not provided an index, I'm going to stick with these.) 

You'll notice that some of these modes are tied to fields (e.g., politics, law, religion) while others are not (e.g., habit, organization, network). Activity theorists will note that habit, which AT would associate with the operational level of activity, is presented as a separate mode. Yes, these modes are entangled in practice, and I'm not always clear on why a field-oriented mode (e.g., science) is on the same footing as a mode that is inevitably going to be instantiated in every other mode (e.g., habit). But Latour is not simply attempting to examine these modes as separate, but as inevitably crossing and producing hybrids. For instance, he talks about the crossings between networks and prepositions (p.63), reproduction and reference (p.106), reference and politics (p.128), reproduction and metamorphosis (p.202), technology and networks (p.212), and so forth. In defining each mode along basic canonical questions (hiatus, trajectory, felicity/infelicity, beings to institute, alteration), Latour has presented a way to systematically investigate each mode and how each mode interacts with the others. 

To describe the project in an overgeneralized way, the book is an attempt to get at polycontextuality via a taxonomy of processes that yield different, coherent contexts/meanings. Once the taxonomy is laid out, we can use it to systematically investigate how these processes interact. Along the way, Latour draws on his vast set of publications, discussing Latourean concepts from networks to black boxes to quasi-objects and quasi-subjects to factishes, and on and on. If you haven't read Latour yet, this is probably not the book to start with. The number of concepts is overwhelming, as is the overall scope of the project, and Latour's often elliptical, often metaphorical writing style makes it difficult to keep the concepts and scope straight. 

For those who have read most of Latour's major works, this book is worthwhile. But it's not a walk in the park for those folks either: after all, the book is attempting to reframe key parts of Latour's work, often by re-presenting some of the original material within the newly expanded scheme. In practice, this means that it's easy to begin skimming a chapter ("ah, this is his basic argument from that chapter in Pandora's Hope") only to realize near the end of the chapter that Latour has added a new term, concept, or connection. This problem is compounded by the fact that the printed book has removed some of the key signals that help readers to detect updated arguments: citations and footnotes. Nevertheless, the book synthesizes a vast body of work into a more coherent understanding of what's at stake. Those who have seen Latour primarily as a sociologist of science because of his earlier books should now be able to see how those early projects connect with his overarching ontological project.

At least in outline. As Latour says apologetically on p.478, "I am well aware that I passed over each mode too quickly, and that each crossing would require volumes of erudition, even if the modes and crossings are more fully developed in the digital environment that accompanies this text" (p.478). Latour's hope, I think, is that the digital environment will allow others to work out these ideas more fully, connect the modes more firmly, and examine the crossings more fully. Latour has provided this vast infrastructure, so won't you build on it?

Will I? Probably not. I expect that I'll return to this book over and over—as a sourcebook. But as a work of scholarship, it was too exhausting, too unwieldy, and too sprawling for me to take in. (Longtime readers may note that this review is shorter than those I've written for similarly massive books.) The scope itself was not the only problem. Latour's writing style, which can be immensely enjoyable in 150pp books, wore on me in this longer format, and I began to fervently wish that some editor had been licensed to ruthlessly edit for concision. Frankly, I think this book could have been sweated down to 200 lean, well-organized pages, and the result would have been much easier to absorb and navigate.

Nevertheless, if you have a few Latour books on your shelf, I encourage you to pick it up. In fact—although I obviously didn't try this—you might consider blocking off six months to read the book in concert with Latour's major works. For instance, when the present book mentions religion, you could bookmark it and read On Rejoicing. When it mentions law, you could bookmark that passage and read The Making of Law. When it discusses factishes, you could read Pandora's Hope and On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods. If you do this, let me know how it goes.

Reading :: Innovation, Human Capabilities, and Democracy

Innovation, Human Capabilities, and Democracy: Towards an Enabling Welfare State
By Reijo Miettinen

Reijo Miettinen is a professor of adult education at the University of Helsinki, where he works alongside and often collaborates with several other activity theorists (such as Engestrom and Sannino). His work has typically involved case studies of scientific and technical innovations, case studies in which he has applied activity theory. In this book, however, he's less interested in contextualized case studies, instead focusing on the question of why Finland has excelled at innovation in educational and business contexts. That is, this book is focused on policy, using activity theory as a framework for understanding how Finland's educational policies have worked.

Interestingly, in Chapter 2, Miettinen applies rhetoric to the question of policy making, drawing on Burke and Perelman. This move allows him to examine policy and its drivers, setting the stage for an historical analysis of stakeholders and shifts in how those stakeholders have interpreted policy terms and concepts. He also examines the educational system, innnovation and technology policy, and capability-cultivating services. The result is a deeply textured examination of the unique mix at play in Finland.

I'll be honest: I'm not terribly interested in policy. But Miettinen conducts a solid, detailed analysis and does his best to enliven what is inherently a dry topic. I am interested in activity theory, but it is applied here rather than extended; you won't see new insights into AT here, just a model application of it.

If you're interested in policies, innovation, and education, or an application of AT to these topics, pick up this book. If you're not, consider picking it up anyway, but take it slow.

Reading:: Qualitative Research: Studying How Things Work

Qualitative Research: Studying How Things Work
By Robert E. Stake 

Whenever I pick up an article on qualitative research, it seems, I see Stake referenced in the methodology section. So when I bought several methodology texts recently, I tossed Stake on the heap.

That was a worthwhile decision: Stake provides a clear, understandable, and (in some places) passionate discussion of qualitative research and its applications. As an introductory text, it works well, covering basic concepts and stages such as the researcher-as-instrument, data collection, literature review, analysis, action research, and reporting.

But at the same time, as with Charmaz's book, this one is pitched as an introductory text. Consequently, I found myself skimming a lot and sometimes skipping chapters. If you're interested in an introduction—for yourself or your students—this might be a good book to use. But if you've conducted a few studies already, I'd look for something a little more advanced.

Reading :: Constructing Grounded Theory

Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis
By Kathy Charmaz

When Charmaz published this book in 2006, it became an instant classic. Researchers working with grounded theory found it to be an accessible, useful guide for conducting qualitative research. They're right: Charmaz covers the basics of grounded theory, discusses how to collect data, code it, write analytical memos, conduct theoretical sampling, develop theory, and write it up.

The book is accessible. But I was only lukewarm about it. I don't think that's the book's fault, though. Rather, I think that the book is simpler than I wanted it to be—especially just after reading Saldana and Miles, Huberman, & Saldana, both of which explore parts of the qualitative research process in great detail. Those books taught me something; Charmaz's book is more of a primer—which, to be fair, is what it's supposed to be.

But for that reason, I'd consider using Charmaz's book for a graduate or even undergraduate class in qualitative research. It's accessible, clear, and perhaps more lucid than any other explanation of grounded theory that I've read. If you're just learning about qualitative research in general or grounded theory in particular, pick it up.

Reading :: Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook

Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook
By Matthew B. Miles, A. Michael Huberman, and Johnny Saldana

Miles and Huberman's Qualitative Data Analysis is a classic sourcebook for qualitative researchers. I have the second edition on my shelf in the office—the one that I bought as a new assistant professor at Texas Tech. Unfortunately, Miles and Huberman passed away before they could produce a third edition, and in the intervening years, qualitative research has gone through transitions. For instance, computer-aided qualitative data analysis (CAQDAS) packages have become commonplace, diversified, and become available on various platforms. Coding has become more systematized, partially because of Saldana's efforts.

The publisher, Sage, decided that it needed a new edition. So it approached Johnny Saldana, who has attempted to preserve Miles and Huberman's insights and text while updating and extending it. Saldana does not always agree with Miles and Huberman, and sometimes signals that disagreement by specifying the source ("Miles and Huberman say...").

The book is a sourcebook, not a cookbook: any method that works is fine (p.6). And it's focused on analysis, not research design or data collection, although it touches briefly on both. You can read it through sequentially—I did—but it's really meant as a reference. It covers matrix and network displays, the two basic types of data displays, and walks through how to apply these to explore, describe, order, explain, and predict. Simple, right? Yes, but the book is 373 pages of painstaking discussion.

It's all worth it. If you do qualitative research, this book should be either on your shelf or (more frequently) open on your desk.

Reading :: The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers

The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers
By Johnny Saldana

I can't remember whether I saw this book cited in a recent article or whether Amazon suggested it to me—but I bought it alongside the third edition of Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook, the classic Miles and Huberman sourcebook that Saldana recently updated. (I'll review that one soon too.)

In any case, this present book is all about coding, a move in qualitative research that involves interpreting, analyzing, and organizing data. "A code in qualitative inquiry is most often a word or short phrase that symbolically assigns a summative, salient, essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute for a portion of language-based or visual data" (p.3). It's primarily an interpretive act (p.4).

Coding is often treated in qualitative research texts, but as a chapter or a section, not an entire book. Consequently, we typically get a restricted, crabbed idea of what coding involves. By giving himself the room to really explore coding, Saldana provides a broad synthesis of what others have said about it, and he consequently is able to systematize it and provide many different strategies for it.

In Chapter 1, Saldana describes what coding is, what it involves, and how to use computer-aided qualitative data analysis software to implement it. He explains how coding represents an interpretive, analytical act and prescribes ways to code solo or as a team.

In Chapter 2, he goes on to discuss analytic memos and their role in generating codes and categories of codes.

Chapter 3 is where coding actually begins: Saldana describes first-cycle coding methods, "processes that happen during the initial coding of data" (p.58). By methods, Saldana essentially means discrete categories of coding approaches: grammatical, elemental, affective, literary & language, exploratory, and procedural methods. Each is associated with different types of codes. For instance, affective methods involves emotion coding, values coding, versus coding, and evaluation coding. That is, Saldana has developed an organized taxonomy of coding approaches that might be appropriate for different kinds of studies and research questions. And he gives us explicit guidance in selecting the right coding approach(es). By laying out and taxonomizing these coding approaches, Saldana allows us to see coding in a much more organized and expansive way than we might have when reading more restricted discussions of coding.

Chapter 3 comprises pp.58-186 of the book. It's an exhaustive discussion of each category, making this book more of a sourcebook than a discussion (much like Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook).

Chapter 4 suggests what to do after first-cycle coding. It suggests performing "eclectic coding," a sort of open coding approach that "employs a select and compatible combination of two or more First Cycle coding methods" (p.188). After eclectic coding comes code mapping: listing the codes, categorizing them meaningfully, constructing major categories as moieties (group divisions), then phrasing the divisions in "versus" terms (pp.196-198). Code landscaping comes next: organizing and examining codes through basic approaches such as word clouds and outlining. Next, Saldana walks us through operational model diagramming, which depict processes in the data, and tabletop categories (i.e., affinity diagrams).

In Chapter 5, Saldana discusses second-cycle coding methods, which allow us to do further, more complex analytical work. These methods focus on Sources, Description, Applications, Example, Analysis, and Notes (p.207).

In the final chapter, Chapter 6, Saldana gives us strategies to pursue after second-cycle coding: focusing, theorizing, formatting, writing, ordering, networking, and mentorship.

If you're getting the idea that this sourcebook is essentially a portfolio or catalog of coding strategies, you're not wrong—and I'll likely turn to this book when I design my next research study. But it's also a meditation on what coding is, what it should do, and how it can furnish a stronger structure for one's analysis. If you conduct qualitative research, I strongly recommend it.

Reading :: The Collaborative Enterprise

The Collaborative Enterprise: Managing Speed and Complexity in Knowledge-Based Businesses
By Charles Heckscher

I read this book during the summer, but have been putting off reviewing it because I got so much from it—it seems as if every page has at least one sticky note on it. But it's time to discuss this book, which I found to be extremely useful for thinking through some of my recent case studies.

Heckscher came onto my radar when I read the book he coedited with Paul S. Adler, The Firm as a Collaborative Community. That book influenced me as I thought through work organization, and Hecksher's The Collaborative Enterprise, which was published a year later, extends those themes that I found so useful. Its focus is on "the power of extended collaboration," which "is the latest of a series of historical expansions of human abilities through an increase in the scope and richness of human interactions" (p.1). At this stage, "the problem at the leading edge of production is to combine knowledge and skills flexibly around changing tasks"—a problem that is not tackled well by markets or bureaucracies (p.1). At this point, "the challenge is mobilizing not effort but intelligence: to get people to use their particular knowledge and capacities in ways that continuously contribute to the success of the whole" (p.2).

Collaboration involves working with others toward a shared objective. As Heckscher puts it, collaboration involves “a shared objective that cannot be reached without the contribution of all. Thus it necessarily implies processes of dialogue and negotiation, of exchanges of views and sharing of information, of building from individual views toward a shared consensus” (2007, p.2). When we work together with others to define a project objective, when we develop a shared understanding of a problem, and when we find ways to make sure that everyone gains an advantage from our shared work, we are collaborating.

Collaboration isn't new—but until recently, "it required sharply bounded groups with enduring and homogeneous membership (p.3). Now, we can support extended collaboration, which represents a "quantum shift" in that specialists can come together briefly, rotate leadership among themselves, and flexibly adjust to changing projects (p.5). This is what interests Heckscher: the "collaborative enterprise," which is "collaboration that extends beyond the limits of permanent teams, units, or firms" (p.5). 

Collaboration contrasts with two other ways of seeing the enterprise: (1) one that centers on loyalty, long-term relationships, and diffuse commitments, typically hierarchical (p.9); and (2) one that centers on individuality and autonomy, usually expressed as a market or bureaucracy (p.11). Both work against collaboration, which demands that people hold dialogues across hierarchical levels and that they give up autonomy to "enter into each others' ways of seeing" (p.12). Yet collaboration is hard. Whereas markets and hierarchies "are simpler because they are highly restricted and simplified patterns of interaction," either restricting information (markets) or links (hierarchies) (p.13). Collaboration involves listing the restrictions on both. 

The seeds of collaboration rest even within the conventional hierarchies. Even though hierarchies formally restrict communication channels, they typically also have informal associational links (p.26), which cut across the hierarchy but which typically do not impute power to the association. This associational dimension is what becomes organized by the collaborative enterprise (p.28), which has the ability to create effective task teams—temporary, project-oriented, multispecialist teams—as needed (p.35).

As  Heckscher later argues, shifting to a project focus can support adaptive collaboration, focusing resources such as knowledge around focused problems; such organizations “reduce hierarchy considerably and emphasize project teams generated around opportunities. Size is not so important because this strategic approach narrows the focus to a small number of ‘core competencies’” (Heckscher 2007, p.63).

Such collaborative enterprises have different needs. For instance, Heckscher argues that “Mobility could be a good thing for employees as well as for companies if there were good systems in place for supporting mobile careers. These systems were unneeded in a bureaucratic order, but they are crucial now—and weak” (2007, p.272). Additionally, people in collaborative enterprises must be able to build “shared understandings and processes” by freely using the physical and service infrastructure to contact each other, collaborating via associational links without going through the levels of their organization’s bureaucratic hierarchy (Heckscher 2007, p.92). This collaborative infrastructure can and should be “deliberately managed” in larger enterprises (Heckscher 2007, p.92, 136). 

Yet, Heckscher adds, “there is no organized and systematic effort to build the infrastructure for mobile careers” (2007, p.190; cf. p.272). He sees these constraints on communications infrastructure—as well as other structures, such as benefits—as restrictors that may retard the development of collaborative enterprises.

If you've been following my readings or writings over the last few years, you can see how I'd be intrigued by Hecksher's work. This review only scratches the surface of this book, which is well argued, thorough, and thought-provoking. If you're even a little interested in the issues discussed here, check it out.

Presentation - All Edge: Exploring the New Workplace Networks

I just got back from speaking at the Austin Chamber of Commerce about how work is changing due to new information and communication technologies. Here's my presentation:

All Edge: Understanding the New Workplace Networks from Clay Spinuzzi

The new issue of Present Tense, including an interview with me

Brian McNely was kind enough to interview me last year at SIGDOC, and this interview has recently been published at Present Tense. Brian does a great job pulling together our conversation while retaining my enthusiasm about methods and methodology. If you're interested, please take a look! And also see the other stories—it looks like a really interesting issue!

Official announcement below:

The editors of Present Tense are pleased to announce the publication of Vol. 3.1. This issue is our most multimodal collection to date, including our first slidecast essay (“The Quiet Country Closet”) and our first full audio essay (“Voices in Egypt”), as well as a number of other essays that incorporate images, video, and additional modes beyond alphabetic text. 

Volume 3.1 includes:

The Quiet Country Closet: Reconstructing a Discourse for Closeted Rural Experiences: Garrett Nichols examines the rhetorical and communal practices of rural LGBTQ dwellers “who have no desire to flee their supposedly oppressive communities.”

Voices in Egypt: Sound and Revolution: Abigail Lambke explores the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 as a “recorded revolution”—one in which oral utterances of the uprising have been preserved through technology to document the struggle of Egyptians in protest.

From GUI to NUI: Microsoft’s Kinect and the Politics of the (Body as) Interface: David M. Rieder interrogates the role of reflection and critique in immersive natural-user interface (NUI) environments, such as Microsoft Kinect, in which users themselves effectively become the interface.

Rhetorical Empathy in Dustin Lance Black’s 8: A Play on (Marriage) Words: Lisa Blankenship describes how the concept of rhetorical empathy functions in arguments about gay marriage in the play 8.

Louis C.K.’s ‘Weird Ethic’: Kairos and Rhetoric in the Network: James J. Brown, Jr. argues that comedian Louis C.K. opens himself to kairotic moments of vulnerability and unpredictability, in contrast to the snark that constitutes “the dominant mode of networked rhetorical situations.”

Why So Hostile?: The Relationships among Popularity, “Masses,” and Rhetorical Commonplaces: Mark D. Pepper addresses arguments against popular texts by invoking and questioning the rhetorical commonplaces that denigrate mass culture.

“That Light-Bulb Feeling”: An Interview with Clay Spinuzzi: Brian McNely sits down with Clay Spinuzzi at the 2012 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Design of Communication Conference to ascertain Spinuzzi’s ideas about genre, research methodologies, and much more.

Instructive Commodities: The Rhetorical Regulation of American Health and Gender Norms in Bodies…The Exhibition: Tara Pauliny looks to the popular Bodies…The Exhibition as an example of “how regulation and commodification are networked” to inscribe bodies as metaphors for international commercial practices.

Residual Nations and Cyber Yugoslavia: Speech Acts and Nationality in the Internet Age: Mary Hedengren discusses the “residual nation” of Cyber Yugoslavia to demonstrate how technology can transform and transgress notions of nationhood in contemporary political discourse.

Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society is a peer-reviewed, blind-refereed, online journal dedicated to exploring contemporary social, cultural, political and economic issues through a rhetorical lens. In addition to examining these subjects as found in written, oral and visual texts, we wish to provide a forum for calls to action in academia, education and national policy. Seeking to address current or presently unfolding issues, we publish short articles ranging from 2,000 to 2,500 words, the length of a conference paper.

Reading :: Interaction Ritual

Interaction Ritual - Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior
By Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman is a giant in sociology, and I always feel guilty that I don't enjoy his work more than I do. The work always seems to be promising, but the system weighs heavily on me and the illustrations are light touches, brief stories from others' works, not long enough to feel that the system has been well grounded. It's like reading Aristotle.

Nevertheless, the system itself is valuable and, like Aristotle, Goffman provides a vocabulary and set of concepts that can be productively applied to various instances. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle opposes rhetoric to dialectic and explains appeals such as logos, pathos, ethos; in Interaction Ritual, Goffman describes face-work and explains the various moves that people use to maintain it.

"The term face may be defined as the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. Face is an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes—albeit an image that others may share, such as when a person makes a good showing for his profession or religion by making a good showing for himself" (p.5). People must maintain their face (i.e., keep the line internally consistent; p.6). They can be "in wrong face when information is brought forth in some way about his social worth which cannot be integrated, even with effort, into the line that is being sustained for him" (p.8). And they can be "out of face when he participates in a contact with others when he participates in a contact with others without having ready a line of the kind participants in such situations are ready to take" (p.8). They can be shamefaced (perceived as flustered) and can have poise (the ability to suppress or conceal shamefacedness) (pp.8-9). Throughout their interactions, people build a line—and are often stuck with it; switching one's line can be confusing because one is abandoning a line to which one had previously been committed (p.12; Goffman does not go on to discuss common ways of changing one's line, such as confession, repentance, and conversion).

On this basis, Goffman goes on to examine interaction rituals, i.e., "acts through whose symbolic component the actor shows how worthy he is of respect or how worthy he feels others are of it" (p.19).

The rest of the book, though it consists of separate essays, builds on this vocabulary of face-work. In one chapter, Goffman uses a study at two mental wards to examine the nature of deference and demeanor, concluding that the self is in part a ceremonial thing (p.91). Goffman also examines alienation, public order, and the notion of "action." In each, he carefully and systematically examines rituals of interactions.

Again, this book is a classic. But take it in small doses, like Aristotle.

Reading :: The Fifth Age of Work

The Fifth Age of Work: How Companies Can Redesign Work to Become More Innovative in a Cloud Economy
By Andrew M. Jones

Drew Jones was one of the first people I met when I began investigating the coworking scene in Austin in 2008. An anthropologist by training, Drew began looking into coworking in 2007 and cowrote one of the first books (perhaps the first?) on coworking: I'm Outta Here. But Drew's focus was always broader than coworking: he was interested in how work would change in the near future due to a number of factors, such as millenials entering the workforce; the information revolution, which has obviated copresence in a lot of work; the question of how to nurture and sustain innovation in companies; the environmental and financial impacts of moving people back and forth; and the sheer waste of office buildings that are empty two-thirds of the time. Drew outlined many of these themes in forums such as the Future of Work salon and SXSW 2010, as well as his book on innovation. And now he's developed them in this book, which comes out in November. I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy.

The Fifth Age of Work examines coworking and other work trends against this backdrop. This book, aimed at popular audiences, lucidly and engagingly discusses the challenges that organizations face as we move toward "the fifth age of work":

The Fifth Age of Work is an emerging world of work broadly defined by the rise of cloud-based technology such as remote computing, file storage and retrieval (e.g., Evernote, Dropbox), and communication channels (e.g., Skype, Google Hangout), as well as the decentralization and de-localization of work characterized by distributed teams, remote work, flex work and telecommuting, contract and project-based work, and the rapid growth of the coworking movement. But the Fifth Age is also much more than this.  These myriad arrangements are manifestations of more fundamental, evolutionary changes in our economy. The Great Recession in 2008, in fact, was an inflection point that marked the arrival of this new epoch, where we are now witnessing culture and technology colliding to disrupt and redefine the what, when, where, how, and even the why of work. (p. 10).

Jones contrasts the Fifth Age with the previous four:

• First: hunting and gathering
• Second: agriculture 
• Third: merchantilism
• Fourth: the Information Revolution (pp.11-12)

He sees the Fifth Age as the occasion for a new social contract, one that addresses workers' need for "more independence, trust, and honesty in their working lives" (p.15). 

Based on this vision, Jones discusses coworking, work innovation, corporate culture shifts, workplace design, and other aspects of work that are changing or under pressure. He concludes that in the Fifth Age of Work, leadership must look different—perhaps "anthropological." And he includes a workbook near the end of the book to help leaders think through experiments and innovations in their own workplaces.

Personally, I enjoyed the broad sweep and the way Jones connected different trends in this short but thought-provoking book. If you're interested in the future of work, coworking, or similar aspects, take a look.