4.5.1 Research Strategy
While the methodological framework adopted would be suitable for quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods of social research enquiry, the nature of the research purpose and questions in my study are in the interpretivist tradition. I sought to capture the experiences, perceptions and feelings of individual DCS participants because I am
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interested in how they make sense of their professional identity. This involved capturing detailed and situated empirical interpretation through tracing participants’ Psychobiography, while maintaining an analytical lens on the external forces shaping the social reality of leadership in public services today where leaders experience increasingly uncertain, complex and turbulent professional working lives (Horney, Pasmore & O’Shea, 2010). Following Social Domains Theory, this is not incompatible. In fact, it is exactly the type of social enquiry Layder (1997, 2006) advocates to facilitate a meaningful connection of practical research to theory to enrich ontological understandings of social reality.
In summary, my philosophical and theoretical stance is informed by theories of critical management studies (Alvesson & Wilmott, 1992; Essers, 2009; Fournier & Grey, 2000; Skoldberg, 2009; Stokes; 2011; Svenningson, 2003) which views identity as struggle, and therefore in a continual process of ‘becoming’. I believe the social and discursive contexts to which individuals relate themselves leaves identity a more open project than in the past: with some of the most concentrated identity work actually taking place in the increasingly fragmented and contradictory contexts my participants inhabit. There is recognition - certainly in the work of Sveningsson, Alvesson and Skoldberg, that individuals may be able to draw on variable integrative capacities and, in exercising these “with skill and effort, and a little luck” (Alvesson, 2010, p. 201) they may succeed in constructing a positive identity – albeit offering only a temporal sense of coherence, as they resist or align to their perceived social reality. This understanding has influenced my design and the overall methodology for the study. I have chosen to conduct narrative research (Chamberlayne, Apitzsch & Bornat, 2002) through extended in-depth interviews, and in applying the Theory of Social Domains and its related Adaptive Theory as an analytic device, I have been able to critically interpret and analyse the empirical data in a way that takes seriously both life and career stories, and the social and discursive contexts in which they are embedded.
4.5.2 Sample Choice and Profile
I required participants for my small-scale study who could offer some insights into professional identity perceptions and constructs of those in the role of DCS. I knew it was not feasible - or even necessary, to attempt to interview all 152 DCSs in England to
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address the research questions. So, a purposive, non-probability sample was identified using a Government defined administrative region in the North of England to bound my research area. This regional focus gave me access to DCSs managing services in areas with diverse socio-economic conditions and very different communities of children, young people and families living in large cities, former industrially important towns, rural areas and seaside resorts. The region covers over 15,408 square kilometres (ONS, 2014). There are fifteen Directors in the identified region, each situated in a different local authority. One DCS chose not to be involved in the study.
Ten participants are female and four are male, with most in their mid-40s to 50s. As a first, or primary ‘occupational-professional’ background, six have come from social work, one from youth work, four from teaching or education management, one from youth offending, one from early years and one from librarianship-lifelong learning. Some psychobiographical detail of the participants is contained in chapter six, although care has been taken to obscure as much identifying information as possible, discussed further in 4.7 of this chapter. Selecting as my purposive sample, all DCS’s in the regional area was sensitive to ethical issues of peer identification, considered a little later. There is support in the research methods literature for selecting relatively small numbers of participants for an empirical study of this nature. Creswell (2005) recommends that qualitative studies using in-depth interviews, should involve around ten people. While Boyd (2001) argues that there is a saturation point in such interviewing; again indicating this may be around twelve participants.
The range of services DCSs are responsible - and accountable for, generally include: secondary and primary schools, looked after children (including fostering, adoption and legal guardianship), children with additional needs, early years services such as local daycare, childminders and playgroups, children’s rights/youth empowerment, family learning, children’s centres, children’s social care, parenting support, child and adolescent mental health, pupil referral units, advice support and counselling for young people, play and recreation and children’s health services. DCSs are responsible for several thousand staff and significant annual budgets of between £40-60 million, not including funding for schools (DfE, 2014). No DCS in the sample (or as far as can be ascertained, in England), is on an annual salary and benefits package less than £115,000. The average outer-London salary range for a DCS is £127,000
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(GatenbySanderson, 2014). Each DCS has a statutory duty (under section 18 of the Children Act, 2004) to protect the well-being and safety of all children in their area, even in services they do not have direct management responsibility for. An example would be a children’s ward in a hospital, a private sector fostering organisation placing children in homes (including outside the area), a Free School or an Academy.
4.5.3 Gatekeepers and Access
In the organisational hierarchy, DCSs sit just below the Chief Executive of a local authority in England. Most authorities have a similar structure (although the layers of management have been significantly reduced in the last few years due to economic cuts, Hulme et al., 2014). DCSs will normally have at least two Assistant Director’s (ADs) and in some authorities four or five, to manage the complex and wide-ranging services and responsibilities. As very senior organisational leaders, each DCS has a Personal Assistant to support them administratively and to organise their very busy work schedules. I faced some challenges in negotiating access to some of the participants and reaching beyond these PA ‘gatekeepers’ (Neuman, 2000) to secure the first interviews. Two aspects helped me. Firstly, I had some previous professional contact with a few of the DCSs, which lent currency for securing that all important appointment time in their busy diaries. I had sent letters to each of the fifteen DCSs in the region (Appendix 1), explaining the purpose of the research and asking them to be involved. This was followed up in approximately ten days by a telephone call from me. Secondly, I had established a fledging - yet positive working relationship with one of the DCSs in the identified sample. She agreed to take part in an exploratory conversation to explore the most fruitful areas for investigation around my planned focus on how DCSs experienced and made sense of their professional identity in the role, to inform and help me prepare for conducting in-depth narrative interviews (Chamberlayne, Bornat & Wengraf, 2000). The unexpected outcome of this encounter was her enthusiasm for the research study and a commitment to speak with her DCS peers in the region to encourage them to take part. Such personal endorsement is so valuable to the “lone
PhD researcher, often seen as nothing more than an irritant in an already pressurised institutional context” (Chadderton, 2011, p.57). While I was able to capitalise on this with
a number of the DCSs’ PAs in my follow up telephone calls to book interview time, others proved a little more tenacious as gatekeepers, but some gentle persistence
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(trying hard to not be an irritant) paid off and I secured the commitment of fourteen of the selected purposive sample of fifteen DCSs for my study.