Interacción Humano – Computador (HCI)

To supplement the data collection and data analysis phases, I kept a reflective journal in the form of a public blog which I updated every 2-4 weeks (see Appendix A). The purpose of this research diary was to log my progress and personal development over the course of

writing my thesis, or, as I put it in Entry 1, to provide “a space to process the great amount

of information I will be attempting to cram into my brain over the course of the next 12

months. An opportunity to reflect…without worrying how it all ‘fits’ into the bigger

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research process in terms of exploring my self-presentation and interpretive research

position (see Chapter One –Researcher’s Position).

Blogging is described by Freeman and Brett (2012) as an “individual exploration of ideas

of personal interest through frequent online posts, documenting ideas as they emerge over

time” (p. 1032). As a form of self-reflective practice, blogging has the potential to improve

analytical skills and reflective thinking, along with facilitating the thoughtful questioning of beliefs and practices, and, in some cases, changes in attitude (Sim & Hew, 2010;

Freeman & Brett, 2012). For example, in Entry 2 “On the Road” I explored my reasons for

an important change in direction from an ‘authentic leadership’ perspective to a ‘women and leadership’ angle:

Although I was hesitant at first to focus solely on women’s leadership, especially

since authentic leadership was/still is something I’m quite passionate about and

interested in, in terms of creating excellent discussion material and contributing to feminist discourse within business and management studies, refining my focus seems like the best course of action. Furthermore, finding good literature with

strong female characters which also contained examples of ‘authentic’ leadership

moments was proving tricky!

This doesn’t mean that at least one of the stories I select can’t be concerned with

authentic leadership and how women enact it and experience it (I’m thinkingThe

Secret Life of Bees!), but rather that I’ll have the freedom to utilise both a wider

range of literary texts and make the whole study more provocative, topical and

hopefully less ‘fluffy’/feel good –I don’t want to simply provide nicely packaged

‘right’ answers. Thus, the focus will be more on women’s leadership

development rather than authentic leadership lessons. With this in mind I’m in the process of re-defining my criteria for the selection of texts.

I also used the blog to discuss my emerging understandings of key theories and intellectual

ideas. In Entry 8 “Storytelling as the ‘Other’ (Part 2)” I conducted an in-depth analysis of

Badaracco’s (2006) approach before suggesting and then deliberating at length on an

alternative method:

Badaracco takes a popular business concept (in this case a leader's in-built ‘moral

compass’), problematizes widespread ideas/norms surrounding individual morality,

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Okonkwo’s downfall in Things Fall Apart), and proposes possible solution/s in the

form of self-improving reflexive questions. Essentially, he is providing aspiring

leaders with ideas to help them become better, more ethical, moral leaders. It’s like

book club on steroids basically, but for men.

I can’t bring myself to write something so blatantly post-feminist; buying into the

wider discourse of Western individualism and over-simplifying the pressing issues

surrounding women’s leadership by relegating problems to the ‘I/me/you’. And so

I would like to turn to feminist poststructuralism, deconstruction and critical

reflexivity (scary names, huh?) as potential ‘methods’ or strategies for content

analysis.

My blog has served as a springboard for action, helping me to engage creatively with new ideas, as well as providing a discursive platform on which to clarify my emerging

understandings of complex theories. It has been a forum for candid yet thoughtful self- expression, making me deeply aware and critically self-conscious of my own learning and development. The entries which focus on this are:

x Entry 1:The Beginning of the Beginning or ‘Listomaniac’

x Entry 3: Signposts in Wonderland

x Entry 5: Storytelling as the ‘Other’ (Part 1)

x Entry 7: Storytelling as the ‘Other’ (Part 2)

x Entry 9: “I’m not a Feminist, but…”

x Entry 10: The Year That Was & The Year That Will Be

x Entry 12: The ‘Art’ of Writing

x Entry 14: Keep Calm & Write On

x Entry 16: Making Ends Meet

x Entry 17: How to Finish?

The blog has also played an integral role in my assessment of women’s literature. I used

the blogging platform to reflect on potential long and short list candidates, make

‘applicability ratings’, pick out relevant ‘women and leadership’ themes, and provide key

thoughts on plot, favourite characters, personal likes and dislikes, and possible discussion

points. These highly self-conscious reader-response ‘book reviews’ have served as

scaffolding for all further data collection and data analysis during implementation of the five phases of the RITES rubric:

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x Entry 2: On the Road

x Entry 4: Still Time for Butterflies

x Entry 6: Thoughts from and Enthusiastic Reader

x Entry 8: Calling All Bookworms

x Entry 11: In the Name of Reading

x Entry 13: Straight from My Book Bag

x Entry 15: “That’s a Wrap!” A Book Review Finale

The complete set of blog entries are available in chronological order in Appendix A.

5.5 Chapter Summary

To conclude, this chapter outlined in detail the processual steps I took to develop my own methods for systematically selecting appropriate literary fiction for my research. These included four reading boundaries to identify texts for the long list along with four short list selection criteria (see Table 10). Applied to the novels, short stories and plays, I was able to choose 50 texts for my long list (see Table 9), and from this broad selection, ten stories for my short list (see Table 11). My critical reflective journal served to capture in detail the

developmental phases of my ‘artful’ approach by tracking the reading and discovery

process, managing positions of not knowing, and, ultimately, assisting me in finding flow and unity in my research.

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Chapter Six: Discussion and Findings

6.1 Introduction

This chapter discusses the findings from my reading, selection, interrogation and thematic analysis of ten short listed literary texts using the reading boundaries and selection criteria

methods developed in Chapter Five. These ten stories and their corresponding ‘women and

leadership’ themes are summarised in Table 11. A short plot synopsis and summary of key

themes are also provided. These concise vignettes inform the thematic arrangement (Step 3 of the RITES rubric) of the stories in line with the conceptual framework, as well as

providing context for all further qualitative/textual content analysis. This is followed by an extended discussion (Steps 4 and 5 of the RITES rubric) of the data mined from five of the

texts in view of the meanings they hold for women’s leadership. Due to the size limitations

for this research project, I provide only one extended illustrative example for each of the five theoretical concepts, identifying multiple opportunities for critical theorising, illustrative analysis and critical reflection in my analysis of these texts.