Manual de procedimientos para la confección de las camisetas de algodón

My writing aims to be a ‘still point’ that fosters thoughtful action. My interpretative lens has changed as the study has progressed towards holding complexity and interrelatedness rather than simplifying conclusions and closing down the knowing process. A major part of the problem is in academic discourse itself. Some social scientists only value narrative accounts if they analyse stories to advance social theory. Ellis and Bochner (2000) and others, though, see personal reflection as political insight evoked through individuals' stories, co-creating consequences that are bound up in the storytelling and practitioner experience. My personal account is a mix of experience, vignettes and changing practice in emotions at my workplace and in myself. In

contributing to knowing I require the reader to reflect on their own life in order to bring alive the thesis' value and import. It captures and holds a process and, as such, needs active communication to keep the contribution alive and charged with emotion. I am and will always be a reflective practitioner and, as a doctoral student, I am a professional who attempts to change and develop organisational culture through the power of emotions. Ely et al. (1991) explore how reflexive conversation can be promoted through qualitative writing. This process of writing, reflection and

practitioning can embed and anchor local, yet strategically significant, progress and can cut through rationalised obstacles, such as delineation by job titles, positions and traditions, into fresh approaches. I resonate with Ely (ibid.) as she talks of research writing as the ‘still point’ that can promote thoughtful actions and change. Schön (1983) talks of an intellectual and political reflexive conversation - but to this I add emotional - that carries through to actions and meaningful, heart-felt activities. I am an interpreter of my and others' emotions in the workplace. As Denzin (1994, p.500) states, "Nothing speaks for itself". This really is a sea of clues and cues to mix together in a belief - a thesis. I have worked through literature, then moved to field texts and iterations to reach a research text as a script draft that makes some sense of what it is I have learned and how I can place this in academic and practitioner contexts. Many iterations have been gone through in this whole story account that is shared with mentors and supervisors to reach the goal of being a published text.

In studying emotions at my workplace I have found and felt how we interconnect and influence each other, consciously and subliminally. I have tried to rationalise and gather evidence to present and analyse in a traditional way but ultimately failed as emotions cannot be rationalised or contained in data for conclusive proof. In a sense my failure to do this was a seminal observation which could have been a show-stopper, yet I was carried through the pain wall into a reflective practitioning of sense-making that was essentially emotional at its core. I set out to find out about emotion but

through reflective practice in work with others. In so doing I developed a self-knowing process and method of inquiry that evolved. This aligns with Bullough and Pinnear’s (2001, p.14) research finding that “that to study a practice is simultaneously to study self”. As Lerner (1993, p.206) proposes, I found that there was no one “true self" that I could reflect on in myself or others but "multiple potentials and possibilities that different situations will evoke or suppress”. I have unearthed through reflective emotive practitioning a crucible of emotional selves that need to be respected as an intense energy source within any context, in this case the workplace, that underpins all activity. It is the understanding and experience of this that should be shared in theses such as mine to contribute to the community of academic and practitioner knowledge. I have matured in my emotional self and tuned my ear, eyes, heart and spirit to feelings that communicate and resonate harmonics to move my soul in relationship with others at work. It is not so much that I had been getting it ‘wrong’ in my earlier doctoral research or that this unearthed evidence to answer basic research questions on emotions in the workplace but, critically, it exposed a seam of rich base rock on which my reflection carved and shaped the meaning embodied in my further reflective work. As a geographer I liken this to throwing a sample net over a diverse grassland so that

detailed study can proceed in a practical manner and projected as representative of the population. However, this analogy stops there as the field of emotions cannot be delimited and certainly is not two-dimensional.

Glaser and Strauss (1967) promote writing itself as a method of inquiry into the self. My research promotes a sense of self in finding out and aims to embrace what

McLaughlin (2003) calls the “feeling of finding out”. Claxton (2000) calls for intuition to be made the glue for conscious intellect and intelligent action. This is readily

brought out in my research action and is key to establishing “knowing” processes. This is an existentialist perspective which increases the importance of participants’ choices, meanings and desired actions.

Fineman (2003) adds that an open mind helps with seeking new understandings and paradigms through integrating interdisciplinary conversations across emotions, feelings, psychology, sociology, biology, anthropology, history, organisational

behaviour and management studies. New methodologies help to contextualise critical accounts of emotion in real contextualised workplace situations, which is necessary if we are to see useful change recommendations through the emotional lens of the inner- self. Denzin (2006) argues for using different methods to cumulatively compensate for the biases of any single one but cautions us as to how difficult it is to effectively

combine different results. This research recognises these concerns but steers a route through research action that gets to a consensual feel for behaviours and actions, although through my own philosophy, bias and actual and perceived influence on the situation.