Thursday, November 21, 2013

What Should You Do With Your Life?

This week's topic is Careers and Professional Development. To explore this topic, we take a look at two articles. In Butler and Waldroop's (1999) article, employee retention takes a front seat. They claim that employers do not understand the concept of work satisfaction. Employers seem to think if someone is a successful employee, he or she is a happy employee. However, research shows that happy employees are those whose work aligns with their interests. Aligning word with those interests is called job sculpting, and employers would be smart to take it into consideration. The authors blame hiring practices and development practices as reasons why the system is currently broken. Hiring practices are based on abilities, not interests. The problem with professional development is that HR people are not your boss. If you want to truly develop as a professional, you and your boss need to collaborate on that. Another interesting aspect of this article was the discussion of the top eight life interests for people suited to business careers. These are application of technology, quantitative analysis, theory development and conceptual thinking, creative production, counseling and mentoring, managing people and relationships, enterprise control, and influence through language and ideas.

Paradise (2009) looks at the 2009 ASTD State of the industry report. The good news is that those of us in areas of study that align with workforce development and performance improvement are in a field that remains steady. At least in 2009 organizations were not cutting professional development budgets. That said, the employee to training staff ratio is quite high. So, while there is plenty of work to be done, organizations do not appear to be hiring more of us to do it. Outsourcing went down a little bit, which would suggest organizations are hiring their own development teams, rather than hiring outside companies.

While the job market in professional development tends to be seasonal, I've noticed a lot of jobs in that area over the last couple of years. My job board notices are constantly flashing with new entries for instructional designers, trainers, and workforce development coordinators. Perhaps, as more of us are hired into this field, we can design professional development programs that take into consideration people's interests and helps to bridge the gap between employee and supervisor for better collaboration.

References

Butler, T., & Waldroop, J. (1999). Job sculpting: The art of retaining your best people. Harvard Business Review, 77(5), 144-152.

Paradise, A. (2009, November). The 2009 ASTD state of the industry report. T+D, 44-49.

Every Field has It's Issues

It appears a big issue in Human Performance Technology is research, or lack thereof. James Klein (2002) takes us through three years' worth of articles in Performance Improvement Quarterly to determine how many involved empirical research and what that research had to say. Apparently, about 36% of the articles were empirical research. This is quite high, on one hand, since the article also refers to a similar review of four publications that only turned up 7%. Yet, it is quite low, on the other hand, considering the importance of research in the field. Most of the research involved surveys and case studies. Direct observation was not common. The topics of these research articles tended more toward practices of professionals and training strategies rather than on whether or not different methods are actually working. Klein identifies the many gaps in HPT research that many consider vital to address.

Pershing, Lee, and Cheng (2008) gather the opinions of fifteen experts in the field regarding dominant methods, influential fields of study, and research and development within the field. Popular models included the ISPI model and models by Rummler, Gilbert, Mager-Pipe, and Tosti. The experts did not push for new models, but did call for better evaluation methods. Most appeared to be neutral with regard to interventions, not seeing them as the major focus of HPT. The top three most influential disciplines were "systems theory, information technology, and cognitive science" (Pershing, Lee, and Cheng, 2008). Although many other disciplines were also influential to some degree. There were mixed reviews of the current research in the field. Some even thought research was not needed. It's clear that most have an opinion about research. The problem is that many of those opinions conflict with one another.

This trend toward lack of research in HPT keeps coming up in my classes this semester. It has come up repeatedly in my course on needs analysis. Most of our readings are quite old, simply because there is so little research on the topic, especially with regard to which methods are most effective. In IT Foundations, it is coming up again. While instructional technology and HPT are both applied fields, instructional technology tends to be more academic, whereas HPT is more organizational. Organizations simply do not have the time, nor take the time, for research. Academia tends to focus on itself, leaving very few folks actually studying organization interventions and methods. The real question is what needs to change in order to support and encourage more research in this area? My suspicion is that it would require a paradigm shift on the part of modern business practices, as well as more incentives for academics to do field research in organizations. I welcome your thoughts.

References
 
Klein, J. D. (2002). Empirical research on performance improvement. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 15(1), 99-110.

Pershing, J. A., Lee, J. & Cheng, J. (2008). Current status, future trends, and issues in human performance technology, part 2: models, influential disciplines, and research and development. Performance Improvement, 47 (2), 7-15.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

A Matter of Ethics

This week we are looking at performance standards and ethics within instructional technology and human performance technology. Honestly, this subject deserves an entire course just by itself. It's a matter of great importance within any professional association. I am a member of AECT, and there is a section in every Tech Trends issue devoted to ethics. A section of the website is devoted to the ethical principles agreed upon by the membership. This is true of other associations, as well.

One of those issues of Tech Trends was assigned reading on this subject. This particular article provides a provocative scenario. A student appeals to her professor regarding another student who was looking at pornography during class. The principle covered addressed the responsible use of media as being a commitment to society. While the article provided no closure to the fictional scenario, it offered possible explanations and solutions that could have been used to correct the problem before it became a problem. Like many ethical principles, this one contains a lot of grey area. I can think of all kinds of reasons naked people might pop up on someone's computer screen. I remember doing research on vermicomposting (composting with worms) and finding all the wrong websites for the topic. Indiana University has the famed Kinsey Institute. Insert a minor in sex education, and it would be perfectly reasonable for a student to be utilizing pornography for valid educational use. I've worked in community health for many years. My branch of health studies originated in Europe, and I can tell you that most of my textbooks feature a lot of naked people. Even if the student had been viewing those sites unjustifiably, the article points out that there is a big continuum between freedom of speech and expression and unlawful acts.

Banaji, Bazerman, and Chugh (2003) take a look at ethical management and the fact that we view our own ethics above where they actually are. This brings up a question. If we do not know we are being unethical, how can we correct it? The first issue covered in this article is that of implicit bias, when we have biases we are not even aware of. I don't have to take the Implicit Association Test to know I have implicit bias. Leaving home and going away to college taught me that I soaked up a lot of bias along the way, despite years of rebelling against the prejudices around me. The next issue covered is in-group favoritism. Apparently, nepotism is alive and well in our culture. The problem is that our groups tend to be made up of people like us. Another problem is that people tend to think too highly of themselves. While confidence is identified as virtue in today's world, this article explains how this dilemma can lead to diminished group performance. Conflict of interest is another problem. I just started working for a research project of the Center for Research on Learning and Technology. Part of the new hire process is taking compliance training. Identifying conflicts of interest and recognizing which ones need to be disclosed is an important part of that training. The training program is quick to point out that we all have biases, whether or not we know it, that contribute to conflicts of interest. This is a good reason why data collection and analysis should always be triangulated. So, back to the question of how to correct unintentional questionable ethics. This article suggests collecting data, shaping your environment, and broadening your decision-making. That sounds much easier said than done.

Finally, Guerra (2006) takes an extended look at ethics with regard to HPT.  I found the comparison between the definitions of ethics, morals, values, and business ethics in this chapter interesting. The author explains that the chapter deals with normative ethics. This branch of ethics looks at acceptable behaviors. The consequentialist theory bases the morality of an action on its consequences. My undergraduate degree is in religious studies, and in that field this approach was identified as a developmentally childlike approach to morality. Some people never grow out of this stage. This author encourages reflection on where on the continuum of ethical egoism, utilitarianism, and ethical altruism one's organization stands when making ethical decisions. The next step up to consequence-based ethics is conforming to the rules. This is called intentionality in this chapter. Then, what follows is virtue ethics, which is based in developing good moral character. The author next addresses the question of whether or not ethics are relative or absolute, without actually answering the question. Let's face it. These questions have been debated for millennia, chances are good we are not coming up with the answers anytime soon. According to the four-stage process for making ethical decisions, one must recognize there is a moral question in order to make an ethical decision. This reminds me of the saying, "Hindsight is 20/20." It's much easier to recognize a morally questionable situation after the fact. The good news from all of this is that professional codes of ethics actually do make a difference. Therefore, AECT, ISPI, and all the other professional organizations that put so much effort in them are not wasting their time.  I could fill another blog post with the discussion and suggestions this author provides regarding ethical values in both instructional design and human performance. So, I'll just say that there are guidelines out there, and they are gaining more and more attention.

Guerra (2006) paints the picture of organizations that are growing in their focus on ethical standards, and I hope that is true. The chapter was written eight years ago, and I must say that one of my explicit biases is that ethics seems to have no place in modern business practices. I really hope that is an unfounded bias, and corporate America is far more ethically sound than I imagine it. I'm glad ethics is being covered in my foundations course. As I said before, I would love to see it offered as a required course so that we could explore some of the professional codes more thoroughly.

References

Banaji, M. R., Bazerman, M. H., & Chugh, D. (2003). How (Un) ethical are you? Harvard Business Review81(12), 56-64.

Guerra, J. A. (2006). Standards and ethics in human performance technology. In J. A. Pershing (Ed.) (2006), Handbook of human performance technology (3rd ed.) (pp. 1024-1046). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Napper, V., Hadley, K., & Yeaman, A. R. J. (2010). Is Janet viewing porn in class!?!! TechTrends54(2), 22-23.