It has taken me forever to get this post up on my blog! \u00a0I am finally being shamed into finishing up this post after drinks, snacks, and dinner with my students last night. \u00a0Why so hard to write? \u00a0I think it’s because one becomes very self-conscious about writing when one is teaching about writing and thinking.<\/p>\n
So, the scoop: \u00a0I am teaching a course this semester for our PhD students called “Writing in the Organizational Sciences”. \u00a0Although the title says “writing,” what it’s really about is writing and THINKING about research in the organizational sciences. And, as one of my students pointed out last night, critical thinking about research. \u00a0I’d also add creative thinking about research.<\/p>\n
This course builds off a course I had with\u00a0Allan Wicker <\/a>called “Conceptual Framing” and from the philosophy of my main graduate school mentor, M. Lynne Markus<\/a> who believed that you aren’t actually thinking until you are actually writing.* \u00a0In this class, we talk about everything involved in writing and thinking about research from incredibly mundane but fundamental parts of writing research like grammar (Barzun’s Simple and Direct<\/a>) and scheduling (Pomodoro Technique<\/a>) to pretty heady activities like having the students analyze their research problems using concept, \u00a0process, and \u00a0facet analyses, among other conceptual framing techniques.<\/p>\n We’ve read some classics like Davis’ essay <\/a>on what make research interesting to and Sutton and Staw’s essay on\u00a0\u00a0“What Theory is Not<\/a>, to my new favorite article by Suddaby on \u00a0why construct clarity is lacking in organization science and why it is so important<\/a>. Along the way, we’ve read some great papers that put creativity and thoughtfulness into writing and thinking about important research\u00a0\u00a0topics like\u00a0Orlikowski’s article on social materialism (2007)<\/a>\u00a0and the brand new article by Klein et al in AMR reconceptualizing organizational commitment<\/a>.<\/p>\n So, that’s what we did<\/strong><\/em> in the class. \u00a0What I love is what the students became<\/strong><\/em>: \u00a0open to sharing their research ideas and taking constructive criticism; able to see the interesting components of others’ research and coaching them on how to develop it; creative thinkers of new ideas and approaches grounded in previous research.<\/p>\n I’d love for this to be a course that is offered in other PhD programs. \u00a0I don’t think it needs to be limited to organizational sciences; I think all social science PhD folks could get a lot out of it. \u00a0We teach our PhD students a lot about research methods. \u00a0I think it’s also useful to teach them how to theorize and to really think about their research.<\/p>\n *How bizarre to link to my \u00a0mentors’ wikipedia pages!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It has taken me forever to get this post up on my blog! \u00a0I am finally being shamed into finishing up this post after drinks, snacks, and dinner with my students last night. \u00a0Why so hard to write? \u00a0I think it’s because one becomes very self-conscious about writing when one is teaching about writing and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p67nDP-2U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":259,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2014\/02\/21\/writing-and-thinking-and-theorizing\/","url_meta":{"origin":180,"position":0},"title":"Writing and Thinking and Theorizing","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"February 21, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"So I'm teaching my Writing And Thinking in the Organizational Sciences graduate class again. \u00a0(Wow! \u00a0My academic blog is two years old. \u00a0I really need to post more often) \u00a0This is a course that I took with Allan Wicker many years ago and is based upon Allan's (1985) paper on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":184,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2012\/05\/10\/aspirational\/","url_meta":{"origin":180,"position":1},"title":"Aspirational","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"May 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The final papers for my writing and thinking class are starting to arrive. \u00a0I don't know whose bright idea it was for the due date for the papers to be two weeks after the last class because I am already feeling the summer schedule. \u00a0Oh, yeah. \u00a0That was me. \u00a0Well,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":191,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2012\/08\/28\/non-dualistic-thinking\/","url_meta":{"origin":180,"position":2},"title":"(Non) Dualistic Thinking","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"August 28, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week, for the first week of the first semester for our first year PhD students, I assigned a reading that made my students cry.\u00a0 Or at least whimper.\u00a0 Or perhaps merely curse my name.\u00a0 The article was Feldman and Orlikowski\u2019s (2011) Theorizing Practice and Practicing Theory in the journal\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":217,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2013\/02\/22\/time-in-organizations\/","url_meta":{"origin":180,"position":3},"title":"Time in Organizations","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"February 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"When I went back to school after working in the \"real world\" for 4 years, one of the differences that struck me was differences in time in the organization. \u00a0I have not studied time in organizations, which is an important area of research. \u00a0What I want to talk about is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":262,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2014\/05\/13\/writing-by-hand\/","url_meta":{"origin":180,"position":4},"title":"Writing By Hand","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"May 13, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"So \u00a0sometime during the last semester, a study came out demonstrating that taking notes by hand (i.e., writing) helps students retain more information than typing notes on their keyboard. \u00a0I posted that to both my undergrad and graduate class online pages. \u00a0But it ended \u00a0up sparking a discussion a few\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":267,"url":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/2014\/07\/10\/mom-working\/","url_meta":{"origin":180,"position":5},"title":"Working Mom","author":"Anita Blanchard","date":"July 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"In conjunction with my personal blog, I'm posting about my summer \u00a0work schedule. \u00a0This\u00a0entry focuses on the \"Working\" aspect of being a professor who is also \u00a0a mother (i.e., a MoFessor). Academics know that the summer is supposed to be our most productive working time, even though many of us\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions\/183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/anitablanchard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}