Developing Your Communications Strategy: Audiences, Translation and Timeliness

Robin WensleyOpen University and Warwick Business School

The nature of multiple audiences

•Within and Between various groupings

•Some key groups: Colleague Researchers and Peers, Students, Executives, Journalists and Policy makers

•The Process of Sequential Gatekeepers to get to the audience

Sequential Gatekeepers

•Grant Bids: Office; Reviewers; Board

•Journal Articles: Desk Assessment; Reviewers; Editors/Area Editors

•Media: Journalists, Sub-editors, Editors.

The Issue of “Lost in Translation”

•Eva Hoffman's book and Sofia Coppola's film

•The Book: the permanent shift from Poland to Canada -

•The Film: a temporary shift from one culture (USA) to another (Japan)

•Both raise questions of translation but only the former raises serious questions of identity.

One survey examined why management research is often not applied in management practice. The "lost in translation" problem occurs when academic researchers do not present their results in ways that make sense to practitioners. The "lost before translation" problem occurs when management research does not address questions that are even of interest to managers. problems.

Lost Before Translation?

Shapiro, D.L., Kirkman, B.L., & Courtney, H.G. 2007. Perceived causes and solutions of the translation problem in management research. Academy of Management Journal, 50: 249-266.

Translation as Decoding and Encoding

Translation may be regarded as a kind of litmus paper that makes the process ( of decontextualization and recontextualization) unusually visible. What I was just describing rather glibly as 'equivalents' for alien concepts and practices cannot be assumed to exist. Some words, ideas and customs are a good deal less translatable than others. Especially the important ones. So much so that the British writer Salman Rushdie once suggested, in his novel Shame, that to understand a culture, one should focus on its untranslatable words.

Peter Burke, Lost (and Found) in Translation: A Cultural History of Translators and Translating in Early Modern Europe, European Review (2007), 15:1:83-94

From Source Text to Translated Text

•From word-for-word to sense-for-sense to the relationship between the ST and the TT

•The ST no longer has privileged status

• ST has (acquires) its meaning in the context of an audience.

Eva Hoffman on Words

Every Day I learn new words, new expressions... The words I learn now don't stand for things in the same unquestioning way they did in my native tongue. “River” in Polish was a vital sound energised with essence of riverhood, of my rivers, of my being immersed in rivers. “River” in English is cold – a word without aura.

Translation and the Time Line

DESIGN: What is of interest may not be researchable and vice-versa

FIELDWORK AND ANALYSIS: Even when it is of interest to different communities the research process takes time and priorities and interests change.

DISSEMINATION: How might we balance the need for timeliness with the careful process of independent review?

INITIATION Enquiry driven by theory ( A journals)

Research agenda adapted to organisational interests

Research questions derived from dialogue

Organisation identifies broad issues and seeks academic collaboration

Organisation defines questions and hires researchers

FIELDWORK Researchers use external data sources

Researcher get permission to survey managers or employees

Interviews held with emergent sample, some jointly

Academics act as advisors in sorting sample and data collection

Sample and questions determined by organisation

DATA ANALYSIS Researchers do it all.

Draft findings checked out with organisation

Initial findings discussed; lead to further data

Organisation interprets and checks out with academics

Organisation takes data and makes up own mind

CONTACTS Contact only with gatekeepers

Contact with subgroup (e.g. SMT)

Wider contact and sharing of basic questions

Work with practitioner community and share questions

Respond as facilitator to community’s questions

OUTPUT Academics write for A journals

Organisation people contribute but academics write

Joint output in practitioner press.

Organisation dissemination in practitioner communities; academics help

Internal dissemination by organisation only

Table 0.1: Mapping Collaborative Research Against Five Dimensions (Easterby-Smith, Mark (2012) WORK STAGE Theory Driven “In the Middle”

Problem Driven

The Worlds of Academe and Practice

Kieser and Leiner (2009) argue that following Luhmann, the worlds of scientific research and economic practice are in the end closed systems which operate according to different logics: true/false in the case of science; payment/non-payment in the case of economic practice

BUT whilst the two worlds do indeed operate according to different basic principles, they can and do interact to effect. Following Luhmann, Rasche and Behnam (2009) argue that interventions between the worlds of science and practice should be seen more as "irritations" or as "fictions".

A Communications Approach: Some Suggestions: (1)

•Stories matter and are powerful ( outliers, context, identification)

•Remember the sub-editors rule: you can cut the text at almost any point!

•Use footnotes and endnotes properly

A Communications Approach: Some Suggestions: (2)

A Realistic Portfolio of Audiences

The twin challenges: That’s Interesting! and So What?

Mystery as Method

Remember the broad rationale for references: helps the audience locate your work in their wider context.

Further Reading• Rasche, Andreas and Michael Behnam (2009), “As if were relevant:

a systems theoretical perspective on the Relation between Science and Practice”, Journal of Management Inquiry September 2009 vol. 18 no. 3 243-255

• Hoffman, Eva, Lost in Translation, William Heinemann : London, 1989

• Alvesson, Mats and Dan Kärreman Qualitative Research and Theory Development: Mystery as Method, Sage Publications: London, 2011

• Easterby-Smith, Mark (2012) ‘Research Collaboration in Management: Exploring the Academic-Practitioner Divide’ , Working Paper, Department of Management Learning and Leadership, Lancaster University, Lancaster. LA1 4YX