The comedian, Steven Colbert, has a segment on his comedy show called “Word of the Day.” I would like to talk about a few words that came up this session that really had an impact for me.
The Doctor of Management program places an emphasis during the first semester on getting one’s research question in focus. As my topic has moved from very broad and integrative to something narrow and manageable, all of us have been advised that when we tell the story of our research interest we need to “situate the research within the academic literature.”
I know what all the words mean in this phrase except for “situate” within the context of this phrase. Situate has a physical dimensionality to it. “My chair” is situated amongst all the other chairs in the classroom such that it is close to the front of the room. So, how are ideas situated? I recall during the first two sessions of the program of the need to situate our idea within the research literature but until this third session I really had no concrete idea what “situate” meant in the academic sense.
Our research methods professor, Tony Lingham, asked us to describe our research topic in a few sentences. He then replayed our topic back to us but in a way that showed explicitly how the specific topic was embedded within a larger, simpler set of concepts and how, in kind of a story-telling fashion, one moves from framing a broad category and eventually drilling down to the specific issue of one’s interest. This may seem obvious to me now but it was anything but obvious until Tony turned our language into academic language.
Another word or phrase is “tipping point.” In the mainstream literature, we have read Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point. Our theory professor, Richard Boyatzis, uses tipping point as an element within his Intentional Change Theory, a theory about sustaining change at any level of human organization. One of the key issues is how one moves from a negative to a positive emotional orientation. This is where tipping point is situated. I finally understood the mechanics of tipping points in Richard’s context: to move from a highly charged emotional state (or any heavily committed state whether technology or intellectual or emotional) the leverage to make that move has to be something neutral, not highly charged in either direction and something that people can use to swing in the opposite direction.
Lastly, another word is “democracy.” Our culture and world politics professor, Eileen Doherty, asked the class to reflect on the readings for the 3rd session. Our team came up with a very interesting observation: people from different countries have different perspectives of what democracy means. This observation served as an exemplar for other concepts, that everything political or cultural is relative depending on the context of situation, that is, how the issue like democracy is situated within the broader set of complex historical and present conditions.
And like Steven Colbert says, “situated,” and that’s the “word of the day.”
Adrian (Zeke) Wolfberg
DM Class of 2013
23 Oct 2010
DM Class of 2013
23 Oct 2010
