‘Ghost in the Shell’: Reflections on Fieldwork in Kazakhstan

After independence from the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan proclaimed Kazakhs the title ethnic group, and the Kazakh language the national language. This deprived the Russian-speaking population of its former dominant social position. Being a Russian-speaking citizen of Kazakhstan, the daughter of a half-Korean half-Russian father and a half-Kazakh half-German mother, I did my field work as a presumed ‘native’ anthropologist at Kazakhstan State University with linguistically divided groups of students. The relations between the field and the researcher disclosed different geopolitical realities of knowledge production and challenged the legacy of relativist methodology. I reflect on this experience and examine different conceptualisations of the native positionality in the post-Soviet context. Reflections in this paper raise new questions about nation-building in post-socialist states and about ‘nativeness’ itself, and contribute to the criticism of postmodern theory.     

A scoping review of knowledge syntheses in the field of evaluation across four decades of practice

This scoping review of 62 knowledge syntheses published in evaluation-focused journals between 1979 and May 2018 provides a portrait of synthesis practices and their evolution in the mainstream of the field of evaluation. Concerns surrounding the production of knowledge syntheses to answer policy questions are not new in the field of evaluation. However, during this last decade, knowledge synthesis methods have expanded as a means to go beyond the limits and constraints of singular evaluations. This scoping review reveals and discusses two key issues with regards to the expansion of knowledge synthesis practices within the field of evaluation: the diversity—and muddling— of methodological practices and synthesis designs, and the frequent omission of quality appraisals.     

Secondhand social capital: Boundary spanning,secondhand closure,and individual performance

We move beyond the performance returns of individuals’ direct network connections to study the effects of “secondhand” social capital, i.e., from the networks of one’s contacts. We propose that certain colleagues may be more valuable to one’s job performance than others when their spillovers of novel information combine with spillovers of the cooperation needed to obtain that novelty. In a study of 1273 research and development employees across 16 business units, we find that the most benefit to one’s own performance comes from having ties that span business units and that also include secondhand closure (i.e., where one’s contacts are each embedded in a constrained, dense network). Bridging the organizational boundary provides the novelty; and secondhand closure provides the cooperation. Further, by examining who in the network is constraining these contacts, we are able to trace their cooperative motivation both to reputational and organizational identity concerns, which each create a spillover of cooperation toward the focal individual, who reaps the returns.     

Critical discourse analysis of perspectives on knowledge and the knowledge society within the Sustainable Development Goals

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is employed to analyze discourses of knowledge and the knowledge society in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Discourse analysis is a collective name for a number of scientific methodologies for analyzing semiosis, namely how meaning is created and communicated though written, vocal or sign language. Employing a genealogical approach which locates discourses in the field of prior discourses, two prior discourses of the knowledge society are identified in the key document of the SDGs. The concepts knowledge and knowledge society are found to have a marginal position within the main policy document “Transforming our world,” adopted by the United Nations in September 2015. The techno‐scientific‐economic discourse is found to be dominant at the level of implementation and of goals, while there is some evidence of the pluralist‐participatory discourse at the level of vision and strategy. Analysis of some of the policy advice provided by international organizations and civil society indicates that more pluralist‐participatory discourses on knowledge were represented when the SDGs were being formulated. Developed countries and the corporate sector were very influential in determining the final text and were probably instrumental in excluding more transformational discourses and maintaining the status quo.     

Breastfeeding interventions in Kansas: A qualitative process evaluation of program goals and objectives

Across the state of Kansas, eighteen public health departments received funding through the 2011 Breastfeeding Grant Initiative to start a breastfeeding intervention. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the progress toward program goals and objectives. This study was a process evaluation. Qualitative data were collected from recipient health departments at two time-points during the program year. Structured, open-ended questions were asked through telephone interviews. This study examined: (1) progress toward program goals and objectives, (2) problems encountered during implementation, and (3) evaluation measures employed to assess program impact. All health departments reported making significant progress toward program goals and objectives and reported successful collaboration with other healthcare providers. The use of breast pumps, educational classes, and professional training of staff were reported as providing the best outcome in the promotion of breastfeeding. The majority of respondents did not measure program impact. From a public health perspective, it is important that infants receive breast milk for the first six months of life. It appears that goals and objectives set a priori guided health departments with the administration of their breastfeeding program. Results may be used to enhance and sustain delivery of breastfeeding support programs in Kansas communities.     

Process evaluation of an environmental walking and healthy eating pilot in small rural worksites

Small Steps are Easier Together (SS) was a pilot environmental intervention in small rural worksites in Upstate New York in collaboration with Extension educators. Worksite leaders teamed with co-workers to select and implement environmental changes to increase walking steps over individual baseline and to choose healthy eating options over 10 weeks. Participants were 226 primarily white, women employees in 5 sites. A mixed methods process evaluation, conducted to identify determinants of intervention effectiveness and to explain differences in outcomes across worksites, included surveys, self-reports of walking and eating, interviews, focus groups, and an intervention log. The evaluation assessed reach, characteristics of recruited participants, dose delivered, dose received, and context and compared sites on walking and eating outcomes. Emergent elements of participant-reported dose received included: active leadership, visible environmental changes, critical mass of participants, public display of accomplishments, accountability to co-workers, and group decision making. Participants at sites with high reach and dose were significantly more likely than sites with low reach and dose to achieve intervention goals. Although this small pilot needs replication, these findings describe how these evaluation methods can be applied and analyzed in an environmental intervention and provide information on trends in the data.     

Efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge management systems in SMEs

This paper proposes a 3D fuzzy logic methodology to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge management systems (KMSs) adopted by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and identifies a classification bringing together the behaviour of SMEs when adopting KMSs. The proposed methodology was previously tested on an individual SME and then implemented on a sample of SMEs. The results highlight that there is an ample variety of behaviours related to the nature of knowledge and the KMSs used. Specifically, four typologies of behaviour are identified: the efficient and effective SME, the effective but inefficient SME, the efficient but ineffective SME, and the inefficient and ineffective SME. The results show that only 18% of surveyed SMEs are efficient and effective for both KM-Tools and KM-Practices, the remaining 82% are inefficient or ineffective for KM-Tools and/or KM-Practices. Lastly, the paper shows how this methodology may be used by an SME as a managerial tool to suggest appropriate changes to improve the efficient and effective adoption of KMSs supporting SMEs in the knowledge management processes.     

Mitigating the Impact of Functional Dominance in Cross‐Functional Process Improvement Teams

Manufacturing process improvement teams often draw upon cross‐functional expertise. However, teams dominated by a single or few functions often do not achieve the desired interdisciplinary learning and cooperation, which in turn could negatively affect the performance of that cross‐functional team. Through an empirical analysis of 149 manufacturing process improvement teams in six SIC industrial categories, we show that even after controlling for several factors such as team size, number of functions, gender diversity, ethnicity, number of management levels, and geographic dispersion of team members, psychological safety of work environment fully mediates the relationship between functional dominance and team performance. We also confirm that a team leader possessing high interpersonal justice mitigates the deficiency of dominated teams and improves team performance by fostering a psychologically safe work environment. Our recommendation therefore is that when a dominated team is unavoidable due to the needed skill sets or other organizational considerations, to ensure success it is imperative that the firm chooses a team leader who can promote psychological safety by being just, and who can effectively encourage input from all functional team members and give them objective feedback.