Viva questions (Significance)

This blog is the first of two that address different questions about significance. This first is about ensuring nothing significant is missed. The second asks what is significant about the thesis. Both could be asked at conferences when doctoral peers want to know why they should trust your work or listen to what is being said.

Question: How can you be sure that you haven’t missed anything significant?

This question has many potential limbs. First, how can I know the problem being researched is significant and not resolved. This is addressed by a thorough review of the literature. I took an approach that canvassed the different fields of scholarship each with interest in the PPP and followed the origins of governance scholarship to surprisingly recent start-points. All were regularly returned to and over time I learned to follow the lead of those scholars who have already survey such literature and increasingly this became focused upon matters of governance of the PPP as relatable by these different scholars. At the same time, I became increasingly aware that much of this scholarship borrows from a few specific origins of governance thinking. My final literature review is therefore a broad canvas of what is known and noting contemporary literature tending to bring together disparate origins and concepts which was itself significant. By example, this included public administration, political science and accounting literatures which I identified as clearly public sector concerned and different to a literature originating from concern for private sector firms in their marketplace. A third origin was also differentiated as stemming from more philosophical origins and the notion of governmentality. I noted project management interests and matters of construction and operational concern borrow from all three origins. I was further buoyed by finding the most contemporary surveys of this literature, in public administration and project management context, both pointing to the nebulous nature of the term governance and pointing to gaps in understanding which research into the PPP per se is deemed capable of helping to fill.

Secondly, and I suspect more likely the intended framing of this question, are matters of significance which a poorly designed or executed methodology might otherwise allow in. There are four aspects to methodology which could be of concern for missing something significant (philosophical positioning, rigour, validity, and lack of awareness of where one’s research scope ends). Each concern has been addressed in the thesis submission, and all remained close-at-hand as I applied the overall research design in practice and each coherently selected method. Specifically, semi-structured interview to gather data and reflexive thematic analysis, all underpinned by hermeneutic reasoning and tenets of phenomenological philosophy.

From a philosophical perspective a broadly phenomenological and hermeneutic view was opted for, and I was impressed most by a Heideggerian view in addressing the research question. I raise this specifically because asking what is significant to whom has meaning by this thinker’s positioning. His opposition or claimed impoverishment of taking a Descartes-inspired dualism (i.e., between an individual who then extends outwards into a world) was a useful criticism that steered me away from all claims of subject-to-object clarity being a possible end or answer to the research question posed. Instead, I was guided toward considering the revealing of more of the referential totality of significance once all party-perspectives where more holistically revealed. In this sense, what is revealed by one party closes off aspects of another. In a way, the realisation that matters of human significance become this impoverished Descartes-inspired dualism (and constantly closing-off some other aspect of this totality of significance) was itself enlightening. Hence, when asked how one can be sure to have not missed something significant the answer is always a possibility that one has. The question is then, significant to whom? This gave me an access point to matters of power and influence I had initially deemed inaccessible to my research if taking this position. Clegg and co-authors (Hardy and Clegg, 2002) ask the question in whose eyes are matters power and influence illegitimate, and this aided my own questioning of who deems a particular intended outcome and the governance toward that as significant to themselves. My endeavours have been to seek the views of all party-perspectives and differentiate those from what the project itself was intended to do. It is in this context that the phenomenological framing of intentionality (the directedness of thoughts or actions) and intersubjectivity that differentiates two people or groups enabled this research question to be considered most fully. Notwithstanding, and as I explain at length in the limitations section of the thesis, there are limits to challenging such legitimacy of authority (as power and influence) by this approach. This is not to say I have therefore fully overcome this limitation, but more acknowledge and articulate the limits of what can be claimed from this overall philosophical underpinning.

Rigour, as meant by taking the hermeneutic reasoning I use as my underpinning, has to do with the address of meaning from between two understandings. The more plausible explanation from two opposing sides, or seeing the assumption made as the folly to uncover or wrestling with all such interpretations; these are all what I was keenly questioning and revisiting repeatedly throughout the research. Rigorous in the challenges to interpretations was the constant reframing and reworking the analysis of meaning of both data and how it applied to extant theory.

In qualitative research the notion of validity has long been understood as trustworthiness. For purposes of this question on missing something significant, the question is therefore asking what makes this research trustworthy in not missing something significant (or indeed made a significant claim that is not valid). Research design plays a significant part in this trustworthiness. The appropriate use of guidance in key aspects of that design each point to transparency as key—if more details is asked for this is specific to use of elite informants in the strategy literature (Aguinis and Solarino, 2019; Solarino and Aguinis, 2021), and strategy literature guidance more generally as also borrowed from by project management guidance from journal editors (Makadok et al., 2018; Müller and Klein, 2019). These guides point to ways of ensuring transparency and reporting findings with sufficient detail to enable the reader to make determinations themselves. The results chapter in the thesis offers extensive detail of the elite informant perspectives and the discussion chapter engages in detailed engagement with this collective of understanding and extant literature.

The scope limits of the research are also limiting the claims made to UK Private Finance Initiative. Significant differences are flagged between UK specifics and other countries applying PPP in broadly comparable forms. I make specific warning to be careful in applying such findings in other territories, and I am critical of literature not making these differences clear when making project-level comparison between countries. Opinion is also forwarded that remains critical of (and suspicious of much of significance missed) when such comparisons are made unduly. For example, when considering the dual role of contract and relationship management but remaining ignorant of the legislative inferences and governances applicable beyond the project-level per se. It became apparent quite early in my critiques of the literature that the PPP can be a source of significant confusion by such over-generalisations. This brings us full circle back to the opening comments I made in answering this question.

Question: Why is your thesis interesting (i.e., what is significant about it)?

I shall address this question next time.

…to be continued

References

Aguinis, H. and Solarino, A.M. 2019. Transparency and replicability in qualitative research : The case of interviews with elite informants. Strategic Management Journal. 40(40), pp.1291–1315.

Hardy, C. and Clegg, S. 2002. Some Dare Call It Power In: S. R. Clegg, C. Hardy and S. Nord, eds. Handbook of Organization Studies., pp.622–641.

Makadok, R., Burton, R. and Barney, J. 2018. A practical guide for making theory contributions in strategic management. Strategic Management Journal. 39(6), pp.1530–1545.

Müller, R. and Klein, G. 2019. Qualitative Research Submissions to Project Management Journal. Project Management Journal. 50(1), pp.3–5.

Solarino, A.M. and Aguinis, H. 2021. Challenges and Best-practice Recommendations for Designing and Conducting Interviews with Elite Informants. Journal of Management Studies. 58(3), pp.649–672.