Being part of the so-called last batch to be permitted to be exempted from what majority of the students called the "live writing" in the MBA program. I was fortunate to know that even if we were delayed in terms of supposed to be defending our papers, but wasn't able to whether voluntarily or involuntarily, we were given one last chance by the department to make sure to defend and pass our thesis or else... we have to go through live writing like some of the students who just finished Strategic Management class this term.
So to further tell the story of how live writing works, of which majority of the students are said to dread at, the Integrative Action Research (IAR) of the MBA Program will be explained to further understand where the students are coming from and why doing a live writing is a dreaded thing to go through for majority of the students.
The Integrative Action Research or the IAR is the terminal paper of every student wherein he/she must pass and defend before one would be able to obtain a degree. If a student does not want to pursue doing the IAR, he/she can still graduate, but only with a certificate. When before the terminal paper for every student in the MBA program is a Strategic Management paper of a certain company; now the terminal paper is an IAR paper in which it is expected that the students (who are also employees or part of a certain organization) should be heavily involved in dealing with the organization or the company that they are currently affiliated with. Doing the said paper would mean that one should be able to solve any organizational problem by including your co-workers or stakeholders who will be affected in the outcome of the problem. This kind of thesis format has been done more or less for five years already.
The ideal trend that should be happening in our IAR is that we have to start doing our paper by the time Management Action Research (MAR) has been introduced to us as a subject. Once, you would be able to pass this subject, you can now proceed with compiling information for one's IAR paper. However, what happens in reality is that most students either had a hard time figuring out what would be their ideal terminal paper during their MAR class and instead just use any organization for the sake of finishing the paper. Come the time wherein they must present a paper for their IAR, this is where some students would scramble to find another organization in which they would consider it as their terminal paper. So this could be one reason why the department decided that live writing must be done so that students would be able to do the process of Action Research properly with the supervision of the mentor.
Below are the things live writing would require students to do:
Stating the requirements of live writing, this would make a lot of students upset about it. I think the types of student who would actually prefer live writing are those who prioritize learning, money was not an issue and those who currently do not have an impending career or life role change. However for the majority of people, this is certainly a big issue.
So to further tell the story of how live writing works, of which majority of the students are said to dread at, the Integrative Action Research (IAR) of the MBA Program will be explained to further understand where the students are coming from and why doing a live writing is a dreaded thing to go through for majority of the students.
The Integrative Action Research or the IAR is the terminal paper of every student wherein he/she must pass and defend before one would be able to obtain a degree. If a student does not want to pursue doing the IAR, he/she can still graduate, but only with a certificate. When before the terminal paper for every student in the MBA program is a Strategic Management paper of a certain company; now the terminal paper is an IAR paper in which it is expected that the students (who are also employees or part of a certain organization) should be heavily involved in dealing with the organization or the company that they are currently affiliated with. Doing the said paper would mean that one should be able to solve any organizational problem by including your co-workers or stakeholders who will be affected in the outcome of the problem. This kind of thesis format has been done more or less for five years already.
The ideal trend that should be happening in our IAR is that we have to start doing our paper by the time Management Action Research (MAR) has been introduced to us as a subject. Once, you would be able to pass this subject, you can now proceed with compiling information for one's IAR paper. However, what happens in reality is that most students either had a hard time figuring out what would be their ideal terminal paper during their MAR class and instead just use any organization for the sake of finishing the paper. Come the time wherein they must present a paper for their IAR, this is where some students would scramble to find another organization in which they would consider it as their terminal paper. So this could be one reason why the department decided that live writing must be done so that students would be able to do the process of Action Research properly with the supervision of the mentor.
Below are the things live writing would require students to do:
- All the cycles or interventions that was done prior to thesis writing would be placed into context. Meaning you would have to find another intervention to further improve the issue that your organization is currently dealing with.
- Students are required to enroll at least two terms of thesis writing. This does not include whether student voluntarily delayed their defense and decided to instead continue writing.
- Mentors would monitor your intervention process. When before mentors would trust that you would be able to do the proper intervention for as long as the process is being done ethically, now the mentors would monitor your interventions before one would even implement the said intervention.
Stating the requirements of live writing, this would make a lot of students upset about it. I think the types of student who would actually prefer live writing are those who prioritize learning, money was not an issue and those who currently do not have an impending career or life role change. However for the majority of people, this is certainly a big issue.
Below are the reasons why I think live writing is unfavorable to the students affected... or will be affected.
- It involves a lot of money. As much as mentors would not want students to speed up their pace to ensure a high quality output, it cannot be denied that one of the reasons students are increasing their pace just to finish their degree is to save money. The longer you are in school, the more expenses you are incurring. This means that more fees need to be paid, which is the reason why majority of the students are actually targeting writing and passing the defense in one term and in one attempt.
- Companies are just being nice to their employees for the sake of the students having an output - which is the IAR paper itself. If given a choice, companies would not want the name of the company to be dragged as part of research that would not give them significant incentives.
Privacy is very important with these companies and involving one's mentor into the company's daily operations might cause inconvenience. It was already a form of inconvenience to disrupt employees or so-called collaborators to participate in the study even if the issues are part of the company, it would become even more inconvenient if a third party would be involved as not only it would put a threat to the company's confidentiality, there would also be trust issues between the company and the student itself even if mentors signed confidentiality forms.
Usually companies will check whether the information their employee will divulge is threatening or a typical issue among corporations before fully supporting the employee in presenting the issue as his/her terminal paper in school. The reason some of these companies are permitting their student-employees to use their company as a part of the terminal paper is to not feel guilty about it as to inform the employee that they still helped them in a certain way and would not be one of the reasons why the student cannot finish his/her degree. - All possible cycles (interventions) were exhausted. The rule stated that a student going under the live writing can still use the topic he/she used during his/her Management Action Research (MAR) class, but the interventions or cycles that were implemented before he/she undergo thesis writing would be considered part of the context (portion of the IAR paper which allows students to identify, discuss and propose solutions to certain issues).
For some students, this might not be much of an issue, but for others it would be a big deal. It is true that students must ensure to keep improving the issue and should not only be limited to two interventions. However, the problem comes when one was able to solve the issue without the need to actually further improve their issue. If it was told that they must place all of the previous interventions into the context, this meant that students would either need to come up with a new solution for improvement, or discard everything and find another issue within the organization he/she currently belongs to.
Another possible issue that came into play is that the MAR subject was considered as a Foundation Course. This meant that when you entered the MBA program, this is one of the subjects that you need to take before proceeding with the Core Courses. Also, professors of this subject highly encourages student to use this subject as a jumpstart so that we could prepare ourselves for the IAR. If that's the case, then probably the issue was actually addressed already by the time the student reach the IAR writing.
Let's say the student is a business or accounting undergraduate and is taking two subjects per term (with the exemption of Strategic Management which is required to be taken alone). There are four foundation courses, five core courses, one elective and one strategic management for a total of 11 courses and the school is in trimester. Suppose the student took the subject at Term 2 (one of the last subjects in the foundation courses), if we add the remaining six core and elective courses divided by two subjects per term plus one strategic management, that means the student would have to take at least four more terms (Term 6) before reaching the IAR writing. Gauging on the normal pace for working students, the student would be entering the IAR writing on his/her seventh term. As one could see, the issue is probably addressed before the student would enter his/her IAR writing. By asking students to put all cycles into context would mean that their output in MAR would technically be useless especially if one really decided to use their output in MAR as their terminal paper for IAR. - Organizations may not be in sync with the mentor's idea of the intervention. It seemed like mentors would be the ones acting as an unsolicited consultant in which whatever the intervention was decided upon by the students and collaborators involved in solving the issue, the mentors might play a hand in which he/she might be controlling the decisions of the collaborators in creating change in solving the issue. This may not sit well for all entities involved especially nobody want to receive unsolicited advises from third parties.
Also, if the intervention of the student based on the collaborative decision can be done in a short period of time, why would the student need to wait for the term to finish before proceeding with the next intervention just to follow the protocol of the school? Companies or organizations cannot just make the issue idle just for the sake the students can translate it into writing (thus, the term live writing). What if after the first intervention - or cycle, the company was able to already pinpoint the flaw of the first intervention and decided to immediately discuss it to usher for the second cycle? I think this seemed to be questionable while yes it's true that interventions should not be processed quickly; however, there are instances wherein the effects of the interventions can easily be pinpointed without the need of waiting for the cycle to be finished.
