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The hardest part of writing a research paper often starts before the writing begins. Do I have a worthwhile topic? Will it keep my interest? Will it captivate the reader, especially if the reader is my teacher? Has it been done before?
These questions and more plague the serious researcher—whether in high school or at the highest level of academia. Yet, no one disputes the value of well-done scholarship: it adds to the field of study, delivers highly-useful information to academics and non-academics alike, and sometimes brings recognition to the hard-working investigators in the form of awards. In the College if Business Administration, with its intense focus on research, particularly in the doctoral programs and among faculty, PhD students find topics that sustain their interest and contribute to their fields as Nicole Wishart, and David Hinds, graduate students in the Department of Decision Sciences and Information Systems (DSIS) recently demonstrated. Both have delved into the issue of patterns, with Wishart looking at teaching conceptual database design using a pattern-based approach, and Hinds examining patterns within innovation communities. Nicole Wishart takes open-minded look at rules versus patterns. Teaching in the DSIS department as an instructor, Nicole Wishart noticed that students were having a difficult time understanding database design. Since there is no single universally-accepted approach, she wondered if teaching design using a pattern-based approach would be more effective than using a rule-based one.
“A rule-based approach sets out a sequence of rules for modeling the conceptual constructs and the action to be taken at various stages while developing a conceptual model,” she said. “A pattern-based approach presents data modeling structures that occur frequently in practice and prescribes guidelines about how to recognize and use these structures.” As often happens, Wishart’s work built on earlier research and reacted to it. “Professor Dinesh Batra had already formulated a rule-based approach and described it in an article titled ‘The Use of a Knowledge-Based System in Conceptual Data Modeling,’ which he wrote with Solomon Antony (PhD ’97) and a colleague,” she said. A conversation with Batra prompted her to examine the two approaches more closely—an examination that evolved into her dissertation. “Batra felt strongly that research would give the benefit to the rule-based approach, and in certain instances, it did,” said Wishart, who took on the subject matter without a pre-conceived point of view. “The rule-based approach was significantly better in the low-complexity and the high-complexity cases, but there was no statistical difference in the medium-complexity cases.”
In doing her research, she carefully inspected case studies to extract what the patterns were, among other areas of exploration. Wishart came to see that the idea of patterns crosses disciplines, from computer science to grammar. “Initially I was interested simply because it was the way that I learned, and I thought it might work for others,” she said. “I never lost faith in the pattern-based approach, but over time, I learned how to use the rule-based approach and became fond of it, eventually realizing that we need both.” David Hinds looks at networks. There’s a network that might be far more influential in business than ABC, CBS, or NBC. It’s called a social network, and David Hinds, working on his PhD in international management information systems, is one of the researchers involved in social network analysis (SNA). Along with Ronald M. Lee, professor, DSIS, Hinds is using SNA to reveal how certain leadership and customer involvement patterns may facilitate the building of communities and the generation of innovation. Hinds compares the state of SNA to the invention of the microscope.
“When the microscope was first invented and used, we could see things that were previously invisible,” he said. “However, we didn’t really know what we were looking at. In the same way, we now can see social structures that we couldn’t see before, but we’re not sure yet what these structures mean.” For his dissertation, he is analyzing Open Source Software (OSS) projects to see how the groups function, how they are structured, and how they might be improved. OSS provides an ideal repository for research. “Archives from OSS projects are open, are maintained online, and most or all of the discussion and work records also available online,” he said. Through his research, Hinds hopes to shed further light on just what the networks in the OSS archives do signify. For example, he is looking for communication network patterns associated with low-key leadership styles and high levels of customer involvement. He believes that both are important success factors for innovation communities like OSS projects. “If we are able to show that certain network structures lead to more successful innovation efforts, the information will be valuable to managers,” he said. “They could use this knowledge to assess their own innovation communities to determine if they have the right kinds of structures or if changes might be necessary. We would be one of the pioneers in showing how to distinguish between a good network structure and a bad one.” Practitioners and judges often take note of academic research. Wishart and Hinds both see the potential significance of their research for the world beyond the university. “My work can be applied to practitioners—those people who teach database design” Wishart said. “It is very satisfying to think it may have an impact on improving teaching techniques.” Hinds brought practical insights—based on twenty-five years of management, executive, and entrepreneurial experience—into his graduate work and looks forward to “bringing academe back into business” once he completes the degree. The article Batra wrote with Antony and a colleague was based on Antony’s dissertation and was recently ranked the tenth most downloaded paper in the journal Decision Support Systems—further evidence of the widespread impression that scholarly pursuits make.
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