I return to the song title theme, dear reader in light of my brother Artie's comments on the A380 blog, "I'm a bit disappointed that you didn't grasp the opportunity of continuing your song title puns with the title of this post. I suppose The Stranglers are a bit more my era, but "Goodbye Toulouse" would have been perfect". Yes, much and all as it might distress you, there are (at least) two of us with the punny sense of humour - thanks bro!
Artie was also given to comment on my intro blog to the APROS experience and, again, revealed a wonderfully warped sense of the absurd, along with a good memory for the "Bruces" sketch from the Monty Python gang: " 'ontologically' Maaaate, I didn't know you were into bird watching. I'm a bit worried about these people you'll being presenting your paper to. I thought Bruce was in charge of logical positivism and what about the sheep dip?" This offers me a nice segue back to the APROS conference.
Before I rejoin that exposition, I'm pleased to report that, after a rather horrendous couple of days, the bodily functions are in full flow once more and the news from the urologist is "all good". The biopsy results were all negative so, while my urologist will no doubt continue to refer to my "monster prostate", at least it won't be referred to as "monstrous". Right, the "too much information" paragraph is at an end, and it's back to APROS.
What I didn't mention in my last blog about APROS was the stark contrast I experienced in the two technical session streams I attended. In the afternoon session it was all postmodern, social constructivist speak, as we explored "organization, identity and location" (I was interested in Mary Barrett's work on authenticity and the capacity to apprehend indigenous art in all its combined dimensions). The atmosphere was warm, supportive and mutually enthusiastic, promoted by the excellent work done by the stream facilitators to engage us all in the subject matter.
I had anticipated a similarly postmodern and supportive environment in the sessions of the stream in which I was to present my paper (the Leading Global Organisations), but found myself in the late afternoon session in an enclave of positivists, determined to present their numbers and to comment on the elegance of their statistical analysis (since my paper, with its deliberatively provocative title of "Tromping on Trompenaars and hiving off Hofstede: Wither monocultural theorising in a multicultural world" (TTHH for short), was focussed on a critique of such approaches, I wondered at the sense of my inclusion in this stream). Worse, I found my myself in the academic equivalent of a "feeding frenzy" where, having smelled the blood of the early career researcher, not too confident or eloquent in his exposition (and then unnecessarily defensive in response to the criticisms) a subset of the assembled academics circled and sought to take chunks of the young man. As a senior (white) academic, I felt compelled to come to his aid, and began my own interjection over one of the interrupters with "I think it is a perfectly reasonable and sensible thing to ...." (I forget now the substance of the commentary, but still remember the viciousness of the attack. I have seen similar performances at other conferences in the past, but didn't anticipate the same in what I thought was going to be a "kinder, gentler" context). My presentation was to be on Wednesday so I hoped that things would settle down by then.
Tuesday was the next full day of the conference with workshops morning, afternoon and evening and then the conference dinner that night. Again it was postmodern in the morning, positivist in the afternoon and mix of the two in the evening at the dinner. The second half of the OIL stream was a positive in its atmosphere as the first half and the "sharks" had not come back to the leadership stream (their blood lust apparently sated by their antics of the evening before), so I was now looking forward more to the presentation. The dinner was a wonderful cultural experience of dances from around India and Damian Ruth (from South Africa vis Massey University in New Zealand) for one found it an exhilirating delight. I too was much more interested in the dancing than the food and such, which was just as well because the final dance troupe, a group of very colourful and enthusiastic Sikh gentlemen, were quite insistent on getting a selection of us (including your humble scribe, dear reader) to dance with them - I certainly could not have done it on a stomach full of food. Again, fortunately, the body was slowly starting to "come good" and so I was not as inconvenienced as I might have been if the dinner had been the night before.
Wednesday was crunch day for me, with the TTHH presentation in the morning and a "getting published" workshop on behalf of Emerald in the afternoon, before I headed out to the airport to travel to Patna. The first half of the day went well. The TTHH paper was surprisingly well received - it has been said to me in the past that, when I put my mind to it, I do a more than passable impression of a diplomat; perhaps those skills were to the fore while I "tramped" on the positivist obsession with the "between groups" variation and the highlighting of cultural (and other) differences between countries, without due consideration being given to the "within groups" variation and the cultural differences within countries that reflect their multicultural nature. For the first time, I read poetry (poems from Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson, Pete Gebhardt and Oodgeroo Noonuccal) as part of an academic presentation and felt energised by doing so.
The afternoon session was reasonably well-attended, especially given the competing demands of Delhi and so I was pleased to be able to provide a series of insights on getting published to the assembled group. Damian Ruth had come along out of interest and his presence was enriching for the questions he asked and the insights he provided in return. I have already sent a "soft" copy of my powerpoint presentation to those who requested it and so feel good about having effectively discharged my Emerald responsibilities. Back to the room, the final pack (and, still, half a dozen or so trips to the loo) and then it was off to Delhi airport. A series of delays, meant that, although we were supposed to head off at 7.30pm, we did not take off until after 10.00pm and so I finally arrived at the hotel room in Patna and hit the hay at midnight. The Patna story (and some backfilling with photos) will have to wait until the next blog dear reader, as I head off to my KiBS gig.
As you may have gathered from the above, the conference (especially combined with my incapacity) was a full on experience and, as I tried to stay close to “facilities”, I was not able to get out and about in the city of Delhi and do the tourist thing. I did, however, get a significant photo that you see here. No dear reader, this is not a scene from the “Red Fort” or another gaol in the Delhi precincts. This is a photo of the door to my room in the Nandala College at the Management Development Institute (MDI) at Gurgaon, the venue of the APROS confer
ence.
ence.
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