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7th edition APA formatted paper

Go back through the business press (Fortune, The Economist, BusinessWeek, and so forth and any other LIRN- based articles) and find at least three articles related to either downsizing, implementation of a new technology, or a merger or acquisition. In a minimum of four (4) pages in 7th edition APA formatted paper (sample attached) :

What were the key frontline experiences listed in relation to your chosen change?
How do they relate to those listed in Chapter 4 (Goodman & Dingli, 2nd ed.)?
Did you identify new ones confronting change managers?
How would you prioritize these experiences?
Do any stand out as “deal breakers”? Why?
What new insights into implementing this type of change emerge from this?

Blow is the article link that I found for this paper. Some of them I do have PDF copy (see attached)

1, Shoulberg, W. (2020, September 25). Macy’s, Target, Ikea And Others Are Getting Smaller Stores; Mall Operators Are Getting Worried. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenshoulberg/2020/09/23/stores-from-macys-target-ikea–others-are-getting-smaller-mall-operators-are-getting-worried/?sh=76216fc19ce8

This article talks about many well-known large-scale retail stores. For example, like Target, Macy’s, Ikea are doing downsizing. It’s started before the pandemic due to changes in consumer concepts. But Covid makes this happen faster.

2, Kelly, J. (2020, July 8). United Airlines Got Billions From The Government, Paid Executives Millions And Now Could Downsize Almost Half Of Its U.S. Workforce. Forbes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/07/08/united-airlines-got-billions-from-the-government-paid-executives-millions-and-now-could-downsize-almost-half-of-its-us-workforce/?sh=6ec1da716cba

This article describes United Airlines. After receiving billions of government relief funds. They still had to decide to lay off half of the staff in the US. The pandemic is one of the reasons, and the more important reason is that there are problems in the use and management of funds. Between 2014 and 2019, United Airlines spent $8.57billion to reclaim stock. These stocks used up about 80% of idle funds. If they were saved some money for today. They could have a better situation

3, Kelly, J. (2020b, October 2). Disney’s Bob Iger Quits Gavin Newsom’s Economic Recovery Task Force After California Restrictions ‘Exacerbated’ Pandemic Troubles. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/10/02/disneys-bob-iger-quits-gavin-newsoms-economic-recovery-task-force-after-california-restrictions-exacerbated-pandemic-troubles/?sh=2f92d74d2f1f

This article introduces. Influenced by the pandemic and government policies in California. Disney Park is considering reducing its employees by 26,000. Another California biggest automaker-Tesla failed to restart production. because they failed to reach out an agreement with public health officials. Not only that, but more companies also choose to leave California due to taxes and regulations

4, Kelly, J. (2020a, May 19). Uber Lays Off 3,500 Employees Over A Zoom Call—The Way In Which A Company Downsizes Its Staff Says A Lot About The Organization. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/05/13/uber-lays-off-3500-employees-over-a-zoom-call-the-way-in-which-a-company-downsizes-its-staff-says-a-lot-about-the-organization/?sh=4be30a607251

This article explains the challenges of Covid. Both Uber and Airbnb are downsizing. But the two companies did treat employees in completely different ways. Uber used the ZOOM call to inform their employees that they had been laid off. Airbnb took into account the situation of the employees and gave these laid-off employee’s severance pay and medical care.

5, Ezrati, M. (2020, May 26). Ominous News As The Economy Re-Opens. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/miltonezrati/2020/05/26/ominous-news-as-the-economy-re-opens/?sh=542464481537

This article points out that in the face of a pandemic and shut down. The initial idea of corporate managers was to resume operations as soon as possible. But as the isolation and closure continued. The business managers seem to have changed their views. They want to permanently shut down those inefficient facilities. The author of the article stated that this downsizing layoff would make economic recovery more difficult.

6, Kelly, J. (2021, January 6). HSBC Plans To Axe 10,000 Jobs—Bringing The Total To 60,000 Banking Employees Downsized Just This Year. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/10/07/hsbc-plans-to-axe-10000-jobsbringing-the-total-to-60000-banking-employees-downsized-just-this-year/?sh=3d1ec5ab4186

This article describes the downsizing and layoff of HSBC, JPMorgan, Chase, Wells Fargo, and some large European banks and why. The reasons are as follows: the development of automation and artificial intelligence has replaced some employees, and the economic recession caused by factors such as tariffs, trade wars, and Brexit. Let the bank’s managers be cautious

7, Loeb, W. (2018, September 17). Sears Downsizing Is Scary. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2018/09/17/sears-downsizing-is-scary/?sh=6ec583fd3ac2

This article tells that Sears Holding was a very large retailer. However, many stores have been closed in recent years and the losses have been very serious. One of the reasons why their team does not understand millennials and Gen Z, customers. Although they are trying to recover their losses by restructuring the property. But this does not make Sears return to subversion

8, Damiani, J. (2020, April 23). Magic Leap Cuts Staff In Half In ‘New Course’ Restructuring Amid COVID-19 Downturn. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessedamiani/2020/04/22/magic-leap-cuts-staff-in-half-in-new-course-restructuring-amid-covid-19-downturn/?sh=4c82791e185c

This article introduces a technology startup called Magic Leap downsize in response to the pandemic. They had to lay off about 1,000 employees for the company’s future considerations. The cost saved in this way can ensure their product delivery and expand market influence.

2021/1/14 HSBC Plans To Axe 10,000 Jobs—Bringing The Total To 60,000 Banking Employees Downsized

Just This Year

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/10/07/hsbc-plans-to-axe-10000-jobsbringing-the-total-to-60000-banking-employees-downsized-just-this-year/?sh=7056… 1/4

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HSBC Plans To Axe 10,000 Jobs—

Bringing The Total To 60,000

Banking Employees Downsized

Just This Year

EDITORS’ PICK | Oct 7, 2019, 10:53am EDT | 13,672 views

Jack Kelly Senior Contributor

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2021/1/14 HSBC Plans To Axe 10,000 Jobs—Bringing The Total To 60,000 Banking Employees Downsized Just This Year

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/10/07/hsbc-plans-to-axe-10000-jobsbringing-the-total-to-60000-banking-employees-downsized-just-this-year/?sh=7056… 2/4

In a cost-cutting, belt-tightening initiative, HSBC, a top-tier, global bank,
plans to downsize about 10,000 employees, according to the Financial
Times. This was reported after a prior announcement had been made that
the bank would be laying off over 4,000 professionals. Well-compensated,
senior-level executives will bear the brunt of the cuts.

Downsizing has become a regular occurrence for both European and U.S.
banks. Banking and financial institutions are confronted with a toxic
combination of falling interest rates, uncertainty over Brexit, tensions
between China and Hong Kong protests, the ramifications of trade wars and
the possibility of a recession and an accompanying downturn in the global
stock markets.

HSBC’s new interim CEO, Noel Quinn, is deviating from predecessor John
Flint’s stance on staffing. It was reported that Flint was let go—in part—due
to his reticence in taking action to deal with the economic and geopolitical
challenges, including initiating downsizings. According to the Financial
Times, a source told the paper, “We’ve known for years that we need to do
something about our cost base, the largest component of which is people—
now we are finally grasping the nettle.”

Most of the job reductions will be in its European business division—where
there is greater weakness compared to other locations. The bank will focus
efforts on one of its bright spots, its Asia division, which is realizing solid,
double-digit growth.

Big U.S. banks, such as JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, have also felt the
pressure from the current economic environment and lowered their 2019
profit forecasts. Similar to HSBC, the banks cite the adverse impact of lower
and negative interest rates on their profits.

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How To Get Started With Your First Bank Account

By Chelsea Brennan contributor

It’s been brutal for people who work on Wall Street, banking and financial
services. According to Business Insider, about 60,000 jobs were slashed this
year. The last six months alone saw banks collectively announce plans to
downsize about 30,000 people.

In the U.S. and in Europe, Deutsche Bank previously announced plans to
downsize 18,000 employees. Citigroup axed hundreds of trading-related
professionals. Commerzbank planned to eliminate 4,300 jobs. Barclays let
go 3,000 employees and Société Générale eliminated 1,600 jobs.

With the ascension of technology, automation and artificial intelligence,
bank executives are able to jettison employees that can be replaced.
Algorithm software has pushed out live traders. Those engaged in repetitive
and menial-type roles are summarily separated from the payroll—in favor of
automation.

It seems that bank management is playing it safe. Concerns over tariffs,
trade wars, decreasing trading volumes, low interest rates, Brexit, internal
nasty, political battles within the U.S. and Europe, an exceeding, decade-
long bull market run and other factors that could ultimately end in a
recession give the executives an excuse to cut jobs and save money for
possible difficult days ahead.

If you are looking for a new job, be prepared. When there is a trend of
downsizings, each new job requisition is scrutinized. Potential new hires will
have to be absolutely necessary. Banks will be careful, as they don’t want to
add headcount, only to fire the person in the near term. It may be very
challenging for job seekers moving forward. However, Wall Street is known

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2021/1/14 HSBC Plans To Axe 10,000 Jobs—Bringing The Total To 60,000 Banking Employees Downsized Just This Year

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/10/07/hsbc-plans-to-axe-10000-jobsbringing-the-total-to-60000-banking-employees-downsized-just-this-year/?sh=7056… 4/4

for moving in excesses. They’ll overhire when times are good and overfire
when things look bleak. The pendulum moves quickly. Just as fast as they
layoff, the banks will quickly rehire when the climate appears sunnier.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my
other work here.

Jack Kelly

I am a CEO, founder, and executive recruiter at one of the oldest and largest global

search �rms in my area of expertise, and have personally placed thousands of…

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2021/1/14 Ominous News As The Economy

Re-Opens

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Empty Mall (Photo by May James/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) SOPA

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Corporate decision making has begun to take an ominous turn. When the
lockdowns began, most managers thought in terms of bridging the
emergency – conserving cash and cutting costs but otherwise standing ready
to resume previously high levels of production as soon as the virus-fighting

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strictures lifted. Little discussion of downsizing occurred. But as the
quarantines and shutdowns persisted, business managers seem to have
changed their views. More and more, they have begun to talk about
downsizing layoffs and permanently shuttering less efficient facilities.

The news is spotty, mere straws in the wind so far, but even at that, the
changing attitude is threatening. As long as companies had simply
suspended operations, it was reasonable to look for an economic snapback
when circumstances allowed. But once firms turn to more permanent
shutdowns and layoffs, recovery will require the long and arduous process of
rebuilding. Instead of a proverbial v-shaped recovery, the nation might
suffer a U-shaped one or something with a still less encouraging shape.

Though as yet no statistical evidence of the change has emerged, the flow of
anecdotes is discouraging. Such a shift, of course, should hardly surprise. As
the lockdowns have continued, companies have quickly burned through
their capital cushions and their ability to rely on lines of credit. Those with
less financial backing face the stark possibility of bankruptcy. Those
managers who only a few weeks ago remained firmly committed to only
temporary furloughs for workers and efforts to maintain existing facilities
have found themselves faced with a reality that has made such an
encouraging approach impossible.

Here are some of the unsettling reports: Caterpillar has announced its
decision to close one of its German factories permanently. The company has
not yet announced anything ominous for the United States, but the German
action is hardly encouraging. More stark are decisions by Polaris, Inc. and
Goodyear Tire and Rubber, the first to completely shutter a boat and
motorcycle manufacturing facility in Indiana, the second to close a plant in
Alabama. Lennox China had identified the effect of the lockdowns and
quarantines as a kind of last straw and decided to close its last domestic
facility located in North Carolina. Maple Block Company, a medium-sized
Michigan-based firm, at first issued temporary furloughs, but more recently

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has announced its decision to close of its facilities for good. Raytheon has
hinted at “further reductions.” Less well-known small and medium-sized
firms across the Mid West and in the North East have announced closures
and bankruptcies. Other companies, if not making outright announcements,
have issued warnings of a coming change from bridging the emergency to
permanent downsizings. Typical is the announcement from MGM Resorts
International. Its management has identified August as a deadline to make
clear more permanent downsizing moves unless the nation’s reopening
proceeds well.

Other ominous signs of impending bankruptcies have emerged. Credit rating
agencies of reveled that increasing numbers of firms are moving toward
what Wall Street calls “distressed debt exchanges.” In these, borrowers offer
new or restructured debt in place of outstanding issues. Alternatively, firms
buy back outstanding notes at substantial discounts. Such actions were
common in 2008, often before bankruptcies. Research from New York
University’s Salomon Center indicates that historically some 40% of such
distressed exchanges precede bankruptcy. To be sure, these problems have
roots that predate the coronavirus emergency. Because interest rates and
bond yields have remained so low for so long, managements have actively
borrowed to lock up long-term credit at favorable rates. Many have not used
the funds but have kept them in cash as a kind of reserve for future
investments. The income from those cash investments failed to cover the
servicing requirements of the long-term borrowing but managers could
justify the loss in terms of locking in historically low long-term rates. But
now that the lockdowns and quarantines stemming revenue flows, this debt
has become an unsupportable burden.

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Clear The Way For Caterpillar Inc.

It is some comfort that these announced permanent closings and financial
maneuvers have yet to become widespread. A successful re-opening for the
general economy – one that perhaps adequately re-starts business by August
(to use MGM’s date) – can head off these trends and justify the original
plans to bridge the emergency with a temporary pause. But that is only a
“perhaps,” not the least because there is no telling the direction of the virus
and because political calculations often differ from those that might most
help the economy.

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2021/1/14 Uber Lays Off 3,500 Employees Over A Zoom Call—The Way In Which A Company Downsizes Its Staff Says A Lot About The

Organization

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/05/13/uber-lays-off-3500-employees-over-a-zoom-call-the-way-in-which-a-company-downsizes-its-staff-says-a-lot-abou… 1/5

Careers

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Uber Lays Off 3,500 Employees

Over A Zoom Call—The Way In

Which A Company Downsizes Its

Staff Says A Lot About The

Organization

EDITORS’ PICK | May 13, 2020, 01:46pm EDT | 156,884 views

Jack Kelly Senior Contributor

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2021/1/14 Uber Lays Off 3,500 Employees Over A Zoom Call—The Way In Which A Company Downsizes Its Staff Says A Lot About The Organization

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Note: Uber announced on Monday that it will cut an additional 3,000
workers.

In this challenging COVID-19 climate, many companies are having a hard
time. Their revenue has slowed and profits have evaporated. In cost-cutting
measures, businesses have had to make the hard decisions to layoff staff.
Some are empathetic, while others take a more callous and uncaring
approach to this sensitive matter.

This week, Uber announced that it will layoff 3,500 employees, representing
14% of its workforce. In a sign of the times, with employees working from
home, Uber informed the job-loss casualties via an online Zoom call.

The Daily Mail, who first reported the story, obtained a video of the head of
Uber’s customer service office, Ruffin Chaveleau, telling people that today
was their last day at the company.

Chevaleau soberly shared that Uber’s business was hit hard. The company’s
business dropped by over 50%. She said, “With trip volume down, the
difficult and unfortunate reality is there is not enough work for many front-
line customer support employees.” Chaveleau added, “As a result, we are
eliminating 3,500 front-line customer support roles. Your role is impacted
and today will be your last working day with Uber.”

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Chaveleau was saddened by the call saying, “I know that this is incredibly
hard to hear. No one wants to be on a call like this. With everyone remote
and a change of this magnitude, we had to do this in a way that allowed us to

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2021/1/14 Uber Lays Off 3,500 Employees Over A Zoom Call—The Way In Which A Company Downsizes Its Staff Says A Lot About The Organization

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/05/13/uber-lays-off-3500-employees-over-a-zoom-call-the-way-in-which-a-company-downsizes-its-staff-says-a-lot-abou… 3/5

tell you as quickly as possible so that you did not hear it from the rumor
mill.”

Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said of the downsizing, “We’re focused on
navigating through this crisis that absolutely leaves us in a position, a
stronger position, as the world starts to recover.” Khosrowshahi announced
that he will be forsaking his base salary.

This wasn’t the first Zoom firing amidst the pandemic. The Verge previously
detailed the circumstances surrounding the layoffs of employees at scooter-
sharing startup Bird, which fired 406 employees in a harsh “Black Mirror”
style. The unsuspecting workers were asked to log into a one-way Zoom call,
after being informed that all other appointments were cancelled. A
disembodied voice read a script informing the person that they’ve been laid
off. Their Slack and other accounts were shut off and given end dates.

Airbnb took a different, more enlightened approach. The company
announced that it will downsize 25% of its workforce. Roughly 1,900 people
out of the company’s 7,500 total workforce will lose their jobs. This is one of
the largest layoffs that we’ve seen out of Silicon Valley due to the effect of the
coronavirus outbreak. What’s different about Airbnb is the manner in which
the company informed employees of its plans.

In a message to staff, Airbnb cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky said, “Some
very sad news. Today, I must confirm that we are reducing the size of the
Airbnb workforce.” Chesky then advised his employees that he will be
transparent and offer details, so that everyone is fully aware of what’s
happening.

He was forthright and didn’t try to spin the narrative, as he stated, “We are
collectively living through the most harrowing crisis of our lifetime, and as it
began to unfold, global travel came to a standstill. Airbnb’s business has
been hit hard, with revenue this year forecasted to be less than half of what

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2021/1/14 Uber Lays Off 3,500 Employees Over A Zoom Call—The Way In Which A Company Downsizes Its Staff Says A Lot About The Organization

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/05/13/uber-lays-off-3500-employees-over-a-zoom-call-the-way-in-which-a-company-downsizes-its-staff-says-a-lot-abou… 4/5

we earned in 2019. In response, we raised $2 billion in capital and
dramatically cut costs that touched nearly every corner of Airbnb.”

He also assured the staff that the “decisions are not a reflection of the work
from people on these teams.” Chesky thanked his employees by saying, “We
have great people leaving Airbnb, and other companies will be lucky to have
them.” The chief executive promised that the company will take care of those
that are leaving. “We have looked across severance, equity, healthcare and
job support and done our best to treat everyone in a compassionate and
thoughtful way,” Chesky added.

His message also said, “Employees in the U.S. will receive 14 weeks of base
pay, plus one additional week for every year at Airbnb. Tenure will be
rounded to the nearest year. For example, if someone has been at Airbnb for
three years and seven months, they will get an additional four weeks of
salary, or 18 weeks of total pay.” Twelve months of health insurance will be
covered through COBRA.

The airline industry has been one of the hardest-hit sectors by the pandemic.
The federal government called for the cessation of nonessential travel. Even
with essential travel, potential passengers have steered clear.

In response to the dramatic decline in flights and acknowledging that the
fortunes of airlines won’t turn around anytime soon, they’ve enacted
massive layoffs.

The airlines received billions of dollars from the government to bail them
out. The federal bailout for the airline industry barred layoffs, involuntary
furloughs or pay cuts for employees. The airline executives, including United
Airlines, were cold and harsh. United didn’t even try to hide the fact that job
cuts are coming as soon as the required period to retain employees ends.
Once the prohibition is lifted on Oct. 1, the workers will get their pink slips.
To add insult to injury, workers were told to take unpaid or lower-paid
leaves in the interim.

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Retail

I’m a retail junkie who loves to see who is doing what…and to whom

Macy’s, Target, Ikea And Others

Are Getting Smaller Stores; Mall

Operators Are Getting Worried

EDITORS’ PICK | Sep 23, 2020, 04:02pm EDT | 8,096 views

Warren Shoulberg Senior Contributor

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As if mall operators and retail real estate owners didn’t have enough to
worry about with bankruptcies and liquidations, they have a new terror to
face: stores getting smaller.

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In a trend that began well before the pandemic but has now accelerated as
shopping patterns change, retailers are looking at downsizing their existing
stores and building new locations that are substantially smaller than their
typical footprint.

It’s another Covid by-product that threatens to transform the retail
landscape in ways that seemed unlikely in what has always been a bigger-is-
better philosophy in the business.

Retailers like Target TGT +0.6% , Kohl’s KSS +1.2% and Ikea were already
moving towards opening smaller stores as a way to penetrate inner city and
other locations where their usual massive stores wouldn’t fit. But since the
pandemic started, others, including Macy’s M +5.1% and John Lewis in the
U.K., are also exploring downsizing strategies. For the companies that own
and operate shopping malls, strip centers and suburban retail real estate it’s
one more threat to their business models they need to deal with.

Macy’s may be the best example of the trend. Even before Covid it had
opened a compact 20,000-square-foot under the Market by Macy’s banner
in Texas that featured well-edited assortments in some classifications and an
emphasis on food. In subsequent reports from CEO Jeff Gennette, he has
talked about additional smaller format stores even as Macy’s continues to
close more than 100 of its legacy department store format locations.

Macy’s is also believed to be looking at a proposal that would cut retail floor
space at its Herald Square flagship in New York City with the addition of a
tower atop the building. That plan could be impacted by the severe softening
of the Manhattan real estate market but the reduction in selling space could
still occur even if the tower is not built.

In the U.K., department store John Lewis is reported to be looking at a 40%
reduction in its Oxford Street flagship in London, with at least three floors
being converted to office space. The retailer has not confirmed this report

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from the CityA.M. website but sources cited the same traffic slowdown in
London as is being experienced in the U.S.

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Other retailers were well on their way to downsizing their existing locations.
Kohl’s has leased out space in several of its stores to the Aldi supermarket
chain and Planet Fitness PLNT -0.6% . Ikea has opened urban locations in New
York, Paris and elsewhere that are a fraction of the size of its behemoth
stores in the suburbs. Nordstrom JWN +1.2% is testing several Local stores in
New York and Los Angeles that serve as satellite locations to existing full-
line stores. And the JCPenney JCP -2.3% “lab” store in Hurst, Texas
eliminated an entire floor of the former three-level store in its new format
providing for a more compact shopping experience.

Target has probably been the furthest along with scaled back stores, now
operating more than 100 such locations. Some are on college campuses
while others are inner-city stores with smaller assortments and some
departments eliminated. Target has said it plans to open as many as 30 such
stores a year even as its expansion with full-size doors has slowed
significantly.

The challenge for mall owners and other retail real estate operators is of
course how to fill space that otherwise would have been used by full-size
stores. In the case of Kohl’s, the retailer itself is subletting its space and
Macy’s has cut back the size of many of its traditional locations by adding
Backstage off-price store-within-a-store branches. But in cases where large
retailers choose not to renew leases as they move to smaller locations or
simply don’t open full-size stores at the pace they used to, real estate

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companies may have difficulty leasing out these spaces. Given the number of
out-and-out shutdowns and closings it makes a bad situation worse.

As with many other things to do with the pandemic, this trend was already
in process but has been accelerated greatly. More online shopping, less foot
traffic and an economy that makes buying merchandise like apparel and
fashion goods less of a priority are all contributing to a real estate headache.

It may not be fatal but like Covid, it’s very contagious.

Warren Shoulberg

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2021/1/14 United Airlines Got Billions From The Government, Paid Executives Millions And Now Could Downsize Almost Half Of Its U.S.

Workforce

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Careers

I write actionable interview, career and salary advice.

United Airlines Got Billions From

The Government, Paid Executives

Millions And Now Could

Downsize Almost Half Of Its U.S.

Workforce

EDITORS’ PICK | Jul 8, 2020, 12:35pm EDT | 27,967 views

Jack Kelly Senior Contributor

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Back in May, it was reported that United Airlines planned to downsize
thousands of workers after taking billions of dollars from the government, in
an effort to stay solvent in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Airlines were
one of the hardest-hit sectors, as governments recommended people not
travel. Also, potential passengers were too afraid to take a flight out of fear of
catching the virus.

At that time, Kate Gebo, United’s executive vice president of human
resources, said about upcoming job cuts, “We have to acknowledge that
there will be serious consequences to our company if we don’t continue to
take strong and decisive action, which includes making decisions that none
of us ever wanted or expected to make.” Gebo said that workers affected by
the cuts will be notified in July. It was also expressed that prior to the
firings, some impacted employees may be required to take 20 unpaid days
off between May 16 and Sept. 30.

It’s interesting to note that United Airlines said the job cuts will commence
on Oct. 1. The date is significant. By accepting the money from the stimulus
plan via the CARES Act, companies are required to retain employees for a
specified time period ending Sept. 30.

In total, the U.S. airlines were provided with $25 billion in Treasury cash
grants. Companies, such as United, are prohibited from firing workers until
after Sept. 30—if they took the money. With massive amounts of
unemployment, this was a governmental-backed incentive for corporations
to retain employees. By openly admitting that United Airlines will most
likely fire people starting October, it feels as if the company sort of gamed
the system. It seems unsightly that, although seemingly perfectly legal, the
company accepted taxpayer money knowing that it would fire workers.

Now, fast forward to the present. For a small brief moment, it felt that we
may have been out of the fire. There was a temporary belief that we may
have seen the worst of the virus outbreak. Maybe it was the peaceful protests
over the killing of George Floyd and the accompanying hijacking of the

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movement that led to riots and mayhem that distracted us. It could have
been the change of seasons from spring to summer—signifying hope. This
sadly didn’t last long. Cases quickly spiked higher in a number of states that
reopened and America took a number of steps backwards.

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Other’

Just a couple of weeks ago, United was optimistic. The company saw an
increase in bookings, as people felt the virus was under control. The
euphoria faded as United’s reservations for travel drastically declined after
New York, New Jersey and Connecticut said they would all require a 14-day
quarantine for people arriving from hot-spot states. Cancellations also came
from other states that saw rises in Covid-19.

On Monday, United shared its gloomy prospects with employees. The airline
told workers to prepare to receive notifications of potential furloughs this
week under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act.

United informed employees that tens of thousands of workers would receive
WARN Act notices.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “United Airlines Holdings Inc. said it
could be forced to shed almost half its U.S. workforce, telling 36,000
employees on Wednesday that they could be furloughed from Oct. 1 because
of the pandemic-driven slump in passenger demand.”

This action is in line with what United previously predicted would happen
several months ago. The company said it would alert people of the layoffs in

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July and that notices will be given for terminations on or after Oct. 1—when
the restrictions that accompanied the federal aid package are satisfied.

In a sign of new concerns, the U.S. Treasury Department said on Tuesday
that United and four other carriers have executed letters of intent for
additional loans available under the CARES Act. United applied for $4.5
billion in loans.

Some of this disaster could have been softened. Lost in the conversation is
the self-harm United Airlines committed on itself. From 2014 through 2019,
the company spent around $8.57 billion for stock buybacks—representing
about 80% of its spare cash, buying back its shares. These funds could have
been set aside for a rainy day. As it turned out, United faced more than a
rainy day. It headed right into a combination tornado, hurricane and
typhoon all at once. Those billions of dollars could have been helpful to
retain employees during this tough time.

It also didn’t help matters that the airline lavished its executives with lush
compensation packages. United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz earned roughly
$12,643,005 for 2019 and President J. Scott Kirby was awarded $16,779,485
for 2019. Other top executives, such as the CFO, COO and CAO, earned
millions too. A portion of this largesse could have been reallocated to save a
lot of jobs.

United Airlines did not return request for comment.

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Business creativity

It’s an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth.

(Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody thought.
(Albert von Szent-Györgyi)

Learning objectives
This chapter explores:

What is creativity?

2 Understanding thinking.
3 Contextual factors affecting personal creativity.
4 Assessing personal creativity potential.
5 Left-brain and right-brain thinking model.
6 Introducing the total thinking model.

Introduction
The challenges organisations face as a result of the business environmental paradigm
change discussed in Part I call for fresh thinking. The portfolio of management responses
that was both effective and efficient in the era of sellers’ markets (collectively referred to
as the least-cost production/supply paradigm) need to be revised in order to respond suc-
cessfully to the different problems posed by buyers’ markets. In most cases this requires a
radical change in thinking. This is the essence of business creativity and the process starts
with a review of thinking at the individual level. The chapter explores the process of think-
ing by describing the physiology of the brain and discussing how the process of thinking
occurs. Once the fundamentals of thinking have been explored the next task is to apply the
key principles to the individual’s problem-solving practice. This requires both mental flex-
ibility and a tolerance of ambiguity and is a fundamentally a personal journey of discovery.
Practical exercises are included to assist individuals to realise the need to evaluate their
thinking approach to business problems. (See Figure 4.1.)

66 Innovation from theory to practice

Nasruddin

Mulla Nasruddin was once attempting to repair something, without apparent success, when
an onlooker asked scornfully, ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’

Nasruddin replied, ‘No, that’s why I’m doing it.’
The field of creativity research is rich with examples from the lives of remarkable indi-

viduals, but lacks an accepted framework for approaching the many issues that arise when
trying to make more general sense of the data. To produce such a framework is an important
aim of this chapter.

Figure 4.1 Overview of business creativity.

Business creativity 67

Context

What is creativity?

Creativity is a natural gift and part of the wholeness (gestalt) of every individual. It can and
should be encouraged. This offers the individual the opportunity to derive more satisfaction
from life. Understanding creativity is difficult if we strive to define it in rules and try to put
it in a box. By its very nature it is unpredictable, unique, infectious and real. Most, except-
ing those with closed minds, can quickly appreciate it when they see it. True creativity has a
beauty of its own that often defies logical explanation. So are civilisations all over the world
in danger of losing their way by attempting to justify creativity? Can it be bottled, concen-
trated in a pill and swallowed? Is it possible to control it by logic alone? Or is it a mysterious
force that seems to bless us in puzzling, usually joyful, ways?

Creativity is a unique force that distinguishes the higher orders of fauna, such as homo
sapiens from the rest of creation. Other creatures are capable of expressing creativity and
creative thought. Squirrels, for example, can do amazing things in pursuit of food. Humans,
however, are generally accepted to be the most advanced form of life. So the way in which
humans think would seem to hold promise if we are to appreciate human creativity and fully
achieve our individual potential to express it. The next section explains how the human brain
works. Prepare to be surprised.

Definitions

Creativity has been defined as the generation of new ideas by approaching problems or
existing practices in innovative or imaginative ways. It is stated that creativity involves
re-examining assumptions and reinterpreting facts, ideas and past experience. It is also
reported that a growing interest in creativity as a source of competitive advantage has
developed in recent years (Business & Management Dictionary, 2007; Banks et al., 2002;
Dundon, 2002). It is an imaginative process with outcomes that are original and of value.
One way to find out more about creativity is to ask people about their conception of a
creative person. Whether they are lay people or experts in a field, people have implicit the-
ories about what it means to be creative. They usually identify personality and cognitive
elements such as:

• connects ideas;
• sees similarities and differences;
• is flexible;
• has aesthetic taste;
• is unorthodox;
• is curious, inquisitive;
• questions accepted ways of doing things.

Another way to tease out the governing conditions of creativity is to look at paradigm case
examples of what the most creative people do. Much research has gone into trying to under-
stand creativity by looking at the way creative minds work (Gardner, 1997). By studying
exemplars of creativity such as world-famous writers, artists or inventors one might find a set
of necessary and sufficient conditions which defined their creativity. We then might want to
try to recreate those conditions in our homes, schools, businesses and community. All have
the mental resources to be creative (see Chapter 5).

68 Innovation from theory to practice

Process

Research into the habits of creative people reveals certain common characteristics. They:

• generate ideas;
• are flexible in their thinking, experiment and seek variation;
• strive for originality;
• provide examples of their work.

Generate ideas

Creative people tend to have lots of ideas. They do not limit their thinking to a few ideas;
they want more ideas and better ideas. The more they have the greater the likelihood that
some of them will work. Some ideas will go wrong. As Edison, the inventor of the telephone
said, he needed 100 ideas for he knew that 99 of them might be wrong. Inside the oyster of
an idea may be a pearl. Creative people do not discard ideas simply because they seem at first
to be a bit odd or unworkable. Output of ideas spurs further ideas, each of which may have
an unexpected potential. Creative people are rarely half-hearted. They make an effort to keep
thinking, to become absorbed, immersed and fascinated in the subject in hand for the ideas
to flood in. When Tolstoy was writing a novel he said he ‘knew’ all his fictional characters
inside out because he had thought so much and generated so many ideas about them.

Creative people

Creative people are able to overcome the mental blocks to their thinking through being flex-
ible and divergent. Some of these blocks include the tendency to think that:

• there is only one right way to do things;
• we know all there is to know;
• it is wrong to experiment with new ideas.

Being creative means not having to be stuck with one idea, one approach and one way
of doing things. It is having the ability to move from a known way to a new way, being
willing to change your ideas or views if you need to. Creative people have a thirst for
knowledge. They use imagination to play with ideas. They are willing to experiment. The
French mathematician Poincaré said: ‘Experiment is the sole source of truth.’ It is also the
source of all creativity. Creative people are curious, open-minded and have the confidence
to try new ideas.

Strive for originality

Creative people strive for originality by thinking of novel ideas, finding new solutions to
problems or creating their own unique ways or plans for doing things. They extend their
thinking through a process of elaboration. They are willing to improve on an original idea,
so that what they add improves on or takes further the original idea. Elaboration is shown
in the number and quality of different ideas used to add on to the original idea, expand-
ing on existing knowledge, extending an idea to make it more complex or build a unique
feature into a given situation. They try alternatives and don’t give up easily. They have
‘stickability’ – they know that creativity often requires a tremendous struggle for a vision

Business creativity 69

to be realised. The painter Turner said: ‘My paintings bring me nothing but pain. The real-
ity is so immeasurably below the conception.’

Provide examples of their work

Creative people work hard and continually to improve ideas and solutions, by making gradual
alterations and refinements to their works. Contrary to the mythology surrounding creativity,
few works of creative excellence are produced with a single stroke of brilliance or in a frenzy
of rapid activity (Breen, 2004). Here is Beethoven describing his way of working:

I carry my thoughts with me for a long time, often for a very long time before writing them
down . . . I change many things, discard others and try again until I am satisfied; then, in
my head, I begin to elaborate the work . . . the underlying idea never deserts me. It rises, it
grows. I hear and see the image in front of me from every angle.

(Gruber and Wallace, 1999)

Newton claimed that what enabled him to make discoveries in mathematics and science was
his ability to concentrate intently on a problem for hours, days and weeks on end. Research
shows that experts in any creative field take about 10 years of practice before they produce a
masterwork (Sternberg and Lubart, 1999). Creative excellence in any field seems to require
long-term interest and investment of effort (Sternberg, 2006).

The problem with studying paradigm cases of creative people who have excelled in their field
is that they are vulnerable to paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1975). Thus the analysis may fit well with the
works of preceding artists who were imbued with a reverence for the tradition they were working
in, but it may not fit the works of revolutionary creative thinkers. The old ways of study may not
fit new technologies. We cannot reinvent the future by copying the traditions of the past. Creative
people can learn from a past tradition but need to move beyond that tradition to achieve the most
creative expression of their ideas. They need to move into new paradigms, new ways of thinking.

Most acknowledge that creativity exists. Many can name a creative person, alive or dead,
though it is amazing how many people seem to think that creativity and the afterlife go
together! This chapter asserts that all individuals are naturally creative and that this is by
design and not an accident of birth. Of course, some are more creative than others. However,
we all have tremendous potential. The curious thing is that many of us keep our creativity
under wraps. Perhaps this is because many of us find it easier this way. Many individuals and
groups seem to radiate a latent hostility toward creative people. This makes about as much
sense as this text trying to convince you that you do not exist!

Curiously, when Western wealth-creation activities were primarily facing a supply gap,
the pearl of great price was not creativity or innovation but compliance. The pursuit of order
portends a strong attraction to many ‒ usually those doing the ordering ‒ and is necessary for
some of the adventures of life. If it becomes the norm ‒ the way things are done at all times ‒ it
restricts the creative force. Practised to excess it can sometimes lead to a dangerous myopic
condition. As the forces of change are ‘neutralised’ or managed for administrative convenience
and short-term advantage so the real, long-term cost becomes staggering. Suddenly in a series
of unstoppable shifts the contextual factors impacting on wealth creation undeniably enter a
period of explosive change. The result is a dangerous crisis that frequently does not play the
game by the rules. As instability is met by complacency, living standards are threatened. What
is needed is a new management approach that is contextually aware.

In such a predicament we can place our trust in man’s ingenuity, but only if it is given
sufficient space.

70 Innovation from theory to practice

Creative people in business in Africa, Asia, Europe and

South America

Africa

Richard Brasher – CEO of Pick n Pay for continued supply of affordable food for all
customers is motivated by the three principles of consumer sovereignty, doing good is
good business and maximising business efficiency.

Yasmin Belo-Osagle ‒ developed female entrepreneurs across Africa.

Asia

Amit Agarwal – the former assistant to Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezo, established a domi-
nant foothold for Amazon in India.

Jean Liu – president of Didi Kuaidi, daughter of the founder of Lenovo, built China’s
largest car-sharing and taxi business.

Europe

Maria Grazia Chiuri – reinvigorated the Rome-based Valentino brand together with
co-creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli.

South America

Maria Claudia-Laccutre ‒ president of ProColumbia, rebranded the government agency
that promotes non-traditional Columbian exports, foreign investment and international
tourism.

Carlos Mario Rodriguez – completed a crossbreeding of Starbucks first-ever hybrid of
a high-producing coffee plant that is rust resistant.

Sources: FastCompany, ‘Most creative people 2015 and 2016’; pick n pay website, http://www.
picknpay.co.za/about-us-introduction.

Ordinary individuals just need to believe that it can happen. A vital first step is for an indi-
vidual to rediscover their own creativity. It is hoped that this chapter will help many honest
enquirers.

Key principles

Understanding thinking

To realise the full potential of our brains it is helpful to briefly explore how the physiology
works before assessing our creative thinking potential.

Business creativity 71

Physiology of the brain

By any account the human brain is an incredible machine. It controls all the activities and
reactions of the body and is the centre of emotion, memory and personality. Whereas the
heart is the functional centre, it is the pump that circulates our blood; it is the brain, the
organic computer that is the true expression of life. Whereas the heart enables us to be,
the brain enables us to live. It is made up of millions of very small cells called neurons.
The average individual has over ten thousand million of them (Encyclopaedia Britannica,
2006). They are two categories of cells: those that carry information to and from the body
via the spinal cord and those that cross-connect the constituent parts of the brain. Basically
there are three key parts to the brain: the cerebrum, the cerebellum and brain stem or
medulla oblongata, as shown in Figure 4.2.

The brain is the coordinator of the nervous system and controls most of our conscious
and unconscious actions. The cerebrum is the largest and most highly developed part of the
brain and on inspection looks a little like a walnut. It consists of two approximately equal
halves or lobes called the cerebral hemispheres. In humans this part of the brain is so large
that it has had to be wrinkled, like a walnut, to fit into our shells or skulls. The surface of the
cerebrum is referred to as the cerebral cortex or grey matter. Below the cerebral cortex is
the white matter that is a mass of nerve fibres connecting the cortex with the body and other
parts of the brain. Information flows into the brain from the body by a process known as
sensation. Messages come from the skin, muscles, eyes, ears, nose and other sense organs by
the sensory nerves. The brain processes the information and then sends out responses along
the motor nerves to the muscles of the body that control all the body movements. Different
areas of the cortex control different parts of the body. Curiously, the left side of the brain
controls the right side of the body and vice versa, with the centre brain somehow coordinat-
ing this activity.

The cortex is the place that determines our awareness of the environment around us. The
eyes look at the world and the ears listen, but it is the cortex that sees, hears and understands.
It decides what responses to trigger having evaluated the external stimuli. This is where trust
or suspicion is determined and it is the centre of our creativity. The cerebellum is below the
cerebrum (see Figure 4.2) and assists the cerebral cortex by providing fine control of intricate
movements, such as walking, writing and driving. The medulla oblongata, or brain stem,
connects the cerebrum and cerebellum to the spinal cord and so to the rest of the body. This
part of the brain provides a largely automatic control of the body’s internal organs.

Figure 4.2 Lateral view of cerebrum, cerebellum.

72 Innovation from theory to practice

The working brain: a synaptic wonder

Each brain cell or neuron is structurally independent. In other words, they do not come into
contact with each other. They communicate with other cells by a subtle interchange of com-
plex electrochemical signals, which is a process known as contiguity and was first advanced
by the Spanish scientist Ramon y Cajal in 1889. Each neuron has three distinct components:
the cell body or soma; the main nerve fibre or axon, which is the main exit of information
transmitted by the cell; and a number of receiving branches or dendrites. Dendrites and axons
range in size from a millimetre to one and a half metres in length. All along their length
are little acorn-like shapes called dendritic spines or synaptic buttons that contain chemical
material that provide the means for connections to be made between brain cells. This occurs
when an electrical impulse travels through the liquid filled space between two adjacent cells
and connects their synaptic buttons.

The amount of activity going on in the brain is incredible. It can usefully be likened to the
amount of traffic through a busy electronic telephone exchange. Incoming messages are auto-
matically connected to a multitude of cells as the brain processes the input stimuli to produce
a suitable response or outcome. This is the product of a complex evaluation procedure that
coordinates the contributions of thousands of individual brain cells and produces a distinct
electromagnetic routing or pathway that is known as a memory trace. If the same or similar
stimuli or enquiry is repeated, the brain automatically energises the memory traces it formed,
thus speeding up the response time. This is the essence of learning. As each brain cell is
capable of directing information to as many as 10,000 other brain cells in the same instant,
the problem-solving potential at the individual’s disposal is virtually infinite.

Practice

Contextual factors affecting personal creativity

Anyone is capable of responding creatively. The issue is to what end and how often. Of
course, some will be naturally more creative than others. Figure 4.3 illustrates some of the
ways that ordinary everyday people exhibit creativity. The degree to which personal creativ-
ity occurs depends on a complex set of environmental or contextual factors. Social pressures,
such as the pressure to conform to group norms, can either encourage or discourage creativity
depending on the value placed on such activity by the dominant social rules. Technology can
trigger creativity when a new and accepted (wanted) application suddenly appears. A useful
example of this is provided by the development of the electric toothbrush that took off after
the technology behind rechargeable batteries was perfected. Economic factors too can play
their part, as many on low budgets know when they ‘make a penny do the work of a pound’.
Finally, political factors can influence creative responses. Examples of this include a variety
of novel ways of ‘getting round’ ‒ legally and otherwise ‒ existing and proposed legislation.
Take some time out and think of a handful of examples!

Whilst creativity will occur, to some degree, even when it is discouraged and opposed by
organisations in society, its incidence increases if it is actively encouraged. This coaxing has
to occur at two distinct levels: that of the individual and that of the social groups/organisations
to which the individual belongs. An adult, like a child, needs to feel safe if he or she is to play
creatively. Heightened tension and emotional pressure are bad for creativity. The individual
has to experience a satisfactory level of safety and to trust the personnel around him or her.
No trust, little creativity.

Business creativity 73

Organisations and creativity

Organisations cannot respond creatively. What they can do, though, is to actively encour-
age their individuals. Thus the incidence of creative activity is contextually governed by the
degree of group and/or organisational support. At the individual level the vibes that are in the
air have to be convincing. Corporate motherhood statements and other forms of ‘chin music’
are to no avail unless the ‘place feels right’. When this is the case then the people will invoke
the processes and creative responses will occur.

Expressing natural skills

Whilst it is true that all individuals possess creativity ‒ it’s a gift of nature ‒ most of us fail
to make the most of it. As creativity is a dynamic phenomenon, a force, we cannot learn to
effectively improve our use of it by only studying the literature. If we realistically wish to
develop our creativity skills then we must be prepared to have a go. The first major chal-
lenge facing many individuals is to overcome their shyness and apprehension and let the
genie out of the bottle. Starting with the knowledge that all individuals are creative is both
reassuring and challenging. It provides comfort in that most of us are aware of our creative
achievements, no matter what private beliefs we may harbour about their frequency, strength
or durability. It presents a challenge in that most will readily accept that any skill can be
developed by sustained exercise.

Car drivers have to overcome inhibitions and agree to take their first driving lesson.
Then, despite the possibility of a few shocks and surprises, they need the resolution to
see a driving tuition programme through and then to present themselves for examination.
If successful, most drivers then cease to put a lot of sustained effort into improving their
general driving skills. Experience on the open road does develop their driving skills in
some respects but also leaves them prey to developing bad habits. Most, for example,
fail to continuously update their knowledge of the Highway Code. In short, many of us
become lazy. We are easily satisfied with a relatively low level of achievement. Some of
us later rue this, when a sudden challenge to our skill response leaves us wanting. As the
environment on the roads is constantly changing we would be wise to keep our relative
skill level high. Frequently the problems we face are the result of someone else’s failings.
Thus, to survive on today’s roads we need to be continuously updating both our own driv-
ing skills and learning how to cope with the mistakes of others. Passing the driving test
and just driving is not sufficient. Likewise, making do with our natural creativity skill
level is not enough.

Action

Assessing personal creative potential

If we are intent on discovering what we can do to improve our creativity, it is helpful to
start by getting a measure as to where we are now. This can be achieved, to some extent, by
recourse to an appropriate audit or inventory. An improvement programme can then build on
this apparent skill level. It is important to realise that such ‘tests’ are not infallible measures
of our creative performance. They merely confirm that we are creative and provide some
indicative evidence of the use to which we consciously put creative skills. A subsequent run-
ning of the selected audit should then provide evidence of development.

74 Innovation from theory to practice

There are a number of tests widely available that can help us to get a picture of our pre-
sent level of creative activity. However, few were designed exclusively to reflect creative
responses. Most are intended to reveal other personal characteristics such as psychological
type (Myers-Briggs and McCaulley, 1988), personality (16PF, see http://similarminds.com/
cattel-16-factor.html (accessed 15 June 2016)) and learning styles (Kolb, 1984; Honey and
Mumford, 1985; Pritchard, 2014) or team working attributes (Belbin, 1981). One (Kirton,
1987) was developed to measure creative style.

Personal Creativity Audit

The Personal Creativity Audit (PCA) was developed at Durham University to provide evi-
dence that individuals are creative and to give an indication of an individual’s tendency to
use creativity skills in daily situations. Appendices 4.1 and 4.2 contain the PCA together with
responses and scoring instructions. For any such inventory to be useful it has to be capable
of measuring what it is intended to measure and to be reliable in the responses that it elicits
from respondents. However, some people will inevitably try to read the algorithm to delib-
erately register high scores rather than complete the inventory with a view to seeing what it
says about them. Despite these reservations such inventories can provide a snapshot that can
be illuminating.

Personal creativity in action

How do you think you can help yourself to release more of your natural creativity? Take a
short break and try to jot down at least five ideas.

Figure 4.3 Activities that entail personal creativity.

Business creativity 75

Here are a few exercises and ideas to help you develop your own creative thinking.

• How many potential uses can you think of for an ordinary paper clip?
• Irrespective of how good an artist you judge yourself to be, grab a piece of paper

(A4 size is ideal) and try and draw a quick head and shoulders sketch of yourself. Now
choose a hat from the options below.

{{ Mexican hat
{{ Top hat
{{ Cloth cap
{{ Deerstalker
{{ Chef’s hat

Now draw your chosen hat on your head and shoulders.
Why did you choose the hat you did? Express your reasons in a short sentence.
Would you have preferred to have chosen one of the other hats? If so, which one and

why did you pass it by? If it was because you had doubts as to whether you could draw
it have a go right now.

How many uses can you think of for an ordinary builder’s brick?

Now ponder on the following:

According to all the laws of aerodynamics, a bumblebee cannot possibly fly. The bumble
bee does not know this, so it goes ahead and flies anyway (Anonymous).

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between
being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the
hell, leap (Heimal, 1983).

• Play a track of your favourite music. How would you:

{{ Briefly describe it with words?
{{ With pictures?
{{ Can you hum it unaccompanied?

• Look out of the window and focus for half a minute on an object.

Now close your eyes. Think of something that has been troubling you today. Think about
the object . . . make any connections? Get any good ideas? If not, try again, and you too can
experience the Eureka effect!

Work environment and performance

No matter how we look at individual responses there is little doubt that the organisational
work environment has a direct effect on performance. The role models, paradigms, reward
systems, management culture, peer pressures, official and unofficial and psychological con-
tracts all act to encourage some responses and to discourage others. This places – as will be
explored in Chapters 5 and 7, a considerable responsibility on individuals who seek to work
in teams. Figure 4.4 summarises four response sets that have been discovered in research
work in England. If an individual is working in an environment where the management

76 Innovation from theory to practice

are highly concerned about their own interests and render poor regard to the individual’s
interest, this is likely to result in programmed, robotic responses from the member of staff.
This situation is typified by people going through the motions to earn their corn and is
unlikely to encourage a creative attitude to the job. On the other hand, where management
are concerned with the personal wishes of their staff this will trigger a reciprocal response
from the individuals and will provide the opportunity for highly creative responses.

However, if these responses are not continuously encouraged and action is seen to result,
this can lead, sadly, to situations where the individual becomes disenchanted. If this occurs
then the goose that laid the golden egg is effectively killed and the individual will slip into
the damped innovation quartile and possibly to the robot quartile.

Whilst there is merit in an individual taking stock and seeking to discover a position on an
audit such as KAI (n.d.), MBTI (n.d.) or LSI (Duff and Duffy, 2002), it must be remembered
that these inventories only provide, at best, some indicative information. This must then be
closely vetted for its contextual relevance – most people appear to be different at home from
the way they are at work. Most psychometric tests carry error propensities resulting from a
variety of factors such as environmental/contextual issues, test procedures and classification
typologies, and so on. Furthermore, some individuals may be discouraged by the results of
such inventories and so withdraw into their shells, especially if they perceive that manage-
ment are not very interested in them. Others may, unless carefully advised, believe that core
behaviours and responses cannot be changed. Whilst this is true for the broad personality
characteristics that tend to be set in the first 20 years of life, it is not true for several learnt
behavioural responses that can be changed. Individuals can choose to change many of their
behavioural responses such as learning and skill styles.

Left-brain and right-brain thinking model

Have you ever heard people say that they tend to be more of a right-brain or left-brain
thinker? From books to television programmes, you’ve probably heard the phrase mentioned
numerous times or perhaps you’ve even taken an online test to determine which type best
describes you. In right-handed people it is thought that the left-brain lobe is the centre of

Figure 4.4 Individual response patterns.

Business creativity 77

deductive logical thinking with the right lobe being the centre of creative thought. The pat-
tern is reversed for left-handed people. The theory was first publicised by the American
psychologist R. W. Sperry who was awarded the Noble Prize in 1981.

Clearly, it is desirable to gain insight into how we can maximise our thinking potential.
We need both critical and creative thinking, both analysis and synthesis, both the parts and
the whole to be effective in our thinking. We need reason and intuition, order and adventure.
We need creative thinking to generate the new, but critical thinking to judge it. The techno-
logical world enables us to access knowledge in abundance, but creativity is in short supply.
Many have sought to differentiate these two kinds of thinking Table 4.1 presents a summary
of the most commonly found distinctions.

According to the American psychologist R. W. Sperry, the two hemispheres of the cortex
appeared to control separate, distinct intellectual enquiries (see Table 4.2).

The right hemisphere appeared to be active in the processing of the following:

• rhythm
• spatial awareness
• gestalt (wholeness)
• imagination
• colour
• dimension.

Table 4.1 Exploring logical and creative thinking

Logical left-brain thinking Creative right-brain thinking

Analytic Generative
Convergent Divergent
Vertical Lateral
Probability Possibility
Judgement Suspended judgement
Hypothesis testing Hypothesis forming
Objective Subjective
Single solution Possibility of several solutions
Closed Open-ended
Linear Associative
Quantitative Qualitative
Logical Intuitive
Yes but . . . Yes and . . .

Table 4.2 Cortical hemispheres

Left-brain functions Right-brain functions

Written language Insight
Number skills 3-D forms
Reasoning Art awareness
Spoken language Imagination
Scientific skills Music awareness
Right-hand control Left-hand control

78 Innovation from theory to practice

The left hemisphere, by contrast seemed to process an equally important but different pattern
of memory traces covering a variety of learnt skills including:

• language
• logic
• quantitative ability
• sequential ability
• linear ability
• analytical ability.

Generally speaking, the left side of the brain tends to control many aspects of language and
logic, while the right side tends to handle spatial information and visual comprehension.
However, recent research has shown that the brain is not as dichotomous as once thought.
Today, neuroscientists know that the two sides of the brain collaborate to perform a broad
variety of tasks. The left-brain and right-brain theory has been over-generalised by popular
psychology and self-help texts but has its place in helping people to understand their respec-
tive thinking strengths and weaknesses.

Learning skills

When the range of skills – the ability to cut, develop and maintain complex memory trace
sets – of both cortical hemispheres are combined, the individual has a dazzling potential to
develop his or her thinking. The equipment is there for us to generate an amazing array of
responses. The degree to which we are able to do this is a function of our thinking skills and
our determination to improve them.

Many of us regard thinking as a natural skill and tend to get lazy in our approaches to
information processing and problem solving. Effective thinkers take care of their grey matter
as an athlete takes care of his physical skills. To do our best we need to look after our brains.
If we look at the incredible human machine in computer terms, as a unit of hardware, then
we can work towards getting the maximum from it by paying attention to how we put it to
use. Thinking can be likened to the sustained development of software. The quality of output
produced by computers is directly related to the quality of the input (in terms of clarity – the
what); the method of processing it (software – the how); and the performance specifica-
tion of the machine (individual ability). Whilst it is true that each individual has a different
potential in terms of what can be achieved, as some are just cleverer than others, many of
us can improve our thinking performance by making the best use of our potential. This can
be achieved by thinking about thinking to select the most appropriate approach to solving a
particular problem. Many of us try to get our brains to give us an instant answer or quick fix.
We turn on our hardware and use the software already installed. If this can find the required
collection of memory traces then this represents our thinking. Whilst this is probably in order
for familiar problems this rather mechanistic or programmed approach will not serve us too
well with rather more complex and or infrequent problems. This requires total as opposed to
partial thinking.

Introducing the total thinking model

Total thinking, it is posited, occurs when we seek to focus the full power of our brain on
a problem. This means using the potential of both hemispheres of the cortex described

Business creativity 79

above. Strange as it may seem, many peoples around the world choose to develop the skills
in the left hemisphere to a higher level than those of the right hemisphere. This produces
an over dependence on logic as a key response to stimuli and the associated tendency to
try to think in terms of programmed patterns. Overdependence on such partial thinking
can result from personal choice or from a perception that the intuitive, emotive and ‘arty’
skills such as colour, design, imagination, movement and sound are in general not the way
to behave in public. This is curious as many of us actually take part in activities that utilise
these skills in public as well as paying to view other people performing! Obviously there
has been some sustained conditioning here that over time has resulted in the development
of certain traditions or paradigms that preclude the regular adoption in our public lives of
many right-brain skills.

Perception

Priming illusion

1000

1030

1000
20

________

Add up the row of numbers out loud. What is your answer? Do it again? Most people
get the wrong answer! Only look in the appendices after you have tried to this exercise.

Half-brained thinkers!

Both hemispheres of the cortex provide potentially powerful problem-solving power.
In reality, all individuals will display a degree of total thinking in their private and pro-
fessional lives, as they are people. The issue is the degree. In most cases it is small, as
individuals tend to select a thinking style that is usually highly biased to the left hemi-
sphere, so in terms of degree are predominantly partial thinkers. Gifted artistic individuals
can exhibit the reverse pattern. Both will fail to achieve the benefits that flow from a
better-balanced use of total thinking. In many respects such people could, with tongue in
cheek, be accused of half-brained thinking! Perfection, defined as a completely balanced
total thinking approach to life, is very difficult to achieve. However, as the positive benefits
from minor gains in our use of both left- and right-brained thinking are so immense we are
all capable of developing our problem-solving performance. The question is whether we
choose to do so.

80 Innovation from theory to practice

Creative thinking applications

The following are some of the ways creative thinking can be used:

• To foster a more innovative, forward thinking culture able to respond to rapid changes
in the marketplace.

• To support the development of a new, more effective innovation strategy.
• To enable leaders to solve persistent problems.
• To help an older more traditional organisation shake off bureaucracy and shift to a more

flexible, responsive, innovative culture.
• To help develop creative thinking approaches in project work teams faced with solving

new business challenges.
• To respond to the impact of technology on business processes.

The ability to demonstrate creative thinking is much in demand by companies and many may
wonder just how do I, an ordinary person, develop the ability to demonstrate prowess. See the
outline notes on the CPS toolbox featured in the appendix to Chapter 5.

Summary
This chapter has revisited thinking. In the current business environment, individuals, groups
and organisations need to sharpen their thinking skills. Whilst core knowledge (general or
specific) is necessary, in times of discontinuous change it requires special thinking skills if it is

Figure 4.5 What do you see at first?

Business creativity 81

to result in discoveries that are truly innovative. Total thinking is a process that enables the full
power of people’s brains to be applied to problems that result from the challenges presented
by a dynamic and competitive business environment. Success cannot now be assumed to result
by steadfastly using yesterday’s processes and theories. The business world requires managers
to develop a new way of doing things. This chapter has sought to show how thinking can be
boosted if individuals, groups and top management personnel can learn to make use of both
left- and right-brain thinking. This will enable them to discover a new expertise for today’s
challenging business context. Chapter 5 seeks to equip you with a set of practical thinking tools.

Discussion questions
1 How would you explain what creativity is to a fellow student or work colleague?
2 Name three living creative business people.
3 Why is meant by the term total thinking?
4 What is the difference between logical thinking and creative thinking?

Exercises

Sexism

List as many examples of gender discrimination in the workplace as you can. See Appendix 4.3
for the top 10!

YouTube

‘Sexism Coverage Steals the Show at 2016 Olympics’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=eUhf-Jyy1_Y.

Beijing Express problem

Instructions

See if you can solve the problem posed below. Proceed as follows:

1 Try to solve the problem in 10 minutes maximum. If you feel that you have discovered
the answer turn to Appendix 4.4 to check if you have been successful.

2 Now find a friend or colleague and see if they can solve the problem in 10 minutes maximum.
If they declare the wrong answer explain how you worked out the correct solution.

Brief

• Four spies in trench coats sat in four facing seats.
• They travelled the Beijing Express.
• With two by the window and two by the aisle.
• The arrangement was strange, as you’ve guessed.
• The British spy sat on Mr B’s left.
• Mr. A had a tan coloured coat.
• The spy dressed in olive was on the German’s right.

82 Innovation from theory to practice

• Mr. C was the only cigar smoking man.
• Mr. D was across from the American spy.
• The Russian, in Khaki, had a scarf around his throat.
• The British spy stared out of the window on his left.

SO WHO WAS THE SPY IN THE RUST COLOURED COAT?

References
Banks, M., Calvey, D., Owen, J. and Russell, D. (2002) ‘Where the art is: Defining and managing

creativity in new media SMEs’, Creativity & Innovation Management, December, Vol. 11, Issue 4,
pp. 255–64.

Belbin, M. (1981) Management Teams: Why they Succeed or Fail, Oxford, Heinemann.
Breen, W. (2004) ‘The 6 Myths of Creativity’, Fast Company, December, Issue 89, pp. 75–8.
Business & Management Dictionary (2007) London, Bloomsbury Business Library.
Duff, A. and Duffy, T. (2002) ‘Psychometric properties of Honey & Mumford’s Learning Style

Questionnaire’, Personality and Individual Differences, 5 July, Vol. 33, Issue 1, pp. 147–63.
Dundon, E. (2002) Seeds of Innovation, American Marketing Association, Chapter 1, ‘Believe in creativity’.
Encyclopaedia Britannica (2006) 15th edn, Chicago, IL, Encyclopaedia Inc.
Gardner, H. (1997) Extraordinary Minds: Portraits of Four Exceptional Individuals and an Examination

of Our Own Extraordinariness, New York, NY, Basic Books.
Gruber, H. E. and Wallace D. B. (1999) ‘The case study method and evolving systems approach

for understanding unique creative people at work’, in Heppell, S. (ed.), Handbook of Creativity,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Heimel, C. (1983) ‘Lower Manhattan survival tactics’, Village Voice, Vol. 13, p. 26.
Honey, P. and Mumford, A. (1985) The Manual of Learning Styles, Maidenhead, Peter Honey

Publications.
KAI (n.d.) Kirton Adaptation Index, http://www.kaicentre.com (accessed 16 November 2016).
Kirton, M. J. (1987) Adaption-Innovation Theory (KAI) – Manual, 2nd edn, Hatfield, Occupational

Research Centre.
Kolb, D. (1984) ‘Problem management: Learning from experience’, in Srvastra, S. and Associates

(eds.), The Executive Mind, London, Jossey Bass.
Kuhn, T. (1975) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press.
MBTI (n.d.) Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/

mbti-basics/ (accessed 16 November 2016).
Myers-Briggs, and McCaulley, M. H. (1988) Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Palo Alto, CA, Consulting

Psychology Press.
Pritchard, A. (2014) Ways of R.J Sternberg (2006), ‘The nature of creativity’, Creativity Research

Journal, Vol. 18, Issue 1, Jan., pp. 87–98.
Sternberg, R. J. and Lubart T. I (1999) ‘The concept of creativity: Prospects and paradigms’, in

Sternberg, R. J. (ed.), Handbook of Creativity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Selected YouTubes
‘What Is Creativity?’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By-lJdS6ofQ.
‘The Brain’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMKc8nfPATI.
‘Can You Solve the Chameleon Riddle?’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRC7_Uv72iI.
‘Left Brain vs Brain Education’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxSmOOaXrHk.
‘Balance Logical & Creative Thinking’, https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=
Logical+vs+Creative+thinking.

Business creativity 83

‘How to Use the Brain More Effectively’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXJDJ8rqjLY.

‘How to Use a Mind Map’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0XzZCd2tPE.

Appendix 4.1: Personal Creativity Audit (PCA)

Instructions

1 Copy the questionnaire before attempting the audit.
2 Answer the questions honestly and as quickly as you can by placing a tick in the box that

most closely matches your characteristics.
3 Do not confer with others as you are completing the audit exercise.

Table 4.3 Personal Creativity Audit

Question Never Sometimes Fairly often Regularly

1 Do you remember your dreams as images?
2 How often do you make time for hobbies?
3 How often do you read?
4 Do you like to stick to the rules?
5 Do you listen to others’ ideas?
6 Do you inspire others?
7 How often do you show a sense of

humour?
8 Do you take part in sporting activity?
9 Are you a perfectionist?
10 Are you an optimist?
11 Do you have any ideas of your own?
12 Are you courteous?
13 How often do you hum or sing?
14 Are you predictable?
15 Do you like exercising administrative

(rank) authority?
16 Are you a good listener?
17 Are you a resourceful person?
18 Do you tend to work on one idea at a

time?
19 Do you welcome change?
20 Do you have many original ideas?
21 Do you actively promote them?
22 Are you a loner?
23 Do you like organisations with lots of

rules and identified procedures?
24 Are you self-motivated?
25 Are you a good problem solver?
26 Are you good at improvisation?
27 Do you prefer to adapt the ideas of

others?
28 Do you challenge rules if you think that

they are silly?
29 If people oppose your ideas do you give

up promoting them?
30 Do you use metaphors when

communicating key points?

84 Innovation from theory to practice

Appendix 4.2: assessing PCA performance

Instructions

1 Circle the Descriptor you selected (i.e. Never, Sometimes, Fairly Often or Regularly) in
the table below.

2 Next add up your overall score and place it on the creative spectrum in Figure 4.6.

Table 4.4 Personal Creativity Audit coding

Question Never Sometimes Fairly Often Regularly

1 1 2 3 4
2 1 2 3 4
3 1 2 3 4
4 2 4 3 1
5 1 2 3 3
6 1 2 3 4
7 1 2 3 4
8 1 2 3 4
9 1 2 3 4
10 1 2 3 4
11 1 2 3 4
12 1 2 3 4
13 1 2 3 4
14 4 3 2 1
15 4 3 2 1
16 1 2 3 4
17 1 2 3 4
18 4 3 2 1
19 1 2 3 4
20 1 2 3 4
21 1 2 3 4
22 4 3 2 1
23 4 3 2 1
24 1 2 3 4
25 1 2 3 4
26 1 2 3 4
27 4 3 2 1
28 1 2 3 4
29 4 3 2 1
30 1 2 3 4

Figure 4.6 Personal creativity assessment spectrum.

Business creativity 85

Appendix 4.3: sexism
Findings of Stylist magazine survey

1 Being expected to make the tea – 43 per cent.
2 Enduring sexual innuendos – 38 per cent.
3 Having appearance/clothing commented on – 33 per cent.
4 Being accused of being pre-menstrual/menstrual – 29 per cent.
5 Being presumed less competent than male colleagues – 27 per cent.
6 Been joked about in a sexist way – 24 per cent.
7 Being paid less than male colleagues for the same job – 19 per cent.
8 Being presumed to be more junior than they are – 18 per cent.
9 Being spoken over/patronised in meetings – 18 per cent.
10 Being expected to keep the office tidy – 17 per cent.

Source: Matharu, H., ‘The top 10 sexist things that happen to women at work’, Independent,
News/Business,17 September 2015.

Appendix 4.4: Beijing Express problem solution
The British spy has the rust coloured coat.

Appendix 4.5: priming illusion solution
The answer is 4100.

Branching Paths: A Novel Teacher Evaluation Model for Faculty Development

James P. Bavis and Ahn G. Nu

Department of English, Purdue University

ENGL 101: Course Name

Dr. Richard Teeth

Jan. 30, 2020

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Abstract

A large body of assessment literature suggests that students’ evaluations of their teachers

(SETs) can fail to measure the construct of teaching in a variety of contexts. This can

compromise faculty development efforts that rely on information from SETs. The disconnect

between SET results and faculty development efforts is exacerbated in educational contexts

that demand particular teaching skills that SETs do not value in proportion to their local

importance (or do not measure at all). This paper responds to these challenges by proposing an

instrument for the assessment of teaching that allows institutional stakeholders to define the

teaching construct in a way they determine to suit the local context. The main innovation of this

instrument relative to traditional SETs is that it employs a branching “tree” structure populated

by binary-choice items based on the Empirically derived, Binary-choice, Boundary-definition

(EBB) scale developed by Turner and Upshur for ESL writing assessment. The paper argues

that this structure can allow stakeholders to define the teaching construct by changing the order

and sensitivity of the nodes in the tree of possible outcomes, each of which corresponds to a

specific teaching skill. The paper concludes by outlining a pilot study that will examine the

differences between the proposed EBB instrument and a traditional SET employing series of

multiple-choice questions (MCQs) that correspond to Likert scale values.

Keywords: college teaching, student evaluations of teaching, scale development, EBB

scale, pedagogies, educational assessment, faculty development

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Branching Paths: A Novel Teacher Evaluation Model for Faculty Development

According to Theall (2017), “Faculty evaluation and development cannot be considered

separately … evaluation without development is punitive, and development without evaluation is

guesswork” (p. 91). As the practices that constitute modern programmatic faculty development

have evolved from their humble beginnings to become a commonplace feature of university life

(Lewis, 1996), a variety of tactics to evaluate the proficiency of teaching faculty for development

purposes have likewise become commonplace. These include measures as diverse as peer

observations, the development of teaching portfolios, and student evaluations.

One such measure, the student evaluation of teacher (SET), has been virtually

ubiquitous since at least the 1990s (Wilson, 1998). Though records of SET-like instruments can

be traced to work at Purdue University in the 1920s (Remmers & Brandenburg, 1927), most

modern histories of faculty development suggest that their rise to widespread popularity went

hand-in-hand with the birth of modern faculty development programs in the 1970s, when

universities began to adopt them in response to student protest movements criticizing

mainstream university curricula and approaches to instruction (Gaff & Simpson, 1994; Lewis,

1996; McKeachie, 1996). By the mid-2000s, researchers had begun to characterize SETs in

terms like “…the predominant measure of university teacher performance […] worldwide”

(Pounder, 2007, p. 178). Today, SETs play an important role in teacher assessment and faculty

development at most universities (Davis, 2009). Recent SET research practically takes the

presence of some form of this assessment on most campuses as a given. Spooren et al.

(2017), for instance, merely note that that SETs can be found at “almost every institution of

higher education throughout the world” (p. 130). Similarly, Darwin (2012) refers to teacher

evaluation as an established orthodoxy, labeling it a “venerated,” “axiomatic” institutional

practice (p. 733).

Moreover, SETs do not only help universities direct their faculty development efforts.

They have also come to occupy a place of considerable institutional importance for their role in

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personnel considerations, informing important decisions like hiring, firing, tenure, and

promotion. Seldin (1993, as cited in Pounder, 2007) finds that 86% of higher educational

institutions use SETs as important factors in personnel decisions. A 1991 survey of department

chairs found 97% used student evaluations to assess teaching performance (US Department of

Education). Since the mid-late 1990s, a general trend towards comprehensive methods of

teacher evaluation that include multiple forms of assessment has been observed

(Berk, 2005). However, recent research suggests the usage of SETs in personnel decisions is

still overwhelmingly common, though hard percentages are hard to come by, perhaps owing to

the multifaceted nature of these decisions (Boring et al., 2017; Galbraith et al., 2012). In certain

contexts, student evaluations can also have ramifications beyond the level of individual

instructors. Particularly as public schools have experienced pressure in recent decades to adopt

neoliberal, market-based approaches to self-assessment and adopt a student-as-consumer

mindset (Darwin, 2012; Marginson, 2009), information from evaluations can even feature in

department- or school-wide funding decisions (see, for instance, the Obama Administration’s

Race to the Top initiative, which awarded grants to K-12 institutions that adopted value-added

models for teacher evaluation).

However, while SETs play a crucial role in faulty development and personnel decisions

for many education institutions, current approaches to SET administration are not as well-suited

to these purposes as they could be. This paper argues that a formative, empirical approach to

teacher evaluation developed in response to the demands of the local context is better-suited

for helping institutions improve their teachers. It proposes the Heavilon Evaluation of Teacher,

or HET, a new teacher assessment instrument that can strengthen current approaches to

faculty development by making them more responsive to teachers’ local contexts. It also

proposes a pilot study that will clarify the differences between this new instrument and the

Introductory Composition at Purdue (ICaP) SET, a more traditional instrument used for similar

purposes. The results of this study will direct future efforts to refine the proposed instrument.

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Methods section, which follows, will propose a pilot study that compares the results of the

proposed instrument to the results of a traditional SET (and will also provide necessary

background information on both of these evaluations). The paper will conclude with a discussion

of how the results of the pilot study will inform future iterations of the proposed instrument and,

more broadly, how universities should argue for local development of assessments.

Literature Review

Effective Teaching: A Contextual Construct

The validity of the instrument this paper proposes is contingent on the idea that it is

possible to systematically measure a teacher’s ability to teach. Indeed, the same could be said

for virtually all teacher evaluations. Yet despite the exceeding commonness of SETs and the

faculty development programs that depend on their input, there is little scholarly consensus on

precisely what constitutes “good” or “effective” teaching. It would be impossible to review the

entire history of the debate surrounding teaching effectiveness, owing to its sheer scope—such

a summary might need to begin with, for instance, Cicero and Quintilian. However, a cursory

overview of important recent developments (particularly those revealed in meta-analyses of

empirical studies of teaching) can help situate the instrument this paper proposes in relevant

academic conversations.

Meta-analysis 1. One core assumption that undergirds many of these conversations is

the notion that good teaching has effects that can be observed in terms of student achievement.

A meta-analysis of 167 empirical studies that investigated the effects of various teaching factors

on student achievement (Kyriakides et al., 2013) supported the effectiveness of a set of

teaching factors that the authors group together under the label of the “dynamic model” of

teaching. Seven of the eight factors (Orientation, Structuring, Modeling, Questioning,

Assessment, Time Management, and Classroom as Learning Environment) corresponded to

moderate average effect sizes (of between 0.34–0.41 standard deviations) in measures of

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student achievement. The eighth factor, Application (defined as seatwork and small-group tasks

oriented toward practice of course concepts), corresponded to only a small yet still significant

effect size of 0.18. The lack of any single decisive factor in the meta-analysis supports the idea

that effective teaching is likely a multivariate construct. However, the authors also note the

context-dependent nature of effective teaching. Application, the least-important teaching factor

overall, proved more important in studies examining young students (p. 148). Modeling, by

contrast, was especially important for older

students.

Meta-analysis 2. A different meta-analysis that argues for the importance of factors like

clarity and setting challenging goals (Hattie, 2009) nevertheless also finds that the effect sizes

of various teaching factors can be highly context-dependent. For example, effect sizes for

homework range from 0.15 (a small effect) to 0.64 (a moderately large effect) based on the level

of education examined. Similar ranges are observed for differences in academic subject (e.g.,

math vs. English) and student ability level. As Snook et al. (2009) note in their critical response

to Hattie, while it is possible to produce a figure for the average effect size of a particular

teaching factor, such averages obscure the importance of context.

Meta-analysis 3. A final meta-analysis (Seidel & Shavelson, 2007) found generally

small average effect sizes for most teaching factors—organization and academic domain-

specific learning activities showed the biggest cognitive effects (0.33 and 0.25, respectively).

Here, again, however, effectiveness varied considerably due to contextual factors like domain of

study and level of education in ways that average effect sizes do not indicate.

These pieces of evidence suggest that there are multiple teaching factors that produce

measurable gains in student achievement and that the relative importance of individual factors

can be highly dependent on contextual factors like student identity. This is in line with a well-

documented phenomenon in educational research that complicates attempts to measure

teaching effectiveness purely in terms of student achievement. This is that “the largest source of

variation in student learning is attributable to differences in what students bring to school – their

abilities and attitudes, and family and community” (McKenzie et al., 2005, p. 2). Student

achievement varies greatly due to non-teacher factors like socio-economic status and home life

(Snook et al., 2009). This means that, even to the extent that it is possible to observe the

effectiveness of certain teaching behaviors in terms of student achievement, it is difficult to set

generalizable benchmarks or standards for student achievement. Thus is it also difficult to make

true apples-to-apples comparisons about teaching effectiveness between different educational

contexts: due to vast differences between different kinds of students, a notion of what

constitutes highly effective teaching in one context may not in another. This difficulty has

featured in criticism of certain meta-analyses that have purported to make generalizable claims

about what teaching factors produce the biggest effects (Hattie, 2009). A variety of other

commentators have also made similar claims about the importance of contextual factors in

teaching effectiveness for decades (see, e.g., Bloom et al., 1956; Cashin, 1990; Theall, 2017).

The studies described above mainly measure teaching effectiveness in terms of

academic achievement. It should certainly be noted that these quantifiable measures are not

generally regarded as the only outcomes of effective teaching worth pursuing. Qualitative

outcomes like increased affinity for learning and greater sense of self-efficacy are also important

learning goals. Here, also, local context plays a large role.

SETs: Imperfect Measures of Teaching

As noted in this paper’s introduction, SETs are commonly used to assess teaching

performance and inform faculty development efforts. Typically, these take the form of an end-of-

term summative evaluation comprised of multiple-choice questions (MCQs) that allow students

to rate statements about their teachers on Likert scales. These are often accompanied with

short-answer responses which may or may not be optional.

SETs serve important institutional purposes. While commentators have noted that there

are crucial aspects of instruction that students are not equipped to judge (Benton & Young,

2018), SETs nevertheless give students a rare institutional voice. They represent an opportunity

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to offer anonymous feedback on their teaching experience and potentially address what they

deem to be their teacher’s successes or failures. Students are also uniquely positioned to offer

meaningful feedback on an instructors’ teaching because they typically have much more

extensive firsthand experience of it than any other educational stakeholder. Even peer

observers only witness a small fraction of the instructional sessions during a given semester.

Students with perfect attendance, by contrast, witness all of them. Thus, in a certain sense, a

student can theoretically assess a teacher’s ability more authoritatively than even peer mentors

can.

While historical attempts to validate SETs have produced mixed results, some studies

have demonstrated their promise. Howard (1985), for instance, finds that SET are significantly

more predictive of teaching effectiveness than self-report, peer, and trained-observer

assessments. A review of several decades of literature on teaching evaluations (Watchel, 1998)

found that a majority of researchers believe SETs to be generally valid and reliable, despite

occasional misgivings. This review notes that even scholars who support SETs frequently argue

that they alone cannot direct efforts to improve teaching and that multiple avenues of feedback

are necessary (L’hommedieu et al., 1990; Seldin, 1993).

Finally, SETs also serve purposes secondary to the ostensible goal of improving

instruction that nonetheless matter. They can be used to bolster faculty CVs and assign

departmental awards, for instance. SETs can also provide valuable information unrelated to

teaching. It would be hard to argue that it not is useful for a teacher to learn, for example, that a

student finds the class unbearably boring, or that a student finds the teacher’s personality so

unpleasant as to hinder her learning. In short, there is real value in understanding students’

affective experience of a particular class, even in cases when that value does not necessarily

lend itself to firm conclusions about the teacher’s professional abilities.

However, a wealth of scholarly research has demonstrated that SETs are prone to fail in

certain contexts. A common criticism is that SETs can frequently be confounded by factors

external to the teaching construct. The best introduction to the research that serves as the basis

for this claim is probably Neath (1996), who performs something of a meta-analysis by

presenting these external confounds in the form of twenty sarcastic suggestions to teaching

faculty. Among these are the instructions to “grade leniently,” “administer ratings before tests”

(p. 1365), and “not teach required courses” (#11) (p. 1367). Most of Neath’s advice reflects an

overriding observation that teaching evaluations tend to document students’ affective feelings

toward a class, rather than their teachers’ abilities, even when the evaluations explicitly ask

students to judge the latter.

Beyond Neath, much of the available research paints a similar picture. For example, a

study of over 30,000 economics students concluded that “the poorer the student considered his

teacher to be [on an SET], the more economics he understood” (Attiyeh & Lumsden, 1972). A

1998 meta-analysis argued that “there is no evidence that the use of teacher ratings improves

learning in the long run” (Armstrong, 1998, p. 1223). A 2010 National Bureau of Economic

Research study found that high SET scores for a course’s instructor correlated with “high

contemporaneous course achievement,” but “low follow-on achievement” (in other words, the

students would tend to do well in the course, but poor in future courses in the same field of

study. Others observing this effect have suggested SETs reward a pandering, “soft-ball”

teaching style in the initial course (Carrell & West, 2010). More recent research suggests that

course topic can have a significant effect on SET scores as well: teachers of “quantitative

courses” (i.e., math-focused classes) tend to receive lower evaluations from students than their

humanities peers (Uttl & Smibert, 2017).

Several modern SET studies have also demonstrated bias on the basis of gender

(Anderson & Miller, 1997; Basow, 1995), physical appearance/sexiness (Ambady & Rosenthal,

1993), and other identity markers that do not affect teaching quality. Gender, in particular, has

attracted significant attention. One recent study examined two online classes: one in which

instructors identified themselves to students as male, and another in which they identified as

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female (regardless of the instructor’s actual gender) (Macnell et al., 2015). The classes were

identical in structure and content, and the instructors’ true identities were concealed from

students. The study found that students rated the male identity higher on average. However, a

few studies have demonstrated the reverse of the gender bias mentioned above (that is, women

received higher scores) (Bachen et al., 1999) while others have registered no gender bias one

way or another (Centra & Gaubatz, 2000).

The goal of presenting these criticisms is not necessarily to diminish the institutional

importance of SETs. Of course, insofar as institutions value the instruction of their students, it is

important that those students have some say in the content and character of that instruction.

Rather, the goal here is simply to demonstrate that using SETs for faculty development

purposes—much less for personnel decisions—can present problems. It is also to make the

case that, despite the abundance of literature on SETs, there is still plenty of room for scholarly

attempts to make these instruments more useful.

Empirical Scales and Locally-Relevant Evaluation

One way to ensure that teaching assessments are more responsive to the demands of

teachers’ local contexts is to develop those assessments locally, ideally via a process that

involves the input of a variety of local stakeholders. Here, writing assessment literature offers a

promising path forward: empirical scale development, the process of structuring and calibrating

instruments in response to local input and data (e.g., in the context of writing assessment,

student writing samples and performance information). This practice contrasts, for instance, with

deductive approaches to scale development that attempt to represent predetermined theoretical

constructs so that results can be generalized.

Supporters of the empirical process argue that empirical scales have several

advantages. They are frequently posited as potential solutions to well-documented reliability and

validity issues that can occur with theoretical or intuitive scale development (Brindley, 1998;

Turner & Upshur, 1995, 2002). Empirical scales can also help researchers avoid issues caused

by subjective or vaguely-worded standards in other kinds of scales (Brindley, 1998) because

they require buy-in from local stakeholders who must agree on these standards based on

their understanding of the local context. Fulcher et al. (2011) note the following, for instance:

Measurement-driven scales suffer from descriptional inadequacy. They are not sensitive

to the communicative context or the interactional complexities of language use. The level

of abstraction is too great, creating a gulf between the score and its meaning. Only with

a richer description of contextually based performance, can we strengthen the meaning

of the score, and hence the validity of score-based inferences. (pp. 8–9)

There is also some evidence that the branching structure of the EBB scale specifically

can allow for more reliable and valid assessments, even if it is typically easier to calibrate and

use conventional scales (Hirai & Koizumi, 2013). Finally, scholars have also argued that

theory-based approaches to scale development do not always result in instruments that

realistically capture ordinary classroom situations (Knoch, 2007, 2009).

The most prevalent criticism of empirical scale development in the literature is that the

local, contingent nature of empirical scales basically discards any notion of their results’

generalizability. Fulcher (2003), for instance, makes this basic criticism of the EBB scale even

as he subsequently argues that “the explicitness of the design methodology for EBBs is

impressive, and their usefulness in pedagogic settings is attractive” (p. 107). In the context of

this particular paper’s aims, there is also the fact that the literature supporting empirical scale

development originates in the field of writing assessment, rather than teaching assessment.

Moreover, there is little extant research into the applications of empirical scale development for

the latter purpose. Thus, there is no guarantee that the benefits of empirical development

approaches can be realized in the realm of teaching assessment. There is also no guarantee

that they cannot. In taking a tentative step towards a better understanding of how these

assessment schema function in a new context, then, the study described in the next section

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asks whether the principles that guide some of the most promising practices for assessing

students cannot be put to productive use in assessing teachers.

Materials and Methods

This section proposes a pilot study that will compare the ICaP SET to the Heavilon

Evaluation of Teacher (HET), an instrument designed to combat the statistical ceiling effect

described above. In this section, the format and composition of the HET is described, with

special attention paid to its branching scale design. Following this, the procedure for the study is

outlined, and planned interpretations of the data are discussed.

The Purdue ICaP SET

The SET employed by Introductory Composition at Purdue (ICaP) program as of

January 2019 serves as an example of many of the prevailing trends in current SET

administration. The evaluation is administered digitally: ICaP students receive an invitation to

complete the evaluation via email near the end of the semester, and must complete it before

finals week (i.e., the week that follows the normal sixteen-week term) for their responses to be

counted. The evaluation is entirely optional: teachers may not require their students to complete

it, nor may they offer incentives like extra credit as motivation. However, some instructors opt to

devote a small amount of in-class time for the evaluations. In these cases, it is common practice

for instructors to leave the room so as not to coerce high scores.

The ICaP SET mostly takes the form of a simple multiple-choice survey. Thirty-four

MCQs appear on the survey. Of these, the first four relate to demographics: students must

indicate their year of instruction, their expected grade, their area of study, and whether they are

taking the course as a requirement or as an elective. Following these are two questions related

to the overall quality of the course and the instructor (students must rate each from “very poor”

to “excellent” on a five-point scale). These are “university core” questions that must appear on

every SET administered at Purdue, regardless of school, major, or course. The Students are

also invited to respond to two short-answer prompts: “What specific suggestions do you have for

improving the course or the way it is taught?” and “what is something that the professor does

well?” Responses to these questions are optional.

The remainder of the MCQs (thirty in total) are chosen from a list of 646 possible

questions provided by the Purdue Instructor Course Evaluation Service (PICES) by department

administrators. Each of these PICES questions requires students to respond to a statement

about the course on a five-point Likert scale. Likert scales are simple scales used to indicate

degrees of agreement. In the case of the ICaP SET, students must indicate whether they

strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree, or are undecided. These thirty Likert scale

questions assess a wide variety of the course and instructor’s qualities. Examples include “My

instructor seems well-prepared for class,” “This course helps me analyze my own and other

students’ writing,” and “When I have a question or comment I know it will be respected,” for

example.

One important consequence of the ICaP SET within the Purdue English department is

the Excellence in Teaching Award (which, prior to Fall 2018, was named the Quintilian or,

colloquially, “Q” Award). This is a symbolic prize given every semester to graduate instructors

who score highly on their evaluations. According to the ICaP site, “ICaP instructors whose

teaching evaluations achieve a certain threshold earn [the award], recognizing the top 10% of

teaching evaluations at Purdue.” While this description is misleading—the award actually goes

to instructors whose SET scores rank in the top decile in the range of possible outcomes, but

not necessarily ones who scored better than 90% of other instructors—the award nevertheless

provides an opportunity for departmental instructors to distinguish their CVs and teaching

portfolios.

Insofar as it is distributed digitally, it is composed of MCQs (plus a few short-answer

responses), and it is intended as end-of-term summative assessment, the ICaP SET embodies

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the current prevailing trends in university-level SET administration. In this pilot study, it serves

as a stand-in for current SET administration practices (as generally conceived).

The HET

Like the ICaP SET, the HET uses student responses to questions to produce a score

that purports to represent their teacher’s pedagogical ability. It has a similar number of items

(28, as opposed to the ICaP SET’s 34). However, despite these superficial similarities, the

instrument’s structure and content differ substantially from the ICaP SET’s.

The most notable differences are the construction of the items on the text and the way

that responses to these items determine the teacher’s final score. Items on the HET do not use

the typical Likert scale, but instead prompt students to respond to a question with a simple

“yes/no” binary choice. By answering “yes” and “no” to these questions, student responders

navigate a branching “tree” map of possibilities whose endpoints correspond to points on a 33-

point ordinal scale.

The items on the HET are grouped into six suites according to their relevance to six

different aspects of the teaching construct (described below). The suites of questions

correspond to directional nodes on the scale—branching paths where an instructor can move

either “up” or “down” based on the student’s responses. If a student awards a set number of

“yes” responses to questions in a given suite (signifying a positive perception of the instructor’s

teaching), the instructor moves up on the scale. If a student does not award enough “yes”

responses, the instructor moves down. Thus, after the student has answered all of the

questions, the instructor’s “end position” on the branching tree of possibilities corresponds to a

point on the 33-point scale. A visualization of this structure is presented in Table 1.

Figure 1

Illustration of HET’s Branching Structure

Note. Each node in this diagram corresponds to a suite of HET/ICALT items, rather than to a single item.

The questions on the HET derive from the International Comparative Analysis of

Learning and Teaching (ICALT), an instrument that measures observable teaching behaviors for

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Tables and figures are numbered sequentially (i.e., 1, 2, 3 …). They are identified via a second-level heading (flush-left, bold, and title case) followed by an italic title that briefly describes the content of the table or figure.

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Table and figure notes are preceded by the label “Note.” written in italics. General notes that apply to the entire table should come before specific notes (indicated with superscripted lowercase letters that correspond to specific locations in the figure or table.
Table notes are optional.

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the purpose of international pedagogical research within the European Union. The most recent

version of the ICALT contains 32 items across six topic domains that correspond to six broad

teaching skills. For each item, students rate a statement about the teacher on a four-point Likert

scale. The main advantage of using ICALT items in the HET is that they have been

independently tested for reliability and validity numerous times over 17 years of development

(see, e.g., Van de Grift, 2007). Thus, their results lend themselves to meaningful comparisons

between teachers (as well as providing administrators a reasonable level of confidence in their

ability to model the teaching construct itself).

The six “suites” of questions on the HET, which correspond to the six topic domains on

the ICALT, are presented in Table 1.

Table 1

HET Question Suites

Suite # of Items Description

Safe learning environment 4 Whether the teacher is able to

maintain positive, nonthreatening

relationships with students (and to

foster these sorts of relationships

among students).

Classroom management 4 Whether the teacher is able to

maintain an orderly, predictable

environment.

Clear instruction 7 Whether the teacher is able to

explain class topics

comprehensibly, provide clear sets

of goals for assignments, and

articulate the connections between

the assignments and the class

topics in helpful ways.

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Tables are formatted similarly to figures. They are titled and numbered in the same way, and table-following notes are presented the same way as figure-following notes. Use separate sequential numbers for tables and figures. For instance, this table is presented as Table 1 rather than as Table 2, despite the fact that Figure 1 precedes it.

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Suite # of Items Description

Activating teaching methods 7 Whether the teacher uses strategies

that motivate students to think about

the class’s topics.

Learning strategies 6 Whether teachers take explicit steps

to teach students how to learn (as

opposed to merely providing

students informational content).

Differentiation 4 Whether teachers can successfully

adjust their behavior to meet the

diverse learning needs of individual

students.

Note. Item numbers are derived from original ICALT item suites.

The items on the HET are modified from the ICALT items only insofar as they are phrased

as binary choices, rather than as invitations to rate the teacher. Usually, this means the addition

of the word “does” and a question mark at the end of the sentence. For example, the second

safe learning climate item on the ICALT is presented as “The teacher maintains a relaxed

atmosphere.” On the HET, this item is rephrased as, “Does the teacher maintain a relaxed

atmosphere?” See Appendix for additional sample items.

As will be discussed below, the ordering of item suites plays a decisive role in the teacher’s

final score because the branching scale rates earlier suites more powerfully. So too does the

“sensitivity” of each suite of items (i.e., the number of positive responses required to progress

upward at each branching node). This means that it is important for local stakeholders to

participate in the development of the scale. In other words, these stakeholders must be involved

in decisions about how to order the item suites and adjust the sensitivity of each node. This is

described in more detail below.

Once the scale has been developed, the assessment has been administered, and the

teacher’s endpoint score has been obtained, the student rater is prompted to offer any textual

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In addition to presenting figures and tables in the text, you may also present them in appendices at the end of the document. You may also use appendices to present material that would be distracting or tedious in the body of the paper. In either case, you can use simple in-text references to direct readers to the appendices.

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feedback that s/he feels summarizes the course experience, good or bad. Like the short

response items in the ICaP SET, this item is optional. The short-response item is as follows:

• What would you say about this instructor, good or bad, to another student considering

taking this course?

The final four items are demographic questions. For these, students indicate their grade

level, their expected grade for the course, their school/college (e.g., College of Liberal Arts,

School of Agriculture, etc.), and whether they are taking the course as an elective or as a

degree requirement. These questions are identical to the demographic items on the ICaP SET.

To summarize, the items on the HET are presented as follows:

• Branching binary questions (32 different items; six branches)

o These questions provide the teacher’s numerical score

• Short response prompt (one item)

• Demographic questions (four items)

Scoring

The main data for this instrument are derived from the endpoints on a branching ordinal

scale with 33 points. Because each question is presented as a binary yes/no choice (with “yes”

suggesting a better teacher), and because paths on the branching scale are decided in terms of

whether the teacher receives all “yes” responses in a given suite, 32 possible outcomes are

possible from the first five suites of items. For example, the worst possible outcome would be

five successive “down” branches, the second-worst possible outcome would be four “down”

branches followed by an “up,” and so on. The sixth suite is a tie-breaker: instructors receive a

single additional point if they receive all “yes” responses on this suite.

By positioning certain suites of items early in the branching sequence, the HET gives

them more weight. For example, the first suite is the most important of all: an “up” here

automatically places the teacher above 16 on the scale, while a “down” precludes all scores

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References

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Start the references list on a new page. The word “References” (or “Reference,” if there is only one source), should appear bolded and centered at the top of the page. Reference entries should follow in alphabetical order. There should be a reference entry for every source cited in the text.

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Note that sources in online academic publications like scholarly journals now require DOIs or stable URLs if they are available.

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Source with organizational author.

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Source with two authors.

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Shortened DOI.

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All citation entries should be double-spaced. After the first line of each entry, every following line should be indented a half inch (this is called a “hanging indent”).

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Second edition of a print book.

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Appendix

Sample ICALT Items Rephrased for HET

Suite Sample ICALT Item HET Phrasing

Safe learning environment The teacher promotes mutual

respect.

Does the teacher promote mutual

respect?

Classroom management The teacher uses learning time

efficiently.

Does the teacher use learning time

efficiently?

Clear instruction The teacher gives feedback to

pupils.

Does the teacher give feedback to

pupils?

Activating teaching methods The teacher provides interactive

instruction and activities.

Does the teacher provide interactive

instruction and activities?

Learning strategies The teacher provides interactive

instruction and activities.
Does the teacher provide interactive
instruction and activities?

Differentiation The teacher adapts the instruction

to the relevant differences between

pupils.

Does the teacher adapt the

instruction to the relevant

differences between pupils?

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If the appendix contains both text and tables or figures, the tables or figures should be labeled, and these labels should include the letter of the appendix in the label. For example, if Appendix A contains two tables and one figure, they should be labeled “Table A1,” “Table A2,” and “Figure A1.” A table that follows in Appendix B should be labeled “Table B1.” If there is only one appendix, use the letter “A” in table/figure labels: “Table A1,” “Table A2,” and so on.

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