5.2 Using political skills In particular, a project manager needs to employ good political skills in order to maintain the support of senior management, without allowing them to undermine or take over the project. However, this can raise questions about the ethics of their behaviour. Read the following account that was given by a member of an external consulting team working on a project for a local authority in Scotland. The project's objective was to revamp the structure of the council which had operated in much the
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1.3 Examples of projects A project might involve establishing a new product or service, developing an existing product or service or discontinuing a product or closing a service that is no longer required. A project might arise from recognition of new needs of customers or service users or from an opportunity that is expected to deliver benefits to the organisation. Projects might also arise from a new organisational requirement, for example, as a
1.2 What is expected from projects? The project may be expected to deliver financial benefits to the organisation. In the public sector projects are usually expected to lead to social, economic and political outcomes. All projects are different. The level of complexity differs and the context in which a project exists will affect it. There is no single right way to manage a project. All projects have customers. There are three key dimensions to a projec
Learning outcomes At the end of this unit you should be able to: identify the main features of a project; explain the importance of the key dimensions of budget, time and quality; identify the links between a project's scope and definition and a sponsor's strategic and operational objectives; agree the objectives of the project in sufficient detail to enable it to be planned effectively; assess the feasibility of a project and to negotia
2 What's so great about innovation? So far we have suggested that innovation is a positive concept and, it appears, the rate of innovation continues to accelerate, led mostly by technology. The process is an example of positive feedback, in which the change is self-reinforcing: the development of technology itself increases the capacity for technological innovation, and raises the expectation of consumers for further innovation. While there seems little reason why this process of accelerating technological change should
2.2 Identifying skills and personal qualities There are several ways to approach this: Reflective It’s a great opportunity to reflect about yourself and to ask others, your friends, family or colleagues just what they think as well. Be realistic about your strengths and your weaknesses. Ask them to be honest; weaknesses can be just as important as strengths here! Look at the ‘Know yourself’ section of the OU Careers Advisory Service website, which covers personal strengths and skills. References 1.7.2 Summary The EU is an economic, juridical and, to a certain extent, a political reality but a single European public space has not emerged yet. The establishment of European citizenship could play a crucial part in fostering a common European public space. European citizenship could encourage Europeans to play a more active role in EU affairs and participate in governance processes. 1.7.1 European citizenship The EU is an economic, juridical and, to an extent, political reality. But is it a public space in the sense of an arena in which groups and individuals vigorously exchange symbolic messages of different types? It would appear as if, while the public of most EU countries are willing to accept ever closer economic union (including a common currency and even political convergence), when it comes to historical memories, social organisation and cultural ideas (including religion), they are mostly 1.4.3 Summary The process toward European unification was initiated by top political elites in France, Italy, Germany and the Benelux countries after the Second World War. New collective actors are progressively being engaged in European affairs, among them the Labour movement, regional movements and new social movements such as the environmentalism of groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. European elites, although engaged in 1.4.1 Historical background European unification was begun by the social democratic and Christian democratic leaders of the Western European states who had fought each other during the Second World War. The idea was to create a community of states that would guarantee peace and prosperity. The process turned out to be long and arduous, particularly after the federalist failures of the Congress of the Hague (1949) and the European Defence Community (1953). The main emphasis was on economic co-operation, and the project w Learning outcomes After studying this unit you will: recognise that ‘European identity’ is a socially constructed attribute; appreciate the basis for the unities as well as the divisions amongst Europeans; understand the ways European identities are assessed and measured; appreciate the key role of ‘culture’ in the organisation of a common European identity; see that European identity could be a bottom-up process as well as a top Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence.
I would like to thank Liz Stokoe and Jackie Abell for giving me access to their transcript of the Panorama interview and along with Peter Bull generously sharing their unpublished work and knowledge of Diana lit 1.13 Conclusion So far we have traversed three kinds of domain in which the study of discourse is relevant. Discourse is often (but not necessarily) interactional and researchers have studied the order and pattern in social interaction. The study of discourse also has important psychological implications for the study of minds, selves and sense-making. Finally, discourse is about social relations, culture, government and politics. No doubt, as you have been reading some problematic and confusing areas 1.12 The politics of representation We turn now to consider Diana as an icon, as the subject of discourse. It could be said that Diana and the many words written about her form a discursive space (Gilbert et al., 1999; Silverstone, 1998). She is the rather enigmatic centre of many competing representations of royalty, femininity, democracy, the family, morality, celebrity, fashion, private versus public life which jostle with each other. Such a discursive space is a place of argument. To use another metaphor, it i 1.11.1 Subject positions In her analysis, Blackman is identifying a pattern in Diana's talk and relating it to other similar methods of self-representation found in our culture. It is worth thinking through this in more detail. One key claim of discourse researchers is that language positions people – discourse creates subject positions. What does this mean? To speak at all is to speak from a position (remember the discussion of footing in the previous section). Further than this, the positions or slots in c 1.10 Voice and the speaking subject Discursive practices, as we have seen, order the shape of written and spoken discourse; they order the features which appear and the selection of words and phrases. But these properties are only a small subset of those which govern meaning-making. In this and in the next section we will be more concerned with patterns in the content of discourse and the psychological and sociological implications of those patterns. This will help elaborate further on the notion that language is constru 1.4.1 Discourse involves work If discourse is doing something rather than doing nothing, what kinds of things are being done? We can see that Diana's account in Extract 1, like all accounts, constructs a version of social reality. When we talk we have open to us multiple possibilities for characterizing ourselves and events. Indeed, there are many ways Diana could have answered Bashir's first question in the extract above. Any one description competes with a range of alternatives and indeed some of these alternativ 1.3.1 Discourse is constitutive First we'll focus on Diana's utterances as a form of description. She is describing some events in the world and people's reactions to those. Social scientists deal with descriptions of this kind all the time. They are basic data. But what do we do with them? One way to respond is to move to judgements about adequacy and accuracy. Is this objective data? Is Diana telling it how it was? Would we want other sources of information about what really happened? Social science is made up of these ki
