Giants.

Why does google scholar labels itself with “Stand on the shoulders of giants”?

My husband mentioned this quote last week. Obviously its taken from a letter written by Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke on 5 Feb 1676: “What Des-Cartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, & especially in taking ye colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants.”

Newton meant that by using ideas and knowledge contributed by people before you, you can develop your own view of the world and contribute your own ideas in an effort to expand the knowledge of this world. So by surfing scholar.google you can read the cognitions in all those scientific papers and thats when you’re standing on the shoulders of giants (great scientists) enjoying a great view. And maybe you can see things that others have overlooked, or because you can think outside the box and be creative.

I also found this nice (creative) interpretation of this quote on google: “That quote is used to express gratitude to people who have helped the person become whom they are.”

Therefore i dedicate this blog, to my own personal giant, the person who helped me writing this thesis and who also helped me and helps me becoming and being who i am. No name dropping needed, you know who you are! Thank you for letting me stand on your shoulders.

What a feeling.

 

What a feeling. Just dropped the printed version of the thesis by at my profs office, im sitting in the train back to Zurich feeling comfortly empty. Thats it. Four years have passed by with the speed of light. I am sure a different person now, looking back to September 2009, while starting my studies. Last months were intense. But i’ve learned so much during the time of writing my bachelor thesis. And despite all of the moments of last years desperation, questioning wether this simultanious studying and working will damage my health and social relationships irreparably or just a little, i now couldnt be happier having it done exactly that way.

It is done.

Im actually through with this ToDO list. Feels good.

The writing proceeds.

And no Bachelor Thesis is better, than the sources it refers to. So I keep on writing, this time about relevant theories to the internationalization:

“Uppsala model (Johanson and Vahlne, 1977) ”

“Transaction Cost Model (Williamson, 1981) ”

“Resource-Based View (Barney, 1991)”

“Network Model (Johanson and Mattsson, 1988)”

“Theory of International New Ventures (Oviatt and McDougal, 1994) ”

“Eclectic (OLI) Paradgime (Dunning, 2001) ”

“Hidden Champions (Hermann Simon, 1992) ”

Working with Mendeley is great. I had no clue that seeing my reference list grow, would bring that much joy into my life. It rocks!

The writing begins.

After my multiple science oceans dives, i became a research-junkie. Researching and reading is like a drug, the more you do, the less you get satisfied. And the more youre longing for. But 24 may is coming, and my personal scientific coach, my dearest husband, gave me a piece of valuable advice: stop researching, start writing. Giving up on google scholar and mendeley, was like being dried out, heavy times. But it was the best advice i could have recieved. So after the reading, the writing follows. The scientific writing. Heres my check list of my ZHAW-learnings: Tentative statements, full form words, nominalised phrasing, passive voice, third person pronouns, no clichés. Heres a good artikle on third person pronouns: http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2013/apr/19/academic-writing-first-person-singular?CMP=twt_gu

And heres a nice one (for all ya research-junkies out there) on how reading improvs ones writing skills: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/The_most_enjoyable_way_to_improve_your_writing_ski_14300.aspx?fb_action_ids=10151350702393344&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%7B%2210151350702393344%22%3A555115997861963%7D&action_type_map=%7B%2210151350702393344%22%3A%22og.likes%22%7D&action_ref_map=[]#

Measurement wisdoms.

Today I’ve found a great quote for the introductory part. “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” -Peter Drucker
Despite of googles sternly linking this quote to Peter F. Drucker, i could find out, that this famous “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” quote first came up in 1996, in the book ‘The Balanced Scorecard’ by Robert Kaplan and David Norton:

http://books.google.ch/books/about/The_balanced_scorecard.html?id=mRHC5kHXczEC&redir_esc=y

 

More good quotes for my thesis:

“No index can be better than the data it uses. But this is an argument for improving the data, not abandoning the index.” (UN, 1992).

And as for relevance of measurement as follows:

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” -Peter Drucker
„Was du nicht messen kannst, kannst du nicht lenken.“ -Peter Drucker
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”-Greg Thurman
“What you do not measure , you cannot control .” -Tom Peters
“What gets measured , gets done .” – Tom Peters
If you can measure that of which you speak and can express it by a number, you know something of your subject; but if you cannot measure it, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory.” -Lord Kelvin
When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be. -Lord Kelvin

Analysis. What is it actually?

I’ve been doing lot of analysis of the internationalization measurements lately. Working on saturdays until 23.00 and at once feeling insecure whether its madness or the reight procedure that i am doing here. So to make sure, i’ve checked up the meaning of analysis on Wikipedia. What a relieve. So exactly what i’m doing here.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/analyse To separate into the constituent parts, for the purpose of an examination of each separately.

http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/analysieren Etwas in seine Bestandteile zerlegen und diese einzeln geordnet untersuchen.

Heuristic, or four years of studying in one single word.

Am I developing an Index, a Scale, a Ranking or a Rating? Getting lost. Getting completely lost in science and world of knowledge is a wonderfull thing (experience, process) and quite flow-promising. On the other hand investing one whole day (or 10 hours) for 0.5 pages and 3 citations is not that motivating. By reminding myself that the submission date is in 5 weeks already and projects such as AWF, WPM and management game are coming up make me bit dizzy. And there is also this decision about my future which needs some serious thinking. Which master to choose and which work-pensum i to negotiate with my employer. And once again this quote i found lately on wikipedia comes to my mind. (Sorry the german quote is better.)

Heuristik – bezeichnet die Kunst, mit begrenztem Wissen und wenig Zeit zu guten Lösungen zu kommen.

My post on twitter to this discovery was “Wow, four years of studying in one single word.”

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristik

Indices, Indexes, Indicators?

Indices: Hinweise
Indice: Hinweis, Indiz
To indicate: hinweisen, anzeigen

Indicator: Kennziffer, Kennzeichen, Blinker
From latin to point out.
Economic Indicator: Is a statistic used to determine the state of general xy activitiy (Britannica)
Economomic Indicator: is a statistic about economy. Include various indices, reports, summaries etc. (Wiki)

Rating: Bewertung, Einschätzung
Rating: evaluation or assessment of something, in terms of quality, quantity or combination of both. (Wiki)
Rating: of items assigns a numerical score to each item. A rating list, when sorted, creates a ranking list. (#Book)

Ranking: Klassifizierung
Ranking: is a relationship betweet a set of items, ranked higher/lower/equal than/to. (Wiki)
Ranking: of items is a rank-ordered list of the items. (#Book)

Ranking & Rating:
Sorting a rating list produces a ranking list. (#Book)

Ranking method: matrixanalysis or optimization,

Index: Verzeichnis, indizieren, indexieren

Scale: Masstab, messen
Scale social sciences: process of measuring or ordering entities (Wiki)
Rating scale: one of the oldest and most versatile of assessment techniques. rating scale present users with an item and ask them to select from a number of choices. Its similar to mult. choice test, but options represent degrees of a particular characteristic. (Britannica)

Measure: messen, abschätzen
Assess: bewerten, schätzen
Evaluate: bewerten, schätzen
Rate: schätzen, rechnen, klassifizieren

Degree: Mass, Stufe, Grad

Lost in science.

It’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been lost in research, journal papers, books, articles and reports and take this as advantage to describe my search strategy. Strategy #1: List of keywords. As there are many words for one thing, i’m keeping a list of all my keywords. Strategy #2: there are two approaches to find interesting sources: forward and backward citations.

Search strategy #1: list of keywords of main words “index” and “internationalisation”
____________________________________________________________
index                         internationalisation
measuring                internationality, international
measure                    transnationality, transtanional
indices                       multinational
assessment               multidomestic
degree                        global company
rating                        born global
ranking
scaling

Search strategy #2: forward and backward citations
_____________________________________
Forward: check bibliography of interesting paper /article for more sources.
Backward: check publications that cited your source (google scholar “cited reference search” or klick on “zitiert durch”)