crossroads

What you can do depends ALOT on the institution you are in. Your posts give me the feeling that it is prevailing practice at the place you are at. Because of this I'm focusing exclusively on politics, which has been somewhat ignored in other posts. Other aspects are certainly important. However, no matter how much those practices are actually not supported in your institution, the situation is very political. So it is important you are aware of it. Ethical behavior may be a ceremonial affair. People will give lip service to it, so if you take on the issue head-on you may find yourself tacitly excluded from the program and the entire case buried. I'm not saying not to fight, but to pay close attention to the culture and politics of the institution you are in. If you chose to fight it head-on, to achieve success in such a context it is almost certain that outside pressure will need to be exercised. This might mean media, attorneys, exposing the issue to the wider community, a combination of these means or the threat of their use. Do you have the time, inclination, and resources to embark on such a journey? However noble the idea, my guess is that this will not be the preferred path. On the other, some of the advice fuzzylogician gave is very good (see fuzzylogician, on 18 July 2011 - 12:47 AM). Talk to people, network, get involved in a project with people outside of your institution that are attractive and that nobody has links to - this will give you some power. Discuss your work with others and if possible communicate it to outside audiences. Make sure your "supervisor", the s.o.b., knows about your actions. Don't confront him/her, at least until you are on more stable ground. Don't give the impression you are doing this to escape is cluch. Play innocent - <<Ohh, that can't be possible because I've been discussing/presenting/working with so and so or at so and so>>. At the moment, you are taken for a fool, so you have some slack before he/she realizes you are acting (present yourself as an eager worker out of his/her control). Later you will have to turn your apparent innocence into apparent political competence and the s.o.b. will slowly start to respect you. However, BEWARE not to provoke retaliation. It is most likely this has been done before without any consequences. So your "supervisor" has been collecting credit at the expense of others, which are important to move his/her career forward. Also, talking about the issue to everybody is not necessarily a good idea. If this has been done by him/her it is very possible others are doing it. You are not in a position to take on the status quo. But don't forget to act. Power is a relational issue, things will not change without action. By the way. Perhaps I should have started with this. Have you been in the program long? Do you know if other institutions are like that in your field and where you are? It might be that changing institutions is something you can consider seriously. If not, it is likely that you'll have to adapt and make some concessions. How did past colleagues dealt with that issue and what is the best you can hope for? In the case of communications (articles, conferences, the lot) my guess is that you should not accept anything other than name in first place or name in second place, considering the s.o.b. had poor to no participation in the work. HTH

I'm a management student focusing on the birth of dynamic capabilities (strategy process research). I've just started data collection. I'm taking a case study approach. At this moment I've managed to negotiate access and have made some preliminarily interviews with project managers (studying engineering firms). My goal is to study how they develop the know-how and tool themselves to bring new services to their customers. I'm facing with the decision to: 1. Take the usual stance of management case studies: which could be characterized of taking reality as it is and then develop a model that explains observations and meanings. 2. Choose a sociological perspective. I'm favoring the sociological perspective. But, I would not want to miss collecting data that would be important for conducting analysis under the selected perspective. However, I have at best cursory knowledge of some sociological theories. Thus, I might be missing an obvious well suited perspective. I'm obviously interested in a micro-perspective but both interaction and meaning are expected to be significant to developing an understanding of the cases. For my study different understandings people make of the situation, some resistance they at times display regarding taking new roles (sometimes implicit), or learning new skills seem to be important elements. Project managers typically manage units between 5 to 30 people, and they might have a boss or be the boss. I wonder which theories might be a good fit. Would you please also suggest a good reference on the fundamentals of the theory and perhaps a good exemplar/reference of methodological application.