The overarching research question for this development task was ”What does a successful onboarding framework consist of from both the new professor’s and the organization’s perspective?“ The new framework creation has involved both the stakeholders and the new professors in bringing these aspects into it. The final answer to these questions will be received only after taking the onboarding framework into use.
For creating the new professor onboarding framework, organizational socialization and uncertainty reduction theory were used as theoretical background. Organizational socialization is the phenomenon of new employee arriving to a new organization and it provided good basis for the whole onboarding framework. Uncertainty reduction theory dates back in the 70-ties but was still valid theory for cross-checking the onboarding framework for including its important elements in relieving newcomer stress and anxiety. Also, more recent articles and research were used to help mold the actual framework elements.
Service design method provided customer friendly and co-creative tools for the whole development project. The customers’ experience was the most important data in this development work. Customers’ feedback showed many of the resolutions to the new
onboarding framework. Not each individual wish of the customers could be fulfilled but many of the most pressing issues could be solved with developing the framework further. A
professor’s work should be quite similar globally, varying a bit in the amount of workload in teaching, research, and administrational work. This fact made the creation process for the professor onboarding framework and the result well usable in other higher education institutions worldwide.
The framework for onboarding new professors at the case organization will be utilized all over the case university. This is going to be an eagerly expected improvement, but it will take some time to implement it in every unit. The benefits this improvement brings to the university are undeniable. To enable new professors for a smoother start, with more knowledge and better network they are sure to become productive sooner but also fond of the university to stay there for a long time content, with the goal of contributing in creating solutions to world’s wicked problems.
Another silent mission with this thesis development work was to nudge the service personnel in different units to collaborate and work together on this topic. This mission was
accomplished in the workshops and it continued after that, and the goal is that it will continue and spread to other collaboration topics as well.
definitions of quality criteria in qualitative research initially created by Lincoln and Guba (1985) and later referred and developed by Korstner and Moser (2017, 121). Those
trustworthiness definitions are credibility, transferability, dependability, confirmability and reflexivity. The more detailed definitions are presented in Figure 19. This thesis work is next evaluated based on those five definitions.
Figure 19: Modification of trustworthiness definitions of quality criteria in qualitative research by Korstner and Moser (2017, 121), and Lincoln and Guba (1985, 289-331)
This development work was done based on qualitative data. The use of qualitative data always creates a credibility issue, whether the author has been able to exclude own assumptions and biases or not. Nevertheless, the use of qualitative data on the other hand brought so much more insight than quantitative data could have done. All interviews were conducted carefully with taking notes and listening to the interviewee. The names of the interviewed persons were not disclosed to other members of the organization than the author and assistant.
The transferability of this work in another context should be quite straight forward. All the steps in the project are explained in such detail that they can be utilized and transferred into another organization. By recreating the development process done in this thesis, another researcher could confirm similar results in own organization.
Concerning dependability, the results of this development work are a representation of a certain moment of time. The results surely have been similar for quite some time and would have continued to be so if no development to the professor onboarding had been done.
To confirm the results of this development task by another researcher is not possible since the interview data is not available to others in its entirety. Also, data created in the
workshops is not available outside the case organization. The theoretical background of this thesis can be traced to literature. The process can be repeated but the data must be collected again from customers in own setting.
Human biases are difficult to avoid but being aware of them and considering them during the development work of this thesis helped the author to diminish them. The fact that the thesis author has been working for several years within the case organization can blind her for some of the defects within the professor onboarding. The same might have caused the author to put a lot more effort in solving one issue within the onboarding than another. The author has her personal preferences in enhancing the onboarding for those who are nonnatives, and this might have blinded her when concerning the onboarding process for native new professors.
The author was involved in the service personnel interviews, in creating the professor questionnaire, in the workshops presenting the results of the current situation of professor onboarding and in many meetings with stakeholders of the professor onboarding. The author was solely responsible for creating the new framework based on all previous observation and thematic analysis of that data. The author conducted the feedback interviews with professors on the newly created onboarding framework.
The choices for the theoretical background served well for the development work. The theories were at their time groundbreaking ones in both organizational socialization and uncertainty reduction as they have been cited and refined many times since their publication in the 70-ties and 80-ties. Additions to those theories could have been to include more details on interpersonal communication and organizational culture. Those themes seem to be quite close to the topic of the thesis. On another angle, some topics on successful ways for learning new things, for example pedagogical theories could have been useful.
Moreover, the fact that the author had ten years of experience at the case organization benefitted the work. The fact that the same person who oversaw this development work for professor onboarding will be responsible for it in the future, is beneficial to the case
university. The involvement of the stakeholders at an early point of the project made them responsible for the onboarding process. This project helped the stakeholders to identify the correct contact persons and their internal responsibilities in professor onboarding. The author’s existing networks within the university community helped her to communicate and persuade the involved stakeholders into collaboration.