ACADEMIC RESEARCH USING THE INTERNET

 PAPEP PRESENTED AT THE SYMINAR FOR AFRICAN UNIVERSITY DAY

 

AT

 

THE COPPERELT UNIVERSITY

NOVEMBER 10, YEAR 2000

 

NESSAN J RONAN

BANK OF ZAMBIA CHAIR IN ACCOUNTANCY

 

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

THE COPPERBELT UNIVERSITY

KITWE, ZAMBIA

 

ACADEMIC RESEARCH USING THE

INTERNET

 

ABSTRACT

 

In this paper, the use of the internet for academic research is explored in the context of a philosophy of lifelong learning.  Other issues which impact on the need for research activities are highlighted such ascompeting in the global arena and the changing job scene.  A number of internet sites are described in order to illustrate the capability of the internet to yield useful information relevant to an academic.  Finally, number of principles for using the internet are enunciated which provide guidance on obtaining optimum benefit from the information searches.

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

The digital revolution has given us the intemet, electronic mail and other electronic media.  These developments have led to the concept of the virtual university and within that the virtual library.  It is quite amazing to consider the speed at which the internet technologies have been adopted in both the developed and developing world.  Indeed, many observers point to the intemet as having the potential to create a level playing field between the developing and developed world.  Certainly, the developing world now has a better opportunity to bridge the information gap that has historically existed.  In this paper, we demonstrate how academics in lesser developed countries can utilise the intemet to pursue academic research.  The exploration of this issue is contextualised within the framework of the philosophy of lifelong learning and the learning society.

 

THE LIFELONG LEARNING PERSPECTIVE

The last decade of the second millennium has witnessed an enormous interest in the concept of lifelong learning.  In Europe, Asia and the NAFTA region, there is a sustained ongoing debate about how to create an enabling environment for lifelong learners.  This debate has resulted in the publication by goverm-nents of Green Papers and White Papers on lifelong learning.  The European Commission (1995) in its white paper Teaching and Learning: Towards the Learning Society, outlined a set of cogent arguments why European countries should engage their citizens in lifelong learning.  The paper identified three major change drivers which were changing the occupational landscape in Europe.  Firstly, the rapid changes in the information society leading to significantly different skill demands, calls for a more sustaining leaming environment and one which is radically different to what we have been accustomed to.  Secondly, the opening up of global trade leading to countries being forced to compete internationally, highlights the urgent need to develop manpower in all countries so that there is a level playing field.  Finally, The complexity of the modern technological world driven as it is by advances in scientific knowledge, requires a citizenry who are educatpd to take advantage of these developments while simultaneously exercising judgment on ethical and social issues raised by scientific progress.

 

The Scottish Green Paper (1998) on lifelong learning Opportunity Scotlan& A paper on Lifelong Learning puts the case for lifelong learning succinctly in the foreword (p. 1)

 

"We believe in a culture of lifelong learning where the education system, provision of learning and the benefits of new technology are focused on making it easier for more people to participate in learning at any stage of their lives"

 

This quotation not only is an admirable statement of the philosophy of lifelong learning but it also neatly defines what a lifelong learner is.  Pursuing lifelong learning requires resources especially that of up to date and relevant information.  It is not always possible to fulfil these requirements due to severely constrained national and institutional financial budgets.  In lesser developed countries, the normal experience is to find universities and colleges lacking the basic infrastructure including good libraries.  Recurrent funding of educational institutions rarely provide the means to enable libraries to keep their information resources current.  Before considering what the internet has to offer to the academic in Africa, we will briefly explore a number of issues which are crucial to the operations of universities.  These issues include the changing job scene, competing in the global arena and higher education standards.  We consider the use of the intemet from a business and accountancy perspective.  But similar observations can be made about the usefulness of the intemet for research purposes in other academic disciplines.

 

 

THE CHANGING JOB SCENE

 

Over the past decade a number of writers have been sounding warnings on the changing global economic environment.  We are witnessing a change in the structure of business and trade whereby the global imperatives have a significant influence.  Thus firms in Africa are now subject to much more competition and less protection for home industries.  This has led to a significant number of business firms being unable to compete effectively.  The upheaval in business competition has brought about a number of phenomena including delayering, downsizing and retrenchment.

Internationally, the concept of the job as we know it is undergoing a fundamental revision.  No longer can anyone expect guaranteed lifetime employment and employees are being encouraged to take more responsibility for the management of their careers.  They are also being encouraged to provide their services not as employees but as independent contractors.  Handy (1995) terms these "portfolio people".  These are 'the people who provide services to companies but any one company does not employ them.  They act like consultants except that they are providing routine services.  Bridges (1995) warns that in the future all workers will have a hard time finding security in a job.  He encourages employees to think not like an employee but as a vendor and to ensure that you have something relevant to sell.  He also suggests that all opportunities should be seen in terms of markets.  Further evidence for the change in jobs comes from Herriot & Pemberton (1995) who perceive that the psychological contract of employment is undergoing a radical change.  No longer can an employee count on loyalty and competence to keep his job.  Even the competent today can be declared redundant.  It has little to do with competence and everything to do with markets.

 

 

COMPETING IN THE GLOBAL ARENA

 

The advent of the Japanese challenge to the Western dominance of business in the nineteen seventies has encouraged intensive research into competitiveness.  Both Europe and the United States have led a sustained search for the key determinants of competitiveness.  A seminal article by Hayes & Abernathy (1980) drew attention to the loss of competitiveness by American industry.They attributed these economic problems to the dysfunctional culture of American organisations.An influential book by Athos & Pascale (1981) compared American and Japanese industry and drew unfavourable conclusions about American work practices.The debate continued with a groundbreaking report on American industry by Peters & Waterman (1982) who reviewed the performance of a selection of American companies.They claimed that successful companies possessed among other things a strong culture.  On the other side of the Atlantic Goldsmith & Clutterback (1984) published a book in Britain purporting to show how British companies could compete favourably in the global business arena.

Michael Porter (1990) offers us a model of Competitive Advantage of Nations and specifies the necessary conditions for success.  He claims that for any nation to be able to develop and sustain a competitive advantage, it must possess inter alia a set of favourable factors of production.  These factors include human resources , knowledge and financial resources.  While acknowledging that a skilled workforce is not a sufficient condition for securing a competitive advantage it most definitely is one of the essential components.  The modem approach to human factor enhancement is through competency development.  McClelland (1973) was one of the first researchers to draw attention to the importance of the competency approach to skills development.  Since then the competency approach has taken on the characteristics of a new paradigm.  In the context of business organisations a number of writers (Boyatzis 1982, Spencer & Spencer 1993,Cox & Cooper 1988) have developed competency clusters for a wide range of managerial functions.

Competency development is facilitated through the learning Organisation (Senge 1990,Garratt 1987) operating through the culture of the lifelong learner.  Thus we can see the importance of promoting and sustaining lifelong learners if a country is to achieve and sustain a competitive advantage.

 

HIGHER EDUCATION STANDARDS

 

Higher education has in the last quarter century been confronted with significant and threatening challenges.  The role of universities in the modem world continues to be challenged and questioned.  Hills (1994) views the role of the modem university to train people to manage and gain access to the universal database of knowledge.  The main challenge facing African universities is seen by Sherman (1990) as integrating African culture with the modern world.  The World Bank (I 988) believes that the main challenges facing university education in Sub-Saharan Africa are how to cope with declining quality and standards.

There is no shortage of proposals to deal with the crisis in higher education.  Posnansky @ (I 989) recommends that African Universities should expand technological and commercial training to provide middle management skills.

 

Other suggestions include fostering modest but persistent educational development (Miller 1987), fewer but better students (Malikamkono 1991) and a better match between educational output and human resources needs of the economy (National Commission on Education 1993).

In all cases the suggestions encompass a need for change, reflecting as they do a reaction to the recent phenomenon of graduate unemployment in both developed and developing countries.  Advocates of change point to the need for tertiary educational institutions to respond positively to societal demands for greater relevance in educational offerings.  Relevance in this context implies that graduates should be prepared to be easily absorbed into the labour market.  Thus, they should be equipped with the relevant skills and competencies required by the labour market.

It has been contended that the most effective universities in the next few decades will be those able to adapt to a changing workforce and shifting demands of business (Dodson 1993) while Zensky & Odel (I 994) believe that the biggest challenge facing higher education today is to meet the demand for degree programmes which provide genuine job skills.  Clark (1993) argues that institutions of higher education must indulge in strategies such as benchmarking in order to further develop instructional paradigms.  It has been found that educational innovation tends to go hand in hand with organisational development (Van Meel 1993).

 

THE INTERNET AS A SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE

 

Clearly, the African academic can be disadvantaged in relation to his colleague in the developed world, when it comes to accessing information for research purposes.  But the Internet has the potential to create a level playing field for academic research.  The remainder of this paper is concerned with demonstrating how the internet can assist the academic in research activities.

One of the first needs of academics is information about the latest textbooks available.  Academic publishers do not usually provide catalogues for African academics.  A very good internet site for academic textbooks is www.amazon.co.uk.  This site is based in the United Kingdom but there is a corresponding site in the United States.  They offer a large range of books in Accounting and Business, Law, Humanities and other areas.  The method of purchase is relatively simple with everything completed on-line.  What the purchaser requires is a credit card and the transaction can be completed in about ten minutes on the internet.  Selecting a book is fairly easy as a brief description' of the contents is provided.  There may also be opinions of readers provided on the net.  They have a useful system that allows you to see a number of books in a related area.  Once the order for the book is received, it is dispatched through the mail system and should arrive in any part of Africa in about a week to ten days.  Amazon provide a guarantee that if you are not satisfied with the book, you can return it within a specified period and obtain a complete refund of your payment.  The writer has used Amazon for about two years and find them very satisfactory.  Thus, an academic can benefit from the internet technology to keep up to date on the literature of the discipline.

For those academics who are members of professional organizations, there are internet sites which can provide them with useful information.  For example, in accountancy most if not all of the major professional accountancy bodies have internet sites.  In Zambia, the two major accountancy bodies offering examination and membership services have internet sites.  These are the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants www.cima.org.uk and the Chartered Association of Certified Accountants www.acca.org.uk.  Both sites contain a tremendous amount of useful information for those who are lecturing in accountancy.  In addition, those students sitting the professional examinations can access the pass lists of students. . This provides immediate information on examination results.  These sites provide information for students, lecturers, employers and the general public.  They also contain useful articles on professional accountancy practice.

For those academics who wish to access more substantial academic articles in accountancy, the international federation of accountants www.ifac.org is worth accessing.  This site contains futuristic theoretical articles on such subjects as intellectual capital and the conceptual framework of accounting.  It also contains a list of all the affiliated accountancy institutes all over the world.  The professional accountancy firms have internet sites.  A particularly good one is that owned by Price Waterhouse Coopers www.pwc.global.com which reflects the diverse interests of professional accountants.

There are sites which are useful if one is working on developing a new academic course.  Today, electronic commerce has become a very topical issue and more and more universities are beginning to offer electronic commerce courses.  A considerable amount of assistance can be obtained through accessing some web sites.  An excellent site for electronic commerce is that of McGill university  www.management.mcgill.ca.  This site contains the complete course outline for a course in electronic commerce.  As well as the detailed syllabus, information is provided on the recommended textbooks and the tutorial topics to be covered on a weekly basis.  Effectively, one can find a complete ready- made course on electronic commerce on this site.  This is of tremendous assistance for academics who may lack the necessary resources in lesser developed countries, to develop their own courses.

We can illustrate how the internet can assist in the design and resource of a course with an example from the Copperbelt University.  When we decided that it was necessary to offer a course in Management Consultancy for our MBA students, we turned to the internet for information and materials.  We first accessed the Institute of Management Consultancy www.imc.co.uk and established through their UNIFORM BODY OF KNOWLEDGE what was important in a management consultancy course.  We decided that students should have access to the latest thinking in knowledge management, consulting and human skills.  For this material we accessed the IMD web site www.imd.ch, a management development institute which is based in Lausanne Switzerland.  This web site contains a large number of articles in the series PERSPECTIVES FOR MANAGERS.  We used these articles to provide the broad based organizational knowledge required in a management consultancy course.

 

 

THE INTERNET AS A RESEARCH RESOURCE

 

In the previous section, we have illustrated through a discussion on the contents of selected web sites, how an academic in Africa can continue to undertake academic research for the benefit of his students and the community.  In this section we outline some of the principal requirements for successful research using the internet.

1.       The academic needs about one year to develop proficiency in using the internet.  There is a vast amount of information on the internet.   One of the important skills that need development is that of data discrimination.  Knowing what sites are likely to yield relevant information is a skill that needs time to develop.  Like any other skill, it benefits from practice.

 

2.       A person should be willing to spend at least 30 minutes on an internet session.  Less than that is unlikely to yield very much by way of useful information.  Of course, the internet user should resist the temptation to stray from the objective of the search.  The internet is a source of many interesting sites but to achieve your objective, it is important to resist going into other sites that are outside your area of focus.

 

3.       Remember that some material is password protected and you will need a password to gain access.  This may be available through your academic library or you may have to make a payment for access.

 

4.       You should use journals and newspapers to gain knowledge on new internet sites.  Most of the professional journals now contain articles and information on useful internet sites.

 

5.               Finally, remember you cannot expect to solve all your research information needs through the internet.  But it will provide you with many interesting leads and some useful articles that will point you in the right direction.

 

 

 

CONCLUSIONS

 

The academic in a lesser developed country is confronted with a plethora of seemingly intractable

problems.  One of these is how to keep current with his discipline while at the same time producing relevant research reports.  The task is made more difficult by the lack of support for academic libraries.  The solution to this problem can be partially met through the internet.  We have demonstrated that the internet contains a vast store of useful information to assist the academic with his teaching, curriculum development and research activities.  But the academic should note that the internet is not a panacea for all the information needs.  Nevertheless, if an academic observes a few basic rules, the internet can yield a rich source of information and ensure that the academic maintains his status as a lifelong learner.

 

 

REFERENCES

 

 

Athos AG & Pascale RT (1981) The Art of Japanese Mana2ement, Simon & Schuster, New York

 

Boyatzis RE (1982) The Competent Manager,Wiley, New York

 

Bridges,W. (I 995) Jobshift: How to prosper in. a wolkplace without Jobs.  Nicholas Braeley Publishing, London

 

Clark KI (1993) Benchmarkiniz as a Global Strategy for improving Instruction in Hi2her Education, paper presented at the I I'h International Conference on new concepts in Higher Education, Phoenix December 5-9.

 

Cox CJ & CL Cooper (1988) Hii4h Flyers, An Anatomy of Managerial Success, Basil Blackwell, Oxford

 

Dodson J (1993) The Changing Workforce; Human Resources Challenges, Business Officer, Vol 26, no. 12, P32-35

 

European Commission (I 995) White Paper Teaching and Learning,Towards the Learning Society.

 

Garratt R (1987) The Learning Organisation, Gower, Aldershot

 

Goldsmith W & Clutterback D (1984) The Winning Streak, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London

 

Handy, C. (1995).  Be3Lond Certainty: The Changing Worlds of Organisations.

Hutchinson, London

 

Hayes RH & Abernathy WJ (1980) "Managing Our Way to, Economic Decline", Harvard Business Review, July/August.

 

Herriot, P. & Pemberton, C. (1995).  New Deals: The Revolution in Managerial Careers.  John Wiley, Chichester.

 

Hills G (1994) Universities of Tomorrow, CEPES papers on higher education, European Centre for Higher Education, Bucharest.

 

Maliyamkono TL (1989) Higher Education in Eastern & Southern Africa, Pro5pects, Vol 21 No.3, P351-62

 

Miller RM (1989) The Fading Future, Comparative Education Review, Vol3l No.2, P218-40.

 

McClelland D.C (1973) Testing for competence rather than for intelligence, American Ps o ist, 28,1-14

 

Peters TJ & Waterman RH (I 982) In Search of Excellence, Harper & Row, New York.

 

Porter M. (I 990) The COMI) tliltlilve lakduvvantage of Nations, Macmillan, London

Posnansky M (1989) Restructuring the African University of Ghana,

Paper Presented at the Annual Conference of African Studies Association, Atlanta, Ga, November.

 

Republic of Botswana (1993) Report of the National Commission on Education; Gaborone, Government Printer

 

Senge PM (I 990) The Fifth D            Century Books, London

 

Sherman MAB (1990) The University in Modem Africa: Towards the Twenty First Century, Journal of Higher Education, Vol 61, No.4, P363-85.

 

Spencer LM & SM Spencer (I 993) Competence at Work, John Wiley, New York.

 

Scottish Office (1998) Opportunity Sc @tland- A a er on Lifelon Learnin Edinburgh, Scotland

 

Van Miel RM (1993) Modemisation & Flexibilisation Centre for Educational Technological Innovation, Herleen, Netherlands, Open University.

World Bank (1988).  Education in Sub-Saharan Africa- A World Bank Policy Study, Washington, World Bank.

 

World Bank (1993) Higher Education: The Lessons of EnNrience, Washington, World Bank

 

Zensky R & Odel P (1994) Higher Education & the C, an in Nature of the American Workforce- Responses, Challenyes nd Opportunities, National Centre on Educational Quality of the Workforce, Philadelphia.

 

 

INTERNET SITES

 

Amazon bookshop

 

Chartered Association of Certified Accountants

 

Chartered Institute of Management Accountants

 

Institute of Management Consultancy

 

International Federation of Accountants

 

International Institute for Management Development (IMD)

 

McGill University

 

Price Waterhouse Coopers