Academic articles are for academicians

“AS WORLD leaders prepare to meet at the Group of 20 conference this week, a slew of recently released research confirms that climate change is an immediate and critical problem that must be at the top of the list of global priorities.” (Washington Post, 6 July 2017)

The above is a typical example of how journalists want to influence policy decisions based on their own presuppositions and interpretive framework of research articles Do the journalists have the expertise and can we trust them?

Academic articles are for academicians. This may sound obvious but their territory has been intruded. In the past, access to journals was limited and expensive and they only read by academicians. With the Internet, many academic journals are now published online and available at a lower cost. Some journalists follow these journals and publish news from the articles, on the hot topics like climate change, global warming, health and the environment. These articles are not subjected to scrutiny and misinformation may be common.

Journal articles are research observation and findings by the academicians. They have not been scrutinised by their colleagues and until they are endorsed, they are not suitable for public consumption. It is counter productive If politicians or other interested parties manipulate and use them for their own agenda. Once this happened, it becomes very difficult to change the public perception. The publishing cycles of the journals are much longer than the news media and public may have forgotten the content of original article by the time the questions were asked. Many people who only have common knowledge based on the news media articles, but without the formal training required, believe they understand the intricate issues involved. What they “know” is ambiguous and can differ.

Peer reviewed journal articles are not intended for the public or even for other academicians not familiar with the topics involved. They are often written in a specialized language using a vocabulary that requires formal training and background knowledge to make sense of them. The background knowledge can include the environment, historical, conceptual and contemporary information. Without the background knowledge, it is more than likely that the observations, evaluations, assertions, and findings of the papers will be understood based on their own presuppositions and rudimentary interpretative framework.

There are people who suggest that academician should write in a language easy for the public to understand. This is a mistaken idea as knowledge need to be captured and expressed in the proper language. The dictionary can define words in a few sentences but concepts may need a few pages or even a book chapter to explain. The academic language was developed to make communication among academicians more precise while keeping it concise. Reducing an academic article to the understanding of words and simplistic ideas, metaphor or analogy for the uninitiated public can be disastrous.

Technical journals are the forum to support the concept of academic freedom and freedom of expression. It allows the academics to publish and discuss their research and findings, even if they are controversial, without worrying they will be misused. Healthy discussions and deliberations can help develop, nurture and mature new ideas and concepts. Unfortunately, if these articles are promoted to the undiscerning public, the editors and peer reviewers may practice self-censorship to be politically correct. This may create an unintended problem where important but controversial papers are rejected for publication and politically correct articles dominate and distort the intellectual space.

Let me explain what I am saying with an example of the complexities involved. 197 parties met in Paris to discuss and plan the Paris Climate Agreement. “The Paris Agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global average {sic} temperature rise this century well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5°C.” But what do we understand by temperature or specifically global average temperature? What is the impact of these temperature anomalies on the weather we experience?

Let us start with the global average temperature. How is this temperature defined or determined? Is this temperature physically significant? Is this the average of the available temperature records? Are people just assuming others will know what they are unsure themselves? I find it a surprise that the Paris Agreement does not define this expression at the core of the Agreement.

Temperature measuring devices have evolved over the years, from mercury bulb thermometers to thermocouples and thermistors. More recently, the temperatures are inferred from satellite measurements. The accuracy of the measurements can vary from ±0.5°C to ±0.002°C using surface measurements. Daily temperature ranges can be more than 10°C. The surroundings of the weather stations have changed drastically with urbanization. We know the surface temperature varies with the elevation and I don’t know how this has been accounted.

Where no temperature records exist, the scientists use proxy temperatures. They determine the proxy temperatures from tree rings, ice cores and so on to go back thousands of years with no means to confirm the figures. There are no ice cores in the tropics to be included in a meaningful average.

Given the above scenarios, what do people understand when they talk of 1.5°C and 2°C global average temperature anomalies. It is more than likely that the parties involved want to stay in their state of rational ignorance and assumed that others know better. If the issue is global warming, then the discussions should be focused on the energy inventory of the earth rather than the temperature. This would be difficult to handle or even to consider as it requires existing work and long held concepts to be questioned or discarded.

The purpose of research will include and not limited to advancing our knowledge, provide the information resources for policy development and satisfying the human intellectual curiosity. Self-censorship is against the principles of academic freedom.

Policy development is hard enough without undue influence from the lobbyist. In the US, there are congressional briefings where the experts from the different schools of thoughts provide their inputs and they can be grilled by the lawmakers. This is unlike news items where the authors cannot be scrutinized. Elsewhere, think tanks may have great difficulty in making sense of the research publications with all the distractions.

I don’t have the answers how this problem can be resolved. My aim is only to create awareness of this problem.

KK Aw

July 2017

#globalwarming, #climatechange, #policydevelopment, #researcharticles

Are you looking for a manager or a leader?

A leader’s role is to lead; a manager is to manage work. Is it that simple?

There is an abundance of literature out there that erroneously suggest that these two terms can often be used interchangeably. Perhaps, these authors are confusing the personality traits required of a leader or manager with their roles and responsibilities and a person’s management styles with their expertise and skills. This may be why it is difficult to find good leaders when people confuse the two roles and many managers project themselves as leaders as it is of a higher status.

Role of a manager

A manager have a clear aim and has to meet recurring performance targets. In some organizations, they evaluate the manager’s performance based on key performance indices (KPI).

The key role of the manager is to control, organize and mobilize the resources of the organization towards a specific aim. This includes resources such as human, financial, properties, plants and so on such that they are used effectively and productively. Given these constraints, the manager has to ensure the smooth and stable operation of his unit. His focus will be inwards rather than outwards unless he is in sales or marketing. The manager is likely to develop plans based on fixed time frames like a month, a year or for a particular event. Any innovation introduced has to be adaptive rather than disruptive as stability is paramount.

Role of a Leader

The leader’s role is much more complicated. One of his primary concern is to ensure that his organization is sustainable in a changing environment. Hence there will be a constant need for the leader to monitor the business environment and to position the organization so it can withstand economic downturns or other crisis while it can exploit new opportunities.The leader also has to provide oversight of the managers under him.

Leaders cannot afford the luxury to be involved in the implementation and service delivery activities. He must facilitate others who can devote their time and energy to these activities. A bad scenario is when he is so involved that he competes for funding for his pet projects and demoralizing others with more deserving projects. This can cause colossal failures as there may be no accountability.

The keywords associated with the leadership would include seeing the big picture, long term planning, human resource development, succession planning, capacity building, facilitating, investment, process improvement, change management, policies development, innovation and so on.

Multiple hats

In a micro-enterprise with limited staffs, the chief executive is the manager who will often be required to double up as a leader. Perhaps he will devote 10% or less of his effort as a leader and the rest as a manager. These are two different hats the person must wear and he should be able to differentiate them and adjust or switch his operating mode. This may also be the reason for the confusion between a manager and a leader.

In large organizations, the senior executive's roles would be more specialized and those in leadership positions would concentrate on leadership issues. The stakes are higher and the impact of the decisions made have far-reaching effects. Here, the senior management may be required to spend 70% or more of their time on leadership functions.

At the national level, the leadership can make or break the country. The leaders cannot afford to be distracted by day-to-day issues of managing work and the other resources. They must be free to focus on bigger and long term issues that affect the sustainability of the nation.

Leadership training

The leadership role is too important to be given to natural born leaders who have not been properly trained and vetted. Leaders of large organizations require a wide range of skills, expertise and personality traits. This would require, among others, having deep understanding and insights of the business of the organization, foresight, and vision, with skills in finance, planning and strategy and human resources. Starting with the right person to be a future leader is important. Grooming is a must. We may not afford the mistakes of the leaders.  

In every age groups, we need leaders and managers to get them organized and direct their energies at some specific aim. Hence there is a need to train young leaders or future leaders. There are now many leadership courses offered. The short courses do not have the business context and therefore should concentrate on the personality traits of leaders and basic skills rather than trying to address technical skills or intractable societal issues such as national unity. It can do more harm than good.

The longer post graduate courses offered by Universities address the specialized skills required by the leaders.

Conclusion

A manager who consider himself a leader may neglect his management duties and not be able to meet his performance targets. Likewise, a leader who neglects his leadership duties and indulges in the activities of a manager could jeopardize the future of the organization. Those wearing two hats need to find the required balance.

With this new perspectives, I hope the reader can find examples of the leaders and managers with misaligned priorities from their personal exposure and hold the individuals accountable. We cannot get the right leaders if we do not know what to expect and demand of them.

What are our expectations of the new Auditor-General?

Since Madinah Mohamad was appointed the auditor-general with effect from 23 Feb, 2017, social media has been abuzz with discussions on her lack of expertise as an accountant and auditor.

Some even extended this issue to other key senior civil service appointments. The Federal Constitution and the Audit Act 1957 do not specify the professional qualifications of the auditor-general.

Many people have misguided expectations of the auditor-general as they associate auditing with financial auditing only.

The annual A-G’s reports put much more emphasis on the activities of the public entities than on the financial statements. The sensational audit findings that are reported in the mass media are found mainly in the activities reports.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has oversight of our national spending and it works closely with the National Audit Department (NAD). One of PAC’s main roles is to scrutinise the A-G’s Report and to investigate if the findings of the audit department are addressed and the recommendations implemented by the audited entities.

The dictionary provides two definitions for the word “account”: A report or description of an event or experience; and a record or statement of financial expenditure or receipts relating to a particular period or purpose.

Many people are unfortunately fixated on the second definition. We want to hold the government and public sector accountable and this can only make sense with the first definition.

The Public Accounts Committee is called “Jawatankuasa Kira-Kira Wang Negara” in the national language. This reflects the second definition of the word “account” and adds to the confusion.

The highly regarded outgoing auditor-general is an economist by training while the current Auditor-General of Singapore, Willie Tan, is a mechanical engineer by training. Apparently, other former auditors-general are also not accountants by training. So, the basic training of the auditor-general should not be an issue as other expertise are more important.

The NAD is the supreme audit institution of the country. The vision of the NAD is “to be recognized as a key contributor towards financial management excellence and enhance good governance in the public sector.”

NAD has just over 1,900 officers, with offices in all the different states and in some of the federal ministries. The A-G is the auditor of over 1,400 government departments and agencies and about 1,700 government-linked companies.

On top of this, audits are also conducted on the hundreds of federal and state projects. Government initiatives like the BR1M are also audited.

In such a complex environment, the effectiveness of the A-G is unlikely to depend on his or her technical skills but on the management and leadership skills.

The civil service is driven by procedures, rules, and regulations, and this is the base the NAD must work from. Understanding and appreciating procedural knowledge is, therefore, a prerequisite.

The usual management issues such as providing a conducive working environment, staff motivation, improving productivity, communication skills, public relations, human resource development and so on are all important.

Madinah has released her profile at https://www.audit.gov.my/index.php/en/ketua-audit-negara/profil. It is an impressive service record and she has held 13 positions in various government departments and agencies over the years. These experiences and exposures should hold her in good stead in her new position.

The public sector entities are engaged in a diverse range of activities and functions. The NAD needs to appreciate this and learn of their challenges, priorities, and critical issues faced. Audit findings and recommendations not in line with this may be considered frivolous or out of touch.

Such knowledge may be acquired from the staff of the public entities through good working relationships or through research and consultation with outside parties.

The ability to get personal knowledge to provide leads or feedback to help the audit process could be invaluable. Otherwise, the auditors may miss critical factual information that the audited entities wish to withhold.

It would appear that former A-G Ambrin Buang paid a lot of attention to procurement management and rightly so. The NAD conducted a combined total of about 70 specialized procurement management audits at both the federal and state levels from 2010 to 2014.

His keynote address at the “Combating Procurement Fraud in the Public and Private Sectors Forum 2017″ on Jan 24, was headlined “Public procurement most vulnerable to corruption, says the Auditor-General” by the MalayMail OnLine.

The recent spate of arrests by the MACC of senior civil servants in procurement-related graft may have been unnerving for Ambrin. It looks like procurement management remains a major issue despite all the efforts undertaken.

The procurement cycle is complex. It involves needs analysis, requirement specifications, site investigation, design, contract specifications, scheduling, budgeting, tendering, vendor selection, project implementation, monitoring and supervision, testing and commissioning, documentation, and training and many other activities.

Technically, procurement should also include project management and contract implementation.

Procurement must be executed professionally at every stage of its cycle. Procurement corruption is not something that can be fixed through auditing as “audits are not a panacea”.

Part of our public sector problem is the lack of professionalism, competency and support facilities at the various stages of the procurement cycle. This needs to be addressed by the agencies concerned with inputs from the stakeholders and the NAD.

The current issue about the civil service is the allegation that the service is bloated. The payment for emoluments, pensions and other benefits for retired staff is taking up much of the government’s annual operating expenditure.

There may be a need to downsize but it must be done systematically with considerations for business continuity, succession and so on.

Instead of just conjecture, it would be more meaningful if we can find audit information related to human resources.

I am afraid that this issue has been hardly touched on by the NAD in the last few years.

Human resource issues are raised when there is a lack of expertise for the operation and maintenance of sophisticated machinery or systems. Alternatively, it is when positions in the technical departments are left vacant.

Madinah has a PhD in Human Resource Management. Perhaps, she may want to take up the challenge to audit the human resource issues in the public sector so that strategic plans can be developed to address the alleged bloated service.

Proposals and decisions made should be evidence-based and NAD is perhaps the only agency with the means to gather this information independently and cost effectively.