I’m taking a few days, belatedly, in catching up on missing work. One of the things I’ve been putting off is the up-dating and house-keeping necessary for the course materials we use in our MBA Starter workshops.
This three-day event is divided between the PD stuff – which I tend to improvise on as I go – and seven Study Skills sessions. These sessions have been authored, co-authored, delivered and developed by many experienced hands over the last year or two, so we need to learn from the repeated delivery. As luck would have it, I’m the Module Convenor, so it’s my job to tidy things up while still giving colleagues the freedom to deliver the aims of the sessions in their own voice.
I’ve noticed that when you revisit some details they can reveal connections to you that are somehow overlooked the first time round. One such example is the relationship between “concept” (or construct), “framework”, “model” and “theory”. These form an important part of the language of study and assessment at master’s level, so we have always had a session to introduce them.
It occurs to me that there is a sequence in the four:
- Concept Individual items that represent abstract ideas, or mental objects. Our ability to conceptualise is almost limitless. Concepts are sometimes seen as the building blocks of theory. Concepts are driven by our epistemology (way of knowing).
- Framework The arrangement of concepts in a taxonomy or typology (i.e. a classification of parts) where the order does not affect the nature of the taxonomy (PESTLE is a good example). Frameworks have a fairly loose relationship with theory but can be very effective in narrowing down the mass of data and possibilities to manageable chunks. Frameworks are driven by the same epistemology as concepts (after all, a framework is also a concept), but are always at one level of abstraction away from the concepts they contain.
- Model The arrangement of concepts where the order or position does make a difference. Models can show cause and effect, as well as before and after, relationships. The aim of a model is to achieve accurate description of those relationships. Models may be generated by theory, or may be a step on the road (a guess, in other words) to the establishment of theory. MBAs are attracted to models in order to apply other people’s thinking to a given problem in hand (short cuts). Models are driven by expediency.
- Theory The aim of theory is to explain. Theory tries to map data to underlying tautology in such a way that the steps between them could not be in doubt. Most work in science is the search by various means of inference of more complete theory. A better theory is one that explains more than its predecessor. MBAs are not attracted to theory usually until it’s too late! Theory is driven by curiosity.
Chris Dalton's Personal Development Blog 
Would you agree that, in pd, there is potentially a 5th category to be included that is the temporal and spatial boundary that allows everything to hang together in a certain context, and yet gives sufficient flexibility for growth? After all, pd is, by its nature, non-static, and yet there has to be a demarcation from where one is currently and where one is going to. Time and place give context, a positioning, from whence one can move forward. Without it, there cannot be a direction, as you don’t have a reference point from which to measure any “distance” …
I think you’re right, but this is also where it gets tricky.
I’ve been pondering how all this must (necessarily) hang together. It seems to me that many people think PD has to be a directional, deterministic process (e.g. these four things above would need to lead to a fifth in a sequence).
I am not so sure. What is growth? Define ‘forward’? As Janis Joplin said “as a matter of fact, as we discovered on the train, tomorrow never happens, man. It’s all the same fucking day.”
We define ourselves with our boundaries and that is perhaps inevitable, but the “fifth element”, for me, would have to be a route in our thinking which was a kind of liberation from all that determination.
For example, if you say that PD is by its nature non-static, you can only assert this in relation to something that is static. One idea implies the other. The whirlpool of change that we encounter during, let’s say, the MBA course is a necessary set of bounded adjustments in order to conserve energy (or preserve a stability) at a higher level in the system. This is where, I believe, Bateson’s epistemology helps (but that’s part of a long story).
There is a danger of sailing off into the distance here. But I have become interested lately in how we should alert people to this structure of punctuation.
Thank you very much for this useful clarification of the relationship between “concept”, “framework”, “model” and “theory”. It was a big question when I started HB52 in March.
Regarding a “5th” dimension (position across time), I would find this very useful. There is something comforting about a “rough assessment of where you are”. I have found that “maturity models” (such as Baldrige, CMMI, EFQM) give us useful guidance for assessing our organisational “position” and level of maturity.
For PD, we could build a much simpler tool with 5-10 attributes and a scoring mechanism to assess where we are on the PD journey. We could use such an empirical assessment tool to “determine” our current “position” across time. This would then allows us to build specific and personl action plans to improve certain areas over a given time frame.
As an example of one attribute (reflective maturity), in his book, “Becoming a Reflective Practitioner”, Johns (2004, 2009) suggests 5 levels of reflection.