Participants

Two groups participated in the study (N=24; 12f, 12m). In the first, through purposive sampling, all 19 members of TUS’s higher-level management (i.e. President, Vice-Presidents [VPs], Faculty Deans and other higher-level decision-making personnel) were invited via email to participate in an IM session. Twelve (n=12; 4f, 8m) were available for the session and consented to participate. In the second group, external stakeholders (i.e. community-based industry, policy and service providers, based regionally local to TUS), aligned with outcomes associated with ongoing TUS activities (extant partnerships, evidence awarding of employment for TUS graduates, prominent presence in the community, etc.) were identified (e.g. at least one per academic department and functional office; via inviting recommendations from TUS VPs, Deans, Heads of Department, function heads and use of the TUS Target Connect database). From these recommendations, 74 potential contacts were identified and invited to participate in an IM session via most appropriate contact (i.e. email or telephone), with n=12 (8f; 4m) consenting to participate and available on the day. Participating external stakeholders represented perspectives from diverse areas, including: industry, local government, further education, second-level education, external education programme development and social services. Notably, the sample used in the current research is either consistent with sample sizes in similar research (e.g. Dwyer et al., 2014, 2016) or largely surpasses it (as in the case of Dwyer et al., 2017).

Materials and measures

IM is a thought-and-action mapping strategy (Warfield, 1994) used to aid groups in developing outcomes regarding complex issues that integrate contributions from individuals with diverse backgrounds and perspectives (e.g. see Dwyer et al., 2014; 2016; 2017). IM is informed by theoretical constructs from both behavioural and cognitive sciences, with a strong basis in general systems thinking (Warfield & Cardenas, 1994). IM involves the mapping of ideas, concepts and arguments generated by a group of knowledgeable individuals and delineates content and process roles, assigning responsibility to participants for contributing ideas and, to the facilitator, responsibility for choosing and implementing selected methodologies for generating, clarifying, structuring, interpreting, and amending ideas – with emphasis on balancing behavioural and technical demands of group work (Broome & Chen, 1992) while honouring design laws concerning variety, parsimony and saliency (Ashby, 1958; Boulding, 1966).

IM utilises a set of five processes matched to the phase of group interaction and the requirements of the situation: (1) generation and clarification of ideas; (2) voting, rank ordering and selection of resulting concepts; (3) structuring of concepts; (4) evaluation of graphical representation of group logic with the group and amendment if necessary; and (5) interpretation and evaluative discourse and reasoning to further understand the nature of the concepts and interdependencies. Nominal Group Technique (NGT) and Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) were employed as two phases of group interaction to complete the IM process.

NGT (Delbeq, Van De Ven, & Gustafson, 1975) facilitates the pooling of individual ideas through (a) presentation of a stimulus question; (b) generation of ideas in writing by each participant working alone; (c) presentation of ideas by participants, written recoding of each idea by the IM facilitator on a large sheet of paper and posting of these on walls surrounding the group; (d) serial discussion of the listed ideas by participants solely for clarifying meaning; and (e) closed voting where each participant is asked to select and rank five ideas from the list, with the results compiled and presented for review by the group. In the current study, NGT was used to identify impact influences based on professional experiences and by generating ideas in response to the question: ‘What are the most important influencers of TUS’s ability to create and capture impact?’. ISM (Warfield, 1994) is a computer-assisted process that facilitates groups to identify relationships among ideas and impose structure to manage the complexity of the issue. The five steps of ISM are: (1) identification and clarification of ideas (e.g. using NGT); (2) identification and clarification of a ‘relational question’ for exploring relationships among ideas (e.g. ‘Does idea X significantly influence idea Y?’); (3) development of a structural map through the relational question to explore connections between pairs of ideas; (4) display and discussion of the map by the group; and (5) amendment to the map by the group, if necessary. The ISM phase is often considered as an activity in “mapping perceptions” and through this phase, the group engages in discussion about each relational question, with a vote being taken to determine the group’s decision about the relationship(s).

Procedure

Participants were brought together into a meeting room where they were asked the following question: ‘What are the most important influencers of TUS’s ability to create and capture impact?’. Participants were advised that their responses could represent facilitators, barriers or both (i.e. depending on context). To ensure clarity, TUS Impact was defined for the group prior to idea generation or discussion. In order to facilitate open discussion, seating was arranged in a semi-circle, such that each participant could clearly see and engage with each other.

Following generation of ideas, each participant was asked to present what they perceived to be their most important influence, in turn. If an idea had already been presented or if there was significant overlap in conceptualisation (without distinction) between ideas, the person would then present their next most important influence. The facilitator asked for elaboration or clarification when required and opened discussion to the group. Each idea was then written clearly on an A5 page and adhered to the wall. In both sessions, once the facilitator deemed that idea generation had been exhausted, they asked the group if anyone had any further ideas that they would like to add. Subsequently, participants each voted to select the five most important identified influences on impact. Results of the voting dictated what ideas were selected to progress to ISM. In Group 1, the seven highest ranked influences were carried forward to the next phase (i.e. wherein a voting gap was identified between the 5th highest vote-getter [6] and the 6th [3]; notably, this threshold also represented votes from at least one-third of the group progressing to the next phase). The results of the voting session were compiled, displayed for review by the group and were entered into the IM software.

Using the IM software, participants were presented with a series of questions describing relations among influences, for example, ‘Does idea X significantly influence idea Y?’. Once the discussion had ended, a vote regarding the relationship was taken and was entered into the software. A “yes” vote was entered in the ISM software by the computer operator if at least two-thirds of the participants judged that there was a significant relationship between the pair of ideas; otherwise, a “no” vote was entered (Dwyer et al., 2014; 2016; 2017). On completion of the question series, a structural map describing relations among influences was generated by the IM software, in light of answers provided, and projected on a screen in front of the group to provide participants the opportunity to read, interpret and confirm the structural paths identified by their group (see Figures 1 and 2 in the Results section). Afterward, the session closed and participants were thanked for their contributions. The duration of each session ranged from approximately three and four hours. In summary, IM was utilised through identifying, clarifying, ranking, categorising and structuring relations among influences generated by participants (also, see again Figure A for a flow-chart illustrating the methodology).