UGB361 Developing the Reflexive Practitioner Assessment Answer

Section A

Research Aim

The concern of the research is dedicated to considering HRM as the professional identity which in my opinion describes my current as well as future aspirations. The research would be concentrated densely towards understanding 'increasing self-awareness' as a part of Human Resource Management as a professional career. Human Resource management is the processional domain of concern the research focuses on three behavioural standards associated with it by looking through the CIPD professional map. The CIPD professional map is considered as the international benchmark for the professions undertaken by individuals and for this research in particular in order to understand the behavioural standards, CIPD would be referred to.

Research Context

As per the behavioural perspectives in HRM is considered to be one of those alternative approaches towards understanding how different firms undertake different approaches in their process of human resource management. The different approaches undertaken by firms result in different consequences in terms of the management of employees. The behavioural perspective in human resource management has been used primarily to understand the correlation between HRM systems and other responses from different stakeholders closely associated with the behaviours of the employees. Regardless of the fact that the behavioural perspective in HRM is not considered a theory in formal use, it provides a framework for understanding how employee contributes towards the effectiveness of the organization. The base of behavioural perspective is rooted in the foundation of role theory which articulates that the business strategies are influenced by the ways in which employees are managed.

As per the CIPD professional map is considered the segment of core behaviour underlines the following behaviour to be the basic to be considered while dealing with the behavioural perspective of HRM management (Eurich 2018). These are ethical practice, influence and courage from the professional domain, values being ascribed to people, inclusive work culture and practice, passion towards learning, and agile decision-making capacity on the ground of situations. Three behavioural attributes that would be selected as the concern of this discussion would be ethical practice, inclusive working and situational decision-making .

In the course of the discussion 'increase of self-awareness' as an HRM professional would be reflected upon through Gibbs's reflective cycle with an analogy to a personal incident which has contributed to a better understanding of the incident. The behavioural attributes that would be focused upon are situational decision-making, inclusive working and ethical practice.

Literature Review

Self-awareness has been described as the ability of an individual to ground themselves in reality. Thereby it also refers to the ability to manage thoughts, feelings, and impulses along with the ability to develop an awareness of themselves while working in the workplace. Such a grounded understanding of the self in the opinion of Rosenbach (2018) is helpful not only in terms of interpersonal relationship and interaction but also with accountability and self-governance. Self-awareness has become even more important in the contemporary work scenario where a large number of organizations have made started hybrid or remote work (Issah 2018).

The individuals who are self-aware are able to focus their attention and thoughts and thereby are able to manage and control their thoughts rather than allowing their emotions to control them. Self-awareness is the attribute which the employees strive for within the workplace. While self-awareness allows the individual to have control over their emotions and actions, the employees who are self-aware take the challenges through a stride and are thereby able to react to the situation in a professional and calm manner. Self-awareness becomes a critical aspect as a large number of companies and industries undergo prolonged periods of disruptions in their workplace (Lumpkin and Achen 2018).

From the HRM perspective, it has been suggested that the professionals involved in HR should be dedicated to promoting self-awareness if they aim at the growth and development of their employees. With the increase in self-awareness among professionals and employees, there comes an improved understanding of their competencies so that they can make conscious and strategic decisions. Karagianni and Jude Montgomery (2018) claims that self-awareness is crucial for both professional and personal growth. Greathouse (2018) posits that situational decision-making from the perspective of HRM is concerned with undertaking pragmatic and effective choices or decisions and thereby considering contexts or situations rather than taking one unified approach for all the situations. With an increasing focus towards ethical human resource management, the practitioners are dedicated to adopting practices and principles so as to ensure that respect, justice and fairness are attributed towards individuals within the scope of the organization. The identification of inherent dignity and worth lies at the centre of consciousness for ethical Human Resource Management (Miao et al., 2018).

Inclusion within the scope of the workplace refers to a sense of accountability which is two-way and thereby individuals are required to accept inclusion as well as ascribe inclusion to others. In an inclusive work environment as such employees tend to feel more comfortable and welcome. In terms of increasing self-awareness in an inclusive working environment it becomes crucial to understand the nature of bias (Muhammad 2021). An inclusive workplace accommodates diverse characteristics of the employees and subjects, part of the organization. The employees vary in terms of ethnicity, gender, age, language, sexuality and physical ability. The professionals dedicated to human resource management are bestowed with the duty of creating and empowering leadership and management to create a diverse organizational culture. The culture which is inclusive and respectful grants the employees with the opportunity to grow, and learn and thereby are more effective to contribute towards the productivity of the organization (Özek and Ferraris 2018). The following discussion will be concerned with understanding how these behavioural standards as a crucial part of human resource management can be aligned to attain increased self-awareness by the professionals on both personal and professional levels. Theoretical understanding of behavioural standards in human resource management would be analysed through the lens of personal reflection further elucidated through Gibbs's reflective cycle (Brown, 2020). The behavioural attributes as selected come under primary areas of concern in the contemporary human resource management practices to be undertaken irrespective of the industry and organization (Armstrong 2018).

Section B

Research Design, Methodology and Method

Research Design Methodology

The concern would be to undertake reflexive dialogic action research . The aim of action research is to produce an identification of the problem and thereby come up with an iterative action plan along with the strategies so that the problems can be solved (Armstrong 2018). The key four stages of the cyclical action research process are reflect, plan, act, observe by reflect. In order to develop the understanding a bit more extensively Gibbs Reflective cycle would be referred to. Gibbs's reflective cycle is considered to be one of those prominent and most used cyclical models of reflection which divides the reflection into six stages through which the experience is explored (Hewett et al., 2018).

Method

Taking Gibbs's Reflective cycle as the basis of reflection the first stage would be description where the series of experiences would be described in detail followed by an account of the feelings of the individuals in the context of that event or experience. The next step is the evaluation of the incidents and the impact that the incident has left upon the person in concern. This is further followed by analysis of the incident taking into account the evaluation of experience and feelings associated with it. The next stage is that of conclusion followed by the action plan which structures the future course of action in regard to the incident.

The incident which would be reflected upon in the course of discussion is that of recruitment and the selection process which had been happening in the organization where I had been working for a particular project for the fulfilment of an academic degree. The experience of working in the organization's department of Human Resource Management has provided me with exposure to understanding how different areas of HR operate within the organization itself and the ways in which real-life working challenges require agile and strategic measures to be mitigated effectively.

Critique of Research Design

While the structured and cyclical nature of the Gibbs Reflective cycle as one of the prominent models of cyclical reflective analysis is not doubted, there are certain areas of concern with which the analysis of Gibbs Reflective negates or is not provided that much attention while dealing with. The practice of reflection has been a predominant one in a large number of domains where it requires the concerned individuals to be engaged in compelling thoughts regarding a practice, event or experience. It requires the thinking to be critical whereby all that has been involved is taken into account irrespective of the fact whether it has worked or not. The aim of reflective analysis is to take into account all the aspects so that a future plan can be devised after looking into the areas that could be improved upon. It also involves bringing in necessary changes in the attributes that are not working well. Reflection provides the path for future action (Adeani et al., 2020).

Provided that the process of reflection requires a certain medium of expression to be expressed which can be in the form of personal notes and narratives or can also be in the form of a conversation with peers. Communication becomes very central to the process of reflection. The rigid structure of Gibbs's reflective cycle provides an understanding or a structure to arrange the reflection structurally. By making a separate and dedicated segment for description, Gibbs's reflective cycle contextualizes the role of the description of the experience as central to the reflection process. The dedicated segment for feeling in the Gibbs reflection cycle provides the scope of framing the reflection in a different way as opposed to the regular discursive academic domain (Markkanen et al., 2020).

Having said that there are certain areas within the Gibbs reflective circle that invite criticism, the first being the rigid six stages model or structure which leaves no space for the expansion and interpretation. Due to the rigidity of the structure in most cases, the reflective cycle turns into a superficial reflection as there is no scope for the reflector to challenge the assumptions or values associated with the experience. Another area of drawback within the scope of the Gibbs Reflective cycle is that the focus of the Gibbs reflective cycle is concentrated highly towards the reflector while negating the presence of the others within that domain. Thus the framework provided by Gibbs for the process of reflection fails to go beyond the self-analysis. Thereby it becomes self-serving rather than being useful individually. Along with that Gibbs's reflective cycle does not have any scope for critical thinking despite the fact that there have been components of analysis and evaluation. The feelings and descriptions being set at the initial part of the cycle make it difficult for different aspects of analysis and evaluations to be accommodated. There is also certain confusion in terms of differentiating between analysis and evaluation and thereby there has been a favouritism for the status quo which is being provided (Tawanwongsri and Phenwan 2019).

This course of discussion has been helpful in elucidating the pros and cons of Gibbs's Reflective cycle as the most used cyclical reflective model. Though the structured nature of the model provides ample scope for the structured reflection writing of any experience, in the case of HRM which involves more than one individual in the process the Gibbs Reflective cycle might not be suitable as it emphasizes the experience of the individual rather than the experience of the others involved in the process (Dhaliwal et al., 2018).

Section C

Digital Storyboard

Dear Diary

I would like to take up this opportunity to share some of my experience of working in a company at the HR department for about 6 months as a part of my internship project. Academically my domain of specialization is HRM and I would like to take it up as my professional career as well. For me HRM is that domain which allows me to interact and experience multiple subjects, learn about them and gain and expand my understanding of dealing with various subjects continuously, HRM provides me with that continuous scope for understanding and improvement which I take not only scope of professional development but a scope of personal development as well. Self-awareness in my opinion is one of those qualities which are a must in HR professionals especially in contemporary times where organizations are agile and expect the employees to cope with changing work environments and culture immediately. In my understanding self-awareness strikes a balance between the existing competencies and the required skills to cope with the challenges and react to them. It also allows individuals to take ownership of their actions and emotions and act accordingly. I strongly suggest and feel that developing a culture of self-awareness within the organization is crucial for the organizational as well as individual development. However, there have been certain incidents which has allowed me to understand that self-awareness alone is not sufficient rather it requires certain behavioural aspects to be taken into account to ensure effective management of the subjects.

Figure 1: Gibbs Reflective Cycle

Source: (ed.ac.uk 2023)

Description - It was during the recruitment and selection process within the organization and I had been provided with the duty to segregate the applications on the grounds of their experience and qualification. While doing the same I realized that the organization is highly rigid in their process of selection of resumes as I could find several potential candidates who had to be disregarded because they missed one or two criteria. If provided opportunity I am sure those individuals could have also proven valuable to the organization. This was followed by the recruitment process where the shortlisted candidates had been called upon for the interview round. Being a close observer of the whole process I noticed that there has been certain favouritism that was being played out during the process. Candidates referred by the members of higher authority were provided with initial chances as opposed to the regular candidates (Ardian et al., 2019).

Along with that, the authorities took an intolerant attitude towards people of colour. They were not being properly interviewed or questioned and their resumes were discarded as soon as they left the room. This has been a shocking experience for me in person. This is not something which I had expected the HRM in the real world to be.

Feeling – I felt quite disheartened as I felt that the practice as I witnessed it was unethical and not inclusive. In my opinion, self-awareness is crucial on the part of the organization and they are required to develop the understanding of how a particular subject differs from the other. Being ethical and inclusive in their practice should be the concern of the organization which in my opinion was highly lacking. However, it acted as a learning experience for me in person where I understood that in real-world HRM practice, such malpractices continue to exist however it is important for me an HRM practitioner to nurture certain behavioural standards as a part of developing my self-awareness towards them.

Evaluation – From the following experience I could evaluate that the domain of HRM is not free from its cons however it requires a better understanding of ethical values. Perhaps it requires the organization to develop certain ethical standards in the course of their organizational practice. I think understanding ethical requirements is crucial in terms of self-awareness initiatives as it allows one to understand the ethical practices that they require to accommodate within their own actions. The practice of inclusive working becomes crucial in the contemporary time when the workplace has become global and boundaries in terms of cultures are merging into one another. There has been an immense coming together of subjects, different values and understandings which ensures that the organizations also make provision for these values to be incorporated within their domain. With the increasing pace of challenges and changing work environments, agile decision-making has also become a part of the organization's initiative towards attaining self-awareness.

Analysis – From the above course of discussion it can be understood that developing a culture of self-awareness becomes highly important in the contemporary organizational scenario as the course of the organizations has been changing. With most organizations incorporating hybrid or remote working within their work culture, the practice of self-awareness has become immensely important. Along with that, it is also crucial to note that certain behavioural aspects or standards like ethical practice, inclusive working and prompt decision-making should be made a prerequisite in the organizational standards.

Conclusion – I can conclude at this juncture by saying that changes in the work and external environment create a notable impact on the work. Self-awareness becomes crucial for me as a practitioner to understand both my personal as well as professional development. As I had mentioned initially the domain of HRM is important to me personally as I feel motivated and dedicated to be able to work with it. However, working in a real organization has made me understand that the working practice in the real world is different from the theoretical understanding of it. This is where I think developing a nuanced understanding of the self becomes even more important.

Action plan - As a part of my future course of action, I would like to undertake a better understanding of these behavioural values so as to enhance my self-awareness. I would also like to take a critical approach and control my emotions and actions in the context of any situation so as to be able to react to them better. The understanding of self-awareness and associated values becomes crucial for both professional and personal development.

References

Adeani, I.S., Febriani, R.B. and Syafryadin, S., 2020. Using GIBBS’reflective cycle in making reflections of literary analysis. Indonesian EFL Journal, 6(2), pp.139-148. https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/IEFLJ/article/view/3382

Ardian, P., Hariyati, R.T.S. and Afifah, E., 2019. Correlation between implementation case reflection discussion based on the Graham Gibbs Cycle and nurses’ critical thinking skills. Enfermeria Clinica, 29, pp.588-593. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S113086211930213X

Armstrong, PaulAlan (2018a) ‘Reflexive Digital Bricolage: The ART of Digital Reflection’. In: 6th International Conference on Professional Doctorates, 'Professional Doctorates in a Changing Landscape'., 2223 Mar 2018, Friends House, London.

Armstrong, PaulAlan (2018b) Scholar-Practitioner, Reflexive Professionals, the ART of Autobiographical Professional Development. International Journal of Online Graduate Education, 1 (1). pp. 114.

Brown, S.T., 2020. Self-Awareness of Who One Is, Makes a Difference: Examining the Predictive Role of Positive Psychological Capital to Mitigate Leadership Turnover in Iowa’s School Systems (Doctoral dissertation, Drake University). https://search.proquest.com/openview/6113ae350b6d82a6f13f0a19220ac32f/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=44156

Denzin, N.K. (2016). Critical Qualitative Inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, [online] 23(1), pp.8–16. doi:10.1177/1077800416681864.

Dhaliwal, U., Singh, S. and Singh, N., 2018. Reflective student narratives: honing professionalism and empathy. Indian J Med Ethics, 3(1), pp.9-15. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Upreet-Dhaliwal/publication/318676729_Reflective_student_narratives_honing_professionalism_and_empathy/links/5c7e7113a6fdcc4715b0ee4a/Reflective-student-narratives-honing-professionalism-and-empathy.pdf

ed.ac.uk., 2023. Gibbs' Reflective Cycle . https://www.ed.ac.uk/reflection/reflectors-toolkit/reflecting-on-experience/gibbs-reflective-cycle

Eurich, T., 2018. What self-awareness really is (and how to cultivate it). Harvard Business Review, 4. https://membership.amavic.com.au/files/What%20self-awareness%20is%20and%20how%20to%20cultivate%20it_HBR_2018.pdf

Greathouse, K., Gritter, J. and Imhoff, A., 2018. Leadership: Self-Awareness of Leadership Styles in Occupational Therapy. https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/ot_work/1/

Hewett, R., Shantz, A., Mundy, J. and Alfes, K., 2018. Attribution theories in human resource management research: A review and research agenda. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 29(1), pp.87-126. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09585192.2017.1380062

Issah, M., 2018. Change leadership: The role of emotional intelligence. Sage Open, 8(3), p.2158244018800910. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2158244018800910

Karagianni, D. and Jude Montgomery, A., 2018. Developing leadership skills among adolescents and young adults: a review of leadership programmes. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 23(1), pp.86-98. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02673843.2017.1292928

Lumpkin, A. and Achen, R.M., 2018. Explicating the synergies of self‐determination theory, ethical leadership, servant leadership, and emotional intelligence. Journal of Leadership Studies, 12(1), pp.6-20. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jls.21554

Markkanen, P., Välimäki, M., Anttila, M. and Kuuskorpi, M., 2020. A reflective cycle: Understanding challenging situations in a school setting. Educational Research, 62(1), pp.46-62. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00131881.2020.1711790

Miao, C., Humphrey, R.H. and Qian, S., 2018. Emotional intelligence and authentic leadership: A meta-analysis. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 39(5), pp.679-690. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/LODJ-02-2018-0066/full/html

Muhammad, H.B.R., 2021. Is Self-Awareness needed in Leadership?. In Студенческое самоуправление как инновационный ресурс развития общества (pp. 83-89). https://elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=46150074

Özek, H. and Ferraris, A., 2018. The role of self-awareness and self-efficacy on career decision-making: An innovative perspective. Innovation and Capacity Building: Cross-disciplinary Management Theories for Practical Applications, pp.207-229. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-90945-5_11

Ripamonti, S., Galuppo, L., Gorli, M., Scaratti, G. & Cunliffe, A. L. 2016. Pushing action research towards reflexive practice. Journal of Management Inquiry. 25:55-68

Rosenbach, W.E., 2018. Contemporary issues in leadership. Routledge. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=fulgDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=self+awareness+in+leadership&ots=QwpmM7TxxG&sig=YkbYj7F9Slnjmc3bzDPmyKN1sxI

Tawanwongsri, W. and Phenwan, T., 2019. Reflective and feedback performances on Thai medical students’ patient history-taking skills. BMC medical education, 19, pp.1-8. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12909-019-1585-z
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