Marlies Whitehouse | Zurich University of Applied Sciences (original) (raw)

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Papers by Marlies Whitehouse

New perspectives in organizational communication, 2023

Stakeholders in transdisciplinary collaboration understandably expect that interventions will gen... more Stakeholders in transdisciplinary collaboration understandably expect that interventions will generate added value. The evaluation of such added value cannot lead to a simple number at the bottom of a calculation, but the success of interventions can be measured at key points. For practice-here the financial analysts, and the organisation-added value is achieved when practitioners have continued to work independently within a defined period of time after a transdisciplinary collaboration project and the objectives of the intervention have been achieved sustainably. For the researcher, added value is achieved when firstly, the research-based interventions have led to a successful and sustainable impact for practitioners; secondly, the measures could be further developed through insights from the interventions, and thirdly, the transdisciplinary collaboration results in scaling effects of knowledge generation. In the following, the added value of the research-based interventions with regard to the overall research question (Chapter 1) is discussed: what are the reasons for the actual state of texts, and how can financial analysts reach a different target state if necessary? (Sect. 10.1). Then, the significance of this added value for the theoretical, practical, and, above all, for the transdisciplinary context is discussed with regard to organisations, the financial community, and society at large (Sect. 10.2).

New perspectives in organizational communication, 2023

This book identifies problems in financial analysts' text production and explains why solving the... more This book identifies problems in financial analysts' text production and explains why solving these problems benefits theory, practice, and society at large. The overall research question is: What are the reasons for the actual state of texts, and how can financial analysts reach a different target state if necessary? In Part II, this overall research question is answered from context, product, and process perspectives (Chapters 4-6). From a context perspective, I investigate the situation of financial analysts in their team, the bank, in the financial community, and in the financial world in general (Chapter 4). From a product perspective, I analyse financial analysts' text products regarding comprehensiveness and comprehensibility, focusing on argumentative practices (Chapter 5). From a process perspective, I shed light on the financial analysts' writing process and the investors' needs for understandable investment recommendations (Chapter 6).

New perspectives in organizational communication, 2023

Financial analysts are professional writers: writing dominates their working days, the accuracy o... more Financial analysts are professional writers: writing dominates their working days, the accuracy of their texts is an integral part of their payroll, and their published recommendations impact the financial markets around the globe. However, most financial analysts have never been trained in writing. As a consequence, they are neither aware of their writing practices (Sect. 2.10) nor of the activity fields in text production and writing (Sect. 2.11). Furthermore, they often are not consciously setting up their line of argumentation in the texts (Sect. 2.9). Ethnographic research knows about these issues (Chapter 4), which enables researchers to contextualise text features (Chapter 5) as traces of "what is going on" (Sealey & Carter, 2009, p. 70) beyond the observable and allows for analysis, evaluation, and interpretation of situated activity of the writers. However, what they lack is process-based data for the further development of the financial analysts' writing processes. In order to include the process perspective, verbal data on both the production and the reception processes was combined: the corpus of statements from participants in writing courses covers writers' issues during the writing process in general, and financial analysts' perspectives on the writing process in particular (Sect. 6.2.1); the aggregated data from a retail investor opinion poll focuses on the readers' perspective on the uptake of financial analysts' text products (Sect. 6.2.2). Since these

New perspectives in organizational communication, 2023

This study has been realised in a transdisciplinary research framework of applied linguistics (Kr... more This study has been realised in a transdisciplinary research framework of applied linguistics (Kramsch & Perrin, 2018). In research practice, this means that I collaborated with stakeholders and practitioners from the financial community, consisting of financial analysts, financial journalists, rating agencies, and investors (Sect. 4.4.4). All the participants were informed that the results of our collaboration would be published in this book. The goal was to establish a mutually fruitful collaboration, throughout the project, with benefits for all participants. First, the collaborative development of the research question should heighten the awareness for each other's needs and interests, but also lead to a shared language (see 2.1-2.11, and Whitehouse et al., 2021) as a solid base for mutual understanding. Second, the collaboration should allow me to gather data from practice, and in return, practitioners should gain new insights from the empirically saturated and theoretically grounded analyses. Third, the interim results (Chapters 4-6) should help practitioners detect white spots in their professional knowledge and repertoires of practices. These white spots would then be addressed with courses by me in the form of individual coaching, in-house training, and organisational development (Chapter 9), which in return would provide opportunities to evaluate the practical relevance of the new knowledge-did the chosen measures

Schreiben in der Finanzwelt, 2019

New perspectives in organizational communication, 2023

Schreiben in der Finanzwelt, 2019