Research
Organizational Research: Assessment & Evaluation
With over two decades of social science research experience, I can help you design, implement, research and report on your organization’s strategic and programmatic initiatives with any or all of the following research methods, using both in person and online approaches:
Case Studies
Clarify the Questions
Corpus Linguistics
Critical-Cultural Analysis
Discourse Analysis
Ethnographic Methods
Focus Groups
Interviews
Literature Reviews
Narrative Analysis
Participatory Action Research
Participant Observation
Questionnaires
Social Network Analysis
Surveys
Thematic Analysis
Values Analysis
workplace Culture and Well-Being
Do you need to understand and shift your workplace culture so that it better reflects your organization’s purpose and strategy? Through holistic social and behavioral research, I offer qualitative and quantitative research to help you identify areas for change and propose concrete steps to maximize your workplace well-being and expertise.
For example, by performing and synthesizing information from 1:1 interviews or small group focus group conversations, I can help you better understand your team’s behaviors that are impacting collaborations and relationships. Through design and implementation of surveys, I can support your need for anonymized and expansive data collection. Through thematic analysis of written policies, I can show how your current systems create your organizational life. Through social network analysis, I can help you maximize team workflows, identify gaps in process, suggest strategic employee hires, and show how team dynamics and innovation show who you are and the value you bring to your clients or communities. Through ethnographic methods, I can help articulate how your physical spaces, nonverbal communication, and other community practices are hindering your goals or speeding your vision for who you want to be.
Research outputs may include written reports, data-driven dashboards, in-person or online presentations, individualized or team-based coaching, and carefully tailored workshops and presentations to pursue positive growth and development.
Wicked Problems
Wicked Problems are tenacious challenges that are challenging to define, have no clear binaries of the exact right or wrong thing to do, have no immediate or ultimate solution, and are caught up in complex systems in which every problem is a symptom of another problem.
Do you find you have a Wicked Problem you need to investigate? I can help clarify the questions, conduct literature reviews to understand the complexity of factors shaping your system, pursue participatory action research in which stakeholders and participants are involved to understand the context and co-create solutions, or conduct values analysis in order to explore common ground and divergent perspectives to shape policy, procedures and practices that begin to address an ongoing challenge.
Research outputs may include written reports, data-driven dashboards, in-person or online presentations, individualized or team-based coaching, and carefully tailored workshops and presentations to pursue positive growth and development.
Organizational listening Appraisal
Strategic listening involve listening practices, routines and cultures that are created within organizational structures. Involving leaders, followers, internal and external stakeholders, improving organizational listening can help you build a culture that is reflexive, nimble, ethical and pursues foundational practices that help organizations thrive. Is your team, group or organization strategically listening through your systems, structures and processes? I can work with you to gather data, perspectives and knowledge about the effectiveness of your listening and instill highly effective listening in all micro, mesa and macro layers of your entity.
I can help you see your listening cultural health through questionnaires with internal and external stakeholders, quantitative corpus linguistics and qualitative values analysis of your policies and procedures, ethnographic methods and participatory action research that probe deeply into your group’s cultural ways of being, critical-cultural study to better understand how power and status impact listening flows, and many other mixed method social scientific and humanities based approaches to inquiry to describe your unique listening culture.
Research outputs may include written reports, data-driven dashboards, in-person or online presentations, individualized or team-based coaching, and carefully tailored workshops and presentations to pursue positive growth and development.
Team Identity and collaboration
Do you want to better understand your team identity? Do you need to understand how an individual or community’s diverse identity is being engaged in your organization. Through holistic social and behavioral research, I can conduct qualitative and quantitative studies to help you explore the ways that group identity and individual identity are expressed and constructed in your organizations and communities.
For example, through analysis of individual and organizational storytelling about workplace identities and image, I can use narrative analysis to show how your group or individual stories are creating your personae. By performing and synthesizing information from 1:1 interviews or small group focus group conversations, I can help you see your team’s key inclusion, diversity, equity, access and social justice (IDEAS) behaviors impacting your relationships. Through quantitative corpus linguistics and qualitative discourse analysis, I can show you how textual and verbal expressions of traits like certainty, optimism and commonality are playing out in your communication. Ultimately, I can help you create spaces in which each individual, group, team and organization can make strategic choices to express their authentic selves in flourishing ways.
Research outputs may include written reports, data-driven dashboards, in-person or online presentations, individualized or team-based coaching, and carefully tailored workshops and presentations to pursue positive growth and development.
These are just a few of the research opportunities that I offer.
What Research Clients Have to Say:
Great data and report. A+++.
“So much positive momentum and really good systems thinking came from Liz’s care for our team.”
“In addition to having a stellar record in research project management, Liz is a gifted leader and org/system developer. She is also one of the most organized and efficient people I know (both as a researcher and leader), and an outstanding writer.”
“She’s really excellent at reframing a topic or question and shedding new light on an issue that cuts to the heart of various challenges we’re expressing.”
“She has pushed my thinking as much as anyone I have worked with. Her DEIJ lens, passion for academics, eye for systems, creativity around structure and generally intuitive take on things has been a real gift to our team.”
