MGMT 8910M Week 6 Feedback Log Example

Twenty-Three Comments, Each With a Decision and a Ripple: A Feedback Log for Chapter One of a Dissertation on Work Engagement Among Field Service Technicians, Showing How Defining Engagement as a State Reached Into the Draft Method Chapter

Student Name

Walden University

MGMT 8910M: Dissertation Development Process

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Twenty-Three Comments, Each With a Decision and a Ripple: A Feedback Log for Chapter One of a Dissertation on Work Engagement Among Field Service Technicians, Showing How Defining Engagement as a State Reached Into the Draft Method Chapter

About the Log

The dissertation examines how scheduling practices relate to work engagement among field service technicians at regional telecommunications firms. Chapter one went to the chair, a second committee member and two peers in Week 5. They returned 23 comments. Each is logged with an identifier, the reader, the location, the comment quoted exactly, a decision of accept, adapt or decline, the change made with its new page reference, and a ripple column listing any other passage the change affected. Fourteen comments were accepted as written, six adapted and three declined. Eight representative rows are shown; the full log is kept with the draft.

The Log

Table 1

Selected Rows From the Chapter One Feedback Log

Page references are to the revised draft dated March 9. Comments C9 to C23 follow the same format in the full log.

The Ripple That Mattered

Comment C1 produced the log's most important ripple. Schaufeli et al. (2002) defined work engagement as a fulfilling, work-related state with three parts, energy and persistence, a sense of significance, and deep concentration, which they called vigor, dedication and absorption, and described it as lasting but not fixed, a state rather than a trait. Accepting that definition in chapter one meant that every other place the dissertation described engagement had to agree with it. The instrument description in chapter three, still in draft, used phrases such as "engaged employees" and "an engaged disposition," which imply a stable trait. The log records that the chapter was checked line by line and that two sentences were changed. Macey and Schneider (2008) noted that the literature has used engagement variously for a disposition, a passing condition and a pattern of conduct, often without saying which; the ripple check is a guard against mixing those meanings within one document.

Declined Comments

Each declined comment has a one-sentence reason. C5 asked for burnout as a second outcome; it was declined because the research question concerns engagement, and adding burnout would introduce a second construct with its own measures and literature. C14 asked for a comparison with office-based staff; it was declined because the population is field technicians, and office staff are not named in the problem. C19 suggested moving the theoretical framework into chapter two; it was declined because the university's template places the framework in chapter one. Kahn (1990), whose account of personal engagement C3 asked to expand, described engagement in terms of how fully people bring themselves to their roles, which is part of why the dissertation keeps him in the framework even while following Schaufeli's definition for measurement.

References

Kahn, W. A. (1990). Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal, 33(4), 692-724. https://doi.org/10.5465/256287

Macey, W. H., & Schneider, B. (2008). The meaning of employee engagement. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1(1), 3-30. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-9434.2007.0002.x

Schaufeli, W. B., Salanova, M., González-Romá, V., & Bakker, A. B. (2002). The measurement of engagement and burnout: A two sample confirmatory factor analytic approach. Journal of Happiness Studies, 3(1), 71-92. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015630930326