Conducting Action Research for Business and Management Students

David Coghlan, Abraham B. (Rami) Shani

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781526454300
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: F&D

In Conducting Action Research, Coghlan and Shani explain how action research differs from more detached research methods and provides expert guidance on how to engage effectively with it, helping the reader to complete both a successful research project and produce findings that are useful in an organizational context. Ideal for Business and Management students reading for a Master's degree, each book in the series may also serve as reference books for doctoral students and faculty members interested in the method.

Part of SAGE?s Mastering Business Research Methods, conceived and edited by Bill Lee, Mark N. K. Saunders and Vadake K. Narayanan and designed to supportresearchers by providing in-depth and practical guidance on using a chosen method of data collection or analysis.

1 Introducing Action Research

Introduction

This chapter introduces action research as a research approach, which aims at both taking action and creating knowledge together. It is practised in all fields of social action including organization development, business and management, education, nursing and health care, social work and community development. Within business and management, as Coghlan and Shani (2016) demonstrate, it is practised across multiple sectors and business disciplines. It is found in industries, such as banking, mining, automotive, healthcare, electronics, pharmaceutical, food, manufacturing, energy and media, and is practised in business disciplines, such as general management, operations management, marketing, information technology, accounting, finance, e-commerce and human resources.

Action research is a commonly adopted approach in masters programmes where the students may be experienced practitioners and are engaging in their programmes in a part-time capacity and have expectations that the output from their programmes will be directly useful to their organizations. Action research is also viewed as a managerial approach to taking action and while doing so embedding in the practice a scientific discovery process that can enhance both the action and generate a deeper level understanding of the issue at hand. Action research is ideally placed to meet both requirements of an academic programme and organizational usefulness. Where the students are not experienced practitioners and are not attached to an organizational system, they typically work under the close direction of a supervisor who is overseeing an organizational intervention. They may be part of a wider research project where there is a team of researchers and any single masters dissertation is a concurrent contribution to the larger project.

This chapter is structured as follows. First, we introduce the foundations of action research, providing a definition which will form the basis of the book and locating it in the work of Kurt Lewin, in forms of knowledge production and in dialogic organization development. Second, we describe the origins of action research and locate it in the philosophy of Aristotle, the social psychology of Kurt Lewin in organization development, in sociotechnical systems and design thinking. Third, we introduce how action research works through cycles of action. Finally, we introduce the distinction between a core project and a dissertation project as central to those engaging in action research as a masters dissertation.

Throughout this and other chapters we invite you to pause and apply the theoretical points of the chapter to your dissertation project. We do this by means of ‘Questions for Reflection’. Here we pose questions and invite you to answer them for yourself in reflections in a reflective journal which we introduce later in this chapter. These reflections are aimed at capturing your insights as you consider your action research project and at enabling you to plan how you will work and with whom in an action research mode. The questions are not comprehensive nor are they a school exercise to be completed. You may think of other questions that are worth considering and we encourage you to pursue those too. Accordingly, the reflections from these ‘Questions for Reflection’ show your work in progress. Later, as your work develops, you will verify some insights and discard others as you replace them with new insights from your experience.

What is Action Research?

As the term suggests, action research integrates both action and research, unlike traditional research approaches which focus on knowledge creation only. Accordingly, the distinction between data collection and data analysis of other research traditions does not apply as in action research they are inextricably linked.

Box 1.1 introduces the story of Kevin, a part-time MBA student, and illustrates how he took the opportunity confronting him as a manager to select/choose/define his dissertation topic. We will follow Kevin’s story through these opening chapters and provide a further extended example in Chapter 4.

Box 1.1 Finding your action research project

Kevin found the lecture on insider action research in his part-time MBA research methods course very revealing and stimulating. He had been struggling with the task of finding a dissertation topic as he found the notion of research as he understood it to be somewhat removed from his concerns as a manager. In this lecture he was exposed to an approach to research that was grounded in the notion of researching in action and that he could engage in as an insider member of his own organization. He had some challenging issues ahead in his managerial role and the prospect of combining tackling them with doing his MBA dissertation appeared to offer him an opportunity to use his actual experience in his organization and be of practical use both to himself in completing his MBA and to his organization. His firm had recently been acquired by a larger firm and the acquisition meant that his section would now comprise members of the former acquiring organization as well as his own former colleagues of the acquired organization. Kevin had retained his position as section head and was responsible for the integration of the two groups into the section. The acquiring company was moving into Kevin’s building. Kevin knew that there was a good deal of anxiety among his staff about the new organization and the arrival of new colleagues. The talk among his own former staff was that they were anxious about losing the work atmosphere that they valued and they feared being dominated by the incoming group, which, after all, was the acquiring company. His new staff would be arriving in two weeks’ time. From the MBA modules on mergers and acquisitions and managing change, Kevin knew that his situation was pretty typical and that unless he managed the process of integration, it could be a disaster. He decided to adopt the preparation of his team for the arrival management of new members as the topic for his MBA dissertation.

Questions for Reflection

Does Kevin’s situation and his sense of the opportunity to combine his forthcoming managerial challenge with his MBA dissertation evoke ideas for you as you consider a topic for your dissertation? Is there an existing or upcoming organizational challenge that is on your desk – or perhaps the desk of a friend or relative – which could form the foundation of an action research dissertation? Did one of your colleagues consult you or share with you a challenge that she was facing that might be an interesting possible topic to explore? Write a reflection on your provisional answers to these questions in your reflective journal.

Definition of Action Research

Drawing on an earlier definition by Shani and Pasmore (2016: 191) the definition of action research that we are following in this book is:

An emergent inquiry process in which applied behavioural science knowledge is integrated with existing organizational knowledge and applied to address real organizational issues. It is simultaneously concerned with bringing about change in organizations, in developing self-help competencies in organizational members and in adding to scientific knowledge. Finally it is an evolving process that is undertaken in a spirit of collaboration and co-inquiry.

This definition captures the critical themes of the approach that constitute action research: that as an emergent inquiry process it engages in an unfolding story, where data shift as a consequence of intervention and where it is not possible to predict or to control what takes place with a high degree of accuracy. As an emergent process, action research involves researching in the present tense as Chandler and Torbert (2003) and Coghlan and Shani (2017) elaborate. Much of what we refer to as qualitative research is focused on the past. Action research builds on the past and takes place in the present with a view to shaping the future. It focuses on real organizational issues, rather than issues created particularly for the purposes of research. It operates in the domain of how people participate in systems and so applied behavioural science knowledge (i.e. the range of disciplines such as organizational psychology, organization theory, management, team working and so on) is both engaged in and drawn upon. Action research’s distinctive characteristic is that it addresses the twin tasks of bringing about change in organizations and in generating robust, actionable knowledge, in an evolving process that is undertaken in a spirit of collaboration and co-inquiry, whereby research is constructed with people, rather than on or for them.

A Complete Theory of Action Research

Shani and Pasmore (2016) present a comprehensive theory of the action research process in terms of four factors (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Complete theory of action research

• Context: These factors set the context of the action research project. Environmental factors in the global and local economies provide the larger context in which action research takes place. The more local context of organizational characteristics, such as resources, history, formal and informal organizations and the degrees of congruence between them, affects the readiness and capability for participating in action research. Individual goals may differ and impact the direction of the project, while shared goals enhance collaboration. Mapping out the context in as comprehensive a way as possible is critical.
• Quality of relationships: The quality of relationships between members of the system and researchers is paramount and evolves during the action research process. Hence the relationships need to be designed for and managed through shared goals, collaborative action, trust building, developing a common language, shared reflection and so on.
• Quality of the action research process itself: The quality of the emerging action research process is grounded in the dual focus on both the inquiry process and the implementation process. As the dual intent is to trigger action and generate new insights, paying attention to ‘how’ the project is progressing through continuous collaborative cycles is essential.
• Outcomes: The dual outcomes of action research are a) improved organizational practice and the development of self-help competencies and b) the creation of actionable theory through the action and inquiry. The added value to the organization is critical for the research to be permitted and, as such, the outcomes are viewed as enhanced systems of practice and knowledge that impact human, economic and ecological sustainability.

To return to Kevin’s story we can see the four factors operative in his dissertation project.

Box 1.2 The four factors

The practical business and managerial context of Kevin’s dissertation work lay in the acquisition of his firm by another firm and the need to make this acquisition work. The academic context told him that mergers and acquisitions typically do not work effectively because of a failure to address issues relating to cultural integration. Kevin foresaw several challenges. In order to build a new integrated section team he would have to create a climate of openness in his team and facilitate a shared preparation for its members to be open and welcoming of the upcoming new situation. He also needed to attend to the academic process of reading relevant literatures on mergers and acquisitions and on team development and show how this reading informed his actions in enabling integration to take place.

Questions for Reflection

How does Kevin’s understanding of his situation and his projected action research project inform your thinking? What are the salient challenges from the external and internal environments that are creating the imperative for your action research project? Who are the key people with whom you need to collaborate? How might you design their engagement in the proposed action and knowledge generation? How might you develop the partnership? What might be some of the possible roadblocks in the study of the challenge? What are your hoped-for outcomes, both for the firm and for the knowledge you generate? Write a reflection on your provisional answers to these questions in your reflective journal.

The Origins of Action Research

Action research integrates knowledge creation and practice through a collaborative process. Through clarifying the philosophical and historical foundations of the separation between knowledge and practice and more recent calls for integration, we can better mark the way forward towards a more balanced approach that addresses both basic knowledge and practice. In this section we trace the origins of different philosophies of science in Aristotle’s writings. We illustrate by characterizing how, through action research and similar paradigms, the re-emergence of Aristotle’s second, less celebrated legacy offers a significant opportunity for management practice.

Aristotle’s Legacies and Philosophies of Science

Interestingly, both the legacy of separating theory and practice and subsequent calls for their integration emanate from Aristotle’s work more than 2000 years ago. Inspired by his mentors Plato and Socrates, Aristotle initially distinguished the spheres of scientific knowledge, and of craft and experience, as two separate domains in Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics (Parry, 2003). His reasoning was that scientific knowledge, episteme theoretike, concerns the underlying rules and principles governing why and how something happens whereas craft, techne, deals with everyday practice. Deriving episteme theoretike required scholars, through their careful and systematic inquiry, to clarify universal truths and in Tenkasi and Hay’s words (2008: 51) ‘causal laws that are universally applicable to events and situations’.

However, Aristotle would later re-examine this division in his reflections on the nature of knowledge in the classic work Metaphysics. Here, Aristotle shifted his attention from the pursuit of generalizable knowledge as the ultimate end to consider practical action or ‘actionable knowledge’, phronesis, which can both solve practical problems and, in turn, inform generalizable knowledge. Dunne (1993) provides a rich discussion of Aristotle’s notion of phronesis, showing how the bedrock of true understanding emanates from, and appropriate action is guided through, the creative integration of experience and craft, and theory. Aristotle argued that true knowledge of events and situations, especially as it concerns practical action, involves knowledge of both the experience and craft, empeiria and techne, derived from those experiences, as well as universal principles, or episteme theoretike (that may apply to those settings). Aristotle further contrasts individuals with empeiria, techne and episteme with the scholar, the lógios, who has only episteme and relies on the rational accounting of why things happen without a basis in experience or craft. According to Aristotle, lógios are ineffective in producing phronesis. Aristotle (1961: 981b) explains:

… experience, like action or production, deals with things severally as concrete individuals, whereas art deals with them generally. … If then someone lacking exp...