Action Research in Organisations

Jean McNiff, Jack Whitehead

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134600564
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The current orthodoxy is that 'knowledge' is the most powerful resource for organisational success. So how can managers develop the appropriate knowledge base to make their organisations grow? The answer lies in action research. Action research is increasingly perceived and used as a powerful methodology to promote professional awareness and development. However, there are very few texts that demonstrate how this can be utilised to promote management and organisational improvement or that emphasise the reflective nature of improving professionalism. Action Research in Organisations fills this gap. Aimed at both practising managers and university students alike, key features of this title include:
* the location of management and organisational theory within a framework * examination of the principles and practice of action research
* real-world examples and case studies of people attempting to improve their own situations through action research.

Part I: What is the nature of organisational knowledge?

This part comprises three chapters and three case stories. The stories demonstrate and explicate in action the issues that the chapters discuss.

Chapter 1 is ‘Learning organisations and the responsibility of managers’. I discuss some of the assumptions that underlie the idea of ‘the learning society’, particularly ideas about knowledge and learning, their nature, acquisition and potential use. I also discuss some of the implications for how the concept of ‘the learning society’ is understood when it is problematised in the light of the multiple factors involved in the idea of learning. I talk about how it is the responsibility of managers to develop the kinds of educative relationships that will support sustainable learning for the development of socially aware organisations.

This chapter is followed by a case story by Jimmy Ryan, a management consultant in Ireland, who studied with me for his MA in Education. Jimmy is constantly enthralled by the idea of learning, and this is evident in his story. He explains how participation on our course raised his own awareness of the potential for growth as soon as he began critically to engage with his own learning. Currently Jimmy is working with managers and management consultants, and encouraging them to adopt an action research approach in their organisations.

Chapter 2 is ‘Learning organisations as good societies’. I try to do two things here. First, I try to explain how important it is to problematise the idea of learning, if the ‘learning’ in ‘the learning organisation’ is to retain meaning and not become a vacuous buzzword. Part of the problematisation suggests that learning which leads to sustainable organisational growth is the same kind of learning that leads to the development of a good social order. I try to make a case for the interlinking of the ideas of learning organisations and good societies. Second, I try to show that the development of learning and good orders can best be understood by a form of theory which itself demonstrates a methodology of learning. Conceptual abstract theory is not sufficiently robust for this; newer forms of living theory are. The problem is that conceptual theory is still prized, so this often leads to differences of opinion about whose learning is valued.

The chapter is supported by Séamus Lillis’s story. I work with Séamus in Ireland in an informal capacity to support his PhD studies in rural community development. Séamus’s story shows the transformation in his practice and thinking, away from propositional forms towards dialectical forms. He is generating a new form of living educational theory of rural community development, which could potentially have significance for how rural community development comes to be theorised in the future, and for the development of structures at national level to support learning in local communities.

Chapter 3 is entitled ‘Action research, power and control’ and explains how I came to understand theories of power through first-hand experience. Power frequently carries negative connotations. It can of course also be positive, and I try to show how colleagues and I have generated our own power to combat authoritarian systems and created our own relationships of power to work towards realising our educational values for social benefit.

The case story which supports this chapter is from Pip Bruce Ferguson, who works as a staff developer at The Waikato Polytechnic. I met Pip some years ago when she was working for her doctoral studies, and was later delighted to act as external examiner for her PhD. Pip’s stories are full of remarkable courage, kindness and determination to improve the quality of life for others in ways that they consider appropriate for themselves. In this story, Pip shows how she is generating powerful relationships in her organisation to transform the nature of its social practices.

I believe the stories have an internal progression to show the transformational nature of personal learning for social change. Jimmy describes a personal learning experience; Séamus shows the transformational process of thinking and practice with the potential for wider organisational change; and Pip brings the focus of learning to a systemic level. There is an iterative and generative quality to the stories: each story shows how individual learning has the potential for wider change; the progression of the stories shows how the change process begins to permeate structures at increasingly wide levels of influence. The pattern within the individual stories, and within the sequence, shows the expanding and potentially unbounded nature of influence.

The work is supported by extracts from conversations I had with colleagues who work in management capacities in a variety of contexts. Those colleagues are:

Ashley Balbirnie, Managing Director of Ireland on Sunday Ltd., Dublin, Ireland. Wayne Gorman, assistant teacher at the University of Alberta, Canada, and part-time worker with ‘Urban’ Nations and Metis peoples, developing skills to set up an Art and Crafts Co-operative.

Sharon Jamieson, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Education, and Director, Office of the President, University of Alberta, Canada.

Liam Nagle, Vice President of World Wide Operations, Enterprise Solutions, Nortel Networks.

Oonagh O’Brien, Coordinator of Parish Renewal, Dublin, Ireland.

Stephen O’Connor, Supervisory Teacher in the Training Unit, City of Dublin Vocational Education Committee Educational Service to Prisons, Dublin, Ireland.

While the comments are by no means representative, they helped me to focus my thinking and see issues through new lenses.

This part of the book, I hope, makes the case for a generative transformational form of organisation theory which shows its potential both for individual and social renewal. It shows the living reality of people in organisational relationships who are creating powerful connections to support their own and one another’s learning.

1 Learning organisations and the responsibility of managers

As I reflect on my practice as a manager I am aware that I am always in relation with other people. My work is not a thing, separate from me. It is a personal process that I engage in. I am my work. Although it is my work, I do not work in isolation. My work as a manager is about how I can help people develop independence of mind and action, and help them enable others to do the same; our purpose is to achieve common organisational goals within a context of free and equal association (Dewey, 1916; Chomsky, 1996). As a manager, I try to create the conditions which will turn this purpose into reality.

I understand my work in terms of the values of individual autonomy, integrity and justice; I try to live these values in my management practice. When I evaluate my work I check whether I am living in the direction of my values, and this involves ongoing conversations with those whom I am supporting to see if they perceive me as living out these values in terms of their own lives.

Study means learning. As I study my work I am aware of my own learning. As I encourage others to study their work, I am encouraging them to be aware of their learning at an individual and collective level and use it for personal-social benefit. I am also aware of how I learn from and with them, and I ensure that they know this. This is the nature of our organisational learning.

When I first began to study organisation theory I became aware of some lack of problematisation. Terms such as ‘the learning organisation’, ‘knowledge workers’, ‘knowledge creating companies’ appear everywhere. Even a cursory glance reveals their lack of problematisation. What does a learning organisation learn, and why? What kind of knowledge do knowledge workers generate, and for what purpose? Do companies create knowledge as an abstract entity, and whose knowledge is it? It bothers me that terms are used willy-nilly, as if there is a universal understanding of what they mean, and their implications for real people’s lives.

It is disappointing that there is not widespread serious engagement in the literature with theories of learning, teaching and education in organisational contexts, especially given that impressive bodies of literature exist on theories of learning, teaching and education, and their interrelatedness. It is disappointing that more studies do not show how theories of learning, teaching and education might influence the quality of organisational growth. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the dominant form of theory is propositional, proposing theories about learning, teaching and education, without showing how those theories might impact on real lives. Anyone who wanted to reflect on their work would have access to quantities of abstract knowledge about hypothetical situations, but few real-life examples to show how theory influences practice, or how practice generates new theory. There is little support in the literature for people who might ask, ‘How do I understand my work in order to improve it?’, or who might have to explain to Mr Smith the reasons for his redundancy notice.

Over these recent years, therefore, I have come to see the need to go beyond traditional forms of theory. Traditional theory gives me insights and ideas, but I have to work these theories into the narrative of my life to show how, if at all, they contribute to its meaning. Sometimes existing theories are not relevant to me, so are not incorporated in my narrative. This process of weaving abstract theory into a narrative of learning from experience generates an embodied living theory of practice.

I want to explore these issues in this chapter, first by showing in a conceptual way what I think is important in existing theories of learning, teaching and education, and their relevance for organisational learning; and then to show how I think they can be woven into embodied theories which demonstrate their use value for human experience. I am adopting the same methodological approach to my enquiry as Clandinin and Connelly do when they explain the narrative inquiry approach to research: ‘stories illustrate the importance of learning and thinking narratively. … Our approach is not so much to tell you what narrative inquiry is by defining it but rather to show you what it is by creating a definition contextually by recounting what narrative inquirers do’ (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000: xiii).

What follows therefore is my emergent theory of learning, teaching and education in organisational contexts, and the implications of the theory for improving the quality of organisational life.

The chapter is organised in terms of the questions:

• What is the nature of organisational knowledge: what kinds of knowledge can be generated through studying experience in organisations?
• How is organisational knowledge acquired: what kind of learning goes on in organisations?
• How is organisational learning put to use: how do we use our organisational learning to best effect?
• What are the implications for the generation of new theories of organisation in the development of learning organisations?

1 What is the nature of organisational knowledge?

It is generally agreed in contemporary organisation and management studies that knowledge is a powerful resource for organisational growth and that knowl edge workers are scarce assets who need to be nurtured (Drucker, 1993; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). However, the concepts of knowledge and coming to know are often treated in a quite simplistic way.

The concept of knowledge is deeply problematic. What knowledge is, how it is acquired, and how it is put to use, are contested issues.

Different views of the nature of knowledge

Knowledge exists in a variety of forms. Problems arise when some forms are seen as more valuable than, and separate from, others, as is the case in much current organisational study.

Knowledge is frequently categorised as propositional, procedural and personal (or tacit). I am presenting these for clarity as separate forms, although they are intimately interrelated, and there are many overlaps.

Propositional knowledge

Propositional knowledge is knowledge about things and facts, and is often, though not always, associated with empirical research (see Chapter 5). Ryle (1949) terms propositional knowledge ‘knowledge that’. An abstract body of information exists about the world; this information is objective and value-free. It may be accessed in books, databases, and other retrieval systems. The body of knowledge exists external to and independent of a living knower. People may leave their books on the table, and the knowledge remains in the books. Knowledge exists as a static entity across time and space; it is reified (concrete and unchanging), and absolute. Propositional knowledge is often perceived as embodying eternal truths, even the Truth; this idea is often employed to justify fundamentalist regimes and orthodoxies and hierarchical forms of dominance.

Commitment to propositional knowledge (also sometimes called technical rational knowledge) dominates the organisation and management literature, both in terms of what happens in organisations (practice) and how this is studied (theory). Organisational practice is understood in terms of a fixed knowledge base of facts which may be studied and understood by observing events and behaviours, and producing descriptions of what is happening.

A view of knowledge as abstract and reified is problematic in several important ways. I shall discuss only two of them here, though there are many more. First, a view of knowledge as abstract and reified denies the idea that the existence of knowledge implies the existence of a knower. Common sense says that facts about the world are always someone’s facts, interpreted and presented by someone somewhere, and open to negotiation with others. Factual knowledge tends to be replaced over time as newer information becomes available: for example, the heliocentric view of the universe was overtaken by a newer cosmology; Newtonian physics has been subsumed within quantum science. This does not mean that earlier ideas are rejected as useless; it does mean that people’s knowledge advances with their new ideas and discoveries, and older forms need to be seen as part of wider evolutionary processes that transform existing knowledge into new knowledge. This applies to the process of knowledge generation itself. A second problematic in a view of knowledge as abstract and reified denies its socially constructed nature. Knowledge, like many human systems, is a historical and cultural phenomenon, created by and for people within their different community settings across time and space. What is so for A is not necessarily so for B; and events in one time become other events through the revisioning of history when different interpretations are offered for the same event (Boyce and O’Day, 1996). During the 1990s peace process in Northern Ireland, for example, people who were previously identified as terrorists later appeared as freedom fighters, and were then storied as enlightened political workers.

In western intellectual and cultural traditions, however, knowledge as fact is still assumed to be the main kind of valid knowledge. Even when people appreciate that this is not so, they still tend to cling, probably for comfort, to the vision of an external body of facts and information for which they have no responsibility and which offers clear and stable frameworks for social living. This fixed standpoint is more reassuring than the shifting-sands idea that knowledge is changing and unstable, a view which suggests that our thinking itself is changing and unstable, not a very secure position from which to run a company or produce public accounts of effective business management.

Procedural knowledge

Ryle (1949) refers to this as ‘knowledge how’. It is a body of knowledge which refers both to procedures and also to capabilities; it is not neatly definable. Knowledge of procedures does not necessarily imply ability to do. ‘I know how this works’ does not automatically transfer to ‘I know how to do this’. Craft knowledge employs capacities other than knowledge of procedures. Procedural knowledge as in ‘I know how this works’ tends towards prepositional forms, whereas ‘I know how to do this’ implies an embodied form of knowing and leans towards personal forms of knowledge (see p. 41).

Know-that and know-how are strongly valued forms of knowledge in technologised societies, for they closely link with efficiency and productivity, getting things done on time. They underpin training and development in which know-how is transmitted as skills for jobs; and they reinforce transactional forms of communication which codify knowledge as systems to be learnt within a guild ethic of master craftsman and apprentice. They also underpin technicist forms of productivity such as just-in-time processes, where systemic slack is minimised through more efficient planning and allocation of material resources to streamline delivery.

Know-how regards knowledge as fluid, open to deconstruction and reconstruction. Know-how is often associated with the interpretive paradigm (Chapter 6), and emphasises the practical knowledge base of personal-social interaction. Social constructivists such as Glasersfeld (1995), drawing on Continental philosophical traditions, emphasise that knowledge is created within and through our practices and discourses; we are what we know and what we say, and we are constantly creating and recreating our knowledge of ourselves and others in company with others. It is not difficult to see the deep problems here for related issues such as the technologisation of work (Aronowitz and DiFazio, 1999), in which human skills are becoming anachronistic because they are easily mimicked by machines; humans are left with the knowledge but no longer have contexts for the use of their skills. The new knowledge work as developing new forms of know-how – knowing how to access and use information – has implications for the ‘meaning’ of work and social lives. Possibly the most important knowers in social and economic development will be those who know how to use electronic systems rather than those who know how to live successfully with others. Schooling in industrialised societies is steadily encouraging know-how forms of knowledge in the struggle for dominance through free markets and economic globalisation (see Chapter 9).

Personal knowledge

Michael Polanyi (1958, 1967) says that a vast reservoir of personal knowledge underlies our personal-social practices. We know more than we can say; our personal knowledge is unarticulatable because usually we are not aware of it – we ‘just know’. Polanyi rejects a view of scientific progress as rational planning, because much scientific enquiry employs a tacit dimension which cannot be codified. ‘Tacit knowledge is that vast fund of practical, local and traditional knowledge that is embodied in dispositions and forms of life and expressed in flair and intuition, which can never be formulated in rules of scientific method, say, and of which our theoretical or articulated knowledge is only the visible tip’ (Gray, 1993: 70). On this view, knowledge is in the way we live our lives and is essentially embodied knowledge. Schön (1983) suggests that this kind of practical knowing-in-action is key to professional practices: professionals build up a store of experiential knowledge over time which often dispenses with knowledge of facts in decision-making. Mature management tends to employ the capacity to rely on wisdom and what feels right, and decisions to act in a certain direction can defy conscious calculation or analysis. Heron (1981, 1992) and others rightly emphasise the centrality of feelings and emotions in business and decision-making, for trust in personal knowledge involves belief and commitment to felt processes, elements that lie outside the realms of technical rationality.

Personal knowledge is knowledge in the present. Futures research (for example, Toffler, 1990) says that the most important knowledge for social progress is knowledge of the future as embodied in present practices. It is essential therefore to be present in the moment, remembering, as Polanyi says (1967), that each present moment holds its history and future eternally dynamic within itself. The values base of successful social living begins with knowledge of the self; we need to know and appreciate who we are, in order to come to know and appreciate others: ‘Our real good consists in the development of our inward resources; … self-improvement is the beginning of all improvement’ (Rhadhakrishnan, 1978: 12, 15). Schön, buil...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Action Research in Organisations
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• The contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Prologue
• Part I: What is the nature of organisational knowledge?
• Part II: How is organisational knowledge acquired?
• Part III: How is organisational knowledge put to use?
• Part IV: What are the implications of living theories of organisation for social living?
• Epilogue
• References