Week 7: Action Research

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Week 7 Action Research
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What is Action Research?

• Action Research is a form of research that
  generates knowledge claims for the express
  purpose of taking action to promote social change
  and social action (Greenwood and Levin, 1998)
• Action researchers believe that
• Complex social systems and social situations
  cannot be reduced for meaningful study
• Action research is a process of making sense and
  understanding complex interactions and systems
• AR refers to the conjunction of three elements
• Research
• Action
• Participation

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• According to Grundy and Kemmis there are three
  conditions necessary for AR to exist
• A project takes as its subject matter a social
  practice, regarding it as a strategic action
  susceptible to improvement
• The project proceeds through a spiral of cycles
  of planning, acting, observing and reflecting
  with each of these activities being
  systematically and self critically implemented
  and interrelated and
• The project involves those responsible for the
  practice in each of the moments of the activity,
  widening participation in the project gradually
  to include others affected by the practice and
  maintaining collaborative control of the process

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Brief history of AR

• Term coined and meaning attributed to AR by Kurt
  Lewin in the 1940s
• Tavistock institute 1950s
• Technical Action Research
• Practical Action Research
• Emancipatory Action Research

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Action Research Spiral
Diagnose
Diagnose
Diagnose
PLAN
PLAN
CYCLE 3
REFLECT
ACT
REFLECT
ACT
OBSERVE
OBSERVE
CYCLE 1
CYCLE 2
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Stages in AR cycle

• Diagnosing
• Action Planning (PLAN)
• Action Taking (ACT)
• Evaluating (OBSERVE)
• Specifying learning (REFLECT theorise)

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Understanding Action Research in the context of
Information Systems

• AR is underpinned by the premise that researchers
  and participants are intervening in social
  systems. Draws upon general systems theory and
  therefore clearly of interest to IS researchers
• Mumfords work on ETHICS and Checklands work on
  the soft systems approach draw upon AR
• Links also into the areas of organisational
  learning and managing systems change
  specifically to theorising about practice

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Action Research in IS

• Lau (1999) Towards a framework for action
  research in information systems studies
  (Information and Technology People 12(2))
• Lau builds on an earlier framework and presents a
  set of guidelines for AR in IS and discusses the
  implications for IS research and practice
• Identifies 4 types of action research
• Action research
• Participatory action research
• Action science
• Action learning

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Participatory Enquiry

• Reason, 1994 has 3 forms of particpatory enquiry
• Co-operative enquiry
• Participatory action research
• Action Science and Action enquiry

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Co-operative Enquiry

• Heron, 1971 Reason Heron,1986
• Addresses a theory of persons as self-determining
• 4 Phases
• 1. Researchers identify area of experience and
  methods to investigate it and agree on actions
• 2. Apply agreed actions/behaviours to everyday
  work
• 3. Experiential knowing from new behaviours after
  much application
• 4. Review of original propositions and
  regeneration to Phase 1
• Validity stems from critical subjectivity
  versional reality

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Participatory Action Research (PAR)

• Founded in Liberationist movement
• A process of the underclass taking control of
  knowledge that is power and political force by
  adult education, research and sociopolitical
  action
• Asserts process of self awareness by collective
  self-enquiry and reflection
• Methodology the uses diverse methods
• Knowledge production by people setting own
  agenda, participating in data gathering analyses,
  and controlling the use of outcomes
• Community orientation to the process

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Action Science

• Based on Theories of Action Argyris and Schon,
  1974, 1978.
• Model 1 - a defensive theory that limits action
  what is done
• Purpose defined by principal actor
• Win, not lose
• Emphasize rationality
• Model II normative theory that promotes open
  enquiry what is said
• Seeks valid information
• Free and informed choice
• Internal commitment
• Focus is on explicit cognitive models

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Action Inquiry

• Torbert, 1991
• Follows Argyris and adds
• Empirically measured outcomes
• Self scrutiny of own acts
• How to transform organisations into collaborative
  self-reflective communities of inquiry
• A community to practice action enquiry needs to
  know
• Knowledge about a systems own purpose
• Knowledge about its strategies
  theories/principles underlying its choices/modus
  operandi
• Knowledge of practical behavioural choices
  available to it
• Knowledge of outside world consequences of its
  behaviour

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Comparison

• 3 come from different
• Ideological perspectives
• Intellectual traditions
• Emphasize different aspects of practice
• Valid human enquiry requires full participation
  in the creation of personal and social knowledge
• Emphasize experiential knowing
• Data varies definition
• Argyris verbal reports
• Torbert all forms of dialogue
• PAR all forms of expression incl song, poetry,
  theatre
• Cooperative inquiry rational verbal reports of
  experience

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Comparison - 2

• Attitudes to Leadership
• PAR radically egalitarian
• Action Inquiry transformational leadership
  distress-free charismatic authority
• Paradox between need to educate to practice
  Action Research
• PAR emphasizes upwelling from the common people,
  and lacks methodology and doesnt see ability of
  groups to be self-destructive
• Co-operative inquiry emphasizes the
  psychological and lacks a robust theory of action
  
• Action inquiry advocates rugged individualism/ego
  development

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Is Action Research the same as consulting?

• 5 differences between AR and consulting
• Motivation
• Commitment
• Approach
• Basis for recommendations
• Organisational understanding

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Limitations of Action Research

• Difficult to publish AR results
• Tendency for inexperienced researchers to focus
  entirely on planning, acting and observing phases
  and less upon theorising
• Ethical responsibilities to other participants
• Length of projects ongoing and evolutionary