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Encouraging Interiority in Business Action Research

A blog post by David Coghlan and Rami Shani

As experienced action researchers in the organization development (OD), we have been reflecting about published action research in the field of business and management. 

We offer this article to the readers of Action Research as we think it is essential for those who are engaging in action research in management and business to develop their interiority and thereby to have a critical lens for reading published accounts and for writing up their own work.  

We offer not an impersonal review but rather a sharing of our reflections through the realm of interiority.

Interiority

By interiority we mean that we are being explicit in attending to both what we are reading in the literature on action research and how we are experiencing, understanding and judging these published outputs. So we not only discuss the articles but also show how we are reflecting on them and coming to judgement about them and the field as a whole.

Based on our comprehensive framework that emphasizes knowledge of the context, the quality of relationships, the quality of the AR process and the dual outcomes of contributing to practice and to theory, our conclusion is  that action research has failed to realize its potential for generating robust actionable knowledge.   

In our paper we invite readers to engage in interiority by their own reflection. How do published action research studies demonstrate the characteristics of action research? What might constitute quality for publishing accounts of action research?  Finally we describe some future trends which we consider to provide opportunities for action research.

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We invite you to learn more about this experience by reading our article HERE. Free 30-day access is available for this article beginning 15 November. 

After you’ve had a chance to read this piece, please share your thoughts, ideas, or experiences with our community in the comments below so we can continue this discussion!