We offer an epistemological basis for action research, in order to increase the validity, the practical significance, and the transformational potential of social science. We start by outlining some of the paradigmatic issues which underlie action research, arguing for a “turn to action” which will complement the linguistic turn in the social sciences. Four key dimensions of an action science are discussed: the primacy of the practical, the centrality of participation, the requirement for experiential grounding, and the importance of normative, analogical theory. Three broad strategies for action research are suggested: first-person research/practice addresses the ability of a person to foster an inquiring approach to his or her own life; second-person research/practice engages a face-to-face group in collaborative inquiry; third-person research/practice asks how we can establish inquiring communities which reach beyond the immediate group to engage with whole organizations, communities and countries. The article argues that a transformational science needs to integrate first- second- and third-person voices in ways that increase the validity of the knowledge we use in our moment-to-moment living, that increase the effectiveness of our actions in real-time, and that remain open to unexpected transformation when our taken-for-granted assumptions, strategies, and habits are appropriately challenged. Illustrative references to studies that begin to speak to these questions are offered.
Work and leisure are commonly viewed as dichotomous and antithetical. The authors argue that this conceptual duality is unreflective, confounding the meaning of each term. They suggest that work and leisure are complements that in their highest states share core elements and are best understood in dynamic relation to each other. Their purpose in this essay is to better understand work by learning about its complement. The authors characterize leisure as the experiential quality of one's time when one engages voluntarily and intentionally in awareness-expanding inquiry, which in turn generates ongoing, transforming development throughout adulthood. Leisure is intrinsically rewarding, facilitating personal and organizational transformations that increase extrinsic economic value. In response to an increasingly dominant work ethic, the authors advocate that leisure receive the same level of scrutiny and respect that we as management scholars naturally give to work. Cultivating true leisure, they conclude, is more demanding than work itself.
This chapter describes action inquiry, a kind of social science that can generate timely action. First, action inquiry studies not just the past, but also the present and future. Second, it is a form of research that is conducted simultaneously on oneself, the first-person action inquirer, on the second-person relationships in which one engages, and on the third-person institutions of which one is an observant participant. Third, it generates not just single-loop feedback that incrementally improves a stock of knowledge, but also double-and triple-loop transformations of structure, culture, and consciousness that influence ongoing interaction. The chapter describes how first-person action inquiry in the present explores four distinct but interweaving 'territories of experience,' which sometimes feel mutually aligned and sometimes dissonant. It further describes how second-person action inquiry on the emergent future crafts four distinct but interweaving 'parts of speech' to generate increasing shared vision and inquiring collaborative practice. It then offers and analyzes a few minutes of firstand second-person collaborative inquiry to illustrate these ideas. The chapter closes by introducing a third-person generalizable theory, and some of the quantitative empirical evidence supporting it, that describes how individuals, organizations, and science itself can transform to the point of practicing ongoing timely inquiry and action.
Developmental Action Inquiry askes three types of questions together in one's actions with others, with the normative aim of improving the timelines and transformational effectiveness of action. The three questions concern the first-person dynamics of one's own awareness, the second-person dynamics of the immediate group with whom one is interacting, and the third-person dynamics of the larger institutions within which one's action is situated. The article outlines the type of theory and practice that supports and reflects such inquiry, and highlights how different such integrated 'research/practice' is from empirical positivism.What is unique and uniquely important in Developmental Action Inquiry, by comparison to other action-focused research approaches?One way of responding to this question is to offer the three questions that have animated this discipline since its inception. To my knowledge, among all the quantitative, qualitative, and action-related social science research approaches, only Developmental Action Inquiry has articulated these three questions together and systematically explored their relationship to one another. The three questions are:1. How, in real-time, to divide the researchers own attention by actively turning toward its origin or source, inviting unforeseeable personal transformations of consciousness, while simultaneously going with the (passive) flow of my attention through feelings, actions, and into perceptions of the outside world? This, not lifelong but potentially adult-long-and-increasingly-continual inquiry can generate my own (and your own) first-person research/practice in each moment (Ouspensky, 1949;Trungpa, 1970;Torbert, 1973).2. How to create mini communities of inquiry (three persons or more) in real-time among friends, within one's family, and at work? As we more closely approximate such communities (which we find ourselves doing by treating awareness-deepening Management Learning
Two illustrations of organizational interventions by consultants and CEOs measured at late stages of managerial development are shown to generate significant opportunities for both managerial and organizational learning at the same time. Moreover, these learning processes occur during the real-time work of the organizations. The article discusses the kind of leadership awareness and action that can generate such simultaneous transformational learning and productive work at both the managerial and organizational scales. By contrast to single-loop and double-loop learning, this kind of leadership is characterized by timely triple-loop learning.
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