Negotiated Project Engagements: Learning from Experience

Abstract

How far is it possible to capture the lessons to be drawn from successive projects that involve intervention by social scientists within or between organizations, whether acting as researchers, as consultants, as agents of change, or in some combination of these roles? This paper outlines the way in which a framework was developed, by staff and associates of The Tavistock Institute, for examining the varied and often subtle influences of successive "negotiated project engagements" on the development of wider personal, institutional, and disciplinary programs. This framework is designed to take into account the contrasting perspectives of the investigators themselves, of their organizational hosts, and of any external sponsors whose primary concern will normally be with project outcomes at a more generalized level. As an illustration, particular reference is made to the experience of a pioneering project concerned with policy-making in city government. This project was undertaken to advance the understanding and practice of public planning, while also exploring the potential for synergy between the perspectives of operational research and applied social science. The paper concludes with some speculations about the potential for further developing this kind of framework in supporting experiential learning.

Behavioural operational research: Towards a framework for understanding behaviour in OR interventions

“…In such contexts, individuals are embedded in systemic relations in which behaviour and learning are important (Simon, 1991) and depend on processes such as sense making (Weick 1995;Bougon et al 1990;Ledington and Donaldson, 1997;Franco, 2006), negotiation (Eden, 1989;Eden and Ackermann, 1998;Friend, et al, 1998;Walsh and Hostick, 2005;Walsh and Fahey 1986), coalition building (Friend and Hickling, 2004;Susskind et al, 1999), and social networks (Carley and Palmquist, 1992;White, 2008).…”

“…In the soft OR tradition, the way in which divergences in opinions, preferences, and interests are organised explains the extent of involvement in the soft OR activities, and the content of the information exchanged (Mingers and Rosenhead, 2004); divergence is also the core variable explaining the intervention's shape and structure (Friend and Hickling, 2004). In contested situations or settings with a high degree of uncertainty, information and knowledge have both a price and a value (Ormerod, 1998;Mingers, 2000;Midgley et al, 2013), and they should be shared with allies and strategically used (Friend, et al, 1998). Thus, according to this view, the crucial element in understanding or designing OR interventions is not so much the level of divergence as the way in which the system is divided and polarised.…”

“…Moreover, and what is more interesting, is that it is found in some older studies that psychological or A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T behavioural ideas were invoked, if somewhat casually, particularly from disciplines such as group and social psychology (Phillips and Phillips, 1993;Friend, et al 1998).…”

John Friend: Advising and Theorizing

“…One is that it takes a long time. In Coventry four years, in Droitwich three: in a retrospective article Friend et al (1998) …”

“…For it may be only through such opportunities to discard entrenched beliefs that the ground can be cleared for engagement in the stressful business of constructing alternative theories alongside colleagues with different frames of reference. (Friend et al, 1998(Friend et al, : 1530 And when Faludi applied it in the Oxford/Leiden study (Thomas et al, 1983) they needed three years. (There the method was called 'abduction', to place it in the discussion of induction and deduction.)…”