This paper aims to demonstrate the value of participatory action research (PAR) for advancing scientific knowledge as well as for solving practical problems. The article supports the argument through brief summaries of three PAR cases in industry: Norwegian shipping, Xerox Corporation, and the FAGOR group of the Mondragon cooperatives. While noting the practical gains achieved through PAR, the author concentrates particularly on the advances in substantive knowledge and theory that would have been unlikely to emerge out of more orthodox sociological research. The author suggests finally that wider use of participatory action research can have a stimulating effect upon the future development of sociology.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/684609.pdf

Advancing scientific knowledge through participatory action research

This paper presents an argument for an enrichment of action research method ology. To the current state of action research, we add a constructivist epistemo logical argument, as well as a crucial inspiration from some futures-oriented planning approaches. Within the domain of social/organizational research, the futures perspective implies that knowledge of the social/organizational world must be based upon images of desirable futures, so-called 'futures theories', not causal descriptions of a problematic present. Futures theories identify ends and means for individual and organizational development. They are generated jointly by the stakeholders of a system and the involved action researchers and are tested every time that the prescriptions for action contained in them are followed by a system's stakeholders.

Normative Action Research

Developing and systematically implementing participatory action research

As an inherently human process fraught with subjectivity, dynamic interaction, and change, social interaction knowledge translation (KT) invites implementation scientists to explore what might be learned from adopting the academic tradition of social constructivism and an interpretive research approach. This paper presents phenomenological investigation of the second cycle of a participatory action KT intervention in the home care sector to answer the question: What is the nature of the process of implementing KT through social interaction? Social phenomenology was selected to capture how the social processes of the KT intervention were experienced, with the aim of representing these as typical socially-constituted patterns. Participants (n = 203), including service providers, case managers, administrators, and researchers organized into nine geographically-determined multi-disciplinary action groups, purposefully selected and audiotaped three meetings per group to capture their enactment of the KT process at early, middle, and end-of-cycle timeframes. Data, comprised of 36 hours of transcribed audiotapes augmented by researchers' field notes, were analyzed using social phenomenology strategies and authenticated through member checking and peer review. Four patterns of social interaction representing organization, team, and individual interests were identified: overcoming barriers and optimizing facilitators; integrating 'science push' and 'demand pull' approaches within the social interaction process; synthesizing the research evidence with tacit professional craft and experiential knowledge; and integrating knowledge creation, transfer, and uptake throughout everyday work. Achieved through relational transformative leadership constituted simultaneously by both structure and agency, in keeping with social phenomenology analysis approaches, these four patterns are represented holistically in a typical construction, specifically, a participatory action KT (PAKT) model. Study findings suggest the relevance of principles and foci from the field of process evaluation related to intervention implementation, further illuminating KT as a structuration process facilitated by evolving transformative leadership in an active and integrated context. The model provides guidance for proactively constructing a 'fit' between content, context, and facilitation in the translation of evidence informing professional craft knowledge.

/pdf/evolving-the-theory-and-praxis-of-knowledge-translation-1bu10wadbm.pdf

Evolving the theory and praxis of knowledge translation through social interaction: a social phenomenological study

In the context of business and management, action research operates in the realm of strategies, practical tasks, and structured hierarchical organizational systems in diverse industries and...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1476750319852147

Michael E. Gaffney

Papers

Research, Action, and Participation: The Merchant Shipping Case.