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The contribution of Edgar H. Schein to the field of management, organisation studies and applied behavioural science is both extensive and deep. For almost 70 years, he has creatively and systematically shaped theory and practice in areas including organisation development and change, career dynamics, the cultural dynamics of complex systems, leadership, process consultation and the clinical inquiry/research paradigm. He has written extensively on the process of organisational change and framed the construct of the clinical approach to research. With such an extensive corpus over such a long period, Schein has been termed a "transcendent thought leader" and it is in this spirit that a volume exploring his work offers a contribution how scholars and practitioners can come to understand their engagement in organisations. This singular volume adopts a reflective perspective on the work of Edgar Schein as a social scientist and shows how he developed his craft as an engaged organisational scholar-practitioner through reflexive attention to his experience in working with managers and organisations and generating knowledge out of action. The intended contribution is both to present Schein's work to students and scholars of organisation studies and to offer a reflexive methodological framework to engage scholar-practitioner in any field.

Moving away from the common/traditional focus on studying organizations from a distance, this highly engaging book introduces the idea of studying them from the inside. Inside Organizations: Exploring Organizational Experiences guides placement students, and any student undertaking part-time work in an organization, through 'insider inquiry', helping them to develop key reflexive and critical thinking skills for their future careers. . It encourages you to pay attention to what goes on in organizations, to question what you experience and ultimately to make sense of how organizations function. , helping you to develop key reflexive and critical thinking skills for your future careers. This book is ideal for students on programmes with a placement or internship element such as business and management, nursing and health, and education and is especially useful to those doing reflective journals and essays.

"The three realms of meaning: practical knowing, theory and interiority
provide a framework for understanding the epistemological challenges
confronting action researchers. Action researchers have two external horizons:
that of practice and that of theory. Practice engages with the world
of practical knowing, where the challenges are the successful completion
of practical tasks. Theory engages the realm of scholarship as action researchers
seek to develop understanding of, for example, the dynamics of
organization and change. Interiority involves shifting from what we know
to how we know, and is a process of intellectual self-awareness. Interiority
goes beyond practical knowing and theory, not by negating them or leaving
them behind, but appreciating them and recognizing their limitations.
Interiority is the integrating factor that enables action researchers to hold
both, to appreciate the value of both and to move from one to the other
appropriately. It is a process at the cutting edge of integrating theory,
practice and research." (author's abstract)

In this article I explore how the notion of authenticity may be grounded in first person practice, rather than in the quality of research data. Drawing on the work of the philosopher-theologian Bernard Lonergan who follows a first person approach and who articulates a notion of authenticity, I explore how authenticity may be framed in terms of being attentive, intelligent, reasonable, and responsible in engaging with the challenges of action research.

The value of spirituality in organizational life and in social research is becoming increasingly recognized by members of organisations and by social science researchers. In this article, the motifs of Ignatian spirituality, the heritage of Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) – a transformational spirituality in the Roman Catholic tradition in which action is a central motif – are introduced and explored in terms of some of the main tenets of action research. This article shows how Ignatian spirituality contributes a faith-based transformational methodology to the field of action research.

Organisation Development has played a significant role in the
renewal of Catholic religious orders since the Second Vatican Council
(1962‐5). Religious orders have used consultants in their change
processes. As religious orders are a unique form of non‐profit
organisation and have a particular culture based on their vocational
service nature, consultants must be sensitive to this culture. This
article describes OD interventions on four levels of apostolic religious
ministry.

"Exploring and exploiting the richness and reach of large scale action research
projects is a challenge. This challenge focuses inwards as it addresses
critical issues of enacting, managing and coordinating the actions
of the project and engaging in the reflective processes of learning-inaction
and knowledge generation by multiple actors and groups engaged
in the project. It simultaneously focuses outwards as it seeks to exploit
both the processes of the action research itself and the dissemination of actionable
knowledge to multiple audiences. This article describes and reflects
upon the challenges of exploring and exploiting richness and reach
arising in the CO-IMPROVE project, a European Union (EU) funded initiative
involving action research in complex networks of academics and
business. The objectives of CO-IMPROVE included the facilitation of
collaborative improvement of operations practice and performance in the
extended manufacturing enterprise through action research among both
managers and academics." (author's abstract)

Within organizational research, the subject of insider academic research has received relatively little consideration. By insider research, we mean research by complete members of organizational systems in and on their own organizations. Insider research can be undertaken within any of the three major research paradigms—positivism, hermeneutics, and action research—selected and presented in this article. First, we revisit some of the established research paradigms to see what position they might have on insider research. Second, we explore the dynamics of insider research under the headings of access, preunderstanding, role duality, and managing organizational politics. Our conclusion is that within each of the main streams of research, there is no inherent reason why being native is an issue and that the value of insider research is worth reaffirming.