"The article illustrates that there seems to be a fairly large distance between action research ideals of dialogue, democracy, participation, and involvement and the actual challenges we have met when practicing dialogic action research in hierarchical organizations where dialogue is always already embedded in organizational power relations. An overall purpose is to show that we are not only involved professionally as action researchers, but also challenged existentially as human beings when practicing dialogic action research. This has at least two consequences. One is about giving up knowing in advance. The other is about focusing on the quality of the relations with the participants, because this relationship seems to have critical impact on the quality of the results of dialogic action research projects. The article presents some concepts developed in dialogic action research projects in Danish, private and public organizations such as AR dilemmas, self-referentiality, emergent mutual involvement and not knowing, social concrete blocks, and the arbitrary punctuator." (author's abstract)
Who decides to initiate change processes in organizations? Who sets the goals? What does it mean for employees to participate in change processes? The book examines organizational change processes based on collaboration between employers, employees and action researchers in Europe and the U.S. in the later part of the 20th century. The authors offer important insights into participation and change in organizations for researchers and practitioners by identifying dilemmas and paradoxes, conflicting interests and exercising of power. Change processes are launched in organizations every day. Which goals should be pursued? How can change be designed and evaluated? Do employees and their closest managers participate in deciding whether a change process is to be initiated? This has been discussed since the middle of the 20th century within organizational action research. It is an integrated change- and research process which employees, managers, researchers, and various stakeholders contribute to with varying knowledge and interests. The book deals with different ways of understanding participation in organizational action research, especially self-managing groups, democratic dialogues, and co-generation. Projects from the USA, England, Norway, Sweden, and Spain from 1940 to 2000, as well as a Danish project from 2010 are analyzed. The book shows that participation is characterized by tensions and exercise of power throughout history. Moreover, it investigates if employees and managers were involved as respondents, practitioners, or co-researchers. Based on these analyses and the authors' experience as action researchers, the book summarizes relevant points of attention. These can be of help for future action researchers, change agents, consultants, and professionals dealing with dilemmas and challenges in citizen-, patient-, parent-, or employee-participation in change processes.
"The article focuses on participation as enactment of power in dialogic, organisational action research. The article has a dual purpose: It shows how participation is enacted as power in processes between participating managers, employees and action researchers with different or conflicting interests. It discusses if and eventually how it is possible to handle participatory processes when participation is conceptualised as enactment of power. This is done by reflecting critically on two examples from a dialogic, action research project carried out in two Danish, private organisations in 2008 and 2009. The overall perspective is to bring participation as enactment of power into the centre of dialogic, organisational action research processes and into action research that understands itself as participatory. The article argues in favour of understanding participation as enactment of power in a project work between different partners (employees, managers, and action researchers) with different interests. This argument is based on a definition of participation as co-determination of goals and means. Moreover, the article argues that combining reflexive and contextualised analyses from 1rst and 2nd person approaches with broader 3rd person action research perspectives might make dialogic, organisational action research projects more actionable. Theoretically, participatory processes aim at empowerment. The article shows that co-producing knowledge in dialogic, organisational action research implies ongoing reflections on tensions in the action research concept of 'co-'. In practice, these processes unfold in a field of tensions between empowerment and constraint." (author's abstract)
"The article deals with employee driven innovation in regular teams from a critical, pragmatic action research perspective, referring to theories on innovation, dialogue, workplace learning, and organizational communication. It is based on an action research project "Innovation and involvement through strengthening dialogue in team based organizations" funded by the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. 18 teams from one public and two private organizations participated in the project. The article defines the concept of employee driven innovation (EDI) in relation to theories on innovation, workplace learning and action research, and presents EDI as a fairly new field of research. EDI is conceptualized as a participatory endeavour differing from a mainstream understanding of innovation as surplus value for the organization. The article focuses on incremental, organizational process innovations co-created across conflicting workplace interests in and between teams. The article argues that it is meaningful to assert that every employee has an innovative potential, no matter of what educational background or sector and that sometimes, this innovative potential might be facilitated through Dialogic Helicopter Team Meetings (DHTM) with a dissensus approach. During the action research process, it became important to organize a special kind of DHTMs as a supplement to ordinary team action meetings close to day-to-day operations, but separated in time and space. They focus on how to improve existing organizational routines and work practice in order to produce value for the organization, better work flow, and improved work life quality. These meetings are discussed in relation to similar organizational constructs within Scandinavian action research. The action research process made it clear that it is not enough to set up DHTMs if they are going to facilitate EDIT. They must be characterized by a dissensus approach, combining dissensus organizing and dissensus sensibility. Dissensus organizing means that team conversations must be organized in ways where silent or unspoken, critical voices speak up. This can be done by using, e.g., pro and con groups or a bystander. This demands, too, that team members, managers, and action researchers develop dissensus sensibility to open up for more voices, for indirect criticism, and for more democracy in the decision process trying to balance dialogues in multidimensional tensions between consensus and dissensus. The article grounds the complexities of this process in thick presentations of DHTMs in Team Product Support, Danfoss Solar Inverters and Team Children, Citizen Service, the Municipality of Silkeborg, Denmark. It demonstrates how these meetings created different organizational process innovations, and how theoretical concepts like DHTM, dissensus organizing and dissensus sensibility were developed from practice." (author's abstract)
"This article describes an ongoing action research project in a public administration department working towards a more flat structure characterized by value-based management, team organization, and involvement. The article presents involvement as a multidimensional dilemma and describes how employees experience and cope with traditional and modern dilemmas, and how the borderline between them seems to be blurred. It also includes the AR-dilemma unfolding in the relation between the participants and us as actions researchers. The dilemmas are discussed in relation to Human Resource Management. The history of involvement is reflected as a historical transformation of participative democracy into participative management characterized by strategic communication." (author's abstract)
The article is a first- and second-person inquiry into power relations between action researchers and participants based on a dialogic action research project with a group of managers at Bang & Olufsen, Denmark. It focuses on discrepancies between our espoused values of dialogue and our theories-in-use characterized by self-referentiality. This concept emerged during the process and describes a non-dialogic way of transforming the perspectives of the other into your own a priori categories and ways of relating. It denotes a power mechanism imposing our regime of truth on participants so that their reality does not count. First- and second-person reflection on self-referentiality is a process of mutual vulnerability and seems to enhance the quality of third-person action and research.
Who decides to initiate change processes in organizations? Who sets the goals? What does it mean for employees to participate in change processes? The book examines organizational change processes based on collaboration between employers, employees and action researchers in Europe and the U.S. in the later part of the 20th century. The authors offer important insights into participation and change in organizations for researchers and practitioners by identifying dilemmas and paradoxes, conflicting interests and exercising of power. - Wie vollzieht sich Wandel in Organisationen? Was bedeutet Zusammenarbeit in einem Unternehmen? Was können wir aus Erfahrungen lernen? Das Buch untersucht organisationale Veränderungsprozesse auf Basis von Kooperationserfahrungen zwischen Arbeitgeber*innen, Arbeitnehmer*innen und Aktionsforscher*innen in Europa und den USA in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Die Autor*innen identifizieren zentrale Akteure und Impulsgeber von Veränderung, zeichnen Machtverhältnisse nach und weisen auf mögliche Dilemmata hin. Dabei entwickeln sie zentrale Erkenntnisse über Prozesse der Partizipation und Veränderung in Organisationen, von denen Forschung und Praxis gleichermaßen profitieren können.
