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Dialogical
Action Research
at Omega Corporation
Pär Mårtensson and Allen S. Lee
Special Issue on Action Research
Volume 28, Number 3
Abstract
In dialogical action research, the scientific researcher does not
“speak science” or otherwise attempt to teach scientific theory to the
real-world practitioner, but instead attempts to speak the language of
the practitioner and accepts him as the expert on his organization and
its problems. Recognizing the difficulty that a practitioner and
a scientific researcher can have in communicating across the world of
science and the world of practice, dialogical action research offers,
as its centerpiece, reflective one-on-one dialogues between the
practitioner and the scientific researcher, taking place periodically
in a setting removed from the practitioner’s organization. The
dialogue itself serves as the interface between the world of science,
marked by theoria and the scientific attitude, and the world of the
practitioner, marked by praxis and the natural attitude of everyday
life. The dialogue attempts to address knowledge heterogeneity,
which refers to the different forms that knowledge takes in the world
of science and the world of practice, and knowledge contextuality,
which refers to the dependence of the meaning of knowledge, such as a
scientific theory or professional expertise, on its context. In
successive dialogues, the scientific researcher and the practitioner
build a mutual understanding, including an understanding of the
organization and its problems. The scientific researcher, based
on one or more of the scientific theories in her discipline, formulates
and suggests one or more actions for the practitioner to take in order
to solve or remedy a problem in his organization. Dialogical
action research recognizes that the practitioner’s experience,
expertise, and tacit knowledge, or praxis, largely shapes how he
understands the suggested actions and appropriates them as his
own. Upon returning to his organization, he takes one or more of
the suggested actions, depending on his reading of the situation at
hand. The reactions or responses of the problem to the actions or
stimuli of the practitioner would embody, in the practitioner’s eyes,
success or failure in solving or remedying the problem and, in the
scientific researcher’s eyes, evidence confirming or disconfirming the
theory on which the action was based. The scientific researcher
may then suggest, based on her theories, additional actions, hence
initiating another cycle of action and learning. To illustrate
dialogical action research, this paper reconstructs some dialogues
between an information systems researcher and a managing director at a
European company called Omega Corporation.
Keywords:
Action research,
qualitative research, research methods, case studies, phenomenology
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