action research 2014 gustavsen 339 56
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Action Research
2014, Vol. 12(4) 339356
! The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1476750314534455
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Article
Social impact and the
justification of actionresearch knowledge
Bjrn GustavsenWork Research Institute, Norway
Abstract
Generalization in research takes the form of statements where knowledge is claimed tobe valid for objects beyond those actually studied. Can action research knowledge, withits emphasis on cooperation between research and those concerned, apply this notion?Several action researchers seem to answer this question in the negative in the sensethat they introduce specific measures to support the broad application of knowledgeemanating from action research, such as locating projects within networks, workingwith leaders who can carry the knowledge to further users, organizing the project aslarge scale events, and more. The purpose of this article is to discuss some of thesemeasures with a view to bringing them together in a broader perspective on how to
make action research knowledge reach out in society, with participative constructivismas the core concept.
Keywords
Action research, generalization, autonomy, constructivism, work organization
How to make knowledge general
In the introduction to Handbook of Action Research, Wicks, Reason, and
Bradbury (2008) see action research as inquiry grounded in the ecology of life, char-
acterized by cooperation between research and those concerned, to promote eman-
cipation and a better life. In spite of claims to qualities of this kind action research is,
in most countries, a marginal activity and even where action research enjoys a rea-
sonable popularity, it plays no major role in research policy or national innovation
strategies. In a discussion of this paradox, Greenwood (2002) argues that action
research is actually fraught with unmet promises and unfulfilled challenges.
Corresponding author:
Bjrn Gustavsen, Work Research Institute, PBOX 6954, St. Olavs Plass, Oslo 0484, Norway.
Emails: [email protected]; [email protected]
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Action research needs to seek a re-establishment of the high profile innovative cases of
the era of Kurt Lewin and his disciples, to be able to provide the world with new
examples and new inspirations. Against this, it can be argued that single cases, how-
ever splendid they may be, have rarely diffused to other actors, nor seldom given rise
to broad change. In fact, if they had done so, the world would already, after more than
half a century of action research, have been shaped according to the ideals of action
research. But if outstanding cases cannot be expected, more or less by automatism, to
create broad change, what is then to be done?
This challenge has sometimes appeared as an element in specific projects, in the
form of efforts to go beyond the single case to achieve a broader impact as a part of the
project itself. The probably most common approach is to rely on the power of the
first project to immediately convince new practical users. Making it possible to
understand the project through its practical manifestations, action research has theadvantage of being able to talk directly to new practitioners. Through attracting a
growing number of users, the project can generate a multiplication of projects until
critical mass, and, with this, self-sustaining change are achieved (Emery &
Thorsrud, 1976). The potential of this approach is strengthened if the project site is
part of a broader network that can help transmit impulses to other sites and it will be a
point in itself to find action sites that are embedded in networks, or where surround-
ing networks can be created as part of the project (Chisholm, 1998). It is also possible
to strengthen the diffusion potential of the first project through designing it in such
a way that the conditions for broader use are built into the project design from thestart (Engelstad & degaard, 1979). A further possibility is to concentrate on leaders
as project partners and rely on them to transmit the message to all members of the
organizations they lead (Torbert, 2001). The leaders can be of many different kinds,
ranging from group supervisors to world leaders. There is also the possibility of
organizing action research projects as large scale events, to include as many people
as possible from the start (Martin, 2001). There may be other possibilities. The point
that there are differences between generating cases on the one hand and creating
broad change on the other is, on a more general level, emphasized in the distinction
between second and third person inquiry (Torbert, 1998). While exemplary cases cangenerally be created in face-to-face encounters, to reach out in society in general, there
is a need for processes that can involve actors who have no direct relationship to each
other.
From discussing how action research can be shaped in such a way that it is able
to reach out broadly in society, one may move further to include discussions under
such headings as networks, clusters, (learning) regions, innovation systems, social
movements, and more. Discussions under these headings can include issues and
concerns of relevance to action research without, however, having the challenges of
action research as a major focal point.Using experience from action research-based efforts at diffusing the idea of
autonomy in work in the Scandinavian countries, in particular Norway, the pur-
pose of this article is to discuss how knowledge generated in action research pro-
jects can be used to promote broad change. For about half a centuryfrom the
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middle 1900s to the early 2000saction research participated in a number of efforts
to promote autonomy in work. Today, the Scandinavian countrieshere taken to
imply Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Swedenshow the highest scores on auton-
omy in the contemporary European working conditions surveys (Lorenz & Lundvall,
2011). It is often argued that the influence exerted by action research is owing to these
countries being small, relatively free of conflict, and showing modest differences
between people; characteristics that are presumed to make it easy for action research
to make itself felt in society. This is, of course, possible, but it is also possible that the
influence is owing to the way in which action research has developed and performed
its role. In fact, looking at the history of the Scandinavian countries, it will be seen
that when entering the process of industrialization, there was no lack of hierarchies.
Nor was there a lack of conflict: in the period between the world wars, Sweden as well
as Norway was, at times, on the top in the European statistics on days lost in laborconflicts (Gustavsen & Hunnius, 1981). The size may be modest compared to, say,
Germany or the USA in general, but corresponds fairly closely to the average size of
the 200 or so nation states that constitute the world community, as well as to many of
the regions, states, and similar that often appear as natural areas for work reform
even in the countries with large populations. It is, consequently, possible to argue that
when the Scandinavian countries today appear as peaceful, co-operative, and even
innovative, it is because of conscious acts performed by human actors and that action
research can be found among these actors.
How to make knowledge reach many people overlaps with the issue of generaliza-tion of research knowledge. In descriptive-analytic research, generalizations beyond
the phenomena actually studied take the form of claims expressed in texts. To what
extent the textually expressed claims actually become known among those to which
they pertain is of little concern; of even less concern is the extent to which they actually
use the knowledge. Given such definitions as mentioned initially, this is hardly sat-
isfactory for action research. It would be a paradox to assume that knowledge about,
say, how to perform inquiry in cooperation between research and the people con-
cerned can be diffused to new actors without cooperation. For action research, gen-
eralization becomes identical to the extent to which the knowledge is brought toinfluence human practices.
The point of departure
The idea of underpinning work reform with research-driven field experiments first
came to Scandinavia through French who, together with Scandinavian colleagues,
in the 1950s conducted an experiment with participation in an industrial plant
(French, Israel, & A s, 1960). The major breakthrough for the notion of using
experiments to underpin work reform with a direct practical intent came, however,with the Industrial Democracy program in Norway in the 1960s. Based on an
agreement between research, the Confederation of Norwegian Business and
Industry (formerly the Employers Confederation) and the Confederation of
Trade Unions, the program was developed in an association between the
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Tavistock Institute in the UK and the forerunners of the Work Research Institute in
Norway. Initially focusing on four industrial workplaces, the main thrust of the
program was to replace production lines based on a high degree of division of
work with group areas, where a number of tasks could be combined and handled
by a number of operators together, with the right to decide between them who should
handle what task at each and every time (Emery & Thorsrud, 1976). The role of action
research departed, although with modifications, from the notion of field experiment
as originally developed by Lewin and colleagues (Lewin, 1943). The issue of scale, or
scope, was on the agenda from the beginning. The Employers Confederation and the
Confederation of Trade Unions, both, are membership organizations, and under the
obligation to create advantages that can benefit all members. While it was, even from
this perspective, fully legitimate to put special effort into the creation of a few exem-
plary cases, these were intended to be followed by processes that could make it pos-sible for all members to adopt autonomous forms of work organization. The
generalization of the knowledge gained through the field experiments became iden-
tical to the scope of its practical use.
Of the measures to achieve scope listed above, practically all were brought to bear
on the diffusion of the experiences from the first experiments: employers and unions,
both, launched information campaigns to strengthen the platform for practical pull.
Both parties had, at the time, major training centers and much of the training was
adapted to incorporate the experiences from the experiments. The leadership element
was strongly present on many levels: the labor market parties centrally had leadershipfunctions in relation to their members; on both sides, the top leaders in office at the
time became involved; in the companies housing the experimental sites management
as well as the union leadership was involved. Elements of large scale design could be
found, in particular, as expressed through large conferences organized by the labor
market parties separately and jointly. Action research was engaged in many of these
activities, as advisors, speakers, and organizers.
In spite of all the efforts at diffusion, there emerged no wave of further projects
that could be seen as multiplication of the first ones. Instead, from around 1970,
there was a successive decline in the interest of unions and managers in performingprojects along the same lines as the first experiments; a tendency that was discussed
under the heading of diffusion problems and made subject to various interpret-
ations (Bolweg, 1976; Gustavsen & Hunnius, 1981; Herbst, 1974). What continued,
however, was a broad range of discourses about issues such as division of work,
democracy, participation, labor-management cooperation, and more. Out of these
discourses, there emerged new initiatives. Common to them is that the notion of
autonomy in work was sustained but that major changes started to emerge con-
cerning how to make the idea come real.
From expert driven to user driven change
When the experimental approaches withered away, they were replaced by other types
of initiatives. A major step within the Norwegian context was a job design seminar
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organized by the labor market parties, but run by action research (Engelstad &
degaard, 1979). Originally designed to rationalize the diffusion of impulses from
the experimental projects to new workplaces through inviting a number of organ-
izations to participate in the same event, the seminar actually came to change the
whole agenda for diffusion. When a number of organizations met in a shared con-
text, they changed the program: the participants wanted to start the process with
presenting themselves and their challenges to the other participants. As the next step,
they preferred to explore the experiences with change and development that were
made by the other participants. Only when these sources were explored did an inter-
est in relating to external examples emerge. The core issue no longer appeared as the
diffusion of experiences from a set of exemplary cases, but as the generation of
interest in certain forms of organizational change. If the interest could be created,
and the organizations pulled into a context where autonomy in work was the maintopic, the working out of practical solutions did not present insurmountable chal-
lenges. In fact, some of the participants in the job design seminar developed, mostly
on their own, projects that were as substantial as the first experiments. Several of the
main automobile dealersrepresentatives of Volkswagen-Audi, Mercedes-Benz
and Volvodeveloped, for instance, forms of work organization in their bus and
truck service workshops that implied organizing the mechanics in autonomous
groups, each group with its own set of tools within their own group domain, and
with its own set of customers. Dispatchers and foremen were mainly done away with.
All experienced a significant decrease in errors and customer complaints. Since theseprojects relied more heavily than the first experiments on the ability of the users
themselves to perform the job redesign tasks, the main action research contributions
shifted toward the organization of the projects and the administration of the various
discourse arenas that had to be created.
While the original experiments involved four worksites, and the various efforts
to continue with the same project strategy added perhaps another 510, the job
design seminar reached about 40 (Engelstad & degaard, 1979). Some other pro-
jects emerged as well; altogether, however, the figures were modest in this period.
From design to conversation: Agreements on workplace
development
When the labor market parties in Norway decided to support the first experiments,
they set down a joint committee. In the early 1970s, this was turned into a per-
manent cooperation council. Given the problems associated with generating
reforms on the basis of exemplary cases, the parties started, within the context
of the regular renegotiations of their agreements, a discussion about a possible
renewal of this apparatus. In 1982 a new agreement on workplace developmentappeared, introducing new perspectives and replacing the cooperation council with
a new organization.
A main characteristic of this agreement is that it did not express views on criteria
for good organization. Focus was, instead, on the processes needed tocreatethis
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kind of phenomenon. The agreement, consequently, focused on how to make the
local parties involve themselves in conversations on work organization. The main
measure to be applied in this context was labor-management dialogue conferences.
Action research was a partner in the discussions that led up to the agreement. The
main role of research was to synthesize, and make explicit, such experiences as
those from the job design seminar, to suggest possible measures to be applied in the
implementation of the agreement, and to participate in conferences and other
events organized under the agreement to ensure a process of continuous feedback
to the labor market parties centrally, as well as a continuous improvement of the
measures.
No dialogue is possible unless the participants accept the autonomy of the other
participants from the start. Autonomy was, in this way, made into the crucial
characteristic of the process of change from its starting point and not as somethingto be achieved after a more or less lengthy process of job redesign. The conference
was constructed in terms of a set of criteria for participation and a set of criteria for
the conduct of the encounter. It is dealt with in several publications (Gustavsen,
1992, 2001) and no further presentation will be done here. Basing the design of
organizations on processes where autonomy is a chief characteristic from the begin-
ning, autonomy is expected to characterize the outcome of the design process as
well. No participant is expected to promote forms of work organization where the
autonomy granted in the conversation is traded away in its outcome.
That the agreement struck a reasonable balance between outside initiatives andinternal forces in the membership organizations could be seen from the fact that
about 300 user-initiated conferences were organized during the 1980s. When all
measures are considered, the agreement had, by 1990, reached about 500 compa-
nies (Gustavsen, 1993).
When the agreement was to be renegotiated in 1990, some observations came to
play a role (Gustavsen, 1993): first, that relatively few of the agreement users had
proceeded beyond organizing a conference. Of cases with more deep going change,
around 3040 could be identified. Second, there was little contact between organ-
izations. In spite of the positive experiences with collaboration gained in the jobdesign seminar, most enterprises tried to move on their own. Third, although
research was involved, there was no organized framework for this involvement.
The recognition of these points led to several steps throughout the 1990s. Major
among these was the initiation of a new program called Enterprise Development
2000 (ED 2000) that came to constitute the new setting for action research.
A distributive program
The main purpose of the program was to strengthen the context of workplacedevelopment, not only because previous experience had indicated that organiza-
tions could pull each other in processes of change, but also because of the recog-
nition that the knowledge on which they relied was generally of a hybrid nature
(Latour, 1987): it did not consist of a linear set of arguments and steps but rather of
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a mix of elements from different sources to be put together by the actors in each
specific context. The points and arguments could come from different sources, and
the sources need not to be outstanding examples. The job design seminar had
demonstrated that a group of organizations could find ways in which to approach
autonomy in work largely through drawing upon their own experiences without
any of these experiences initially being of a spearhead nature.
When the program was to be concretized, a distributive pattern was chosen.
Rather than base the program with one or two particularly qualified research
groups, it was to be distributed on a number, spread all over the country. The
idea was to start from many different local points, in the hope of making each point
grow. It was thought that by emanating from local contexts, such forces as famil-
iarity, regional perspectives, and similar could be used to attract participation.
Seven units of researchers and companies were created in this way.Within each unit, it was a preference for having several organizations partici-
pate from the beginning, not because the number of organizations was decisive
for the mass of the project, but because it would make the participating organ-
izations accustomed to working with other organizations from the start, as they
had done in the job design seminar. If a local combination of organizations was
successful, it was expected to be able to pull more organizations into the
network.
As procedures were concerned, all units had to apply those that were agreed on
as a point of departure for the program. This came, in particular, to pertain todemocratic dialogue and dialogue conference, since these became the prime meas-
ures of the program. Otherwise, each research group was free to develop its own
framework. When Marrewijk, Veenswijk, and Clegg (2010) criticize the notion of
democratic dialogue for being an insufficient framework for organization develop-
ment, they are right, but they have also misunderstood. Democratic dialogue is an
institutionally anchored set of minimum critical conditions for cooperation, not a
full package for change. Nor is it subject to change and revision purely on
research grounds. Developed together with the labor market parties, the notion
can be restructured only in cooperation with the parties.The actual projects varied broadly, not least in terms of the ability to grow from
small nodes to larger networks. In some of the cases, the formation of broad
networks, or links to already emerging networks, occurred, in other cases the
number of organizations in each unit remained limited. The more specific goals
and patterns of the development processes likewise varied. In, for instance, the
Nord-Vestforum network (Hanssen-Bauer, 2001), the main purpose was to
extend a management training program into a program that could include broad
participation from all employees in the membership organizations. In the Raufoss
industrial cluster, 30 companies, that had formerly been one, set out to maintainthe advantages of scale through working together, but in such a way that each
could develop its own distinctive competence (Johnstad, 2007). Variation charac-
terized, furthermore, the methods, or procedures, applied by research in the various
local projects, as well as their theoretical anchoring. The anchoring ranged from
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strongly structuralist theory, to linguistic perspectives such as those argued by
Pa lshaugen (1998) according to which the only path to the understanding of organ-
izations is through entering ongoing conversations with their members, at the same
time as change is identical to various forms of interventions into these conversa-
tions. This program demonstrated clearly that there was no single best way of
supporting organization development. Although the main emphasis was on orga-
nizing dialogues, there were also users who preferred expert advice, or even lec-
turing (a broad presentation of the program and its results can be found in
Gustavsen, Finne, and Oscarsson (2001)).
On the basis of an evaluation (Bakke, 2001) the number of organizations show-
ing significant internal changes in labor-management cooperation could be esti-
mated to be around 40. Even though the total number was modest, an important
aspect was that it had been growing throughout the program. Instead of the riseand fall curve that characterized the experimental projects of the 1960s and 1970s,
the program strategy demonstrated a potential for continuous growth. A further
point was that even if the number of organizations that had undergone major
change was limited, there was, by the end of the program, a substantial number
of organizations linked to the core ones through network formations
(Claussen, 2001).
Revisions around 2000At the turn of the Millenium, the agreement on development was renegotiated, so
was the ED 2000 program. The first perspective to be pursued in this revision was
to strengthen the development toward networks and other configurations including
more than one organization. The second was to promote the emergence of a super-
structure that could provide links between different networks, help initiate new
networks, and generally fill functions in the terrain between and above the net-
works. At this time, the national government instituted partnerships to promote
growth and innovation on a regional level. It was decided to link the ED 2000
programnow renamed into Value Creation 2010 (VC 2010) to this develop-ment. This was made possible since the labor market parties were represented in all
the 19 regional partnerships found in Norway. While the program continued to
focus on autonomy and other quality of working life aspects, the notion of innov-
ation as a goal was strengthened.
At this time, the agreement was gaining ground, in terms of number of users as
well as in terms of impact in the user enterprises. By 2010 the estimate, as made by
the employer-union board responsible for the implementation of all cooperation
agreements, was that about 2000 companies had used the agreement and that about
500 had substantial results to show for the effort. Lacking the resources needed forthorough investigations of each case, the figures need to be taken as approxima-
tions and indicators rather than as exact measurements. This notwithstanding,
there is little doubt that the agreement on development helped transform the move-
ment toward autonomy in work from the level of dozens to the level of hundreds.
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The institutional context
When the labor market parties in Norway decided to participate in the Industrial
Democracy program, it was the beginning of a process that has been going on ever
since, where the labor market parties have developed and restructured their cooper-
ation and sent signals to working life concerning what the good work should look
like, or concerning how it should be achieved. In the 1970s, this process came to
include the state. The context was a new health and safety reform. Such reforms
occurred in practically all industrialized countries during the 1970s and largely for
the same reasons (see for instance Ashford, 1976; Bagnara, Misiti, &
Wintersberger, 1978). While the traditional labor protection legislation had to
some extent succeeded in combating accidents and dangerous substances in the
workplaces, there emerged major shortcomings also within these areas. Equallyimportant was, however, the recognition that there were major areas that were
scarcely covered at all, such as ergonomics, the impacts of dysfunctional forms
of work organization on issues ranging from stress to alienation, and interaction
between different factors where each could be harmless but where the danger could
be found in the combinations. If a reform is to be based on a strict principle of
legalismsomething can be regulated only when it can be fully specifiedthere
was in fact no way in which the new themes could be included. In Scandinavia in
general, and Norway in particular, there emerged, however, another way. If a
health and safety reform could be based on labor-management cooperation, itwould be possible to include all sorts of topics, since the criteria would be decided
locally. To choose such an alternative became possible since there was an estab-
lished tradition of cooperation that had manifested itself in local projects. They
included only a minority of workplaces, but an amount sufficient to base the reform
on co-operative achievements and expect others to be able to follow suit
(Gustavsen, 1980; cfr. the notion of evolutionary, or reflexive, law as argued by
Teubner, 1989). In this way, a health and safety reform came to function as a
mechanism for the diffusion of autonomy in work. Action research performed
three functions within the context of this reform: first, through having a memberin the work group that developed the proposal, action research formulated a sec-
tion in the act where some of the main characteristics of autonomous work were
expressed (section 4 in the present Norwegian Work Environment Act). Second,
within the work group and later, action research made substantial contributions to
the procedures for implementation of the act, where a main point is to achieve
broad mobilization and labor-management cooperation. Third, action research
developed a new generation of field projects designed to illustrate how to imple-
ment the reform (Gustavsen & Hunnius, 1981).
The various steps taken by the labor market parties, in combination with suchpublic efforts as the Work Environment Act, constitute an institutional setting for
working life. In his overview of the socio-technical school in organization devel-
opment, Trist (1981) remarks that this implied a legal sanctioning of the criteria for
the good work emanating from humanist psychology (psychological job
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requirements). In one sense this is correct, in another it implies a misunderstand-
ing. When criteria such as autonomy and learning are given institutional expres-
sions, the reason is that psychology is in itself not strong enough as a platform
for the actual promotion of autonomy. In particular, the unions have argued that if
autonomy in work is a good thing, there should be few arguments against making
this point in laws and agreements.
The impact of this reform on the development in work organization is difficult to
assess. Various investigations performed during the first years after the law went
into force indicated that it was mainly the larger industrial companies that had
implemented the law in a way that had actual workplace impact, while other enter-
prises as well as the public sector were lagging behind (Gustavsen, 1983). There was
a very high degree of overlap between those who used the agreement on develop-
ment and those who implemented the autonomy-promoting parts of the health andsafety reform. Over the years, the scope of the impact has grown, encompassing
areas outside the joint areas of the main labor market parties, such as trade and
service and the public sector. The growth has been sufficient to help locate Norway
among the leading societies in Europe in the implementation of autonomy in work.
This does, however, not mean that the law is fully implemented in all workplaces.
The common denominator: Participative constructivism
The main point in the somewhat lengthy and complex story recounted above is thatthe main contributions of action research refer to contexts as much as to cases. This
emerges in particular from the shifts that occurred during the period. Among these,
there are two that stand out particularly strongly. First, the one that became
apparent around 1980 with the agreement on development. In this agreement, a
major focus was placed on the social mechanisms that generate patterns of organ-
ization. Obviously, this was not a new recognition but rather a strengthening of a
perspective that had been present all the way. It is not possible to perform any kind
of action research project without conversations with those concerned: what hap-
pened around 1980 was that the main focus shifted from the topics of the conver-sations to the conversations as such. This shift can be likened to the linguistic
turn that came to characterize much social research at the time, and there were
obvious influences. As the work research discussed here is concerned, it is, however,
important to emphasize that the shift was brought about by practical events and
concerns rather than by a pure paradigm shift. With this, the core focus came to
be directed at the conversations in which action research became involved: what
were the characteristics of these conversations, what options did they give for
action research, and how could they be made subject to influence?
Departing from the significance of conversations, the second shift that appearsas major when looking at the whole period, but which is actually also a gradual
one, is the growing emphasis on the relationships that surroundthe individual field
site. The perspective was present in the Industrial Democracy Program of the 1960s
in the sense that the status of the experimental sites in Norwegian working life in
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general was an important consideration in their selection. What has happened later
can be seen as a process of differentiation: instead of thinking in terms of one
surrounding network, todays processes rely on distinctions between many different
forms, such as networks, clusters, innovation systems, industrial districts, regions,
interest organizations, social movements, society, and more. There is a broad lit-
erature on all of them and it would break the framework of one article to go into
details. In brief, the notions of network and cluster generally refer to cooperation
between organizations on a scale that presupposes direct contacts of some size and
duration; innovation system often has a broader interpretation to cover larger
slices of organizations that may benefit from the same overall framework without
strong direct contacts between all (i.e. Silicon valley); the various notions of regions
and industrial districts generally refer to mechanisms of integration within geo-
graphical areas of some size (well-known examples in the literature are the NorthItalian regions of Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany) and concepts such as the labor
market parties, social movement, and society refer to processes where many actors
or organizations move in the same direction but without direct relationships
between the participants. Most enterprises will, at each and every time, be involved
in relationships corresponding to many of these phenomena, sometimes all.
Although there is much overlap, they have different characteristics, and to create
broad change, there is a need to enter conversations within all, or most, of these
contexts. On the other hand, most of the conversations exist independently of
action research and do not need to be created from scratch. Even though theyare many, there is also an advantage associated with their specialization. Action
research does not have to take part in conversations that are only vaguely relevant.
Although with exceptions, the focus has shifted toward continuously larger
systems. While the points of origin were the groups of six organizations participat-
ing in the job design seminar, and the units of similar size that constituted some of
the enterprise groups in Enterprise Development 2000, much of the focus is pres-
ently on branch-based innovation systems and regional and national configurations
of organizations.
With this, the role of action research is located within the framework of a set ofmutually dependent conversations. But what are, more specifically, the contribu-
tions of action research within these contexts? Turning back to the function of the
first experiments, they were generally thought to demonstrate the relevance of
psychological job requirements and specific socio-technical design criteria (Emery
& Thorsrud, 1976; Trist, 1981). While this was certainly the case, there seems,
however, as if it was a third, and slightly different, perspective that came to be
decisive in the long run: the potential of constructive efforts performed jointly
between the workplace actors. While this point may look trivial today, there is a
need to remember that the first experiments occurred at a time when the discourseson industrial society and its moving forces were quite heated between, on the one
hand, the proponents of economic liberalism, and on the other those of the various
branches of socialism. These world views tended to confront each other since they
both claimed universal validity. Generally, the founders of Scandinavian social
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democracy became known for their ability to mix elements from the different
schools. To be able to mix elements, they had, however, to reject the absolutism of
both, and reduce them to sources of ideas. With this, they also came to reject the
belief that the world would be set right if and when one of the views became
dominantin a more or less distant future. Instead, their point of departure was
that society was open to choices and constructions: it was up to the people con-
cerned to decide what they wanted, and to act accordingly.
This kind of constructivism called for all actors involved in a field, such as
working life, to play a role in the process. The reason was not participative ideal-
ism but simply the point that any specific interest group would either have to be
given a voice or it had to be dissolved. In this way, the pioneers of Scandinavian
social democracy avoided the stalemate discussions on the roles of unions and
employers characterizing societies with a greater belief in general theory. Themarket liberalists never liked the unions, but were, in most societies, not able to
fully get rid of them. Likewise, the socialists always looked askance at the employ-
ers, but were, again, unable to get rid of them. Accepting that both, along with a
number of other interest groups, had to participate, the social democrats were
looking for ways in which this mutual participation could be organized.
Since what is now often called the Scandinavian model originated with a cooper-
ation between the government and the labor market confederations, it acquired a
strong centralist orientation. Work and the labor market had to be reformed, to
reduce the level of conflict and increase productivity, but the platform had to be anagreement between the central actors. From this platform, a cascade of agreements,
training systems, and conflict resolution mechanisms emerged until, eventually, the
workplaces were reached. It was up to the politicians to see to it that the benefits of
peace and productivity were divided in a fair way, through policies within areas
such as employment, welfare, labor protection, and taxation. Under this umbrella,
Sweden, in particular, saw a major wave of implementation of Taylorism as early
as the 1930s (Johansson, 1978), which was to be followed by the other
Scandinavian countries in the post World War II period. This development was,
however, not free of problems. The continuously intensified implementation ofTaylorism led to unrest in the workplaces, and the centrally administered health
and safety procedures seemed to fall far short of the real needs. Major challenges
posed by work seemed to avoid centralist constructivism. This was the context
where the experiments with autonomy in work appeared. While autonomy and
associated notions of psychological job requirements and socio-technical design
attracted interest, it seems clear that it was the local constructivism as such that
attracted most of the attention: The ability of managers, workers, unions, and
other stakeholders to get together locally and through local processes find ways
of meeting the major challenges of working life.But how did the experiments function? At the core of the experiments was the
idea of taking abstract conceptslike democracy, participation and autonomyout
of the general conversations of society and confront them with workplace realities.
By workplace realities was, however, not understood the workplaces as they are,
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but the workplaces as they are when the local actors confront the task of pro-
moting autonomy, which is a rather different perspective and the one that sets
action research apart from pure descriptive-analytic research. Through this con-
frontation with workplace realities such concepts as democracy, participation,
and autonomy became charged with new meanings associated with the acts
needed to make the concepts into workplace realities. This perspective can be
applied to later efforts and projects as well: for local experience to exert influence
on society level concepts, there is a need for a local as well as a society level
discourse and there is a need for discourses that link them to each other.
Participation in the health and safety reforms as well as in the evolution of the
agreement between the labor market parties on workplace development was actu-
ally directed mainly at the context of workplace change. As far as the last is
concerned, there have, in fact, been a large number of projects over the years, butthey have been tailored to fit the contexts prevailing at each and every time. This
is a main reason why they often lack universal visibility; they can be seen only
from the standpoint of specific discourses and the challenges and concepts
appearing as important within each of them.
This has implied a mix of tasks and roles for action research, ranging from
designing field experiments, via the organization of discourses, to activities
aiming at linking organizations to each other in continuously larger systems, and
further on to contributions to the institutional order of society in terms of agree-
ments and legislation. The optimal way of performing each of these tasks varieswith context. Action research will not improve on its performance through improv-
ing on one, or even some, of these activities. The main focus even in contemporary
action research on how to make better individual cases is only one of a number of
challenges. In fact, a focus on optimizing on single case level may be counterpro-
ductive. As demonstrated by Kania and Kramer (2011), as soon as a case is part of
a broader network of cases, the characteristics of this broader network decide what
is optimal for each case.
From general theory to ripples in the water
While the early field experiments in Norway represented outstanding cases, there is
a notable lack of them in contemporary Scandinavia. Events as early as the job
design seminar indicated that organizations could move forward through working
together and using experience from everyday rather than outstanding situations. At
the same time, attention shifted from single organizations toward the relationships
between organizations. An important experience was that within each set of rela-
tionships between organizations, there was a need for a pattern of give and take; all
needed to learn something but all could function as a source of learning for others.Insofar as something could stand out, it would have to be the configuration of
organizations rather than the single organization. However, as the number of net-
works started to grow, and networks were brought to co-operate within regions,
the perspective of equal partners rather than leaderfollower was applied to the
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to generality, nor the specific measures applied to broaden and strengthen the
movements.
This perspective can be applied to a number of the developments in which action
research has been, and is, a part. In this article the movement towards autonomy
and democracy in work has been used. Other examples are the movement toward
equal treatment of women and men in work and society, towards self-reliance in
the third world, and to save the planet from ecological disaster. In all cases action
research has beenand ismore or less strongly involved and has exerted at least
some influence over the overall nature of the movement. The movements differ in
terms of scope, membership, types of ideas, forms of relationships, and more, so do
the contributions of action research. It seems, however, as if the organization of
confrontations between the general and the local, the abstract and the concrete,
constitutes a common element. What most action researchers do is to conduct oneor some projects, and use these projects to back specific lines of argument in con-
versations on various levels in society. For research contributions to promote and
sustain social movements, there will generally be a need for contributions from
more than one researcher or research group. However brilliant a small group may
be, it will not be able to organize changes of the scope and magnitude needed to
sustain a movement. There is, consequently, a need for some degree of cooperation,
or at least synchronization, among a number of researchers.
As an overall characteristic of this kind of development the notion of social
movement is used. There are challenges associated with this choice of concept.First, that it appears as a highest level in a hierarchy of levels of organization,
spanning from networks and clusters via regions and innovation systems to nation
states and corresponding organizations, such as the labor market parties. On each
of these levels, or systems, there is a broad literature, and the characteristics of each
type of system are generally cast in different terms and with little concern for the
characteristics of the other levels. Second, as the notion of social movement
appears in the literaturelargely political sciencethe emphasis is generally on
leadership and the conditions that create the movements, less on the grass-root
actors as subjects (McAdam, McCarthy, & Zald, 1996). The closest alternative maybe community, but this seems to be too narrow. Although Norway has been used
as an example in this contribution, the action research inspired notion of autonomy
has, although through somewhat different channels, diffused to substantial parts of
the total labor market in Scandinavia, a labor market of about 15 million people.
The purpose of this contribution is, however, to draw attention to the issue of the
wider impact of action research andhopefullyto inspire more action research-
ers to explore this issue, not to freeze a specific set of concepts. If and when more
experience is documented and discussed, one may come to choose other concepts as
more fruitful.The arguments promoted in this article do not call for major changes in the
action research establishment. What they do call for are more attention given to the
issue of how to reach out in society, greater willingness among action researchers to
co-operate with each other, and, perhaps most important, a major improvement in
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the ability to tell society what action research actually achieves in terms not only of
change but in terms of the scope of the change. In spite of the point that action
research may, in general, be on the right track and can be found in a large number
of countries, it remains, after three quarters of a century, a marginal part of the
research establishment. There is no universal theory that will enable action research
to break out of this encapsulation. It can be done only by utilizing its major asset to
the full: creating change in the real world. Change is, however, not enough. The
world must be told what change is achieved and there must be proof behind what is
told.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to thank Davydd Greenwood for leading the review process of this
article. Should there be any comments/reactions you wish to share, please bring them to the
interactive portion (Reader Responses column) of the website: http://arj.sagepub.com.
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Author biography
Bjrn Gustavsen is professor emeritus. Associated with a number of academic
institutions in Scandinavia, he has participated in initiatives and programs for
work reform in Scandinavia as well as in other parts of the world. Alone andwith others, he has published about 25 books and several hundred articles, mainly
on work reform, organizational change, action research, labor market organization
and research policy.
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