action research 2014 gustavsen 339 56

8/9/2019 Action Research 2014 Gustavsen 339 56

1/18

Action Research

2014, Vol. 12(4) 339356

! The Author(s) 2014

Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/1476750314534455

arj.sagepub.com

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]

at Harvard Libraries on January 28, 2015arj.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://arj.sagepub.com/http://arj.sagepub.com/http://arj.sagepub.com/http://arj.sagepub.com/


2/18

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

340 Action Research 12(4)



3/18

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

Gustavsen 341



4/18

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




5/18

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

Gustavsen 343



6/18

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




7/18

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

Gustavsen 345



8/18

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.




9/18

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

Gustavsen 347



10/18

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




11/18

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

Gustavsen 349



12/18

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,




13/18

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

Gustavsen 351



14/18


15/18

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

Gustavsen 353



16/18

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.

References

Ashford, J. (1976). Crisis in the workplace: Occupational disease and injury. Report to the

Ford Foundation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Bagnara, S., Misiti, R., & Wintersberger, H. Work and health in the 1980s. Berlin: Sigma

Bakke, N. A. (2001). Report to the benchmarking group. In B. Gustavsen, H. Finne, &

B. Oscarsson (Eds.), Creating connectedness: The role of social research in innovation

policy (pp. 4170). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Bolweg, J. (1976). Job design and industrial democracy: The case of Norway . Leiden: Nijhoff.

Chisholm, R. F. (1998). Developing network organizations: Learning from practice and

theory. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Claussen, T. (2001). Participation and enterprise networks within a regional context:

Examples from South-West Norway. In W. Fricke, & P. Totterdill (Eds.),Action research

in workplace innovation and regional development (pp. 83102). Amsterdam: John

Benjamims.

Emery, F. E., & Thorsrud, E. (1976). Democracy at work. Leiden: Nijhoff.

Engelstad, P. H., degaard, L. A., & International Council for the Quality of Working Life.

(1979). Participative redesign projects in Norway: Summarizing the first five years of astrategy to democratize the design process in work organization. Working on the quality

of working life (pp. 327338). Leiden: Nijhoff.

French, J. R. P. Jr., Israel, J., & A s, D. (1960). An experiment on participation in a

Norwegian factory. Human Relations, 13, 319.

Greenwood, D. (2002). Action research: Unfulfilled promises and unmet challenges.

Concepts and Transformation, 7, 117139.

Gustavsen, B. (1980). Improvement of the work environment: A choice of strategy.

International Labour Review, 119, 271286.

Gustavsen, B. (1983). The Norwegian work environment reform: The transition from gen-

eral principles to workplace action. In C. Crouch, & F. Heller (Eds.), Organizationaldemocracy and political processes (pp. 545564). Wiley: Chichester.

Gustavsen, B. (1992). Dialogue and development. Assen: van Gorcum.




17/18

Gustavsen, B. (1993). Creating productive structures: The role of research and development.

In F. Naschold, R. E. Cole, B. Gustavsen, & H. Beinum (Eds.), Constructing the new

industrial society (pp. 133168). Aassen: van Gorcum.

Gustavsen, B. (2001). Theory and practice: The mediating discourse. In P. Reason, &H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of action research (pp. 1726). 1st ed. London: Sage.

Gustavsen, B., Finne, H., & Oscarsson, B. (2001). Creating connectedness: The role of social

research in innovation policy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Gustavsen, B., Hansson, A., & Qvale, T. U. (2008). Action research and the challenge of

scope. In P. Reason, & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of action research (2nd ed.,

pp. 6376). London: Sage.

Gustavsen, B., & Hunnius, G. (1981). New patterns of work reform: The case of Norway.

Oslo: The Universiy Press.

Hanssen-Bauer, J. (2001). The Nordvest Forum module. In B. Gustavsen, H. Finne, &

B. Oscarsson (Eds.), Creating connectedness: The role of social research in innovationpolicy (pp. 203216). Amsterdam: John Benjamims.

Herbst, P. G. (1974).Socio-technical design: Strategies in multidisciplinary research. London:

Tavistock Publications.

Johansson, A. L. (1978). Tillvaxt och klassamarbete (Economic growth and class co-opera-

tion).Stockholm: Tiden.

Johnstad, T. (2007). From a learning company to a learning region. In B. Gustavsen, B.

Nyhan & R. Ennals (Eds), Learning together for local innovation: Promoting learning

regions (pp. 102110). Luxembourg: CEDEFOP reference series no. 68, Office of the

official publications of the European Communities.

Kania, J., & Kramer, M. (2011). Collective impact. Stanford Social Innovation Review,Winter issue, 3641.

Latour, B. (1987). Science in action. Milton Keynes: The Open University Press.

Lewin, K. (1943). Forces behind food habits and methods of change. Bulletin of the National

Research Council, CVIII, 3565.

Lorenz, E., & Lundvall, B.-A . (2011). Organization of work and systems of labour market

organization and social protection. In M. Ekman, B. Gustavsen, B. T. Asheim, &

. Pa lshaugen (Eds.), Learning regional innovation: Scandinavian models (pp. 5069).

London: MacMillan-Palgrave.

Marrewijk, A., Veenswijk, M., & Clegg, S. (2010). Organizing reflexivity in designing

change: The ethnoventionist approach. Journal of Organizational Change Management,23, 212229.

Martin, A. W. (2001). Large group processes as action research. In B. Reason, &

H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of action research (1st ed., pp. 200208). London: Sage.

McAdam, D., McCarthy, J. D., & Zald, M. N. (1996). On social movements. Cambridge,

UK: Cambridge University Press.

Pa lshaugen, . (1998). The end of organization theory?Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Teubner, G. (1989). How the law thinks: Toward a constructivist epistemology of law. Law

and society Review, 23, 727757.

Torbert, W. (1998). Developing wisdom and courage in organizing and sciencing.

In S. Srivastva, & D. Cooperrider (Eds.), Organizational wisdom and executive courage(pp. 227253). San Fransisco, CA: New Lexington Press.

Gustavsen 355



18/18

Torbert, W. (2001). The practice of action inquiry. In P. Reason, & H. Bradbury (Eds.),

Handbook of action research (1st ed., pp. 250260). London: Sage.

Trist, E. (1981). The evolution of socio-technical systems. The Ontario Quality of Working

Life Centre. Toronto: Ministry of Labour.Wicks, P. G., Reason, P., & Bradbury, H. (2008). Living inquiry: personal, political and

philosophical groundings for action research practice. In P. Reason, & H. Bradbury

(Eds.), Handbook of action research (2nd ed., pp. 1530). London: Sage.

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.


action research 2014 gustavsen 339 56

Documents