Developing Managers as Healing Agents in Organizations: A Co-Operative Inquiry Approach

This action research examines how a health service manager, with a clinical background, sought to develop his clinical skills in a management context. When asked to undertake an evaluation of an addiction counseling service, he found that there was evidence of systemic ill-health expressed through feelings of powerlessness, hurt, and alienation among the staff of the service. The article describes how the manager used action research, and in particular co-operative inquiry, to become an agent of healing in his own place of work. It illustrates how the co-operative inquiry process can be used to help individuals or groups to overcome feelings of alienation and powerlessness in organizations. By dealing with these feelings through a process of co-operative inquiry the conditions necessary to improve systemic health can be created to help develop a service and meet service objectives It explores the neglected subject of how managers can be agents of healing in organizations.     

Community Work Research through Co-Operative Inquiry in Timor-Leste,Australia and Peru: Insights into Process

Co-operative inquiry is an under-explored method in community-based research. Its democratic approach involves a group of “co-researchers” collaboratively inquiring into a mutually-agreed research topic through systematic cycles of reflection and action. This article shares the process, outcomes, and methodological reflections of three co-operative inquiries that were conducted as part of an international study regarding love in community work. Groups of up to 10 community workers in rural villages in Timor-Leste, Australia, and Peru engaged in co-operative inquiry to collaboratively develop new knowledge to inform practice. The article analyses data regarding co-inquirer experiences of the methodology, and identifies the strengths and challenges of the co-operative inquiry method to support the collective generation of new knowledge. The article concludes that co-operative inquiry involves shared power, participation, action, and contextual reflexivity, and is a useful method for community workers to collaboratively develop innovative approaches to community work practice through cycles of reflection and action.     

Co-operative Inquiry: Changing Interprofessional Practice

Recent government guidance concerning the welfare of children emphasizes the necessity for change in interprofessional practice. This paper examines how co-operative inquiry enabled a diverse professional group to inquire into how change can be promoted in complex practice systems. It considers the influence of external stakeholders, highlights the consequent tension between task and process, and addresses the implications for the role of facilitators.     

The Participation Imperative in Co-operative Inquiry: Personal Reflections of an Initiating Researcher

Participation has become an imperative in international development. In particular, participatory approaches to development research are believed to support empowerment through collective development of knowledge and action. Yet there are broad interpretations of participation, ranging from passive participation and information exchange to empowered participation through self-mobilisation. As such, development researchers may claim to use a participatory approach without yielding power and agency to citizens involved in the research. This is a reflexive article about a development researcher’s experience in applying a participatory worldview through co-operative inquiry, a research approach that attempts to engage emancipatory forms of participation. The article begins with a critical analysis of literature regarding participation, the participatory paradigm and participation in the co-operative inquiry. The author then analyses her personal experiences, challenges and strategies as initiating researcher to actualise empowering forms of participation in three co-operative inquiries. The article emphasises that researchers must “let go” of their power, control and personal agenda to support empowering participation.     

Communicative Action through Collaborative Inquiry: Journey of a Facilitating Co-Inquirer

As complex and rapidly changing organisational contexts present a significant challenge for the management and organisational development of professionals, this paper explores a particular journey of one facilitator/co-inquirer (participant) in a collaborative inquiry (CI) intervention driving culture change within the UK's Civil Service. Through such experience it is argued that CI represents an intensive and effective inquiry based change strategy involving collaborative interaction between the co-inquiring facilitator and client. The philosophical history and richness of CI is explored as a prelude to outlining the learning and development of the co-inquirers involved in this project and the observed impact of CI on the organisation. Of note is that over an extended period of time, the facilitator assumes the two roles of inquirer and subject of inquiry, and through such a dual responsibility, gains a deeper understanding of the challenges they face and the nature of the solutions that would require further attention. It is concluded that co-inquirers effectively contribute both to scientific knowledge and the solving of real life practical problems. This document may not be copied in any form, in whole or in part, without the express permission of one of the authors.     

Toward Fostering Systems Learning in Organizational Contexts

This article explores the ways in which the process of systems learning can be nurtured in organizational contexts. I posit that in order to mobilize systems learning at the individual, group, and organizational levels, an integrated, holistic approach must be pursued. It is suggested that the challenge of not only teaching the systems thinking concepts but also using their actual applications in practice is more than just an issue of pedagogical improvement. The cultural and material issues integral to the use of systems thinking must be taken into consideration as well. I argue that our efforts to improve our pedagogical practices to foster systems learning in organizational contexts can benefit from the social constructivist perspective, which represents a system of ideas about learning. The qualities of systems pedagogy resided in social constructivism are proposed as a framework to think with in designing the meaningful systems learning activities. This article also discusses how to create the cultural and material environments in which the process of systems learning can be nurtured.     

Birth and Demise of a Social Protection Organization in Venezuela

In this article a context for the study of a social protection organization is presented. This context is based on three ideas: (i) social protection is a requirement for assuming the cohesion and continuation of society; (ii) in an industrialized society, social protection is conceived in connection with salary; and (iii) the organizational form of social protection in Venezuelan society is Social Security guaranteed by a Welfare State. The becoming of our Social Security organization is interpreted with these concepts. The interpretive process consists in the unfolding of the relation between the organizational form and the conceptions about social protection since the birth of the organization 60 years ago. This unfolding simultaneously reveals failure concerning coverage of the risks typical of social security and a radical change in the conception of social protection in Venezuela. These results rest on the non-realization of premise ii of the interpretive context in the case of the Venezuelan society. The article concludes by showing the need to understand the conceptions regarding social protection in contexts different from that of an industrial society (advanced or not).     

The Organizational View of Public Participation: A Narrative Analysis

The following research paper presents results of an ethnographic investigation focused on the participatory process of a public project for urban environmental rehabilitation. This public intervention, called Iguaçu Project, is being carried out in the Baixada Fluminense, in the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region (RJMR). Drawing upon the literature on social learning from both organizational and environmental management studies, the research investigates when and why social learning occurs within a participatory arena. The paper presents an analysis of stories told by nine key informants, selected as representatives of the main social categories involved in the project. The different meanings the narrators attributed to participation, environment, knowledge and learning in their stories, are analysed through abductive reasoning, i.e. through a continuous reference to the literature and confrontation with former narrative analysis in business organizations. The findings show an interpretative framework based on development of multiple-loop learning theory, defined as contextual loops. Furthermore, it identifies five explanatory propositions to answer the research questions. The occurrence of social learning in participatory arenas seems to depend upon five organizationally related factors: a systematized organizational structure; the participants’ commitments and the pluralism of the participatory arena; the process proponents’ reliability, the supporting role of a facilitator.     

Systemic Research Practices Towards the Development of an Eco-Community in Vietnam: some Joint Post-Facto Reflections

In this article we discuss how an interdisciplinary research team partnered with a variety of stakeholders concerned with and/or affected by the impacts of climate change in the Red River Delta of Vietnam. The research, undertaken from 2016 to 2018, drew upon a wide range of methods to investigate systemically these impacts – with a view to the research inputting into the development of (more) sustainable ways of living. The research solicited various accounts of the experience of climate change in the community, set up learning processes in community meetings, and created an interface with government officials positioned at commune, district, provincial, and national levels. The intention was to offer support towards developing a learning process (broadly defined as including learnings/systemic inquiry across organizational levels of the society) to pursue options for sustainable living. The article offers our post-facto reflections which render more explicit (to ourselves and for the benefit of audiences) how the research team, with Hoang as lead researcher, facilitated the inquiry process towards developing a synthesis which underscored the assets for resilience to climate change and supported interventions to strengthen such (defined) assets.

     

The trap of evolutionary organicism

This article is a slightly summarized version of an invited plenary at the Aegean Seminar, which took place at the Greek island of Samos in July 1992. The original title was “An Interpretive Systemological View of the Issue: ‘Environmental Fluctuations and Cultural Change in Island Societies.”’ It is an hermeneutical inquiry into the interpretive context that provides full meaning to the issue of Environmental Fluctuations and Cultural Change. The roots of the relationship of causality embedded in such a title are traced so that its underlying ontological assumptions are uncovered. This sort of archaeological inquiry will finally unearth the interpretive context that provides full meaning to such a relationship of causality, namely,neoevolutionary organicism. This theoretical outcome of Modernity embraces natural and social sciences under the aegis of a single way of thinking, feeling, and acting which buries the Enlightenment conception of liberty and its consequent problem of morality and of practical reason.     

Developing Ourselves as Police Leaders: How Can We Inquire Collaboratively in a Hierarchical Organization?

This paper gives a practical account of a recent 18-month long action inquiry project, in which the author facilitated (and co-inquired with) a mixed group of police managers with the intention of improving our own leadership practices. Six phases of the inquiry are identified—doing the groundwork, getting the group together, creating a safe environment, sustaining the inquiry, accounting for the learning, and bridging the gaps. It is argued that such forms of collaborative inquiry are particularly well suited to addressing the uniquely complex phenomenon of leadership, and some tangible benefits for members of the project and for the organization as a whole are identified. Particular attention is paid to the politics and practicalities of doing collaborative inquiry in an overtly hierarchical organization, concluding that action inquiry must be crafted to its particular circumstances and context to realize its considerable potential to help us improve both individual practice and organizational performance.     

Inequalities in health--development and change

This article traces the changes that have taken place in the analysis and interpretation of health inequalities over the last 25 years. It sets these in their historic context, indicates how the debate on their validity and social context has shifted over the period and assesses the current evidence on the extent and importance of social variations.     

企业组织结构与环境不确定性程度的关系

外部环境是企业有效运作所必需应对的各种不确定性的主要来源,目前,现代企业所面临的环境比以往具有更大的不确定性。在不确定性环境中,企业应如何安排自身结构以减少决策风险,是本文所研究的问题。基于数学模型,探讨了环境不确定性程度对企业组织结构设计的影响,得到如下结论:当环境不确定性程度较低而通信费用较高时,组织结构趋于层级化;反之,组织结构趋于扁平化。     

Commentary: Reflections on Co-operative Inquiry in This Historic Moment

Systemic Practice and Action Research - My reading of the six accounts of co-operative inquiry in this volume comes during a historic moment for action research in which the tensions of celebration...     

Systems Thinking and Systems Practice: Working in the Fifth Dimension

This paper describes how a messy organizational problem was tackled using a systems approach which led to a resolution of the problem and to an improvement in the working relationships of the people involved. The example also shows how people who are not familiar with systems thinking, as such, can quickly be helped to develop a shared systemic view of a complex situation using activity modeling. At a deeper level, the paper also shows how the underlying dynamics of the problem situation was altered as a result of using a cooperative, dialogical working method, leading to an improvement in the quality of service provided by that part of the organization. The paper uses Peter Senge's five disciplines of a learning organization, together with various systems concepts, as a framework for describing how the process of change was brought about through the simultaneous management of task and social processes, leading to both individual and organizational learning.     

Establishing a Co-operative Inquiry Group: The Perspective of a “First-Time” Inquirer

Systemic Practice and Action Research - This paper gives a detailed account of the activities I engaged in when establishing a co-operative inquiry (CI) group of 12 young women managers. I feel...     

信息处理与组织结构的理论研究及数值模拟

外部环境是组织有效运作所必需应对的各种不确定性的主要来源,现代组织所面临的环境比以往具有更大的不确定性.将组织看作是一个信息处理网络,组织绩效用组织结构价值来度量,建立数学模型,研究组织结构与组织环境如何相互作用决定组织绩效,以及信息费用对组织结构设计的影响.基于形式模型的理论分析和数值模拟,为理解不确定环境中组织结构设计提供了新的解释、视野及管理学上的含义.     

Modeling Organizational Systems: Banathy's Three Lenses Revisited

The inherent complexity of organizational systems defies full understanding by inquirers. This condition often causes organizational inquirers to become mired in convoluted deliberations, unable to attain the consensus among the inquiring community that is needed to advance the research forward to a meaningful conclusion. Consequently, many practitioners and researchers employ models of organizations to aid in simplifying the system's complexity and to reach shared agreement. Because no single model can fully capture the complexity of an organization, Dr. Bela H. Banathy therefore proposed using three types of interrelated models to give a multidimensional view of a human system under study. Since Banathy first introduced his three lenses approach, the concept has been employed in many educational and organizational settings. This article examines the author's experience using Banathy's three lenses and integrates their usage with some other popular modeling techniques, providing a comprehensive view of how Banathy's three lenses can be effectively employed in contemporary organizational settings.     

The First-, Second- and Third-Person Dynamics of Learning History

Learning history is a well delineated action research process consisting of consecutive stages of inquiry where groups and individuals engage in learning and reflecting on their past shared, but often multiple, experiences as these are recorded in a ‘learning history’. Learning history has much in common with other forms of action research in that it configures first-, second- and third-person processes of inquiry in a particular way and enacts research qualities of rigour, relevance and reflexivity. Yet these and other links have as yet been tacit and under articulated - resulting in learning history often conceived as a distinctive linear method with the practice of learning history likewise confined. This reflective article opens out and makes explicit the inherent first- second- and third- person dynamics of learning history. These dynamics are explored from the point of view of different actors – the historian, the participant and the reader - in a learning history process and connections to a general empirical method are made. Finally questions of quality in a learning history are discussed. The aim of this article is to establish firmer methodological foundations for the learning history approach and to provide practical insight into how action researchers might engage more readily in learning history work.     

IDEA: A Collaborative Organizational Design Process Integrating Innovation, Design, Engagement, and Action

This paper describes an innovative and successful 1-year organization change process. It captures a design-based inquiry that simultaneously applies creative, purposeful, and systemic thinking to a complex set of issues. Three significant findings result from this research. First, this paper discusses how the change process created the necessary and sufficient conditions allowing for the creation of an innovative organizational design that embeds both optimization and innovation. Second, Design Thinking was used to develop a 2-day participative design process we have called IDEA, an acronym for integrating innovation, design, engagement, and action. We believe that the IDEA organizational design process is replicable. Third, it describes an emergent and co-created change process. This paper concludes by raising questions for future transformative organizational design efforts.