Action Research in Inter-Organisational Networks: Impartial Studies or the Trojan Horse?

This article addresses the distinct ethical challenges of action research in inter-organisational projects. Traditionally, the literature on action research has distinguished between two researcher roles: The problem-solver and the observer. Based on an action research project in a Danish inter-organisational network, a third role as legitimiser is identified as an ethical challenge. Potentially, the legitimacy that the researchers carry as academic knowledge-generating actors may be used by a particular company to involve other companies in the network. Thus, the researchers may be perceived as bringing into the other organisations a Trojan Horse containing the interests of this particular company. Lack of clarity in defining the role of the action researcher may thus jeopardise the trustworthiness of the researchers and the action research project. On the basis of the case study analysis, the article develops a number of preliminary points of ethical consideration for future research analysis.     

Fracture surface energy of the Punchbowl fault, San Andreas system

Fracture energy is a form of latent heat required to create an earthquake rupture surface and is related to parameters governing rupture propagation and processes of slip weakening. Fracture energy has been estimated from seismological and experimental rock deformation data, yet its magnitude, mechanisms of rupture surface formation and processes leading to slip weakening are not well defined. Here we quantify structural observations of the Punchbowl fault, a large-displacement exhumed fault in the San Andreas fault system, and show that the energy required to create the fracture surface area in the fault is about 300 times greater than seismological estimates would predict for a single large earthquake. If fracture energy is attributed entirely to the production of fracture surfaces, then all of the fracture surface area in the Punchbowl fault could have been produced by earthquake displacements totalling <1 km. But this would only account for a small fraction of the total energy budget, and therefore additional processes probably contributed to slip weakening during earthquake rupture.