Action Research

Action research was developed during the 1960s and has proved particularly useful in the area of managing change.

French and Bell (1978) have defined it as:

"The process of systematically collecting research data about an ongoing system relative to some objective, goal or need of that system; feeding these data back into the system; taking action by altering selected variables within the system based both on the data and on hypotheses; and evaluating the results of the actions by collecting more data."

As a process it essentially involves

Taking a static picture of the organisational situation;
Formulating a hypotheses regarding improvement of the system based on the picture;
The manipulation of variables in control of the researcher;
Taking and evaluating a second static picture of the situation.

The action researcher ("for a dissertation") is thus involved in a real manner in an organisational situation where there is not only an expectation that a ‘contribution to knowledge’ should be made, but also to directly produce usable knowledge that ‘can be applied and validated in action’(Gummesson,1991).

The skill here is whether the researcher can successfully combine the role of almost a consultant and that of academic researcher.

A recent example of a dissertation based on action research involved a researcher who implemented a new activity based costing system in an organisation. The focus the research was to understand how this new technique was being used to improve corporate financial performance.

A reserch paper based on action based research
“Second Generation” e-Learning: Characteristics and Design Principles for Supporting Management Soft-Skills Development, septermber 2005, download from
http://www.newmindsets.com/resources/2ndGenELearning.pdf