Action research Science or bullshit?
Action research Science or bullshit?. May 2002© Per Flensburg2 Who am I? Per Flensburg, Professor Växjö University Started as mathematician, ended as.
Dec 18, 2015
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Action research
Science or bullshit?
May 2002 © Per Flensburg 2
Who am I?
Per Flensburg, Professor Växjö University
Started as mathematician, ended as humanist
Thesis about End User Computing
Doing research in cooperation with users and trade unions
Following “The scandinavian School” – at least one of them
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Action research - what is it?
Helping weak part to help themselves
Doing free consultancy for weak parts
Research in cooperation with users
Empirical, qualitative research
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Key concepts
Facilitator
Catalyst
Intervention
Change Process
Help to help yourself
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Change process
Change in power, increased power to a weak group
Increased quality of working life
Self-steering groups
Either with trade unions or
Socio Technique with the employer
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Facilitator & Catalyst
Shall not do anything herself, but encourage other to do things
Shall absolutely not make any decisions
Shall keep the change process going
Something between a teacher and headshrinker
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Intervention
Will always cause a lot of turbulence both in the participating organisation and the researchers
Outcome is not possible to predict
Middle management often work against the change
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Help to help yourself
Means working at a meta level
The facilitator should not do anything within the domain
Encourage without doing
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Problems in AR
Choosing participants
Those who not participate
Middle management
Different opinions of the catalysts
Uncertainty of the outcome
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Result of action research
Result describes in terms of a typical case.
In such a case every company should recognize itself in certain respects, but probably will no company recognize itself in all respects.
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An example
A foundry in middle Sweden
The users constructed a production planning system based upon spread-sheets
The following is a collection of some presentations I made in the middle of the 90’s
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What happenedThe production planning system was developed, but was never taken in use, since the users (=the project leader) did not trusted it.The report system was developed with help of an external user hired consult. It was taken in use and worked very well.The users continued making there own support applicationsThe IT-manager was fired
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Traditional planning system
Paintings
Cutting edges
Snagging
Moulding
Core factory
Melting
Ordre
PIW
End storage
Core storage
Theintegratedplanningsystem Paintings
Cutting edges
Snagging
Moulding
Core factory
Melting
Pro
du
cti
on
ord
re
Pro
du
cti
on
rep
ort
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Planning at the foundry
Core factory
Moulding
Melting
Snagging
Cutting edges
Core odre
Iron odre
Casting odre Customer odre
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