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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 September 2022
Despite the diversity of action research designs represented in the previous chapter, there are a number of underpinning characteristics that need to be reflected in most systemic action research designs. The seven that follow are among the most important:
• an emergent research design
• an exploratory inquiry phase
• multiple inquiry streams operating at different levels
• a structure for connecting organic inquiry to formal decision making
• a process for identifying cross-cutting links across inquiry streams
• a commitment to open boundary inquiry
• The active development of distributed leadership.
An emergent research design
By now it should be clear that the way in which we do our work needs to echo the ways in which we observe change taking place in the world. Given our critique of centralised planning it would be odd to apply the same planning principles to systemic action research. So, just as emergence characterises social and organisational change it must also characterise our action research design.
Wadsworth (2001) describes the way in which her study evolved:
The research commenced in a single hospital ward and then – in order to research and develop improving things for any single inpatient – found itself following the threads of that single inpatient's experience out to the rest of the hospital and to the sub-regional area mental health service, then to a regional level, and finally connecting to state-wide and federal mental health service systems. These interconnecting elements of a service system were in turn connected to wider communities of interest (such as non-government organisations, family, friends, and carers, self-help groups, the churches, the professions, unions, teaching institutions and so on) and finally contextualized also within a diverse society (of different individuals, multiple cultures, workplaces; industry, commerce, homes and local communities). In this way it found it needed to achieve – or contribute to – a “critical mass” of culture shift and widespread or whole systems organisational change if it was to make a difference in any single service-user's life. (Wadsworth, 2001, p ix)
In the previous chapter I described the way in which the Welsh Assembly project design emerged (see also Burns, 2006a).
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