Managing Change Enquiry and Action

The aims of this chapter are to:

• introduce the concept of evidence;

• build familiarity with a range of techniques used to gather evidence; and

• identify the political and social challenges of gathering and presenting evidence in change processes.

The concept of evidence is not unproblematic. Some research traditions challenge the very idea of what it means to claim to have evidence if one is operating with a view that our experience in the world is a socially constructed and relational phenomenon (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). However, the view that reality is socially constructed does not mean that ‘reality’ is any less ‘real’ in how people experience it. In some of our own research we have discussed the ways in which those managing an organization relate to evidence about aspects of that organization, in that there are ‘areas of interaction between the fantasized and the experienced’ (MacIntosh and Beech, 2011: 31). Hence, what to one individual or group within the organization might be taken as straightforward and factual might be seen by others as untrue or a fantasy that is being used for political ends. Our own view is that a constructionist and dialogic perspective offers a useful means of looking at both how views come to be held (for example, that some aspect of a change process is important or unimportant) and how those views might impact on future action. On a related note, Scott Cook and John Seely Brown (1999) offer an excellent discussion of the distinction between knowledge and knowing. They use the example of riding a bicycle to suggest that there are aspects of our abilities that we nonetheless struggle to articulate. Theoretically, it would be possible for people to specify in great technical detail the mechanics of how to ride a bicycle even if they were unable to do so themselves, but most of us who know how to ride a bicycle could not offer a solid explanation of the process. As a result, the tacitness of how we know something and the social process by which we construct explicit knowledge are both problematic.