Organizational Development as Action Research, Ethnography, and Beyond

Paper presented at AERA 000424-27

Monica Nilsson, 4/12/00

Summary............................................................................................................................. 1
Introduction........................................................................................................................ 1
Action Research ................................................................................................................. 4
Organization Ethnography ................................................................................................ 6
An Alternative Understanding of Culture ............................................................................... 9

Beyond Action Research and Ethnography .................................................................... 10

Utopian Methodology .............................................................................................................. 10
Developmental Work Research .............................................................................................. 11
Action Ethnography ............................................................................................................ 12
Leading with the little finger ..............................................................................................................13

Conclusion........................................................................................................................ 17
Summary
Within organization theory, action research is historically connected to organization development
(OD) which is an established concept and practice. Ethnography has not traditionally been
connected to actions, involvement, and interventions but in some contemporary action research
approaches ethnographical methods are used. In organization theory a combination of action
research and ethnography is not common due to the approaches different ontological and
epistemological

roots.

Organizational

ethnography

is

commonly

connected

to

social

constructionism and interpretive research while action research historically is refereed to the
functionalist/objectivist tradition. The paper accounts for three research practices aiming at
development of social practices, two of them specifically at organizational development. These
approaches go beyond the division of action research and ethnography and combine them in
unique ways.

Introduction
Organizational development (OD) is an established concept and practice in the field of
organization theory1. One of the founding fathers was the German social scientist Kurt
Lewin who came to the US in the 1930s. It was Lewin that developed the concept of
action research as a new methodology that would address several needs simultaneously
(Lewin, 1943; 1946). The main idea was that researchers would gain insights and
1

See for example French & Bell, 1990.

knowledge about social phenomena, especially about laws that govern change, at the
same time as they contributed to solving social problems. Lewin and his colleagues
founded several institutes; among them the Research Center for Group Dynamics at
MIT.
The work and ideas spread to the UK and the recognized Tavistock Institute was
founded by one of Lewins students and colleagues. Due to collaboration between
researchers in the UK and Scandinavia, Scandinavian action research has become well
known (Toulmin, 1996) 2.
Organizational learning and learning organizations are concepts with roots in this
tradition3. For example Chris Argyris, one of the more established researchers and
authors in this genre, was a pioneer in the OD tradition and very much influenced by
Kurt Lewins work (French & Bell, 1990).
OD and action research were originally part of the Human Relation School which, for
example, Perrow (1986) and Putman (1983) places in the functional/objectivistand
positivistic tradition4. However, nowadays it is claimed that action research distances
itself from the positivistic tradition (Chisholm & Elden, 1993; Eden & Huxham, 1996;
Pihlanto, 1994; Reason, 1994; Toulmin, 1993) in that it repudiates the idea of detachment,
universal laws, and causal relationships, etc. but some kind of systems perspective
seems to be prevalent.
Some action research practices aiming at organizational change and development, have
emerged that have integrated an ethnographical approach, for example Developmental
Work Research (DWR) (Engestrm, 1991, 1996, 1999b) (will be accounted for below). To
some scholars in organization theory this appears to an attempt to mix oil and water, a
seemingly impossible adventure due to the two approaches relations to ontology and
epistemology. This because organization ethnography commonly is placed in the
symbolic/interpretive and subjectivist paradigm. Ethnography, as the word implies, is
writing cultures. Ethno stands for culture and graphy refers to writing. Van
Maanen defines the goal of ethnography:
Ethnography is nothing more and certainly nothing less than a written account of culture. It is not a
method. It is not a theory. It is a written account a text. (Van Mannen in Putnam, et al, 1993, 223)

Traditionally the aim of organization ethnography according to Rosen (1991) is what

Geertz (1973) calls thick descriptions. The researchers task is to uncover multiple
layers of meaning held by the members of the organization studied. These meanings are
See for example Lindh & Rehnman, 1989; Melin, 1998.
Organizational learning/learning organizations is a heterogeneous theoretical framework. For
an overview see for example Dodge, 1993; Fiol & Lyles, 1985; Shrivastava, 1983.
4 See Putnam for a discussion of the functionalistic vs. the interpretive approach.
2
3

expressed through symbolic actions and artifacts such as ceremonies, rites, folklore,
ritual, etc, (Prasad, 1997). The symbolic value and significance that actions and artifacts
possess is the subject of interest and the unit of analysis. The epistemological standpoint
is that organizations can be understood by interpretations of these meaning systems due
to the fact that it is through these meaning or knowledge structures (Alvesson, 1992,
1993; Rosen, 1991; Smircich 1983) that the world is socially constructed5.
For four years I have been studying and working with an elementary school in Sweden
that has been engaged in different developmental projects. During this time we
developed a collaboration that was not only about me learning about organizational
transformational processes. It was also about them taking advantage of what I
brought to the scene. I was not asked to come and help them, which would have been
the case in a more traditional action research approach (Eden & Huxham, 1996). But
during my stay we created a working community that turned out to be a joint effort to
build shared activities and projects that both parties took advantage of. In this
collaboration, of course, we had both different roles and interests. My main task in these
joint projects partly came to be about seeing what decisive decisions and actions that
had to be taken and executed in order for the joint projects and activities to be carried
out and maintained. Partly my task was to reflect their activity by bringing back to them
what I learned about their organization. I coordinated and orchestrated the joint work,
in a way that I started to think of as leading with my little finger. I will account for
and discuss that work in order to make explicit the researchers role in what I will
tentatively call action ethnography, a term I came to use in order to describe my
research method. It can be understood as a mix of action research and ethnography,
though not in their traditional definitions. In this paper I will discuss this approach as an
alternative to pure organization ethnography and action research. I will start to
account for and discuss action research, its historical and present features, and
organizational ethnography. After that I will discuss the concept of organizational
culture and present an alternative definition that is in accordance with cultural historical
theory6, an approach I used in the study7. Based in this alternative understanding of
culture and new features in action research I will account for and discuss Developmental
Work Research, a research practice called The Utopian Methodology (Cole 1995, 1996)
and my own action ethnography as approaches beyond action research and
ethnography. I will point at plausible implications with these approaches.

For an exhausted account for social constructionism see for example Berger & Luckman, 1966.
See for example Cole, 1996b and Cole & Engestrm, 1993.
7 A phd dissertation: Organizational Development as Three Societal Practices:
Action Research, Ethnography, and Beyond; Merger of Discourse Communities; Creation of
Third Space.
5
6

Action Research
Many authors of action research, among them van Beinum & Plshaugen, (1996) and
Eden & Huxham, (1996) hesitate to define the method. van Beinum and Plshaugen
claim that it would be a limitation for learning and development if forced to draw
boundaries and thereby decide what to include and exclude. Eden & Huxham do not
believe it would be useful but on the contrary, they see a risk of a wasteful definitional
debate they instead state that:
Action research involves the researcher in working with members of an organization over a matter
which is of genuine concern to them and in which there is an intent by the organization members to
take action based on the intervention (1996, 526).

In a new journal for action research: Concepts and Transformation8 the editors Hans van
Beinum and yvind Plshaugen (1996) look back on the development of action research
and point at contemporary features. They claim that action research has moved from a
socio-psychological and socio-technical orientation into a socio-ecological direction.
Organizations are no longer perceived as a structures but as an ongoing processes of
evolving functional relations. Theory is considered as an ongoing process of
conceptualization instead of an ordering framework, and the research and change
strategy is a discourse-based approach rather than implementation of a designed model.
Language, instead of being perceived as one of the conditions for change, becomes the
crucial element in the change process. The unit of analysis and change is no longer the
individual organization but inter-organizational processes and networks. There is a shift
from expert-driven to concept-driven processes of organizational change which presume
broad participation in the way that local knowledge is merged with general knowledge
as well as highly specialized knowledge. Finally there is an increasing interpenetration
of the local and the global.
van Beinum and Plshaugens description seems to fit with findings of Chisholm and
Elden (1993). They claim that new dimensions of action research are emerging due to
changed conditions in society that have to do with interdependence between societal
and organizational actors, faster pace of change, demands from systems members for
solutions to problems, and limitations of traditional positivistic research.
Action research can and has been divided into different categories. Reason (1994)
distinguishes three traditionally different kinds of approaches. There is action research
taking a management perspective aiming at organizational change and development of
social science theory. To this group he locates for example Argyris and Schon9. The

8
9

International Journal of Action Research and Organizational Renewal.

See for example their Organizational Learning II (1996)

objective in this kind of action research is transformation of behavior towards greater

effectiveness10. This approach is called Action Science or Action Inquiry by Reason.
The second approach has emancipation and empowering of groups and individuals on
its agenda aiming at social change and transformation. Reason calls this approach
Participatory Action Research (PAR). These two traditions hardly recognize or influence
each other according to Reason.
In the third approach, which Reason calls Co-operative inquiry, researchers and
practitioners work closely together in order to explore and change work practice and
professional skills. I will claim that Wells (1994, 1999) concept of community of
inquiry is a good example in the field of education and school practice. Wells teaches
teachers in action research and pedagogy with the starting point in the teachers own
classroom situation. The teachers explore a problematic issue in their own practice and
later write a research report about their findings.
An interesting example of an approach that is difficult to place in one of these
approaches is the Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania
(Greenwood, et al, 1993; Harkavy, et al, 1996). An institutionalized practice has been
developed that combines education, research and community service. It is based in
Deweys ideas that real advances in knowledge occur through a focus on the central
problems of society. An example is a project where university students carry out both
research and teaching at a public school. The subject matter is health care and the goal is
knowledge development in terms of research and education but also changed eating
habits and health conditions for the people in the city. Service to and collaboration with
the surrounding society is characteristic for the Center, which they claim American
urban universities are forced to take on due to external crises as well as internal
difficulties resulting from the separation of community service from teaching and
research (Harkavy, et al, 1996).
The Centers general strategy and approach to community problem solving is
formulated as communal action research (Harkavy, et al, 1996). They claim it is
differentiated from traditional action research by its focus on the universities
geographic community; its reliance on continuous, sustained local partnerships; and the
universitys institutional engagement and vested interest in the outcome (1996, 27):
In short, proximity and a focus on problems that are institutionally significant to the university
encourage sustained, continuous research involvement; problem-focused research, in turn,
necessitates sustained, continuous research partnerships between the university and its local
environment (1996, 19)

For example Argyris and Schon claim that in order for organizational learning to occur a
change from Model 1 to Model 2 behavior is presumed.
10

Summing up, from this review I distinguish two aims for action research: (1) to conduct
research that results in knowledge development and (2) a wish to give service to, take
part in and change social life. Van Beinum & Plshaugen claim that this is possible to
combine in action research:
The research, the learning, is in the joint action, which, if successful, will at the same time and in the
same act make a contribution to solving or clarifying practical problems as well as generating
knowledge. Action research thus reflects the mutuality of research and development (1996, 6).

They further claim that in action research there are three interdependent, though
different, main sources of knew knowledge: the practical work and the dialogues among
actors of the field, the dialogues between the researchers and the local actor, and the
dialogues between the researchers. A fourth, but to them more ambivalent, source is the
writing of the researcher that in their opinion should be a critical supplement to the
knowledge that already exists.
Toulmin discusses action research in relation to positivistic research and conclude that
the main goal is not theory development but development of practice:
The goal of action research is to improve, not our theories, as in physics or molecular biology, but
our practices, as in medicine and engineering. Its interest lies not in abstract conceptual systems, as
in mathematics but in local timely knowledge of concrete situations, as in cultural anthropology
(1997, 58).

To conclude, there seems to be an agreement about the necessity of practice in order for
knowledge development. Taking part in organizational and community work and
activities is the method for action researchers and the knowledge produced seems to
local and practical.

Organization Ethnography
The concept of ethnography has been the object of controversy (Atkinson &
Hammersley 1994). Some relate to a philosophical paradigm to which one has to
commit, other perceive of it as a method that can be used if and when it is suitable.
Prasad (1996) prefers to conceptualize ethnography as a methodology in contrast to a
method. This means, according to her, that ethnography has a relationship to ontology
and epistemology.
Van Maanen seems to take the same position when he claims that An ethnography is
written representation of a culture (or selected aspects of a culture) (1988, 1) and that
fieldwork is the method of ethnography, while culture is the subject. The result should
be a conscious and systematic interpretation of a culture or parts of it11.
Ethnography is often presented as monographs (Rosen, 1991) due to its elaborated descriptions
and accounts for actions and contexts. Examples are Alvesson & Kping (1993) studying an
11

Culture for social constructionists, according to Rosen, is the knowledge structure that
humans use both to interpret reality and to construct it. Culture is therefore a
constructed document or public rhetoric (1991, 5)12. Assumptions, ideas, values and
norms are system-specific ideational elements, which are given rise to by system
members who have developed them over time through their shared, accumulated
experiences. Assumptions, ideas, values and norms are by that envehicled meanings
with symbols being the vehicles through which communication occurs13 (1991, 5) and
Rosen further claims:
Symbols are thus the objects, acts, relationships, or linguistic formations that stand ambiguously
for a multiplicity of meanings, evoke emotions, and impel men to action (Cohen, 1974, p. 23). They
are thus anything that signifies an intersubjective process, and thus public (Geertz, 1980, p., 135).
While culture emerges from action, it continuously acts back upon it as well, recreating and
transforming action through the provision of meaning. To function in a setting, and to gain
meaning from behavior, culture systems are more or less internalized (1991, 5-6).

The systems of meaning are internalized and by that, completely or in part, unconscious
for the members of the community studied. This explains why members not are invited
to participate in the research. Due to the fact that the material the researchers are
interested in not are conscious to the members it can not be the subject of joint interest.
The aim of ethnography has not been transformation (Grudin & Grinter, 1995). The same
is the case in organization ethnography (Martin & Frost, 1996) though researchers claim
that the outcome often implies change (Rosen, 1991). However, the knowledge that can
be developed is local and there is a resistance to grand theories explaining human action
(Prasad, 1997).
From a social constructionist, interpretivist perspective artifacts are mainly understood
as symbols. Humans give symbols meaning but symbols also transmit meaning and
evoke actions. The meaning systems are public. This implies that organizational
ethnography is about exploration of shared meaning systems that are created and
recreated in relationship to social processes:
because corporate culture is a concept about meaning and its construction, about ideas, values,
beliefs and assumptions, it might reasonably be studied from a social constructionist, interpretivist
perspective, from a perspective exploring how the shared meaning system of the members of any
particular organization is created and recreated in the relationship to the social processes of
organization (Rosen, 1991, 6, italic added).

advertising agency, Nespor (1997) studying an elementary school and Salzer-Mrling (1994)
studying the Swedish company IKEA. But there are also accounts in articles as for example
Prasad and Prasad (1994) studying implementation of information technology, Rosen (1985)
studying a breakfast meeting at an advertising agency and Van Maanen and Kunda (1989)
studying interactions in a Disneyland amusement park and a high tech company.
12 Rosen is here referring to Geertz.
13 Referents to Geertz.

What is interesting here is that meaning systems are detached from social processes
though they are related. This means that social processes in organizations are something
else than culture. It is in accordance with Alvesson who claims, Culture is not about
behavior but meanings, not the social-structural, but the symbolic contexts of meaning
(1992, 39)14.
Smircich claims that a cultural perspective on organizations implies that the focus shifts
from studying what happens inside organizations to the organization itself:
When culture is a root metaphor15, the researchers attention shifts from concerns about what do
organizations accomplish and how may they accomplish it more efficiently, to how is
organizational life accomplished and what does it mean to be organized? (1985, 353 & 355).

My understanding is that Rosen, Alvesson and Smircich want to abandon the

instrumental/functional way of perceiving organizations in favor of an interpretative.
This is promising in that the symbolic side of organizational life is highlighted which has
been neglected in traditional functionalistic/objectivistic research. This attempt is
manifested in research focusing on, for example, power, resistance, gender issues, and
the symbolic meaning of artifacts. But is there necessarily a contradiction between
accomplishing and meaning/sense making, and understanding how organizational
life is accomplished vs. what organizations accomplish? What if we define culture
differently? Before we look into that, lets stop for a moment and find out how we so far
may understand ethnography and action research in relation to each other.
The subject of ethnography is culture, which for interpretive organization ethnographers
is understood as systems of meaning. Their research aim is limited to the search and
interpretation of local meaning systems, which are mostly hidden for the others
themselves. It is the interpretation by the ethnographer that constitutes the knowledge.
Due to the fact that it is these local systems of knowledge/meanings that create and
recreate the reality there is nothing outside them that can be explained or understood.
More general theories about human actions are therefore not possible.
In action research knowledge is conveyed in actions taken by members and researchers
in processes of changing work practices. More contemporary approaches seem to leave
behind the functionalistic, objectivistic, and positivistic tradition in exchange for a more
constructionistic approach. What seems to differ between organization ethnography and action
research is (1) that the latter approach does not in general stress culture as a way to understand
organizational phenomenon. (2) That ethnography does not consider joint actions for change
between researchers and practitioners (the others) as a source of knowledge. The ethnographer
does not participate in efforts for change.
The original text in Swedish: Kultur rr sledes inte beteenden utan betydelser, inte det
sociala-strukturella, utan det symboliska, meningssammanhangen.
15 Culture as root metaphor implies that the researcher considers the organization as a culture,
the organization is a culture opposed to the notion as something an organization has.
14

An alternative perception of culture might make a difference

An Alternative Understanding of Culture

My understanding is that the division between accomplishing and meaning/sense
making that Smircich is discussing, is based on the tension between the
functionalist/objectivist and positivistic vs. the interpretative social constructionist
perspective on organizations. In the functional/objectivist tradition culture is perceived
as a variable equal to other variables, as for example strategy, production, and
marketing with which the management can manage and control in order to reach
efficiency and financial goals16. In this tradition norms and values, as well as material
artifacts, are typical cultural instruments, which can be manipulated and purposely
used. The aim is efficiency by changed behavior. The research outcome is normative
prescriptions.
In the social constructionist/interpretivist approach culture is not something an
organization has but is, or can be perceived as (Smircich, 1983, 1985). Culture is, as we
have seen, often understood as systems of meaning and cultural phenomena as ideal
(Alvesson, 1993). The research outcome is, as we have seen, interpretation of meaning
systems. But, what would happen if we think of culture as something that organizations
do/create and as resources? By that we might come closer to overcoming this dichotomy.
In cultural historical activity theory (Cole & Engestrm, 19xx; Engestrm, 1987;) artifacts
play a significant role as mediational means in human actions and societal practices. It is
by using material and conceptual tools that humans create the world and in that process
we ourselves are being created. Tools are both material and ideal in their character, Cole:
an artifact is an aspect of the material world that has been modified over the history of its
incorporation into goal-directed human action. By virtue of the changes wrought in the process of
their creation and use, artifacts are simultaneously ideal (conceptual) and material. They are ideal in
that their material form has been shaped by their participation in the interactions of which they
were previously a part and which they mediate in the present (Cole, 1996, 117).

A car, for example, is material and by that instrumental in the sense that it can be used
to get you from one place to another. But it also signifies meaning, for example in terms
of freedom, status, industrial revolution, pollution, danger, beauty, etc. The statement
thank you is material in that both vocal organs and perhaps bodily movements are
taken into use. It is ideal in that it might implicate both gratefulness and cynicism (thank
you very much you fool!). In both cases (material things and words) have concrete
consequences through their material and symbolic gestalt. Moreover, the meaning they
carry are context bound. For example, as Bateson shows, a stick for a blind man is of
vital importance when getting around in the city. But when he sits down to eat it has no

16

Schein, (see for example1992) is often given as an example of this approach.

meaning at all for him. It is the context and, more specifically, the activity that decides
the meaning of it.
This understanding of artifacts helps us overcome the dichotomy between culture as
either internal/ideal or external/material (Cole, 1996). With culture understood in this
way meaning systems and social processes are inseparable and there might be no
contradiction between what (and how) organizations accomplish and how
organizational life is accomplished. To understand how organizational life is
accomplished we therefore have to study both what people in organizations accomplish
and how they do it. When researching organizations I therefore suggest that the unit of
analysis should be not just actions in terms of behavior, rituals, ceremonies and rites, but
the entire activity system17 in terms of the object of the activity, what is produced, what
material and ideal (conceptual) artifacts mediate the activity, and what rules and roles
are in use. This should be done from a historical perspective. With regard to Rosen
(1991) we therefore might say that culture emerges in societal practices in which
material and ideal artifacts are resources, or as Cole puts it culture comes into being
wherever people engage in joint activity over a period of time (Cole, 1996, 301). When
researchers take part in this cultural creation and recreation they might create conditions
for more valid and insightful interpretations, understandings, and explanations.

Beyond Action Research and Ethnography

Below I will account for two established practices/methodologies that are based in the
cultural-historical-school and consider actions and collaboration with practitioners as a
natural part of research practice but also take ethnography into consideration. The first
is The Utopian Methodology developed by Michael Cole (1995, 1996) at the University of
California San Diego. The second is called Developmental Work Research (DWR) and
was developed by Yrj Engestrm (1991; 1996; 1999b) at the Center of Developmental
Work Research and Activity Theory at the University of Helsinki. After that I will
account for my own work which I so far call action ethnography.

Utopian Methodology
The Utopian methodology is instantiated in a project called The Fifth Dimension (the
5thD), which is a learning environment/community in which children, students,
researchers, and other adults interact, learn and play (Cole, 1996). Computers and a
variety of artifacts mediate their actions and interactions. Researchers participate in
order to study learning and development. Undergraduate students participate as part of
their university education. Children from the organization that hosts the program, for
example an extended childcare unit, a library, or a school, get to work and play with
adults and more advanced peers in a ratio of sometimes one to one. The theoretical ideas
This is a concept developed by Engestrm (1987) as the smallest unit of analysis for human
activities.
17

10

behind the concept of the 5thD are influenced by both the cultural-historical school and
scholars like John Dewey. The main idea is that learning and development are mediated
by artifacts and human interactions. In order to study learning and developmental
processes ethnographical field methods are used.
Cole sets up three goals for the 5thD activity; a theoretical that aims at increasing
childrens involvement in activities that will promote cognitive and social development;
a research goal that aims at elaboration and critical evaluation of the cultural-historical
theory of human development; an utopian aiming at sustainability of the 5thD that can
lead to their propagation as new forms of socio cultural practice. Cole suggests
following steps in his utopian methodology to be taken:
1. Create activity systems that instantiate theoretical principles taken from the theory (in this case,
principles of cultural-historical psychology). This process requires resources external to those the
system initially possesses in its initial phases.
2. Demonstrate that within those activity settings, it is possible to create the qualities of interaction
required by the theory to produce learning and development. This phase generally also requires
additional, outside, resources.
3. Organize the activity with respect to its setting/context in such a manner that the practice is
taken up and sustained in the absence of external resources, but using all the resources
appropriated in the course of creating and sustaining the model system from birth (1995, 2).

My understanding is that the attempt is to generate field specific theory (child

development) and more general theory (cultural-historical) as well as creation of
practical models for social practice.

Developmental Work Research

DWR is developed in the tradition of cultural historical activity theory and is therefore
based on a theoretical framework about human action and activities. The methodology
highlights the necessity of understanding and studying expansive cycles in human
activity systems, i.e., internalization of given culture and externalization which implies
transformation and creation of artifacts and new models for the activity. Engestrm
discusses the methododology:
I want to suggest that such methodology is best developed when researchers enter actual activity
systems undergoing such transformations. I am not suggesting a return to naive forms of action
research, idealizing so-called spontaneous ideas and efforts coming from practitioners. To the
contrary, the type of methodology I have in mind requires that general ideas of activity theory be
put to the acid test of practical validity and relevance in interventions that aim at the construction of
new models of activity jointly with the local participants. Such construction can be successful only
when based on careful historical and empirical analyses of the activity in question. (1999, 36)

Change Laboratory is an example of a DRW method that aims at developing work

practices by practitioners (Engestrm et al, 1996). A set of tools is placed in a setting (for
example a room in the shop floor) arranged as a laboratory. The tools facilitate reflection
and modeling of present activity as well as past and future. Representations of the
11

workplace and activity in terms of video taped work situations, interview transcriptions,
or statistical data are used as instruments. There are also conceptual tools in terms of
theoretical models. The workers are encouraged to play and imagine in the
laboratory in order to discover disturbances, contradictions and built in buffers that
prevent development of their working conditions.
Engestrm (1999) claims that in DWR validity and generalizability will be decided by
the viability, diffusion, and multiplication of the new models in similar activity systems.
Key findings and outcomes of DWR are novel activity-specific, intermediate-level
theoretical concepts and methods, i.e., intellectual tools for reflective mastery of practice.
He claims that such intermediate theoretical concepts provide a two-way bridge
between general theory and specific practice. The guiding theory of activity as an
explanatory model will and can be reexamined and reconstructed from studies of
concrete activities.
My understanding is that DWR has similar goals to The Utopian Methodology in that
there is an aspiration for both field specific (organization development) and more
general theory (cultural historical) development. Instead of a model of possible social
practice DWR and The Change Lab offers a model of change processes.
This approach presumes intervention or actions taken by the researcher/s in
collaboration with an organization aiming at transformation. In many of the DWR
studies (see for example Engestrm, 1991) an extended period of time is spent in
collaboration with practitioners in and outside the workplace. Sometimes the
practitioners take on roles as co-researchers (Engestrm, 1996). Ethnographical methods,
such as observations and unstructured interviews and techniques as video and tape
recordings are used. The aim might be said to be modeling organizational expansive
learning and development by using the DWR model, and as the ultimate goal,
development of the cultural historical activity theory.
In The Utopian Methodology and DWR a dialectical relationship between field specific
theories and aspirations for a more general theoretical framework is assumed. This can
be compared to for example Toulmin who, as shown, does not seem to be in favor of
such a framework or general theories.

Action Ethnography
It is not always possible, or even desirable, to presume of an interventionist approach
like the DWR that is aiming at conscious expansive transformation of the organization
studied. In my case the starting point and main interest was ethnography focusing on
organizational transformation. As it turned out, my fieldwork came to be mixed up with
developmental work in the school. During the period of four years that I collaborated
with the school I introduced, and together with some of the teachers created and ran a

12

Fifth Dimension project (see page X). The Utopian aim of the Fifth Dimension, as we
have seen, is sustainability that might lead to new forms of socio cultural practices. The
purpose of my introducing the 5thD in the school was to offer a tool to the teachers
that might inspire new forms of pedagogical work in the school18. This was done in
connection with a structural change in the school aiming at integration between the
kindergarten and the lower grades, the so-called track project. I studied this merge
process and I thought that the 5thD might be a good mediator between the school forms
(kindergarten and elementary school) since the 5thD stresses both learning and play as
important elements in developmental processes. In school, learning is traditionally the
main objective while in kindergarten (at least in Sweden) play has the significant role. In
the 5thD learning and play are not understood as opposed but as a prerequisite to one
another; learning has to be fun and in play you learn. In connection with the
reorganization I carried out an evaluation among the teachers with the aim of capturing
their understanding and ideas about the new structure and work practice. The schools
supervisors wanted this information in order to be able to decide about the projects
future. The evaluation was discussed among the teachers and used in seminars.
In our version of the Fifth Dimension students from the nearby high school replaced the
undergraduates. This meant that a network comprised of all school levels, from the
kindergarten to the university, took part and collaborated in this project which in turn
required a lot of coordination. This kind of work came to be mainly my responsibility. I
also led some seminars for the teachers about the theoretical framework behind the
5thD.
I think it is fair to say that my researcher role was a mix of what Adler and Adler (1997)
call peripheral membership (meaning for example not being a staff member) and
active membership (meaning taking action in the organization studied). I did not act
as a staff member but I did take action in terms of a helping hand. But more
importantly for this discussion, I took actions aiming to support transformation in the
school. In the next section I will try to describe the kind of work that I carried out.
Leading with the little finger
During our collaboration and my stay in the school, situations continuously occurred
where I had to act in what I came to think of as leading with my little finger. It ranged
from mediation between parties, for example high school and elementary school staff, to
make sure resources in terms of money and people were available. I took on
responsibility and acted as an invisible conductor in order for these projects and the
collaboration, as a whole, to be sustained and develop. I carried out both coordination
My perception of learning is based in socio cultural/cultural historical theory, see for example
Cole, 1996; Slj, 2000. It would go beyond the purpose of this paper to account in detail for this
framework but it opposes both behaviorism as well as cognitivism. Crucial conditions for
learning are communication and mediation by material and conceptual tools.
18

13

and articulation work (Strauss, 1997). Articulation work is the further work required for
coordinated work elements, i.e., standard operating procedures, to result in a performed
work task. This kind of work is executed by all working people, but as a specialty, by for
example head nurses in hospital settings. In my case the staff, i.e., the teachers and their
supervisors, left to me to overlook and see what decisions and actions that were needed
in between the ritualized 5thD sessions. This was not made deliberately it just
happened to be so. The reason for that, I believe, has to be understood in relation to the
teachers practice. Their task is to make sure that what is expected of them, i.e., the
regular teaching duties, are carried out. The work we did together was something extra,
not part of the regular activities. I felt that if the 5thD was going to survive and in its
extension contribute to change and development in the school I had to be there with my
little finger at least until the work in and around the 5thD had been stabilized and
institutionalized.
I considered my work as a way to guide the school staff members into an activity that
challenged parts of the traditional schoolwork and could therefore lead to productive
dialogues about work practice and pedagogy. For example the 5thD work had to be
coordinated with parties outside the school. Schools are not used to this kind of
boundary crossing, and therefore parts of the structure and work practice in the school
had to be adjusted to these new circumstances and brought under discussion. I felt that
my presence in the school implied change. I tried to guide them from behind meaning
that the steps taken had to be theirs though I did challenge them to consider taking
them. My strategy might be compared to the idea of the zone of proximal development
in child psychology by the Russian psychologist Vygotsky (1986). Vygotskys theory is
that there is a difference between the childs actual developmental level and a potential.
The environment and the quality of the communicative relationship with the guiding
adults or more capable peers determine what is possible to reach. I tried to act as a
guiding peer in their zone and I felt that there was a potential. My strategy was to do
just enough to have the projects going. In that way the force for change emerged from
within though with stimulation from outside.
Engestrm used the concept of zone of proximal development to explain expansive
learning circles in activity systems. In this context the zone is:
the distance between the present everyday actions of the individuals and the historically new form
of the societal activity that can be collectively generated as a solution to the double bind potentially
embedded in every day actions (1987, 174)

The little finger work was all about the process of moving from the present everyday
actions to historically new forms of activity in the school. I was a link between status
quo and a plausible new work practice, which required them to take on and build on
what my work offered. If they didnt the 5thD would die.

14

However with the passage of time the school took on more responsibility both for
running and financing the project. After two years of work the school decided to take
full responsibility for the project. The teachers were by this time getting used to the 5thD
and it was no longer only the entrepreneurs, that I mostly had been working with,
that accepted it. The fieldnote excerpt below is from a meeting where we discuss the
funding for the project. T is the principal, and C is the vice-principal and site
coordinator. Le and El are teachers in the tracks.
T said immediately that he wants to continue with the 5thD, it has become a part of our activity
here and that they would finance the site coordinator themselves. He described the schools
financial situation, which seemed to be ok. C said that there is no talk any more among the
teachers that they are sitting there in front of the computers and that the 5thD has become
accepted. Le she said has always been a driving force but also El has accepted it now. There is
no resistance anymore. I said it might be due to the seminar. T claimed that everybody now knows
what we are doing and what the 5thD is all about (field note, 16/11/99).

This occurrence can be interpreted both as an end and as a beginning. It was an

important step in a process that I think has the potential for pedagogical development in
the school. The school appropriated the project, which means that there are conditions
for a continued dialogue about pedagogical issues. This dialogue has just begun. The
below is an example of an interaction taking place in a seminar about the Fifth
Dimension. In the seminar collaborative learning and creation of knowledge has been
discussed implicitly as opposed to learning as transmission of a fixed set of facts, a
theme not uncontroversial in the school. The significance of joy and meaningfulness in
learning was also discussed.
After breaking up I went to the break room and encountered one of the teachers. She looked at me
and asked something, which was more a sign of wanting to talk more than wanting an answer to a
question. I felt she wanted to start a dialog. The teacher that had said something about not building
walls between teachers and people writing about school issues came and repeated herself. I
pretended I did not understand, taking our good relationship for granted, and then she said
something like this is sensitive. She clapped her chest and said, yes this is sensitive for teachers
and looked at me with both a question and a statement in her glimpse. In the next moment she
looked at me with warm and unprotected open eyes and said my kids learned everything about
the world from reading Donald Duck but then she added not everything of course, we both
laughed (fieldnote 17/08/99).

The quote indicates that change initiative has, on the one hand, to be based on respect
for the work that is carried out in the workplace that is the subject for research and
transformation. I learned that teachers are sensitive to the criticism that schools
nowadays are subject to. If they sense any tendencies to such critique a dialogue is
impossible. On the other hand the quote shows that when traditions and meaning
structures are challenged in a peer manner a dialogue might come in to being. I felt
that there is a large need, on the behalf of the teachers, to discuss working methods and
conditions as well as pedagogy, which might be due to the pressure, both from inside
and outside, that the school is subject to.

15

A cultural-historical perspective is helpful in this regard. By perceiving the activity in

the school as culturally and historically constituted the focus is transferred from the
individual teachers behavior to the schools traditions and methods of working. The
action researchers task will not be to try to change behavior, as in action inquiry or
action science, but to start a dialogue19 about these traditions in relation to the prevailing
circumstances. The starting point has to be based on knowledge of the
organization/institution and its conditions, or as ethnographers say; the researcher has
to understand the others in their own terms. It is here, I think, that action research in
combination with ethnography has its potential as a methodology.
To summarize, if an interventionist approach had been the only alternative I would
probably not have been studying this particular school. This because I was a single
researcher in the beginning of my research career and I did not have an intervention
tool kit. Another reason is that the school did not show an interest in a radical
reorganization of the activity supported and led by a researcher/s though the conditions
for it may have been there due to a long history of struggle for transformation. Instead
the kind of developmental work that I took part in was a result of collaboration and was
not designed from the start. I did not enter into an organization to, which were clear
from the beginning (my role and duties), they emerged and developed over time.
Despite the fact that I did not take on an explicit interventionist role my participation
gave directions for change in the school. They gained something in their work i.e., my
research became an instrument in their activity and I learned about organizational life in
a way that I think would have be impossible from observation alone; not taking actions
for change would have been the result. I learned about, among other things, resistance,
conflicts, and (on a deeper level) the significance of understanding organizations as
cultural systems20.
Organizations taking part in this kind of process may be of a different kind than those
that express an interest in external support. I entered into an ongoing process of change
and my participation probably left some tracks in the schools history. It was a mutual
learning experience. The experience might show that coordination and articulation work
as well as peer guidance in terms of leading with the little finger is a way that
See for example Hoekstra, 1998, Schotter, 1998 for discussion about discourse and dialog in
action research.
20 For example I took from the beginning a cultural perspective on organizations and human
actions but it was not until I red a text (Dahlberg & Lenz Taguchi , 1994) about cultural
differences in the school and childcare traditions that I really understood the implication. The text
in combination with what I encountered in the field came to change my understanding of the
actions and the activity in the school. As a result it changed my attitude and behavior. I became
more respectful and appreciative to their work. After that, my own hopes for changes in the
school became more realistic and I came to understand the importance of long time relationships
in order for change and development. I could now see and understand the dynamics in the
school more clearly.
19

16

ethnographers and action researchers might interact with practitioners and workplaces
in order to contribute to transformation and expansive learning circles. The collaborative
work I took part in contributed to reflection of meanings and knowledge structures in
different ways and situations. The 5thD project was a main tool in that regard. But, in
order for the collaboration and the dialogue to make a significant difference in this
particular school I think it has to be both deepened and expanded. However, the
preconditions for that have been created. The question now is how to maintain and
increase the developmental work. Brulin (1998) accounts for the third task of the
Swedish universities which implies that universities are expected to become a force in
local and regional development by collaboration with local organizations. This task has
been added to the traditional tasks of research and education. It seems to resemble the
Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania. This policy and
strategy is in accordance with and supports the kind of work I just have accounted for.
The school I have been working with is open to a long-term relationship - but is the
university world? To institutionalize such methods and collaboration presupposes a
radical new perception of what universities and research is all about, but that is a topic
for a different paper21.

Conclusion
Action research is showing new features. Organizations are understood as processes,
language and dialogue are significant concepts, and collaboration in networks is the unit
of analysis. New approaches to action research are also emerging in which ethnography
is taken into consideration. In organization theory it has not been common to combine
action research and ethnography due to the approaches diverse perception of ontology
and epistemology, i.e., how the world is constructed and how it can be understood.
It is argued that going beyond action research and ethnography in terms of a combined
approach is beneficial in both organizational development and research on
organizational development processes. It is argued that this combination makes sense if
culture is perceived as resources and something humans create in joint activities. When
applying such a cultural perspective (the subject of ethnography) on organizations,
actions taken by the action researcher will be different than in a traditional action
research approach. Actions will be taken aiming at making visible institutional
traditions in terms of, for example, working methods and structures. The focus will be
directed towards creation of and dialogues about work practices, understood as
culturally and historically produced, rather than on behavior.
Different kinds of approaches that combine action research and ethnography can be
distinguished, for example those with an articulated interventionist approach and those
with a more emerging character. Here I have accounted for a long-term study originally
21

For a discussion about this issue see for example Gustavsen, 1996 and Toulmin 1996.

17

aiming at ethnography. In the collaborative work that took place both the researcher and
the practitioners learned and gained. The research became a tool in the organization
studied and the practice/activity in the organization, and in this case the network of
organizations, became the unit of analysis. It was a reciprocally beneficial situation,
opposed to one in which one party is the giver and the other the receiver of support.
Finally, I conclude that collaborative long-term work relations between research
communities and organizations is a productive way to conduct organizational
development. It not only offers universities and researchers the opportunity to
contribute with their knowledge in order to transform societal life but it also, at the same
time, offers opportunities to study complex organizations as cultural historical
processes.

18

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