Doing Action Research in Your Own Organization - Essay Example

Action research, according to the authors, involves political initiatives from different perspectives. Activities such as data collection, analysis, and communication of results that are associated with a potential to shift power or structural balance, are therefore prone to the communication of a researcher’s political opinion or those of other parties. As a result, an action researcher ought to be tactical in order to achieve the research’s objectives. A good tactical approach ensures that all stakeholders in the research are managed for acceptance and implementation of the research findings. The researcher should therefore be an influential leader who facilitates an understanding between himself and stakeholders to the research as well as the relationships among the stakeholders. Some of the ways of achieving the two types of relationships are understanding the involved stakeholders, avoiding controversies with them, building relationships with them, and knowing the type of information to discuss with them and what to reserve. A researcher’s ‘self-awareness’ and how other stakeholders view the researcher is also important in managing the relationships (Brannick and Coghlan, 2009).

The scope of action research and its potential impacts on stakeholders also elicits ethical considerations for observance of “democracies, justice, freedom, and participation” (Brannick and Coghlan, 2009, p. 132). Such ethics relies on pillars of “interdependency, cogeneration of knowledge and fairer power relations” (Brannick and Coghlan, 2009, p. 133) and varies with the level of research. In action research, for example, the researcher is expected to incorporate participants right from the planning stage and ethical considerations extend to the entire community in which the research is conducted. Higher levels of research demand higher scopes of ethical considerations. Action research particularly involves ethical principles such as “confidentiality and anonymity,” informed consent, and beneficence that can only be fully achieved through observance of the involved relationships, continuous ethical applications throughout a research process, and uncompromised transparency in the research (Brannick and Coghlan, 2009).

However, ethical principles are not strictly followed when organizations’ insiders undertake action research processes. This has particularly been noted when the researchers are subjected to external scrutiny. As a result, more attention, with respect to ethics, should be paid to the research process with the involvement of ethics experts. The ethical concerns, together with politics may however conflict with a researcher’s role in action research leading to dilemmas involving “misrepresentation and collusion, misuse of data, manipulation and coercion, values and goals conflict, and technical ineptness” (Brannick and Coghlan, 2009. P. 136).  

Insider active researchers, therefore, need to consider the impacts of their research initiatives because of the significance of politics. Even though ethics calls for honesty and restraint from harm, a researcher needs to understand the involved stakeholders in order to know how to relate with them and the type of information to disclose (Brannick and Coghlan, 2009).