Ethics and action research

Action Research, volume 4, issue 1, March 2006 is a special issue on ethics and action research. Editorial by Mary Brydon-Miller, Davydd Greenwood, and Olav Eikeland. (Click front cover to review table of contents with abstracts).

Eikeland, Olav, Work Research Institute:
“Condescending ethics and action research: extended review article”.
Action Research, vol. 4(2006), no. 1, pp. 37-47.

Abstract:
The article outlines ethical aspects of action research at two different levels: philosophical and ‘applied’. It also emphasizes ethical aspects of practitioner research and conventional social research tacitly implied in the relations between researchers and researched presupposed by the two approaches. Conventional research ethics is insufficient for grasping these aspects, since it is constituted within the relations assumed by conventional research. Conventional research ethics is also claimed to be a ‘condescending ethics’ unfit for action research because of its practice of ‘othering’ human beings as research subjects. This article interprets many ethical dilemmas experienced by action researchers as ‘othering-effects’, only to be overcome through the establishment of peer communities of inquiry among combined ‘practitioners-researchers-researched’. It uses a book on ethics and action research as a starting point for reflections about the very real challenges of creating peer communities of inquiry doing action/practitioner research.

Key words:
action research and philsophical ethics, communities of inquiry, condescending, ethics, going native, insider research, othering, othering-effects, practitioner research, practitioners-researchers-researched, research ethics.

Hilsen, Anne Inga, Work Research Institute:
“And they shall be known by their deeds: ethics and politics in action research”.
Action Research, vol. 4(2006), no. 1, pp. 23-36.

Abstract:
What makes something action research (AR) or someone an action researcher? In this article I address several questions aimed at clarifying the ethical and methodological foundation of my action research practice: How can I define my research within the many AR traditions? How do I define the ethical foundation of my AR, and why is it important for me, as an action researcher, to discuss and acknowledge my ethical foundation? What is the grounding of my research practice? There are three pivots in my argument on which I will elaborate in this article: human interdependency; cogeneration of knowledge; and fairer power relations. I base my argument on the premise that human life is relational and thus human practice becomes the centre of attention for both scientific and ethical reasons. As the title implies, I argue that it is through our practice that human beings ‘live our ethics’. For me, as an action researcher, this means that it is through my scientific practice that I demonstrate my ethical foundation. To illustrate the empirical consequences of this position, I use the experiences from an ongoing three-years, national, organizational development project (2003-2005) in the National Insurance Service (NIS) in Norway.

Key words:
action research, cogeneration of knowledge, ethics, human interdependency, industrial democracy, senior workers, social justice.