When it comes to organizational change, we often think in terms of single interventions. For example, if we have low employee engagement, we might do some investigating and convince ourselves that the problem is poor communication by leaders. To remedy it we put all of our leaders through a communication course, and pride ourselves on a job well done. However, just because we conducted an intervention doesn’t mean we solved the problem. Often our intervention is ineffective because it was poorly done, because it didn’t address the real problem, or because it had unintended consequences. This is where action research comes in, but what is action research?
What Is Action Research
Nearly a century ago, the psychologist Kurt Lewin came up with the idea of action research as an approach to organizational change. Action research is a cyclical approach that involves several stages:
- Analysis: Investigate the problem, e.g., low employee engagement, to determine its likely causes. We might conduct focus groups with a sample of employees to gain insight into why they are not as engaged as we would like.
- Implement an Intervention: Come up with an intervention as a potential solution to the problem, e.g., communication training for leaders. If the focus groups suggested communication is the problem, we would either create a communication course in-house, or engage an outside consultant to provide one.
- Evaluate the Solution: Collect data to determine if the intervention was effective. Focus not only on the original problem (e.g., low engagement), but on potential unintended consequences. For example, the communication might improve engagement but at the cost of productivity. If our intervention is a course, we could apply the Kirkpatrick four levels of evaluation to determine Reactions (if the leaders found the training of value), Knowledge (if the leaders learned what was covered), Behavior (if the leaders’ communication improved) and Results (if engagement improved).
- Reflect on the Results: Interpret the evaluation data and consider what is working well and where improvements could be made. Reactions and knowledge can inform improvements in the communication course. Behavior indicates if the training was effective in changing the target behavior–communication. Results is the bottom line and tells us if we have the right solution to the problem. Taken together the results tell us whether our intervention can be improved, and if a new intervention is needed in addition to or instead of the original.
- Repeat the Process: Go through another cycle of Implement, Evaluate, and Reflect. It can take several cycles until we are satisfied that our intervention is working well and achieving our objectives.
Going Beyond a One-Shot Intervention
So many of the interventions we try in organizations fail to provide the hoped for results. Evaluation of effects is important, looking at the full range of possible outcomes both immediate a long-term. However, the one-shot approach of implementation is often insufficient. The action research approach considers that often interventions need to be modified and expanded. Just as with software design where beta-testing is needed to get the bugs out of an application, our interventions can need modification from small tweaks to major overhauls. What is action research if not a comprehensive approach to making improvements to organizations through repeated analysis and testing.
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