Insider Action Research

When complete members of an organization seek to inquire into the working of their own organizational or community system in order to change something in it, they can be understood as undertaking insider action research. Complete membership is contrasted with those who enter a system temporarily for the sake of conducting research. It may be defined in terms of wanting to remain a member within a desired career path when the research is completed. Insider action research offers a unique perspective on systems, precisely because it is from the inside. The context of insider action research is the strategic and operational setting that organizational members confront in their working lives. Issues of organizational concern such as systems improvement, organizational learning, the management of change and so on are suitable subjects for insider action research since (a) they are real events which must be managed in real time, (b) they provide opportunities for both effective action and learning and (c) they can contribute to the development of theory for what really goes on in organizations. Insider action research is commonly undertaken by practitioners who are enrolled in practitioner programmes, such as executive masters or doctorates, M.B.A.s and part-time master's or undergraduate programmes. What is common across such programmes is that participants undertake some sort of project in their own organizational or community system, write it up and submit it as an extended essay or dissertation. When this project involves taking action or leading change, then insider action research is an appropriate way of framing it and writing about it. This entry identifies the main challenges for insider action researchers, (a) access, (b) pre-understanding, (c) role duality and (d) organizational politics, and discusses the key elements of these challenges.

Traditionally, there has been a general neglect of insider action research because it is typically based on two traditional assumptions: (1) that being native is inimical to good research and (2) that researching in action does not provide sufficient methodological rigour for generating valid knowledge. Being native in itself is not a barrier to good research. The development of approaches that are grounded in insider perspectives and of specific approaches such as autoethnography and self-ethnography provides evidence that the pejorative ‘native’ tag can no longer be sustained as inimical to good research.