Intervention Research in Management

IRM and the Foundations of Management: Building on Follett's and Barnard's Legacy

IRM combines a theoretical perspective and an intervention protocol in order to revise existing management theories-in-use and co-invent new models of collective action, in a management research and development (R&D) logic. Hence, the epistemology of IRM has deep common roots with the foundations of management as defined by Mary Parker Follett and Chester Barnard, who both introduced general grammars of action and postulated a science of management that would result from immersive interactions between the observer and the observed. Barnard formalized the general principles of a new epistemology, a science of management that would consider organization as a subjective process which can only be known organically and formalized accurately (i.e. consistent with experience) by the individual. Therefore, an organic applied social science, in contrast to the professional science abstracted from the interactions and interdependencies of living and acting, would have unprecedented explanatory power. Rejecting an epistemology [Page 461]that separates theory from practice, Follett and Barnard pursued an integrative science that exploited the creative possibilities of conscious organization, beginning with organizing oneself. For them, it was a scientific, creative and ethical relation at one and the same time. It meant theorizing formal organizations as an experimental condition and method. This way of conceiving the dynamics of collective action is very close to IRM principles and logic: IRM could well be the research programme consistent with Follett's and Barnard's legacy.

Essence of Management Research: Models of Collective Action

IRM assumes that there is no universal protocol to study action but research can study models of collective action through which action is made visible. Therefore, its programme is to understand how models of action are discovered or invented, how they are tested, discussed or validated. For instance, accounting, which is a model of action, makes business observable and simultaneously shapes and orients it. Management models are both a subset of all models of action (all action is not managerial action) and exemplars of models of action. The business world has long been a relevant place to study the invention of models of action. Companies are social entities that regularly have to redesign themselves in order to survive: They are under a permanent change-oriented process through self-intervention. More generally, organizations are also places where innovative models of action may emerge.

If management research is the discovery and study of models of action, it is not the privilege of the academy only. Major management innovations were made by managers or through collaborations between managers and academics. For example, Kurt Lewin and Alfred Marrow at Harwood conducted an 8-year collaboration that contributed to the establishment of action research and new theories and applications of change management. Therefore, the role of management research is not limited to non-participatory observation of what managers do. The essence of management research is understanding, inventing and criticizing models of collective action. Inventing means being a pioneer in designing alternatives to existing management theories-in-use.

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