Work Research Institute, The

From Experiments to Participative Projects

In the beginning, the WRI was strongly influenced by the ideas of Kurt Lewin and, in particular, by the idea of the field experiment. In a major effort, in the 1960s, [Page 818]to spearhead democracy in work through experiments with autonomous work groups, it was discovered that while experiments could give rise to many processes, in particular various forms of discussions, there was a limited direct impact on working life in general. There was a need for a broad mobilization of the will to change among the workplace actors themselves. Experimental methodologies were replaced by more participative research contributions, pertaining mainly to mobilization of those concerned and organization of the process of change. That the efforts would, in spite of a more modest role for research, still aim at autonomy was thought to follow from psychological needs inherent in all people. However, the unions did not want to rely purely on this kind of force and promoted the incorporation of autonomy and participation in the institutional conditions of work defined by society. In particular, in the period from the middle 1970s to the middle 1980s, the WRI was directly involved in processes of legislation and labour agreements in Norway.

A Communicative Turn

With the growing focus on the distribution of influence over the change processes, there emerged a turn towards the medium in which influence is exerted—workplace conversations. When, in 1982, the labour market parties made an agreement on development, the main focus was on how to initiate and structure labour-management communication. In co-operation with action research, a form called democratic dialogue was developed and the Dialogue Conference became the ideal arena for broad participation in change.

Clusters, Networks and Regions as Units of Change

As early as the 1970s, an effort was made to use inter-enterprise conversations as a lever in change. From the late 1980s, the idea was further expanded towards the establishment of networks and clusters of organizations. For action research, this implied a corresponding continuation of the shift towards interorganizational processes as a main theme. The WRI came to focus in particular on how to link actors to each other and on how to develop and sustain collective self-understandings that can keep disparate actors with no common steering mechanism working together over long periods of time.

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