The approach chosen for the investigation was determined by the nature of the University of Liverpool’s DBA program, which is based on action research (Zuber-Skerritt and Perry, 2002; Coghlan, 2008; Pedler, 2008; Jean McNiff, 2011). The notion of action research was introduced by Kurt Lewin (Burnes, 2004). It combines the generation of theory and the changing of a social system by the researcher through action taken on or in the social system and by reflecting on the results to generate critical knowledge (Susman and Evered, 1978; Schein, 1999). Action research has become very popular over the last few years (Reason and Bradbury, 2001). From an epistemological and ontological perspective, action research is aligned with subjective epistemology and realist ontology (Coghlan and Brannick, 2010). From a phenomena and people perspective, reality is considered; however, the view of reality is the interpretation of different phenomena and the personal experiences of the person involved. Positivism (Johnson and Duberley, 2000) separates the researcher from the subject under study. In action research, the researcher is part of the subject under study, and the researcher combines research knowledge when solving an organisational problem.
The methodology chosen for this research study was an action research approach as described by Zuber-Skerritt and Perry (2002), who divide the action research project into a core action research project and action research thesis writing and reflection processes. To undertake and justify the action research methodology and to classify research as action research, three key aspects are needed (Zuber-Skerritt and Knight, 1986; Zuber-Skerritt and Perry, 2002; Jean McNiff, 2009):
- a group of people who work together
- producing a public report (which might be a thesis)
The aim of this research study was to investigate shared leadership and the development of a self-organising team in a social and professional manner. This was achieved by conducting investigations at the team level. For the current research study, only some of the prerequisites classifications as action research study were fulfilled. Consequently this research study does not strictly take a pure action research approach, which usually follows a highly collaborative design while making changes and taking action in an organisation or in a social team setting (Reason and Bradbury, 2001). The investigation of a self-organising team was undertaken by studying a group of people who work together. The doctoral researcher/practitioner however was not a permanent part of this group. Therefore, the social collaborative interactions with the teams took place during predefined measurement appointments. During these measurement appointments the researcher engaged in social collaborative interactions with the teams, either by giving background information about the research study and on shared leadership, or by discussing how shared leadership could happen in such self-organising teams. The changes and findings were subsequently implemented by the teams independently, and the action and reflection took place in cycles, during the intensive social interactions between the different teams and the researcher, i.e. during the TMLQ and SNA result discussion and presentation.
Thus, the left hand side of the thesis organisation picture (see Figure 1) describes the different team samples taken at the measurement points, when the researcher interacted via discussions, presentation of results, or by giving suggestions for improvement in a collaborative manner with the different teams. This is different from the classical pure action research approach, where the researcher is part of the team and observes, acts and reflects in a participative manner. Because of external constraints the researcher could be only partly collaboratively connected with the teams; thus an action-oriented research approach in the tradition of a positivist view was chosen to measure the phenomenon of shared leadership. In this setting taking actions only at the defined appointments seemed to be a suitable approach.
Two distinct projects were introduced: a core project led by the doctoral researcher, which was undertaken in an organisation; and the action thesis writing process to write and reflect on the creation of knowledge acquired during the core action research project. This combined the acquisition of organisational knowledge and the documentation of this acquired knowledge in a report (i.e. a doctoral thesis). For this research study, the approach presented in Figure 4 for a core research project and the action thesis writing process was introduced and followed.
Figure 4: Schematics of Core Action Research Project and Thesis Writing Project
In this thesis work, the quality criteria for action research defined by Herr and Anderson (2005) were followed. Herr and Anderson (2005) used the term validity and defined five validity areas. The validity areas ‘dialog and process’, ‘outcome’, ‘catalytic’, ‘democratic’, and ‘process’ (depicted in Table 4 were adapted from Herr and Anderson (2005) and enhanced for applicability to the thesis work. The following sections describe the different action research projects and measures.
Table 4: Rigorous Quality Criteria for Action Research (Table adapted from Herr and Anderson (2005) and mapped to research thesis)
Goals of Action Research Quality/Validity Criteria Applicability to thesis Generation of new
knowledge
Dialog/process validity New knowledge on how shared leadership is achieved in self-organising teams for the researcher and the organisation
Achievement of action oriented outcome
Outcome validity Core action samples and reflection cycles (action- oriented approach) Education of
researcher/participant
Catalytic validity Reflection is performed partly collaboratively within the team
Result is relevant to the organisation
Democratic validity Core action research projects are partly collaborative A sound/appropriate research
methodology
Process validity Use of action research cycles with Kolb’s reflection cycles and defined and validated measurements
4.2.1 Core action research projects
For the core action research projects, five self-organising teams working in accordance with agile methodology as described in section 3.2 were chosen, these were suitable for the study of shared leadership; Two samples were taken (Coghlan, 2001; Humphrey, 2007). These core action research projects took place in a telecommunication research and development centre where five self-organising teams that apply the Scrum methodology for software development and maintenance were investigated. The core action research projects and their different cycles are described in chapter 7 of the thesis, where the setting is described in detail.
4.2.2 Personal reflective pause sections
Each thesis writing reflection step was accompanied by a reflective pause box (sections 5.7, 6.5, 7.4, 7.6, 7.7) as described by Coghlan and Brannick (2010). These reflective pause boxes focussed on what was encountered, after major achievements were made during the thesis work, how this was reflected in the situation and the findings, and on the practitioner’s development as a researcher. The main focus of these pause boxes was to reflect on the experience obtained, to critically re-think the situation, to evaluate how the findings challenged the practitioner’s beliefs, to determine which changes will be integrated and to determine how to show the practitioner’s development as a researcher. As described by (Bourner, 2003) the method used for the critical reflection process (which is a rather personal issue) used a questioning approach to learn, to explore the nature of learning of reflective thinking, and to transform tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge (Coghlan and Brannick, 2010). Contrasting the pause sections in the thesis document was the reflection on the thesis writing process and their findings, which followed Kolb’s reflection model (Kolb, 1984; Kolb and Kolb, 2009). The beauty of Kolb’s reflection model is that the model directly conceptualises the reflection findings such that these concepts can be applied in one of the subsequent core action research cycles. The thesis writing and reflection processes following Kolb’s method are described in the next sections.
4.2.3 Thesis writing action research process
During the course of thesis writing, the method of Kolb’s (Kolb, 1984; Kolb and Kolb, 2009) reflection process was followed; five cycles of the thesis writing process took place. The cycles journalized the development and refinement of the thesis work, and they documented how the generated knowledge was transferred in practice, triangulated with the extant literature, and applied in the real world via action research. Even though reflection was an important part of traditional education and learning, reflection is even more important in
action research because the actions that are taken are based on the decisions made during reflections (McNiff, 2000; Zuber-Skerritt and Perry, 2002; Jean McNiff, 2009). Reflection is a highly personal cognitive process: a person takes on the experience gained during the research process, brings it to mind, makes connections to other experiences, and connects the experience with the extant literature, thereby generating new knowledge and setting the base for further actions Wood Daudelin (1996). Within the research process, the reflection process needs to be formalised, which requires dedicated time and a particular reflection approach (Nadin et al., 2006; Alvesson et al., 2008). During the thesis writing process, these dedicated times of reflection took place after major steps of the investigation:
1: After the development of the research instrument (section 5.7)
2: After the application of the research instrument in a pilot study (section 6.5)
3: After the first cycle involving four self-organising teams and the data evaluation of the leadership research instrument (section 7.4)
4: After the first cycle where the instrument was applied to team E5 (section 7.6)
5: After the second cycle for team E3/E4 and the corresponding data evaluation (section 7.7) The method used for reflection and conceptualisation was Kolb’s (Kolb, 1984; Kolb and Kolb, 2009) reflection cycle, which complements the action research methodology.
4.2.4 Kolb’s reflection method for thesis writing process
Kolb’s reflection model (Kolb, 1984; Kolb and Kolb, 2009; Bergsteiner et al., 2010) describes a process where “knowledge is created through the transformation of experience” (Kolb, 1984, p. 38) (Figure 5). This happens on a concrete level by grasping and transforming this experience through reflective observation and synthesising this with the experience and knowledge from the extant literature in order to conceptualise the findings obtained from the reflection. Kolb’s reflection method was chosen because it complements the action research process of reflection and conceptualises the process of reflection. The generated knowledge gathered from the field action core projects were fed into the reflection cycles during the thesis writing process (Kolb and Kolb, 2009; Bergsteiner et al., 2010) and conceptualised so that new actions could be taken.
Figure 5: Kolb’s Reflection Cycle (Figure adapted from (Kolb, 1984; Kolb and Kolb, 2009)) This abstract conceptualisation needs to be actively applied to create a new concrete experience and to follow the cycle of reflection again (Kolb and Kolb, 2009). The five thesis reflection cycles are described in sections 5.7, 6.5, 7.4, 7.6, and 7.7 of the thesis; these describe and journalize the different cycles undertaken during the thesis writing process.