Tim Haslett

Action Research in Management—Ethical Dilemmas

This paper discusses the application of the guiding ethical principles for the conduct of research involving human subjects in an action research project in a membership-based community psychiatric disability organization. Action research is a collaborative process of critical inquiry between the researcher and the people in the situation, in this case the management executive. The relationship between the researcher and manager participants in a long-term action research project gives rise to ethical dilemmas related to participant selection and voluntary participation, informed consent, decision making, anonymity and confidentiality, conflicting and different needs. The process and strategies implemented to address them are discussed.

Systems thinking: taming complexity in project management

Purpose – This paper seeks to address complexity in project management via an innovative course that focuses on systems thinking.Design/methodology/approach – Intuitions about systems thinking evident in everyday language are developed and applied to phases of the system development life cycle.Findings – Complexity in project management may be tamed by systems thinking. Surprisingly, project managers do not seem to use simple systems thinking tools even though these provide unique benefits in framing and solving problems that arise from multiple perspectives and relationships.Research limitations/implications – The findings are broadly conceptual. They introduce only some elements of a tertiary curriculum developed by the authors and certified by a major project management practitioner group.Practical implications – The findings are of value to educators, practitioners and researchers who seek a practical approach to integrating complexity theory into modern project management practices.Social implication...

Business Action Research in Practice—A Strategic Conversation About Conducting Action Research in Business Organizations

The objectiveof this paper is to provide “practitioner researchers” with insights into the initial findings around the challenges of conducting “business action research in practice” in “commercial” settings on the basis of experiences of a PhD cohort at Monash University in the first 18 months of candidature. In performing the role of a concluding paper, it sets out a generic framework for action research that the cohort has come to embrace. In doing so, it draws on emergent themes spread across the six diverse topics that are the subject of action research interventions of the cohort members. The paper then identifies and analyses the common patterns that have emerged and offers observations and conclusions for those involved in practitioner research.

Local rules: their application in a kanban system

A theory of local rules was developed using Kauffman and Holland’s work on fitness landscapes. Local rules are used by individuals to increase their chances of survival on a fitness landscape. This paper reports on results from a simulation model of the local rules used by managers in the operation of a kanban system. In this case, local rules were used to optimise chances of survival by deflecting senior management criticism of potential stockouts in the system. The local rules used by the managers were modelled and their success and unintended consequences were reported. Some tentative conclusions about the effectiveness of local rules were advanced.

Occupational Health and Safety Systems, Corporate Governance and Viable Systems Diagnosis: An Action Research Approach

This paper establishes a theoretical basis for the implementation of governance systems in Occupational Health and Safety (OHS). This arose when a complex government organization reviewed the usage of its OHS computer system. This review precipitated several cycles of Action Research (AR). The AR allowed the recognition that the organization needed to define its OHS strategy, clarify its commitment to OHS, and examine its OHS systems in order to provide an effective OHS management and corporate governance system. As part of the review, a Viable Systems Diagnosis was done on the OHS function. It was recognized that Stafford Beer provided valuable insights into the information needs and communication flows of OHS information throughout this complex organization. Action research appears to be a particularly useful method for examining and implementing OHS management systems.

Success to the Successful: The Use of Systems Thinking Tools in Teaching OB

This paper discusses the use of an experiential pedagogy based on two systems thinking tools that can be incorporated in the teaching of organizational behavior (OB) concepts and case studies. It is contended that combining causal loop diagramming techniques and the application of Senges archetypes provides useful tools in assisting students to understand interdependencies, difficulties of implementation, impacts of assumptions, and provide further insights into OB concepts. This paper demonstrates the insights that these systems thinking tools can provide by using the “Success to the successful” archetype as an example.

Action Research: Its Role in the University/Business Relationship

The Action Research (AR) PhD program at Monash University had its genesis in Systems Thinking and Organizational Learning. This paper discusses the role of the university in AR projects in business and the central role that AR projects can have in a Facultys strategic positioning. The issues that have emerged in the project to date are discussed.

Local Rules and Fitness Landscapes: A Catastrophe Model

This paper examines the imposition of “local rules” in five mail delivery centres of Australia Post. Local rules are patterns of behaviour used by subunits of an organization to optimise their payoff. These local rules may ultimately benefit the total organization. Fitness landscapes are used to examine the emergence of local rules in this workplace. This research examined the relationship between the time taken to sort the mail and the volume of this mail. Work rates show a clear catastrophe shift; that is, work rates suddenly drop when the volume of mail exceeds a certain level, as Postal Delivery Officers apply local rules to maximise gains inherent in the pay structures. Such behaviour is close to that predicted by Kauffman (1995) in computer simulations of lattices and may be indicative of the application of local rules in organizations. The implications of the use of local rules are that behaviour in social systems may be dictated by systemic and emergent processes which are outside immediate management control. A further implication is that organizations may be structured to a significant extent by such local rules.

Exploring Ethical Dilemmas Using the “Drifting Goals” Archetype

This article demonstrates how the system archetype “drifting goals” can be used in the classroom to explore ethical dilemmas. System archetypes provide a framework that shifts the focus from seeing ethical dilemmas as stemming solely from the acts of individuals to exploring the systemic structures that are responsible for generic patterns of behavior over time. The use of a system archetype in the classroom is an important pedagogical approach and communication device to encourage systemic thinking. The drifting goals archetype exposes students to new ways of thinking about ethical problems and the structures that create them.

Action Learning as a Mindset—The Evolution of PICCO

This paper investigates action learning as a “maintenance of mindset.” It is an account of a personal evolution from a 4-year work in progress Action Research (AR) study exploring organizational viability. That study, involving two separate organizations and four cycles of AR, has seen the researcher and to some extent the organizations develop action-learning mindsets. The paper is an attempt to step outside the study and its associated learning from an organizational perspective and to link the threads of learning from the mindset of an action researcher. The paper suggests that adopting the mindset of an action researcher favors the transfer of learning from one organizational situation to another. Advocating that action researchers do not restart their initial methodologies, it is contended that the second organization has gained advantage of learning from the first. It is concluded that action learning mindsets articulate cumulative wisdom from organizational and methodological perspectives.