Participatory Action Research as an Organizational Resource

– A Finnish Perspective

Satu Kalliola, University of Tampere, Faculty of Social Sciences, Dept. of Pori, Finland

Paper presented during Conflict, Citizenship and Civil Society, 8th Annual Conference of the European Sociological Association, Glasgow, 3rd - 6th September, 2007 within Research stream 20

Abstract

In Finland, first action research projects in the work life research were started as late as in the 1980s, decades after for example Norway. However, since then action research has kept its position as a significant tool in the development of work organizations, partly with the support of national programmes financed by the Ministry of Labour and the Finnish Work Environment Fund. The full paper will deal with the characteristics of participatory action research that give a voice and to some degree also choice to the employees who may use their discretion in the formulation of organizational change. This makes participatory action research also a practical tool for the management. Attention will be given also to the ethical concerns embedded in the confrontation between manipulation and workplace democracy: Whose values? Whose objectives? What is the role of the action researcher? The paper relies on new reflections of earlier research reports of municipal cases where special dialogue forums are built as action research interventions, that later may find a permanent place in the organizational structures as spaces for learning at work.

Key words: action research, Democratic Dialogue, organizational change, dialogue forums, learning

Introduction

New needs and initiatives of employee involvement

The issue of employee involvement has been understood as something that the employees want, or even demand, in the form of workplace democracy, whereas the management tends to stick to the traditional power positions. Recently the phenomenon has got new dimensions. In a situation where the global competition has shaped the production life and consequently the working life very hectic, the management has to turn to the employees and ask for their commitment to carry out changes in their daily work. In addition, the notion of workplace learning as a competition factor increases the importance of employee involvement, especially there emerges a need for a space to reflect the aspects of work and how it is organized.

Earlier research suggest that the employees value only the kind of participation procedures where they will get relevant information concerning their work beforehand, at a stage which allows participation in the planning of the changes, and secondly, their opinions and work experience can be traced also in the final outcome. This implies that the key factors in the participation process are the opportunities of employees to influence the final results of the decision-making processes at the different levels of the work organizations (Kalliola 1999, 21). One practical consequence of this result is that the employees tend to reject the type of employer approaches where the employee consultancy does not lead to concrete action.

There are two government initiatives that aim to solve the employee involvement dilemma in Finland. Both are partly connected to the influence of European Union with the reference to Directive for Employee Information and Consultation Rights (Directive 2002/14/EC).

A reformed Act on Cooperation within Undertakings will enter into force in 1 July 2007, replacing the earlier act from the year 1978 and a totally new Act on Cooperation within Municipalities will enter force in 1 September 2007, replacing the earlier agreements between the bargaining parties (Local Authority Employers and the trade unions). The new acts emphasize the spirit of cooperation and effort to reach consensus to a much greater degree than the earlier act and the municipal agreement. The earlier law was obeyed with mainly in the case of dismissals and the municipal cooperation agreements were often complied only in a superficial way without any serious joint reflections between the management and the staff. (www.mol.fi; www.kuntatyonantajat.fi)

However, in the case of the both new laws the question is more about representative forms of employee involvement than about direct participation and influence on one's own work. Another government initiative is The Finnish Workplace Development Programme TYKES (2004-2009). This is a third programme in a row since 1996. This newest programme aims to catch the spirit of cooperation more deeply than the earlier ones. Development activity in the programme projects is based on cooperation between the management and the staff of the workplace concerned. The programme promotes the modes of operations of Finnish companies and other work organizations with an eye to simultaneous enhancement of productivity and the quality of working life. The government calls this qualitatively sustainable growth. (www.tykes.fi)

Action research in the service of the public good

The new cooperation acts and the TYKES Programme support each other in the enhancement of employee involvement in the Finnish society. In addition, the TYKES programme is based on a view that the most effective way of generating new innovative solutions for working life is close cooperation and interaction between workplaces, researchers, consultants, public authorities and the social partners. The programme is based on the recognition of two notions: 1) the capacity of the different parties to join forces is for a small country like Finland a precondition for coping with the globalisation economy and 2) the success in the new competitive environment increasingly calls for workplace innovation. (www.tykes.fi) The establishment of national workplace development programme has contributed to the application of various theoretical and methodological approaches of the research assisted projects. Among other organization research methods, action research has gained favour along the conducting of the programme.

Nowadays, especially in the municipal sector, action research can be seen as a significant tool in the development of work organizations. Actually, there are many kinds of action research, so many that Reason and Bradbury (2000) call them action research family. The application of action research conducted in Finnish municipalities is of Scandinavian origin. It relies strongly on dialogue between various stakeholders and utilizes various dialogue forums, like task forces, workplace meetings and special forums called Dialogue Conferences.

Dialogue Conference is a discussion forum, which invites representatives of all stakeholder groups and hierarchical levels of an organization to evaluate the past and the present and to make plans for the future. Special criteria for Democratic Dialogue are used as a guideline. Dialogue Conferences were transferred to Finland from Norway and Sweden in the late 1980s. The concrete model was adopted from the Swedish LOM-programme (Leadership – Organization – Co- determination). The first Finnish projects were conducted as joint efforts of the Ministry of Labour, Finnish Employers’ Management Development Institute and the University of Helsinki. Also, the Education Centre of the Finnish Metalworkers’ Union offered training in the method for its members and their employers. In Finland the conferences are nowadays called Work Conferences. (Alasoini et al. 2006.)

In the municipal sector the first project utilising Work Conferences took place in 1991-1993 as a part of a pioneer project designed to modernise the municipal service organizations. The project called Quality Project was a joint endeavour of the Local Authority Employers, trade unions and Work Research Centre, University of Tampere. The project was a response to many problems of professional bureaucracies. The project, hit by the severe recession in the early 1990s, turned out to be a success. The practical outcome emphasized the role of employee involvement as a key to the improvements of the quality of working life and also to productivity gains.

In 1995 a permanent Quality Network was es tablished to coordinate communicative action research projects in the municipalities. Later the network was opened to all researchers, consultants and professionals of human resource management interested in dialogue based development methods. Nowadays the number of individual members is around 40. Also three member organizations of the network participated in the Life as Learning Programme funded by the Finnish Academy in the years 2002 - 2006. This period made it possible to look at the development methods of the Quality Network more closely. The practical outcomes of most participant organizations of the Quality Network testify that the Work Conferences are able to produce good practical results: every conference has generated something new and the participants like attending them. The question is: How and why do the conferences work?

The aim of the paper

The paper aims to find out, what is there in the Work Conferences that produces and maintains change. What is the role of workplace learning?

The procedure and the steps of the Work Conference method will be analysed in the connection to the context of municipal organizations.

The plot of the paper will evolve around the role the employees as learners and change agents, who will shape the organisational change and at the same time around the role of action researchers as learners, whose inspirations come from good practices.

3. Research method

Action research interventions as tools for data gathering and organizational change

Usually the planning and the conduct of action research interventions offer excellent possibilities for data gathering. Interventions will produce many kinds of data, including diagnostic and evaluation surveys and interviews, memos of the Work Conferences and other dialogue forums, official documents, progress and final reports, and the researchers’ field diaries. The data will be available although the desired organizational change would not take place at all. Often it is very worthwhile to try to find out the prerequisites and the constraints for the desired change, because this might be a key to the organizational culture, hidden without the intervention. These kinds of research approaches require conceptualisations that explain the practical results of the interventions. The data of this paper will come from two earlier studies and two papers.

a) Kalliola, S. & Nakari, R.(1999) (Eds.) Resources for Renewal - A participatory approach to the modernization of municipal organizations in Finland . John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia.

The edited compilation study includes the presentation of the methodology, four original cases from the pioneer project from the years 1991-1993, a home care case from the City of Helsinki from the year 2000 and an analysis of the role of trade unions as a development partner.

b) Kalliola, S. & Nakari, R. (2004) Yhteistoiminta ja kuntien työpaikkojen kehittäminen: Laatu-verkoston arviointitutkimus. [Labour–management co-operation and workplace development: An evaluation research of Quality Network] Tykes-raportteja 38. Helsinki: Työministeriö.

The study is a self-evaluation of the first 25 cases of Quality Network from the years 1995-2001.

c) Kalliola, S. & Nakari, R. (2003) Spaces for learning and cooperation in municipal organizations. "Work and Lifelong Learning in Different Contexts", 3rd International Conference of Researching Work and Learning, July 25th -27th 2003, Tampere, Finland, Proceedings Book II: Theme 4: Partnerships and Co-operation in Workplace Learning. University of Tampere 2003. 104-113.

The conference paper is the first step towards understanding the preconditions for learning in municipal organisations.

d) Kalliola, S., Nakari, R. & Pesonen, I. (2006) Learning to make changes: Democratic dialogue in action. Journal of Workplace Learning, 18: 7/8, 464–477.

The article is based on the newest cases participating in the Life as Learning Programme 2002-2006.

Content analysis will be used to summarise the conclusions made about the Work Conference method and Democratic Dialogue as tools to secure employee involvement and also about the conceptualisations of municipal organizations and learning. The conceptualisation of employee involvement is left partly open due to the many definitions: workplace democracy, quality of working life, shared decision making, participation, participative management, labour-management co-operation and employee voice (Dundon et al. 20004) seem all to contain the important dimension of employee influence on the final outcome of planning and decision making. Also some forms of work organization include the dimension of employee involvement; for example in the classic semi-autonomous team the degree of employee influence is high.

Many definitions of action research, especially of participatory action research, include the idea of learning as one result of the interventions. The definitions cover the learning of all people involved, including the researchers. Keeping this as a vantage point the summaries will be presented as descriptions of the learning of the researchers.

4. Findings and discussion

The criteria for Democratic Dialogue as an inspiration to equal learning needs and opportunities

According to Gustavsen (2001, 18) the history of dialogue conference dates back to 1980s when the problem of diffusing new forms of work organizations throughout working life, experienced both by labour market parties and researchers. An idea of introducing new agreements dealing with development was complemented with the idea of introducing conferences where all concerned could discuss what goals and visions they would like to pursue and how to do it. Thus the idea of dialogue conference has emerged as a setting for discussing development and as an institutionalisation of discourse mediating between the practical and the theoretical. Later, after some epistemological reflections about the criteria of Democratic Dialogue, Gustavsen (and other involved researchers) have progressively returned to the pragmatic understanding of the conference in favour of "what works". One of the newest formulations of the criteria for Democratic Dialogue is the following:

1. Dialogue is based on a principle of give and take, not one-way communication

2. All concerned by the issue under discussion should have the possibility of participating

3. Participants are under an obligation to help other participants be active in the dialogue.

4. All participants have the same status in the dialogue arenas.

5. Work experience is the point of departure for participation.

6. Some of the experience the participant has when entering the dialogue must be seen as relevant.

7. It must be possible for all participants to gain an understanding of the topics under discussion.

8. An argument can be rejected only after an investigation (and not, for instance, on the ground that it emanates out of a source with limited legitimacy).

9. All arguments that are to enter the dialogue must be presented by the actors present.

10. All participants are obliged to accept that other participants may have arguments better than their own.

11. Among the issues that can be made subject to discussion are the ordinary work roles of the participants – no one is exempt from such discussion.

12. The dialogue should be able to integrate a growing degree of disagreement.

13. The dialogue should continuously generate decisions that provide a platform for joint action. (G ustavsen 2001, 18-19.)

Gustavsen (2001, 19) continues, how the word “criteria” could be replaced by the term “orientational directives". In the Finnish version the criteria for Democratic Dialogue are sometimes translated as "principles", but lately they haven understood as obliging "rules". They are distributed to every participant along with the conference invitation and in the conference they are to be seen on posters or as brochures during every phase. The researchers will see that everyone participates and no one dominates the discussions. This is usually done in the favour of those employees who are not used to express their opinions. Also, the researchers emphasise the 13. rule as a means to change words to concrete action.

During the Quality Project in 1991-1993 and in the beginning of the Network phase the understanding of learning was tied closely to the whole idea of Democratic Dialogue. Democratic Dialogue was seen as a demand for equal opportunities for understanding and learning about the relevant issues at the workplace, which would emphasise the rights of the employees to have access to knowledge that was usually reserved for the management only. Especially the rule number 7 was interpreted as one that was related to mutual learning (Kalliola & Nakari 1999, 151.) This was expressed also in concrete ways in conducting a Work Conference with the topic "Let's learn from each other". The theme of that specific Work Conference was the action research method itself: the members from participant municipal organisations and the researchers discussed how to proceed with the method in various phases of development projects. (Kalliola & Nakari 2004, 120.)

As learning was understood practically as a prerequisite for change, it was conceptualised as acquiring new skills, attitudes and shared visions, which contribute to the change. In the municipalities dialogue forums were used for these purposes. Otherwise learning was taken as granted and not much attention was paid on the phenomenon itself.

The action research interventions as providers for workplace learning

The earlier neglects concerning the idea of learning were corrected along the course of Life as Learning Programme (2002-2006) and the researchers started to examine the roots of their intervention methods from a new perspective. It was found out that the idea of learning was deeply embedded in the socio-technical origins of the Work Conference method (Kalliola & Nakari 2003, 109 - 110). The researchers turned to Trist (1978, 394-395) who has argued that development cannot take place unless opportunities for organisational learning are built into all its activities at all levels.

Trist's (1978) "opportunities for organisational learning" were conceptually tied to the Work Conferences that were seen as purposefully created "public spheres for discussion" and "spaces for learning". (Kalliola & Nakari 2003, 107-108.) Later the idea of "spaces for learning" was connected with more current discussion about multidimensional spaces consisting of physical, social and mental aspects (Kalliola et al. 2006). Thus "space" could be seen as a network of relationships, which shapes interaction. Further, the compliance to the rules of Democratic Dialogue was seen to change the social relationships and the mental aspects in a Work Conference to a degree that makes the conference favourable for participatory learning opportunities. Further, it was noted that learning would only take place through voluntary practices, in which people commit themselves according to their notions of power and interests (Billett 2004.)

The technical elements of work conference process in providing learning opportunities

The Finnish version of the Work Conference method has somewhat changed from the original put forward by Gustavsen & Engelstad (1986). In the early days the Scandinavian conferences were gatherings of at least 3-5 organisations that formed development networks in order to diffuse innovations. The Finnish version is often used inside only one organisation, although the participants are invited according to a principle of crossing the borders.

The conference will start by making visions of the future of the issue under discussion. This will take place in homogeneous groups, for example the members of the same occupational group make a vision based on their interests and the politicians make their own. The visions will be presented and discussed in a plenary after which all visions are given to new mixed groups, called diagonal groups that consist of representatives of every stakeholder and hierarchical group present in the conference. These diagonal groups work on the theme of problems: What obstacles there are on the way to attain the vision in question? Again, the results are discussed in a plenary. These two first phases are very important for the employees, because the proper conduct of them secures their voice to be heard.

After visions and problems the two latter phases of the conference concentrate on future action. First, the obstacles found by every diagonal group are discussed in freely formed groups with the aim to find ways to overcome the obstacles. After a plenary the people who work together make use of all the earlier discussions and formulate concrete action plans for the future - sometimes for the near future and sometimes for a longer period of time. The conference will end with a plenary discussion that makes a summary of the ideas brought forward, emphasises the similarities and the differences in the experiences and looks for grounds for something that can be done immediately. As the rules of Democratic Dialogue provide an action code that emphasizes the right and also the obligation of everybody to give their input to the change process, the Work Conference can be seen as one formulation of shared sense making process that leads to opportunities to learn.

However, the Conference is not free from constraints. Although it may offer new opportunities to participate and create new communities of practice by intentional changes in power relations, the subjective nature of people forces them to choose: individuals either commit themselves or do not commit themselves to this type of learning processes. (Billett 2004). There are at least two prerequisites that facilitate - the changes recognised as necessary for survival - commitment: the right issues and According to the practical experience of the researchers sometimes the right issues may be found around the changes that are recognised as necessary for the survival of the organizations. There are cases where the outside pressure is so high that the people start to look for ways to reform their organisations and thus in a survival game a development project can be seen as an opportunity both by the management and the employees.

Another approach comes from ethical issues of action research. All the concerned are confronted with the line between manipulation and workplace democracy: Whose values? Whose objectives? What is the role of the action researchers? One basic principle of the Quality Network projects is that they are started from scratch; in a phase that everybody may participate in the planning. Any secret preparations will quite certainly ruin the project.

An easy answer to the question of right participants is: all concerned. Sometimes the researchers do not know who should be invited to participate in the development activities and if they do not get advice from the members of the organisation the efforts may be pointless. According to the results of the evaluation study of the Quality Network (Kalliola & Nakari 2004, 81-100) participants of development projects valued the existence of a consistent element of actual interaction between all the possible municipal actors. Especially the involvement of the members of the municipal boards and councils, the representatives of citizens and shop stewards was experienced significant for the outcome of the development processes. This was shown both by qualitative and quantitative data and gave impetus to further examine the municipalities as organisations.

Gaining understanding of the organizational context

Along the history of Quality Project and Quality Network the conceptualisation of municipal organizations has undergone some transformations. However, in all the approaches chosen some traces of the present understanding and conceptualisations can be found, as will be shown in the following paragraphs.

In the early phases the emphasis of the action research interventions was on the bottom-up development, along the lines of high involvement of the employee discretion. The researchers critiqued the tradition of top-down development of neglecting workplace innovations and showed how the main obstacle of genuine development was the hierarchical and divided structures of professional bureaucracies. The practical evidence came from cases where bottom-up development was hit with "development ceiling" or where the management did not participate in the project, although an official permission to conduct the project had been given. Also, the researchers saw how the development results did not diffuse from one workplace or one service sector to another. The reason for this was found in the missing cooperative crossover within professional borders, with their various gatekeepers, including the shop stewards of local trade union branches. Along the participation of top management and the supervisors also the input of political leaders was found important in order to carry out a satisfactory development process in a multi-level and multi-actor organization. (Kalliola & Nakari 1999, 151-152.)

In the evaluation phase the notion of gatekeepers was changed to the notion of municipal power elites (Kalliola & Nakari 2004) and the "development ceiling" was seen as a consequence of development that was not connected to the actual future strategies and emerging survival policies of the organization. After that there was only a small step to adopting the kind of conceptualisation of municipal organizations that would give proper explanations also to all the previous findings. The researchers turned to Norwegian research traditions and found the idea of three interacting and partly overlapping organizational systems, namely production, bargaining and development system, by Colbj Ø rnsen & Falkum (1998, 43-45).

Along this conceptualisation it was noticed that the action research interventions, Work Conferences and other dialogue forums, are purposefully built development organization. Their potential to have on impact for example on the modes of operations and on the ways which work is organised and the citizens served is dependent on its relationships with the other two organisations. This approach was used in Kalliola, Nakari & Pesonen (2006) and explanations could be given to the phenomena of words changing or not changing into action.

The value of shared visions will be measured after the Work Conference, when the new ideas should be put into practice. If the management has acknowledged the status of the Work Conference as a development organisation, the management will use their authority to realize the joint plans. In the theoretical language of this paper the question is about good cooperation between the development and the production organization. When also the cooperation is good with the bargaining organisation the gatekeepers of local trade union branches will give their input to promote the planned changes.

The good cooperation between the development, production and bargaining organisations is tied to the future of the development: the words put into action give a positive signal to all the participants and trust may emerge and grow among them. This in turn will be an impetus to organize a new Work Conference, aimed perhaps to evaluate the earlier actions and thus dialogue forums may find their place as permanent development structures and spaces for learning.

6. Conclusions

This learning narrative of action researchers points out how practice and theory complement each other. The continuous positive feed back concerning Work Conferences made the researchers wonder what are the key factors contributing to the good results. The conceptualisation of Work Conferences at the same time as learning spaces, consisting of physical, mental and social aspects, and as development organizations, connected to the production and bargaining organizations, sheds light on these factors.

As many borders characterise the municipal organizations the Work Conference method has turned out to be suitable in bridging the gaps. All the municipal actors may use the conference method as a tool to promote organizational change in a way that secures equal opportunities to be heard and to influence on the decisions. In a genuine dialogue the shared visions are not reached by voting, but by listening to and understanding other people's arguments.

7. References

Alasoini, T., Hanhike, T. & Ramstad, Elise (2006) Benchmarking of different R&D approaches in different workplace contexts. A report by Finnish Workplace Development Programme TYKES. September 2006. A part of WORK-IN-NET project (EU).

Billett, S. (2004) Workplace participatory practices: conceptualizing workplaces ad learning environments. Journal of Workplace Learning, 16:6, 312-324.

Colbj Ø rnsen, T. & Falkum, E. (1998) Corporate efficiency and employee participation in Gustavsen, B., Colbj Ø rnsen, T. & Pålshaugen, Ö. (Eds.) Development coalitions in working life; the 'Enterprise Development 2000' Program in Norway, John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 35-54.

Dundon, T., Wilkinson, A., Marchington, M. & Ackers, P. (2004) The meanings and purpose of employee voice. International Journal of Human Resource Management 15:6, 1149-1170.

Gustavsen, B. & Engelstad, P. H. (1986) The design of conferences and the evolving role of democratic dialogue in changing working life. Human Relations. 39:2, 101-115.

Gustavsen, B. (2001) Theory and practice: the mediating discourse. In Reason, P. & Bradbury, H.(eds.) Handbook of Action Research, Participative Inquiry and Practice. Sage, London/Thousands Oaks, CA/New Delhi, 17-26.

Kalliola, S. (1999) Promoting employee participation in municipal administration in Kalliola, S. & Nakari, R. (Eds.) Resources for Renewal - A participatory approach to the modernization of municipal organizations in Finland. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam / Philadelphia, 15-27.

Trist, E. (1978) Developing an adaptive planning capability in public enterprise and government agencies in Sutherland, J. W. (ed.) Management Handbook for Public Administraators. Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York, 389-422.

Websites used as a reference :

Ministry of Labour: www.mol.fi

http://wwwmol.mol.fi/en/01_ministry/06-press/2007-03-29/-01/index/jsp; read 25 June 2007

The Finnish National Workplace Development Programme Tykes: www.tykes.fi

http://mol.fi/mol/en/01_ministry/05-Tykes/index.jsp; read 25 June 2007

Local Authority Employers: www.kuntatyonantajat.fi

http://www.kuntatyonantajat/ajankohtaista/uutiset/13.4.2007 Kuntien yt-laki voimaan syyskuussa; read 25 June 2007