Enriching action research with the narrative approach and activity theory: analyzing the consequences of an intervention in a public sector hospital in Finland

Abstract

As early as 15 years ago, it was claimed that organizational intervention research lacks consensus about research methods and theory and that more systematic efforts are needed to overcome this theoretical–methodological gap in knowledge. This study aims at contributing to the development of theory and methodology in the field of organizational intervention research. The study puts action research, narrative inquiry and activity theory into interplay in a novel way. Theory and practice are in a dialogical relationship in the study. An empirical case is presented of a public-sector hospital unit that was in crisis and took part in an organizational change process based on action research. The study asks what a combinatory framework can offer the theoretical and methodological development of organizational intervention research. The long-term consequences of the project are here traced and analyzed by conducting ethnographic field research, including narrative inquiry. A meta-analysis of the action research process and narrative accounts is conducted with activity–theoretical concepts of material–artifact mediation and object-oriented activity.

Keywords:

• narratives
• organizational change
• activity
• object
• mediating artifacts

Notes

1. The zone of proximal development defines those functions that will ‘mature tomorrow but are currently in an embryonic state’; that is, the ‘buds’ of development (Vygotsky 1978, 86). Human children can ‘go well beyond the limits of their own capabilities’, and they ‘are capable of doing much more in collective activity’ (Vygotsky 1978, 88, cited in Engeström 1987, 169).