Swedish Network Development for Implementing National Work Reform Strategy

During the early history of action research it was common to work with one single enterprise or workplace. More recently there has been a tendency toward linking organizations together in networks of development projects. One of the chief reasons for this new approach is to achieve "critical mass" of changes between organizations. In creating networks, different approaches can be applied. While the first efforts to develop networks were seen as appendices to single case projects, the current tendency is to see networks as organizational structures in their own right. Their development requires means or action parameters which go beyond those generally applied in "organization development." Networks were a key means in a recently concluded 5-year, nationwide action research-based Swedish work reform effort involving more than 100 organizations in various networks (the "LOM" program). This article describes the LOM program and the background for the interest in network development, the means invented to create and develop the necessary networks, the role of action research, and the resulting perspective on networks that emerged.