Abstract
Action research has approached conflict mainly through the concept of conflict resolution, where action researchers play a role as third parties acting as organizers, conveners, and facilitators. This paper proposes a complementary role as stakeholders in the conflicts of territorial development and thus, as one more part in conflict. This is done in the context of one specific approach to action research, namely, action research for territorial development and one specific project, the Territorial Development Laboratory initiated in 2009 in Gipuzkoa, Basque Country, Spain. The paper argues that the ideological and political positions of action researchers, legitimated by the other stakeholders through the action research process, give them a stake in territorial development conflicts. It also revisits the interpretation of participation in action research in order to conceptualize action researchers’ role as stakeholders in the conflicts of territorial development. These discussions are of interest for any action researcher wanting to explore her or his role as a part in conflict in action research processes and not exclusively as a third party facilitating the process.
Keywords
Introduction
Action research (AR) can be useful when dealing with situations of conflict and action researchers have addressed specificities of AR in these situations such as decentralization, deregulation and cooperation (Falzone, 2004); insider research, legitimation of popular knowledge, and partiality/truth (Lundy & McGovern, 2006) or personal empowerment and practical advancement (Jacobs, 2010). A central concept in the literature when addressing AR in situations of conflict is conflict resolution. There are examples of the use of AR for conflict resolution in the field of education (Kammerer, 1998; Schindler, 1993; Sobral, 2013), war-torn societies (Johannsen, 2001), environment related conflicts (Moelino & Fisher, 2003) and social innovation (Friedman & Rothman, 2015) among others.
Most of these contributions share one characteristic, action researchers are described as a third party acting as an organizer, convener and facilitator (Rothman, 2014) and not as a party in conflict.
The main contribution of this paper is to propose a reflection on the relationship of AR and conflict from a different, though complementary, perspective. That is to say, thinking of the relationship between action researchers and stakeholders in AR as one that is naturally in conflict. The interpretation of natural in this paper connects with how Follet (1930) uses the term normal. Conflict is “not necessarily a wasteful outbreak of incompatibilities, but a normal process by which socially valuable differences register themselves for the enrichment of all concerned” (Follet, 1930, p. 301).
Consequently, this paper focuses on the role of action researchers not as a third party, but a party in conflict. This means that action researchers might have different positions on the problems addressed by the AR process and some of these positions might differ from the positions of stakeholders.
This type of conflict is not conceptualized in a vacuum. It is part of action research for territorial development (ARTD; Karlsen & Larrea, 2014) developing in university environments in the Basque Country (Spain), Norway and Argentina since 2008 and focused on co-generative processes between action researchers and policy makers (elected politicians, civil servants and staff from government agencies). This paper thus focuses on conflict as a natural/normal process by which differences between action researchers and policy makers enrich territorial development. This enrichment takes place because action researchers and policy makers come to agreement “not by reconciling” their ideas but by “finding the new idea which is always something different from the addition of the previous ideas” (Follet, 1930, p. 117).
ARTD is developing in various projects. The main one is a program named the Territorial Development Laboratory (TDLab), led by the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa (Basque Country) that has been ongoing since 2009, and in which I have participated since its inception. The case in the paper is based on a specific episode in this program. One of the features of this episode is that conflict was not initially perceived as such. The interpretation of the situation as being one of conflict emerged from the shared reflection of researchers and policy makers about a mutual sense of discomfort in the AR process. The reconceptualization of the situation helped overcome this initial sense of discomfort.
The problem statement that inspires the article is that the position of action researchers as a party in conflict has been understudied compared with the positionality as third-party facilitators in conflict resolution. The rationale for the paper is that a better understanding of this perspective can help define more comprehensive AR approaches for territorial development. The research question is: What are the features of conflict between policy makers and action researchers in ARTD?
The conceptualization of conflict in this paper results from praxis. This means that the concepts and frameworks shared through the different sections are mostly those that have already been integrated in the dialogue between action researchers with policy makers and have contributed to solving concrete problems. Consequently, there are also references to the case in the conceptual framework. The conceptualization in the paper is not presented as normative, generalizable nor necessarily feasible in other types of AR projects. Nonetheless, it might help reflect about other situations and contexts. The core feature of this conceptualization is the interpretation of action researchers as one more type of stakeholder/participant in territorial development. The paper can be of interest for action researchers who consider their positions to be in conflict with the positions of stakeholders in AR processes and want to use this conflict as a constructive force.
Previous conceptualizations of conflict in ARTD
AR started in Orkestra-Basque Institute of Competitiveness in 2008 (Larrea, 2018). Later, in 2014, Karlsen and Larrea (2014) coined the term action research for territorial development for the specific approach emerging there. The main initial influences in this approach were regional innovation systems literature (Isaksen, 2001), industrial democracy (Greenwood & Levin, 2007; Gustavsen, 1992), local economic development (Alburquerque, Costamagna, & Ferraro, 2008), and the pedagogical approach of Paulo Freire (1996, 2008). Action researchers in ARTD thus combine knowledge in regional and local economic development with AR. Since 2016 ARTD is also influenced by contributions from policy sciences (Bartels & Wittmayer, 2014).
ARTD defines territorial development as the process of mobilization and participation of different actors (public and private) in which they discuss and agree on the strategies that can guide individual as well as collective behavior (Karlsen & Larrea, 2014). The conceptualization of conflict in ARTD, described in the three following subsections, is based on systematizations of dialogue between policy makers and researchers in the context of TDLab since 2009.
The initial conceptualization of conflict in ARTD
ARTD defines conflict as a “situation where different actors have different values, experiences, interests, resources and approaches to a given situation”. On the other hand, “consensus is a situation where there is enough agreement among actors to make action possible […] It doesn’t mean that they agree in everything or that everybody agrees. It means that there is enough agreement that a change process can be initiated or go on. It means that the actors that disagree respect the solution to act” (Karlsen & Larrea, 2014).
To evolve from conflict to consensus the first step is to make conflict explicit. This must be done carefully because, when the conditions are not in place to manage conflict constructively, explicitation can break the whole process (Karlsen & Larrea, 2014). ARTD evolves in cycles where participants detect conflict hindering a process, make it explicit, reach an agreement and then act.
The initial contributions to ARTD (Karlsen & Larrea, 2014), synthetized in Figure 1, assumed that only policy makers, and not researchers, were problem owners (Greenwood & Levin, 2007). Consequently, the role of action researchers regarding conflict was a third party role, facilitating conflict resolution between policy makers who owned the problem.
The ARTD process from the perspective of action researchers as third party.Source: own elaboration.
Researchers working with this framework in TDLab realized that it misrepresented the role they wanted to play in AR and demanded that action researchers take on a role as facilitative actors of territorial development (Costamagna & Larrea, 2018), distinguishing them from professional facilitators.
Action researchers as facilitative actors of territorial development
A facilitator in ARTD is someone who takes on the role of creating the conditions that enable territorial development actors to reflect, decide and act. There are two types of facilitators. The first are professional facilitators, that are usually hired to facilitate a process by the actors and do not have their own interests at stake in the process. Most literature on facilitation refers to them.
The second type of facilitators defined in the context of ARTD is facilitative actors of territorial development. These are territorial actors who have an explicit function as an actor—for example, a policy maker or a researcher—that also take on the role of creating the conditions that enable others to reflect, decide and act. This means action researchers can facilitate without relinquishing their role as territorial actor and embodying the participation of university/academia in territorial development. Although AR literature has addressed researchers’ stake in AR processes in different contexts (Coghlan & Brannick, 2010; Freire, 1996; Karr & Kemmis, 1986) their role as territorial actors with a stake in territorial development is understudied. When action researchers are facilitative actors, they are not a third party.
Soft resistance
Soft resistance (Arrona & Larrea, 2018) is the concept that in ARTD describes the interaction between policy makers and action researchers as facilitative actors. It is a conflict-based and agreement-oriented process. The awareness of having conflicting perspectives makes the relationship between researchers and policymakers openly critical in both directions (the resistance dimension). But there is also a steadfast prioritization of action, one of the cornerstones of AR, by both policymakers and action researchers. Action requires agreement (the soft dimension).
The main feature of soft resistance is that it addresses two dimensions, the critical and the relational (Bartels & Wittmayer, 2014). It proposes that conflict between action researchers and policy makers in ARTD evolves through two types of stages in a cyclical process. Sometimes the role of action researchers is mostly relational, in these stages they do not use their own voice (position). They are a third party that works with the conflicting voices of other actors in the construction of agreement to act. In these stages a buffer of trust is created. In other stages action researchers play a critical role, prioritizing their interpretation of the process that might be in conflict with that of policy makers. In these moments they speak their own voice as territorial actors (the university, academia, researcher actor). In the short term this creates tension and reduces the buffer of trust. As a result, critical and relational stages come one after the other and the buffer of trust decreases or grows accordingly.
Definition of the political role of researchers and ideology in ARTD
ARTD has been conceptualized since 2008 through praxis, testing theoretical concepts in practice and integrating those that were useful into the ARTD frameworks (Arrona & Larrea, 2018; Costamagna & Larrea, 2018; Karlsen & Larrea, 2014). In this section, I share two new concepts that helped face conflict between action researchers and policy makers in the case I will present later and complement the previous ones: ideological position and political role of facilitative action researchers. They help interpret the underpinnings of conflict between policy makers and researcher in ARTD.
AR literature has already addressed political engagement (Freire, 2008; Gergen & Gergen, 2015; Reason & Bradbury, 2008). But this has only been partly integrated in ARTD. Through these two concepts I build into the ARTD framework the rationale that, although politics have sometimes been connected to partisanship and corruption in the literature (Lasswell, 1951, p. 5) there is no research on/in policy that is not political, and this does not mean such research is close to partisanship or corruption. There is, of course, a risk of illegitimate (not considered acceptable by the rest of territorial actors) use of power by action researchers on their own benefit. But the fear of this type of bias should not obscure the discussion on the political dimension of ARTD.
The political role of action researchers
Hilgard and Lerner proposed AR for policy sciences in 1951. In the same book, they shared a statement that has inspired reflections and discussions on the political role of action researchers in TDLab: “the psychologist does not wish to provide tests that are used in the support of school practices which he does not approve; the social anthropologist does not wish to improve factory morale so that workers can be exploited by management; […]” (Hilgard & Lerner, 1951, p. 5). In the context of ARTD, this contribution has helped gain awareness that action researchers have a stake in the policy processes they help cogenerate as they are ethically compromised regarding how their knowledge is used.
Furthermore, based on Berger and Luckmann (1991), ARTD defines action researchers as facilitative actors of territorial development in the context of social construction processes mediated by power. This also helps develop awareness of the use of power by researchers.
Based on these two contributions that are already ingrained in the conceptual frameworks of ARTD and the practices of the TDLab, I interpret the political role of action researchers as their use of power to influence the way their research will be used.
Using power means influencing not only contents, but also methodologies. Influence means, in this definition, to have an effect through cogeneration and not to impose a position.
This interpretation of the political role of action researchers connects with positionality discussions in the AR literature. It questions the definition of action researchers as friendly outsiders (Greenwood & Levin, 2007), who are not problem owners. Action researchers in ARTD are problem owners in territorial development and insiders (Herr & Anderson, 2005) of the territory. They face some of the challenges of insider action researchers such as preunderstanding or role duality (Coghlan & Brannick, 2010).
Ideological positions behind the political role
The previous definition triggers a new question: how do action researchers want their research to be used? This will depend on their ideological position.
The definition of ideological position adopted in TDLab comes from Diesing (2012) who in order to avoid emotional damage replaces the concept of ideology with the concepts of standpoint and perspective. He argues that scientists, or schools of scientists, identify with a certain location in society and view society spreading out around that location. This is the standpoint. The perspective is the angle of vision, or the way the world looks from the standpoint. For Diesing (2012), differences of method are one expression of the more fundamental differences of standpoint and perspective (ideology).
I interpret that ARTD has a standpoint—a location in society—given by the democratizing and empowering values and principles of the AR approaches that inspire ARTD. The perspective from this standpoint brings participation and empowerment to the foreground of territorial development. This happens in a context where participation and empowerment are out of the angle of vision of mainstream research in regional and local economic development.
Presentation of the case
The Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa is a regional government under the provincial parliament of Gipuzkoa (Basque Country, Spain). The TDLab was launched as an AR project in 2009 by this government and is still ongoing. For nine years, it has provided a space in which policy makers from the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa and action researchers from Orkestra have worked together.
The project’s operation has spanned the tenures of three different governments. All three shared, as a final common goal, the construction of governance modes that would make socioeconomic development policies more democratic and efficient within the region. To achieve this goal, policy makers from the 11 county development agencies of Gipuzkoa (all owned by municipalities) started to participate in the process in 2013.
The AR team comprises, on average, one full-time and four part-time researchers and one full-time research assistant. Specific projects are agreed with policy makers on a yearly basis. The two members of the team involved in the episode in the case were the full-time researcher (the author), in charge of facilitating the process and systematizing it departing from memories of workshops, questionnaires to participants and quantitative data available; and the research assistant, in charge of preparing the memories of all workshops and meetings. This team contributed to the process with methodological frameworks and contents on territorial development that helped policy makers reflect, decide, and act. The episode focuses on the period from October 2016 to March 2018.
To share the data on the process, first there is a thick description (Denzin, 1989; Geertz, 1973; Ryle, 1949) based on the literal minutes of meetings, research diaries, and documents generated in the process. Internal credibility—meaning whether the version written by the author has credibility for other participants in the process—was checked by sharing the case with the main policy maker in the case and then conducting an interview on it on 26 March 2018.
Description of the case
The main problem defined in TDLab by October 2016 was that, although the provincial council was already collaborating with the 11 county development agencies of the territory in the context of AR processes, the experimental governance constructed through AR in previous years was not yet institutionalized. The first goal proposed by policy makers and agreed with researchers was to sign a formal agreement between the council and the agencies that would establish the procedures for their cooperation in territorial development. From now on I use the term territorial development agreement (TD agreement) to refer to this formal document.
I had already detected conflicting perspectives between the council and the agencies regarding funding and the mechanisms for decision making. I simplify the situation saying that agencies were afraid of being used by the council and the council feared that agencies participated only to get funds. As facilitator of the process I proposed to use three workshops to better understand one another’s position (make conflict explicit). Another three workshops would be used to negotiate the TD agreement. The proposal was accepted and taken to practice.
I systematized the different positions made explicit in the first three workshops into a document that should help the council prepare a first draft of the TD agreement. I saw myself as a facilitator, a third party that would help the council and the agencies overcome their conflicting perspectives and so I think the others saw me. I presented the document to the policy makers in the council on 5 October. The following is an entry of my diary for that day: “[…] but there was something that was evident that didn’t fit for X[Director of Management of the Strategy]”.
One of the wordings I had used in my document was: Regarding work methodology, up to now the TDLab has followed an AR methodology, integrating the activity of university into the policy process and following cycles of reflection and action. This methodology fosters a balanced integration of learning, collaboration and negotiation. With this methodology the research team undertakes facilitation roles in different spaces.
I now share my interpretation of this part of the process. I had not mentioned our research organization or our team in the document and I had been careful to describe how governance had been and not how it should be. Still, I did have in mind a structural role for university and specifically for AR in the new governance. This is still an aim for me, as I conceive ARTD as a strategy for territorial development. This could be interpreted as a partisan position. Our AR team has been hired into the process for a decade on a yearly basis, which means policy makers decide every year if the team continues in the process or not. If the TD agreement presented action researchers as structural participants in the new governance, the freedom of the council to decide could be reduced and our research organization would economically benefit from a more stable situation.
I was afraid of our position being interpreted as partisan and immediately removed the references to AR from the document. I didn’t feel our trust buffer was at that moment big enough to be critical about this decision, although it was not the way I wanted our research to be used (my political position).
On 19 October, the document was again discussed, but policy makers still felt uncomfortable about it. I was becoming anxious about the process when a sentence that the Director for Management of the Strategy repeated often gave me a clue: “There is something I don’t agree with, but I cannot signal one word or paragraph because it is all through the document.”
On 26 October, I presented Diesing’s (2012) definition of ideology in the meeting with policy makers and discussed that even if I tried my best to show in a document only what had been said in the workshops by policy makers, this would always be impregnated by my ideological position (my standpoint and perspective on the issue). From my standpoint in the new governance, AR was at the core of my angle of vision. The Director for Management of the Strategy saw research as a tool for the initial construction of the new governance, but not necessarily a feature of its later development. From his standpoint, he did not necessarily have AR in his angle of vision when he looked at the new governance. Explicit acceptance that we had divergent ideological positions generated relief because it helped interpret researchers’ stake on the issue as ideological and political and not as partisan or corrupt.
When I shared this part of the case with the policy maker in 2018 to check internal credibility, he said: I don’t mean I didn’t say that at that time, but now I don’t feel identified with it. I guess it had to do with not knowing, with our urge to fund something that would give practical results. Maybe it has to do with short-term vision, or mistrust. With the perspective I have today I don’t think I would have made that decision. I didn’t know research and the contribution it can make as I do today. Later I saw—well, more than see, I experienced and I felt—that we were making progress.
In February 2018, we shared our worries with policy makers and in order to make our role more visible, we triggered a reflection process using a slide that showed the three following potential roles of action researchers in TDLab:
The research team can cogenerate the methodology, have our own voice, and be part of shared leadership. The research team complements the process led by policy makers, bringing such elements as proposals, evaluations, and systematizations. The research team observes the process facilitated by policy makers, contributing with clarifications or ad hoc information.
The roles, though using a different wording, represented the (a) facilitative actor, (b) professional facilitator, and (c) outsider observing the process (traditional research in territorial development). We presented our will to play role (a), though we were ready to play roles (b) and (c) as complements if required.
They said (a) was our main role but argued that it could not be an exclusive role as they would also need us playing roles (b) and (c). I interpret that we did not solve conflict, but in a negotiation on how our research was to be used, our ideological and political positions were accepted as legitimate and we reached agreement enough to act.
When asked about this second part of the case the policy maker said that he recognized himself in the description of the case. When specifically asked about our political role in the project, he answered: There is trust with the research team and consequently the political role enriches the process. It is valuable that you [researchers] put a mirror in front of us. The processes we develop make so much sense that different ideological positions don’t put the process at stake. Your political role strengthens the process and I don’t feel uncomfortable about it, though I don’t know if that is due to the methodology or this specific team. I don’t feel restricted because of you, I feel free.
Discussion of the case
Revisiting participation to conceptualize conflict in ARTD
The fact at the core of conflict in the case is that after eight years of cogeneration between policy makers and action researchers of a new governance for territorial development in Gipuzkoa, when the moment came to institutionalize it, researchers were not considered as part of the new governance. This happened in parallel to the publication of a book by these researchers where they claimed their role as facilitative actors, and thus, as one more type of participant in the governance of territorial development. This mismatch, between the role that action researchers claimed for themselves and the role policy makers attributed to action researchers in the new governance, frames the conflict between policy makers and researchers in this discussion.
My first reflection when considering how the case speaks to AR literature is that the concept of participation in ARTD needs to be revisited. How do action researchers participate in AR? This discussion is of interest not only for researchers in ARTD, but any action researcher interested in exploring her or his positionality as a party in conflict.
To revisit participation in ARTD, I depart from an example in my experience in TDLAb, to later connect it to the literature. Five years ago, we organized with policy makers from the provincial council and county development agencies, a training session on participatory methods with consultants specialized in participation. One of them described that, when a municipality contracted them to facilitate a participatory process to decide what color a park in a neighborhood would be, they did not mind what color the park would be. What they minded was that all neighbors were given the chance and the adequate procedure to make that decision. That was the moment when I realized that in our ARTD environment we differed from that interpretation of facilitation of participatory processes. We do not only mind how territorial development is constructed in our municipality, province or region. We mind what territorial development we construct too. We as individual action researchers, but also as a research organization, are stakeholders with our own stake in territorial development.
My argument in this section is that AR literature gives the ideas, concepts, and frameworks to conceive a political role of action researchers (Freire, 2008; Gergen & Gergen, 2015; Reason & Bradbury, 2008), but it also gives definitions of participation that are close to the position described by the consultant.
I take as an example an extract by Pant (2014): “real participation or power sharing takes place when the decision-making processes are structured to incorporate negotiation between participants and those in power […]. Neither participants nor researchers can unilaterally enforce their point of view on each other”. The second sentence recognizes researchers’ political role when saying they have their own point of view on the issue at stake, still, it distinguishes between participants and researchers. We could interpret that researchers are not participants.
Similarly, ARTD, despite claiming action researchers to be territorial actors with a stake in territorial development, is influenced by an interpretation of participation where action researchers are not considered as participants, stakeholders, and problem owners (Greenwood & Levin, 2007; Gustavsen, 1992). This means that the interpretation that policy makers made of the role of researchers in the new governance for territorial development was probably consistent with how researchers had communicated our own role for years.
The discussion that action researchers opened about three potential roles in the case (co-generation with voice and leadership, complementation of policy makers or observers) aimed to question taken for granted assumptions on this role.
Consequently, I revisit the concept of participation in ARTD by proposing to define ARTD as a participatory process between territorial actors in conflict, where action researchers, embodying the role of university/academia in territories, are participant facilitative actors.
Features of conflict between policy makers and action researches in ARTD
With the previous definition in mind, I go back to the research question: what are the features of conflict between policy makers and action researchers in ARTD? I synthetize the lessons learned in the case into four features:
All (action) researchers have ideological/political positions but they are not always aware of them and these positions are not always explicit.
The case showed that it took a process of several meetings for policy makers and researchers to gain awareness of their own and others’ ideological positions and how these affected the interpretation of data from the workshops. Thus, awareness on different ideological positions cannot be taken for granted and the conceptualization of action researchers as a party in conflict requires considering explicitation of ideological/political positions as one more stage of AR processes.
b. Different ideological/political positions in ARTD—including those of action researchers’—are naturally in conflict and this can be a constructive force.
I go back to the words by the policy maker in the case, “your political role strengthens the process and I don’t feel uncomfortable about it”, to argue that although different ideological and political positions are naturally in conflict, following Follet (1930) conflict can be a constructive force in territorial development.
c. Conflict resolution between policy makers and action researchers is a dynamic process where agreement to act can be reached, but conflict is never “solved”.
The case showed the recognition by one of the policy makers that, thanks to a learning process, he valued researchers’ political role: “I don’t mean I didn’t say that at that time, but now I don’t feel identified with it”. We have constructed certain legitimacy for our role as territorial actors and we are enacting this role. Still, the discussion on February 2018 again about our roles shows that conflict remains. Conflict expresses itself as a continuous tension and asks for sustained dialogue and negotiation to reach specific agreements to act, knowing that the underlying conflict will not be solved.
Although the conflict shared in the case related to the role of action researchers, the insights in this section can help reflect on other types of conflict between policy makers and action researchers regarding the problems defined for the AR process or the methodologies to be used.
d. The conceptualization of action researchers as a party in conflict (not third parties) requires their consideration as participants in AR.
The most relevant feature to understand conflict between policy makers and action researchers in ARTD and thus, to understand action researchers as a party in conflict, is that action researchers are participants in ARTD. In the case, the status of action researchers as participants was not recognized when the Director for Management of the Strategy saw research as a “tool for the initial construction of the new governance, but not necessarily a feature of its later development”. His later words, “with the perspective I have today I don’t think I would have made that decision. I didn’t know research and the contribution it can make as I do today” suggest a different situation is possible.
Integration of the discussion in ARTD frameworks
I argued that ARTD can benefit from integrating the discussions in this paper into the frameworks used by action researchers. To do so, I synthetize them in Figure 2 as a complement to Figure 1. Figure 1 uses the language of the facilitator, a third party in a situation of conflict. Figure 2 is adapted to the action researcher as actor, as a party in conflict. Both roles live in the same process and there are specific stages when one or the other is prioritized.
The ARTD process from the perspective of action researchers as a party in conflict.
In Figure 1, detection of conflict meant that facilitators observe and dialogue with actors do detect conflicts between them. Awareness of conflict in Figure 2 includes, besides observation, the self-reflection process of action researchers to understand their own position in the conflict. Making conflict explicit in Figure 1 meant action researchers help other participants express their conflicting perspectives. Mutual legitimation in Figure 2 adds explicitation of action researchers’ positions to be legitimated (considered acceptable) by the other territorial actors.
There are multiple figures in the AR literature that describe the different steps in the cyclical AR process. This one contributes to that literature with the perspective of action researchers as a party in conflict in AR.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Orkestra-Basque Institute of Competitiveness received financial support from the Etorkizuna Eraikiz program of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa for the research presented in this article.