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Field Theory as a Basis for Scholarly Consulting
Author(s) -
Argyris Chris
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.618
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1540-4560
pISSN - 0022-4537
DOI - 10.1111/0022-4537.00051
Subject(s) - honor , sociology , medal , management , library science , media studies , art history , history , computer science , economics , operating system
About 45 scholars throughout the world met recently to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Tavistock Institute. The Tavistock Institute was the organization that founded action research in Europe as well as the journal Human Relations. The purpose ofthe conference was to examine the present status ofaction research throughout the world in order to illuminate its future. Many, including myself, left the conference with two impressions. There exists a wide variety of views on what is action research. However, when the participants attempted to develop patterns of possible agreement, hopehlly to explore next steps, the result was disagreement, conflict, and self-reinforcing defensive arguments. These consequences seem a bit ironic for scholars dedicated to produce the opposite effects in the world that they study. As I reflected on the conference, I realized that the proponents were explicit about their respective theories; however, each showed little focus on two major features of any theory-causality and the testing of causal claims (Argyris & Schon, 1974; Kaplan, 1964; Pfeffer, 1997). The participants, for the most part, did not have a metatheory-that is, a theory of how to build a theory. Lewin saw this as an important issue early on in his work. Indeed, he described Field Theory as a metatheory (Lewin, 1935,1936; Cartwright, 195 1, 1959; Gold, 1992; Metraux, 1992).