Infinite Leadership: The Power of Spirit at Work

Action research, long regarded as a stepsister in the academy, has at last begun to attain its own place. Action research has its roots to the work of Kurt Lewin in the 1940s; it grew out of Lewin’s concern that academic research remained disconnected from practical action, particularly action that would improve the world. His experiments at the Tavistock Institute included applications to democracy and organizational change.1 Now action research spans a wide range of inquiry methods, while at the same time retaining a common core of concern for practical knowledge and for contributing “to the increased well-being—economic, political, psychological, spiritual—of human persons and communities, and to a more equitable and sustainable relationship with the wider ecology of the planet of which we are an intrinsic part.”2 Contemporary action research ranges from the tightly structured “action science” of Argyris3 and Schön,4 to the more flexible “cooperative inquiry” of Heron and Reason,5,6 and to the fluid “action inquiry” of William Torbert.7