The Cold War origin of action research as managerialist cooptation

Abstract

Managerial applications of action research (AR) (e.g. in Organization Development) have been critiqued as cooptational. Their participatory focus on means over ends of change, on micro-, intra-organizational issues, and the tacit but questionable claim to rigour, are said to conceal and reinforce existing power relationships, rather than deliver the meaningful empowerment promised. This article shows an empirical connection between the Cold War US and these problematic features of today’s managerialist AR. Drawing on a correspondence between Ronald Lippitt and John Collier, two AR founders, it shows a more profoundly socially engaged version of AR was proposed, but shut down by US Cold War inquisition. It was in response to this alternative version of action research that the problematic, now managerialist, version of AR was first consciously and deliberately articulated. This shows that managerialist AR’s self-detachment from social circumstances is evident not just in its application, but its historiography