How can action research help a nonprofit develop and position itself to become more viable and relevant.

摘要

This dissertation describes an action research project with a non-profit civic leadership organization that has developed collaborative leadership capability for dealing with public issues in a metropolitan area. The action research intervention focused on the organization's desire to position itself in the field of civic engagement for greater relevance and viability. The substantive results included a critique of collaboration, a positioning diagram for relating levels of civic capacity to degrees of contention in civic engagement and a strategic choice chart for future organizational development. An unexpected contribution was the creation of a method for making an organization's emergent strategy explicit—an unmet need in the field of strategic management. The relational aspects of action research were explored in three ways: (1) through the application of Edgar Schein's clinical inquiry framework and his principles of a helping relationship; (2) by identifying the relational components in each step of the action research cycle; and (3) by using John Bennett's dimensions of human nature—will, identity and function. Action research can help a nonprofit position and develop itself for greater relevance and viability: (1) by stimulating organizational movement; (2) by developing frameworks for action; (3) by expanding the knowledge base; (4) by identifying important variables for the future; and (5) by surfacing clues as to options and choices. The result is an emergent strategy that makes the implicit explicit, one that is grounded in the reality of the organization and its situation.