When it comes to creating a joint enterprise is it functional or dysfunctional? Who may be contributing to this?
When it comes to developing a shared repertoire is it functional or dysfunctional? Who may be contributing to this?
With regard to mutual engagement, the CoP I'm engaged with is somewhat dysfunctional. They are all involved in the community and seem to be engaged in an effort to creat greater understanding and a better work flow within the environment. However when tensions occur, the mutual engagment falls apart. The normal flows of communication come to an end and chaos around the issues are created by members breaking off into different subsets that work different factions of the CoP against others. As a result, joint enterprise is somewhat dysfunctional as well. Boundaries become less clear in light of stressful situations and people cease to react outside the realm of the usual norms within the group. I think shared repertoire is functional more than dysfunctional in that all members do seem to have the same good intentions and goals with regard to their jobs and professional interests. They have a cohesive cause and all relate to similar demands and issues as these relate to their work day. Being this is the case, they do bond and team up when outside sources threaten to dismantle the team in spite of the inner dysfunctions that surface in light of other pressures.
2. Connect to action research. Stringer notes that action research can be used to resolve problems and crises by:
· defining the problem
· exploring its context
· analyzing its components
· developing strategies for its resolution
He also promotes community-based action research as a way to “build positive working relationships and productive communicative style” (p. 20). This, in support of the CoP theory, provides the most potential for meeting the action researcher’s goal of allowing inquiry to “provide effective solutions to significant problems in their work lives.”
Think about how your action research this semester might be empowered by involving one or more workplace CoPs How might your role within the CoP, or on the periphery, be managed to maximize the potential of your innovation so that your workplace can benefit from real, sustainable, and innovative change?
I think that my action research this semeseter is pretty specific to only one CoP. I think that the effects of the innovation would effect more than one CoP on the periphery. However I don't think that more than one CoP is appropriate for this particular project. I do feel that my role within the CoP, where peripheral, is critical to sustain change. Where the CoP is responsible for the eventual success or failure of the innovation, I feel that I have to be careful to provide appropriate support as a leader and peripheral member without turning the innovation into a demand or expectation. This is delicate because often people want to give up change before it has been given an opportunity to be tested. At the same time sometimes change is imposed and it really doesn't work, but it is forced on people due to mandates. So, as an action researcher I think it is my job to facilitate and innovation and report on the data allowing the CoP room to flex and institutionalize it within the group and the practice. I think this is the only way change is sustainable.
Thinking about yourself as the action researcher and the practitioner. What factors may hamper your abilities to become engaged in a collaborative action research environment based on these TWO roles?
I think it is sometimes difficult to engage in these two roles because as the practitioner you are in a position to create change in an environment that is often sometimes heavily laden by culture, resistance to change, and leadership that may not be in agreement with a particular innovation. As an action researcher you are almost removing yourself and looking at situation and proposing change. I think that often you can see the need for an innovation and you want to impose the change immediatley. This is where the practioner role can stop us and remind us that we have to implement with careful deliberation and in a delicate manner. It has to integrate and flow within the current system at the same time that it imposes change. This can cause frustration that may impede a project from working within the original intent. I think we have to be very careful with regard to identity and how it releates to our project and the culture of the environment where we are conducing the research. We have to take an ethnographer approach and try and impose change from the inside as an active member and not as an overzealous change agent. I had this concern last semester as I felt like sometimes I was imposing change as a supervisor and forcing my innovation. I had to constantly remind myself that while I could take an active role, I also had to accept the human element of my experiment and realize all outcomes are data regardless of my original intent.
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