Danny Burns, Systemic Action Research: A Strategy for Whole System Change

Excerpt

The arena of social and organizational change is occupied by a large cast of characters: psychologists; anthropologists; sociologists; political scientists; management consultants; self-styled gurus; and academics from business schools, public policy and administration schools, and international development institutes. The toolkits employed by these actors are equally diverse, ranging from the quantitative studies favored by political scientists and public policy analysts, to the qualitative methods preferred by organization development practitioners and ethnographic researchers. Danny Burns falls squarely in the qualitative methods camp, and his book, Systemic Action Research, is a combination of manifesto, manual, and analytic discourse on systems thinking as a tool to inform both research and action aimed at social policy formation and implementation. …