Action Research Applied with Two Single Case Studies

Lim and Seok Chai clearly follow the pragmatist research ideology. They expose many of the controversies in classifying the action research method, and then they apply it in two case studies (in Singapore and South Korea). As they cite from the literature, some writers position action research method under the pragmativist ideology, but as advocated in chapter 1, a pragmatic method can come under either the pragmativistic or constructivistic ideologies, according to how it is applied, because it requires the researcher to involve the participants in the process of the problem that they are trying to solve. There is agreement in the literature that action research uses an organizational problem as the unit of analysis to develop a solution for a deductive-inductive theory-building purpose. It starts as deductive so as to review any a priori best practices that may exist, but usually existing procedures require modification (inductively developing a new process model). Otherwise why would an action research project be needed? The generalization is often organization specific although the implications apply to the industry or more broadly. As the authors of this chapter clarify, action research requires the researcher to participate with and within the target community. This is similar to the continuous improvement paradigm of total quality management in the post-positivist ideology where operations research methods are applied.