Abductive Reasoning as the Integrating Mechanism between First- Second- and Third-Person Practice in Action Research
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Abductive Reasoning as the Integrating Mechanism between First- Second- and Third-Person Practice in Action Research David Coghlan 1
& Abraham B. (Rami) Shani
2
Accepted: 1 September 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
Action research has long adopted an integrative approach to research as incorporating three inquiries and voices: the first-person voice of individuals inquiring into their own thinking and learning, the second- person inquiry into the collaborative engagements between the actors as co-researchers and the third-person contribution to knowledge for a wider audience. Third-person theory seeks to integrate among the first- and second-person practices, linking the subjective dynamics of action and inquiry (within the first-person), the intersubjective collaborative dynamics of action and inquiry (between second-persons engaged with one another) and the outcome of actionable knowledge (among a collection of third-persons-andthings at a distance from and often anonymous-to-one another). Drawing on Peirce’s articulation of abductive reasoning this article explores how abductive reasoning serves as the integrating mechanism between first-, second- and third-person practice and informs both the theory of how theory is generated through first- and second-person practices. Keywords Action research . Abductive reasoning . Theory generation in present tense
Introduction Action research’s place in the philosophies of social science is characterized by its foundation in the ‘action turn’, meaning that its distinctive focus is on intervention to create change as well as to generate knowledge (Bradbury 2015; Coghlan 2019). Susman and Evered (1978), Sherman and Torbert (2000) Coghlan (2011) and Shani, Tenkasi and Alexander (2017)
* David Coghlan [email protected] Abraham B. (Rami) Shani [email protected]
1
Trinity Business School, University of Dublin, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
2
Orfalea College of Business, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, USA
Systemic Practice and Action Research
emphasize that distinctiveness by showing how it constitutes a kind of science with a different theory of knowledge in that it produces knowledge which is contingent on a particular situation and which contributes to organizational members’ capacity to address their own issues. Action research builds on what has taken place in the past, intervenes in the present with a view to shaping the future. Accordingly, the interventionist nature of action researchers’ engagement involves timely interventions in the present tense as the action researchers and organizational members engage in collaborative operations of assessing issues, constructing meaning, planning, taking and evaluating actions that they judge appropriate and framing outcomes and emergent learning and theory (Coghlan 2017). Torbert (Torbert 2013; Sherman and Torbert 2000) argues that the interaction of first-, second- and third-person research/ practice with single-, double-and triple-l
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