Chapter 7: Carrying out an Intervention-Research Project in One’S OWN Organization: Challenges and Specificities

For many researchers, empirical questions abound and access to data is a continual constraint. Yet, literally under the feet of virtually every researcher is a huge potential for research—their own company, university, professional association, and so forth. This chapter focuses on the potential of one’s own organization as a Scientific Observation Area (SOA). Our emphasis is not on the use of its members as substitutes—for example, the practice of some scholars who solicit their students or executive trainees to respond to surveys, participate in focus groups, or participate in various scenarios and other simulations instead of engaging “real” actors. The focus is undertaking intervention-research (IR) within one’s own organization, which is not a common practice. There are, of course, many underlying concerns, from the fear of damaging one’s reputation and risk of disturbing one’s colleagues, to anxiety about making a mistake. In many instances all of these concerns are probably operating at the same time, because it can be quite challenging to carry out an IR project that engages colleagues and one’s place of work, including its procedures, tools, routines, and so forth that constitute the organization’s activity an “common good.” The risk of being what we refer to as an “internal” researcher may be to become, at best, a stranger in one’s own organization and, at worst, the scapegoat of the change to which the company aspires.