8: Leadership Promotional Process Action Research Project

Through the qualitative data-gathering process and Phase 1 of the SOD AR project, leadership, “Good old boy (GOB) club,” shoulder tapping, and the concept of bricks being placed on employees were clearly identified as challenges in the organization. The Leadership Promotional AR project included three AR cycles focused on making initial promotional decisions and generating a new leadership process that would address many of the organizational challenges.

The leadership core action research project began the day I arrived at the police department and resulted in the creation of a process to determine if the 11 acting leaders in the department should be made permanent, and how the promotional process in the department would be reshaped. Throughout each recursive cycle of the project, new stakeholders and participants became involved. The data from this project will be broken down into participants and stages based on the timeline.