This paper examines the feasibility of a learning networks-based strategy to improve the ability of publicly supported workplace development programmes to produce broad-based and long-term learning effects in working life. After looking at typical shortcomings of programmes based on the...

This article deals with everyday work experiences in the two sectors of social and editorial work. It stems from two processes of co-research, in-volving a group of eleven editorial workers and journalists in Milan in 2011, and another group of 19 social workers in Turin in 2012. In both cases,...

In the course of general changes in work, informal processes are becoming ever more important, and the question emerges how to understand and organise them. This is a great challenge for research. Quantitative research methods are confronted with the problem that complex processes cannot be...

What is the relationship between labour sociologists and the workers they examine, and what function do researchers acquire within the complex field of force that is the workplace? These questions are addressed, mainly drawing upon the author’s personal research experiences as a labour...

This article considers possibilities and challenges included in the attachment of workplace development as a part of innovation policy. The example used here is Finland, which has carried out a determined innovation policy for a long time and where the government and labour market organisations...

This article describes and discusses an interactive research approach, and illustrates this approach by presenting two examples of national change projects. Our aim in presenting these two examples is to demonstrate how interactive research can be conducted in close co-operation with those...

AR is not just one more social science “method”; it is a fundamentally different way of conducting research and social change work together. Participation in AR is not just a moral value but essential to successful AR because the complexities of the problems addressed require the knowledge...

I think of action research as an extension of a natural approach to problem solving. Faced with a novel situation we often first investigate. We then develop an intention to act, and carry it out. We notice if it worked. Action research similarly cycles between intention, action and review. To...

This text is a contribution to methodological reflection on research, based on the experience of a research team who explored various aspects of the participatory budget in the State of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil). It is situated within the context of participatory research, and deals with the...

During the last decade a major practical turn in research in general has been identified and made subject to discussion. One consequence is a growing interest in what action research can offer in this context. It is a mistake to assume that action research can produce theories of the same kind...