Abstract
This chapter explores the discovery of new or enhanced theory within the action research process. Action research is an empirical research method with two purposes: (1) to solve an immediate practical problem, and (2) to develop new scientific knowledge. Action research projects sometimes succeed at the first, but fail at the second. The highly practical nature of action research sometimes leads to results that have little to contribute in terms of new scholarly knowledge. Although a difficult practical problem may have been resolved, academic publications will often reject reports of the results because the theoretical value is trivial. Action research that encounters difficulties in the attempts to employ existing theory in resolving an immediate practical problem is a more promising venue for developing new or enhanced theory. The most valuable venues for action research lie in the intractable problems of practice, problems that existing knowledge cannot seem to fix.
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Baskerville, R. (2007). Educing Theory from Practice. In: Kock, N. (eds) Information Systems Action Research. Integrated Series in Information Systems, vol 13. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-36060-7_13
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