Discussion

Actionable Knowledge

Professor Elena P. Antonacopoulou Senior Fellow, Advanced Institute of Management Research

Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Director of GNOSIS Management School

University of Liverpool Chatham Building

Liverpool, L69 7ZH UNITED KINGDOM

Phone: +44 (0)151 795 3727

Fax: +44 (0)151 795 3001 Email: [email protected]

Entry to appear in Clegg, S. and Bailey, J., International Encyclopaedia of Organization Studies, London: Sage. The author would like to acknowledge the support of the ESRC/EPSRC Advanced Institute of Management Research under grant number RES-331-25-0024 for this research.

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Actionable Knowledge

Actionable knowledge reflects the learning capability of individuals and

organizations to connect heterogeneous elements (social, political, economic,

technological). The relational understanding generated by actionable knowledge can

extend existing modes of knowing and inform future action. The focus of actionable

knowledge is on (learning) practice as a form of self-organization that is fluid,

dynamic and emergent. Actionable knowledge is therefore, a pragmatic engagement

with the social complexity of organizing.

Conceptual Overview

Actionable knowledge has been a central concern in management and

organization studies on at least two levels. Firstly, actionable knowledge has been

positioned as a response to the long-standing concern about the contribution and

relevance of management research to management practice. Actionable knowledge

illustrates the relationship between theory and practice. It shows the impact that

management research can have by demonstrating that the knowledge generated is

actionable i.e. implementable by the users whom it is intended to engage (business

practitioners, policy-makers, researchers).

Secondly, actionable knowledge, seeks to articulate and theoretically advance our

understanding of the nature of action as a phenomenon and the relationship between

action and knowledge (modes of knowing) in organizations. The attention is on the

conditions that underpin the relationship between knowledge and action and the

potential benefits and outcomes for organizations who succeed in effectively

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‘managing’ both what they know and how they act on what they know. Each of these

perspectives are discussed in more detail.

The Relationship Between Theory and Practice

The relationship between theory and practice is at the core of a long-standing debate

that seeks to articulate and define the distinctive character of management research in

relation to the sciences. Conflicting views dominate the debate. For example some

commentators like Lance Sandelands in 1990 and more recently Ghoshal in 2005

articulated the relationship between theory and practice, as incommensurable,

incompatible and therefore, ‘intertranslatable’. Drawing attention to the distinction

between explanation and understanding he and others that followed have challenged

the assumed causality in the relationship between theory and practice. These

perspectives provide a particular orientation towards what knowledge is and how it

may or may not be related to action.

An alternative positioning of the relationship between theory and practice has been

captured in Kurt Lewin’s assertion in 1943 that ‘there is nothing so practical as a good

theory’. This assertion provides the most convincing articulation of the relationship

between theory and practice as reflective of the complementary and intimate

connection between theory and practice. ‘Action Science’, ‘Action Research’ ‘Design

Science’ are among the modes of management research that seek to maximise the

parallel and reciprocal development of management research and management

practice. These conceptualisations help position actionable knowledge as a distinct

type of research (neither ‘applied’ nor ‘basic’ research) with intervention

methodologies at its core. Intervention methodologies as Chris Argyris, 2004

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describes them are intended to support organizations and their managers to bring

about change in the status quo. They seek to go an extra step beyond description and

explanation towards creating different ‘virtual words’ by engaging the actors in

rediscovering their human quality to act. Action therefore, becomes the main focus

and criterion of validity in management research.

The Relationship Between Knowledge and Action

Actionable knowledge is therefore not only about the connections between theory and

practice but perhaps more importantly between knowledge and action. Here we find

again Chris Argyris leading the way by articulating two theories of action what he

calls Model I and Model II. ‘theory-in-use’. The main thrust of these models is a

focus on revealing the governing variables, action strategies and consequences that

constitute the emerging defensive mechanisms. Defensive mechanisms reveal that one

of the most important conditions for fostering the relationship between knowledge

and action is learning.

Model I theory-in-use reveals the defensiveness, misunderstanding and self-fulfilling

and self-sealing processes. Such mode of action results in skilled unawareness and

skilled incompetence, because it seeks to produce unilateral control. Model II theory-

in-use reflects ‘espoused theories’ of action. The role of the intervener is to help

individuals and organizations to transform their espoused theories into theories-in-use.

Central to this process of transformation is ‘double loop learning’ – learning ‘new’ set

of skills and ‘new’ governing values so that ideas can be tested, actively reflected

upon and new possibilities revealed through experimentation. Model II therefore,

disturbs current practices and seeks to introduce new actions by generating new

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knowledge about ways in which the existing problems can be overcome. The

proposed ‘Action Cycle’ is intended to support this process through four phases of –

diagnosis, invention, production and evaluation. This engagement with defensive

routines rather than sidelining them provides a stronger connection between

knowledge and action and in Argyris’s terms it shows that actionable knowledge ‘is

most likely to be of help to human beings because it describes how they should act.

The basis for the sense of competence, self-esteem, and self-efficacy is effective

action…Action is therefore, at the heart of what it means to be human’.

The relationship between knowledge and action has also been informed by Pfeffer and

Sutton’s analysis of ‘The Knowing-Doing Gap’ in 2000. They provide further

explanations as to the barriers of turning knowledge into action and suggest a range of

management practices that can create or reduce the knowing-doing gap. They present

these in the form of eight guidelines for action:

1. Understanding how things are done and why they are done the way they are

done.

2. Learning what works and what does not work by trying things out.

3. Establishing a cultural tone that action is valued.

4. Allowing for mistakes to happen so that learning can be fostered.

5. Driving out fear and inaction.

6. Fighting unhealthy internal competition.

7. Measuring the knowing-doing gap and doing something about it.

8. Leadership from the Top in what they do and how they allocate resources.

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Actionable knowledge prompts practitioners and academics alike to critically reflect

on their actions in creating knowledge and to seek to develop new practices that foster

knowledge and action as emergent, dynamic processes that refine the rules and disrupt

existing routines through implementable solutions.

Critical Commentary and Future Directions

Although actionable knowledge as it is currently conceptualised, has

contributed significantly to the way we have come to understand the importance of

knowledge and its relationship to action, we are still experiencing great difficulty in

creating knowledge that is actionable. The difficulty is partly because we don’t know

enough about how knowledge and action connect in relation to management practice.

We need more research that studies the management practices that connect knowledge

and action. We also do need to rethink the very research practices for studying

management practices. The latter point reinforces the call for reflexivity (reflexive

critique) in management research in its approach towards creating knowledge. There

is a tendency to develop management theories that are intended to inform

management practice without any evidence how the researchers developing such

theories have applied their theories in their own practice. This tendency only goes to

perpetuate one of the most problematic forces that work counter to a productive

relationship between theory and practice, knowledge and action – the politics of

knowledge creation.

Dominant theories of knowledge creation assume distinctive roles between producers

and consumers (i.e. academics being producers of knowledge, consumed by business

practitioners) and by creating this divide between producers and consumers of

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knowledge, we fail to see the dynamic interaction between them. As Hassard and

Kelemen (2002) remind us, the study of the production of knowledge should also

consider the consumption of knowledge as this “(…) fuels the creation of new

knowledge while new knowledge acquires its status as ‘knowledge’ only when

selected for consumption by important players” (p.333). These important players

consist of not only academics and business practitioners, but also of policy-makers,

consultants and gurus. We therefore, need to give more voice to the politics of

knowledge creation mindful of both how certain ideas are privileged over others in

developing theory as well as, how in practice some of these ideas are selectively

adopted. This process of selection is often driven as much by the short-term, context

specific needs of practitioners, as it is driven by the translation of ideas into

prescriptions for action.

If we look closer at these processes of translation we appreciate more why actionable

knowledge is so hard to be created. Translation is not simply a matter of changing the

language and words used in order to attribute a specific meaning to a particular idea.

Nor is translation about the transformation of theory into practice by predefining what

behaviours and actions a particular idea should exhibit. If we treat translation in these

terms we continue to fall into the trap of implicitly suggesting that something is not as

good as the original given it requires to be adapted –translated – if it is to be of any

use. Therefore, translation helps explain why the relationship between knowledge and

action , theory and practice is dysfunctional.

An alternative view of translation would be to understand translation as a process of

network construction by focusing on the ‘powers of association’ (Latour, 1986), of

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achieving something through others. As Callon (1986) puts it, to translate is to

displace, to be indispensable, placing oneself at a strategic point through which others

(human and non-human elements) must pass. Through translation, a geography of

obligatory points of passage is constituted, and one single voice (the translator’s

voice) is able (and entitled) to express the voices and aspirations of others. This

perspective of actionable knowledge would be founded on the principle of

collaboration and co-creation of knowledge hence, the focus would be on how things

are connected and what are the conditions that foster different kind of inter-

connections.

This perspective draws attention to a way of thinking that focuses on integration and

differentiation rather than distinction and isolation. Therefore, the emphasis is neither

on action nor knowledge, theory or practice in and by themselves in isolation. The

focus instead is on the conditions that underpin the way theory and practice,

knowledge and action are interconnected. This implies that it is just as important to

look for how theory serves practice and knowledge serves action as it is to understand

the theory of practice and the knowledge of action.

The focus on connectivity and relationality as central to both future management

research and management practice, also draws attention to trans-actionality. The latter

point reinforces the need to pay attention to different actors in the process of

knowledge co-creation so that the emerging tensions between multiple and competing

priorities and perspectives can be usefully engaged with to extend the possibilities for

action, knowledge, theory and practice. This means that production and consumption

models give way to models of co-creation where common practices govern the

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interaction between multiple actors (e.g. academics, practitioners an policy-makers).

An initiative that has been leading the way in developing such a perspective is

GNOSIS (www.gnosisreseearch.org) which identifies re-search as a common practice

which can usefully integrate knowledge and action, theory and practice by providing a

space for connecting different communities and perspectives (across the sciences and

across communities). This focus on interconnectivity calls not only for exploring

effectively the interdependencies between theory and practice, action and knowledge.

It also calls for a commitment to learning from and through collaboration.

Future research seeking to advance actionable knowledge needs to focus on the

complexity of organizing and draw attention to the conditions that underpin the inter-

connections that can be fostered through inter-relationships and inter-dependencies

that embrace organizing as a relational process linking heterogeneous elements. This

process of organizing cuts across areas that usually are presented as having clear

boundaries separating them and through its emphasis on interconnectivity it also

draws attention to self-organization, emergence and fluidity. Actionable knowledge

needs to capture the process of searching and re-searching, the discursive, distributed,

contested, unfinished, never-ending nature of knowledge, action, theory and practice.

Elena Antonacopoulou

See also: Reflexivity, Practice, Action Learning, Action Science, Management

Learning

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Further Readings and References

Argyris, C. (2004). Actionable Knowledge. In H. Tsoukas and C. Knudsen (Eds) The

Oxford Handbook of Organization Theory: Meta Theoretical Perspectives, (pp. 423-

452), Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Callon, M. (1986). Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the

scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. In J. Law (Ed.), Power, Action and

Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?, (pp. 196-233). London: Routledge & Kegan

Paul.

Ghoshal, S. (2005). ‘Bad management theories are destroying good management

practices’. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 4, 75-91.

Hassard, J. and Kelemen, M. (2002). ‘Production and consumption in organizational

knowledge: The case of the ‘Paradigms Debate’. Organization, 9, 331-355.

Latour, B. (1986). The powers of Association, in J. Law (ed.), Power, Action and

Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?, (pp. 261-277). London: Routledge & Kegan

Paul.

Pfeffer, J and Sutton, R.I (2000). The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies

Turn Knowledge into Action, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press.

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Sandelands, L.E. (1990). ‘What is so Practical about Theory? Lewin Revisited’,

Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 20, 235-62.