Re: [xmca] CHAT/AR-- Method/Methodology?

[Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>]

On 3 May 2011 12:12, Michael Glassman <MGlassman@ehe.osu.edu> wrote:

>
> I am trying to get a handle on this method/methodology distinction, along
> with the idea that it is not a coherent method.  Is the idea that AR is not
> a coherent deductive method, that is it cannot be used to prove an issue
> where the answer to the problem is suggested in the premises of the
> question?  If that is the claim I think it is certainly true, but I am under
> the impression that this is the whole point of AR, that establishing
> premises before understanding the organization that you are studying is
> potentially limiting in terms of actually solving a problem (as opposed to
> creating a piece of evidence that will in some way enhance the premises).
>  AR seems to be more inductively oriented - the desire to slowly build fluid
> general laws while at the same time establishing some types of interactive
> change.  There does seems to be a methodology, but not one that ties into
> proving or again even enhancing specific premises.  One of the things I
> liked about Chaiklin's article was his willingness to bring Chris Argylis
> into the discussion, because of his idea of double loop learning - you don't
> just learn from research, but you learn about your research while doing it.
>


Peter Checkland (Soft systems methodology: A 30 year retrospective) wrote
about method/methodology and Lewin that seems appropriate here (page A31 in
my book).  SSM aligns with Argylis in that the focus is on the (soft) system
of learning (or appreciation) rather than the (hard) ostensive system.

"Happily for me, the way that the word 'methodology' is now used has indeed
changed, and in the late 1990s Oxford Dictionary of current English now
define it not only as 'the science of method' but also as 'a body of methods
used in a particular activity'..."

He goes on to describe the distinction between recoverable and repeatable:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=R2dQAAAAMAAJ&dq=soft+system+methodology+in+action&q=recoverable#search_anchor

Huw
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