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Keywords
Action learning, Action research, Process management
Abstract
This paper is an edited version of an interview that presents information and insight into the background of ALARPM (action learning, action research and process management) not only as a field but also as a worldwide network association, thus facilitating understanding of the evolution and nature of these three concepts. The interviewee's responses reflect her personal perspective, informed by both life experience and a theoretical framework that conceives of ALARPM first as a philosophy, a theory of learning and a methodology, and second as a method and technique.
Introduction
Action learning, action research and process management have developed independently, and conjointly through ALARPM, to make valuable contributions to learning and research. Yet this history is little known. Here we take an action research approach to uncover some of this history. We have adopted an interview format to reveal some of the personal dimensions involved in the origin and history of ALARPM, making fresh insights accessible to a wider readership.
Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt is a founding member of ALARPM (action learning, action research and process management). Mary Farquhar who initiated with Ortrun the First International Symposium on Action Research in Higher Education, Industry and Government in Brisbane in 1989, and who has collaborated with her on many projects, conducted this interview with Ortrun in Brisbane late in 2000. The interview was inspired by a conversation between Ortrun and Mary that highlighted the utility of this type of oral history for recording the development of ALARPM, about which almost nothing had been recorded to that time. We present here an edited version.
This interview focuses on three areas in which Ortrun has been involved personally and that are useful to understanding how ALARPM has been developed in the past two decades in particular:
(1) Ortrun's personal understanding of action learning, action research and process management in relation to her own professional development;
(2) her role in institutionalising ALARPM as a legitimate and highly useful research and development approach; and
(3) her views on work required to develop the field further.
Accordingly the paper is structured under three headings:
(1) personal understanding and development;
(2) institutionalisation; and
(3) the state of the field.
Personal understanding and development