BEYOND THEORY -- Editorial page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Table of contents -- Preface -- Note -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Development and the Social Sciences: An uneasy relationship -- Introduction -- The point of origin: The experiment -- The diffusion problem -- General theory and local projects -- A redefinition of the points of departure -- The job design workshop -- Reform of the work environment -- The LOM program -- Research and development: Issues and perspectives -- The organization of this book and its main themes -- Notes -- Chapter 2. Workplace Development and Research: Two examples -- Introduction -- Pelly AB -- Mopro AS -- Concluding remarks -- Notes -- Chapter 3. Creating Reflective Dialogue -- Setting the stage: A puzzle in nursing research and practice -- Creating dialogue: The first round of responses -- The second round of responses: What might you do? -- The third round: What about the nurse-physician relationship? -- Notes -- Chapter 4. Workplace Development, Gender and Communicative Competence -- Introduction -- Some issues of methodology -- The Birth Clinic Project: An overview -- The development organization -- Perceptions of work in the Birth Clinic -- Before (and after) the project -- The homogenous groups -- The heterogeneous groups -- The vertical slice project management group -- Results -- Concluding remarks -- Notes -- Chapter 5. Strategic Management from the Bottom Up: The start of a process of managerial, organizational and institutional change -- Introduction -- Strategic Management from the Bottom Up: building organizationalcompetences -- Principles of Strategic Management from the Bottom Up -- Limitations of decentralization and business units -- Increasing importance of immaterial rewards -- Reasons for higher involvement in strategic decison making.

Why a cross section of the organization speeds up the information flow -- The implementation of Strategic Management from the Bottom Up -- What are strategic questions? -- Continuing Strategic Management from the Bottom Up through aknowledge platform -- Implications for the content of management tasks and the position of theshop floor -- Conclusion -- Chapter 6. Action Research and Regional Development -- A regional approach to innovative structures -- Notes -- Chapter 7. The Development Organization as Communicative Instrumentation: Experiences from the Karlstad program -- 1. Background and purposes of the action research program in Karlstad -- 2. Three phases in the development process of the K-projects -- 3. Project descriptions -- 4. Communicative instruments in a development organization -- 5. From dialogue conferences to the development organization and beyond -- Notes -- Chapter 8. Searching for a Program in National Participation: An action research experiment in Turkey -- I. Introduction -- II. Research strategy -- III. The context: structuring the organizational ecology -- IV. Process principles -- V. The outcomes: how action unfolded -- VI. Discussion of difficulties and dilemmas -- VII. Conclusion: major learning points -- Notes -- Chapter 9. 'This is Not the Whole Story...': On the demand for scientific reports of action research -- Notes -- Chapter 10. Pragmatizing Communicative Reason -- Notes -- Chapter 11. Reflections on the Epigenetic Significance of Action Research -- Introduction -- I. Action research as a 'relationship' -- II. Action research as a 'self-reflective relationship' -- III. Action Research as responsible action -- Notes -- Chapter 12. Concluding Methodological Reflections: Élitism and democracy among the sciences -- Scientific Method - One or Many? -- Methodological democracy -- Action research as a human science.

Action research as a clinical art -- The dream of a unitary theory -- The vicissitudes of 'objectivity' -- The convergence of critical theory and pragmatism -- Participatory research and social change -- Democracy in methods, in research and in institutions -- About the authors -- Index.