Embedding Impact in Engaged Research: Developing Socially Useful Knowledge through Dialogical Sensemaking
| Published date | 01 January 2017 |
| Author | Giuseppe Scaratti,Ann L. Cunliffe |
| Date | 01 January 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12204 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 28, 29–44 (2017)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12204
Embedding Impact in Engaged Research:
Developing Socially Useful Knowledge
through Dialogical Sensemaking
Ann L. Cunlie1,2 and Giuseppe Scaratti3
1University of Bradford, School of Management, Emm Lane, Bradford, West Yorkshire BD9 4JL, UK,
2EAESP-Fundac¸˜
ao Getulio Vargas, Brazil, and 3Catholic University of Milano, Faculty of Economics, Largo
Gemelli 1, 20123, Milano, Italy
Corresponding author email: a.cunlie@bradford.ac.uk
This paper explores how we can embed impact in research to generate socially useful
knowledge. Our contribution lies in proposing a form of engaged researchthat draws upon
situated knowledge and encompasses dialogical sensemaking as a way of making experi-
ence sensible in collaborative researcher−practitioner conversations. We draw attention
to the intricacies of doing socially useful research and illustrate how five conversational
resources can be used within dialogical sensemaking through an example of a research
project in which impact and relevance wereembedded and where researchers and practi-
tioners worked together to resolve an important social and organizational issue.
Discussion around the relationship between the-
ory and practice, rigour and relevance is not new,
but has taken on a sharper focus through the im-
pact debate. The challenges of making our work
matter have been addressed in the British and
US Academies of Management (e.g. George, 2014;
Hodgkinson and Starkey, 2011; Tsui, 2013), driven
by the emphasis placed on impact by UK funding
bodies such as the Economic and Social Research
Council and the Research Excellence Framework.
This has stimulated debate around what impact
means, its contested nature, and how to do im-
pactful research (e.g. Brewer, 2013; Latusek and
Vlaar,2015; Learmonth, Lockett and Dowd, 2012;
Pettigrew, 2011). Impact is often viewed from the
traditional logic of an add-on to research in terms
of knowledge transfer after the fact via impact
pathways: of how to translate academic theory
into business practice. But if, as Willmott (2012,
p. 600) notes, we redefine impact as ‘social use-
fulness’, then ‘a radical change in what is stud-
ied, and [...] how it is studied’ and a shift in
institutional and scholarly practices is needed.
This means exploring what impactful knowledgeis
and how we might juxtapose theory and practice,
production and consumption, rigour and rele-
vance, researcher and practitioner relationships
in multiple and unique ways. We suggest that
Haraway’s (1988) conceptualization of ‘situated
knowledges’ oers one start point.
Drawing on Willmott’s observations and the
Special Issue call to ‘challenge the idea that
knowledge flows from researchtowards impact on
practice’ (Call for Papers) we suggest that ‘social
usefulness’ can be achieved through a form of
engaged research where impact and relevance are
embedded in the process of generating knowledge.
We propose a form of engaged research that uti-
lizes dialogical sensemaking, a way of making the
lived experience of research participants sensible
in collaborative researcher−practitioner conver-
sations by surfacing, questioning and exploring
multiple meanings and imagining new possibilities
for moving on. We drawattention to the intricacies
of doing socially useful research and illustrate five
conversational resources used within dialogical
sensemaking through an example of an ‘engaged
research’ project where impact and relevance were
© 2017 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
30 A. L. Cunlie and G. Scaratti
embedded and where researchers and practition-
ers worked together to resolve important social
and organizational issues. This complements and
builds on recent literature on impact through en-
gaged and collaborative research (e.g. Greig et al.,
2013; MacIntosh et al., 2012; Marcos and Denyer,
2012; Philips et al., 2013; Van de Ven, 2007). We
conclude by evaluating the impact and challenges
of this approach, how it enables the development
of socially useful knowledge that is shareable
across contexts and academically rigorous.
‘Impact in’: situated knowledge and
engaged research
Our intention is not to revisit the impact/relevance
debate but to ‘reimagine relevance’ (Willmott,
2012) by exploring a way of making a dierence
by doing research that buildssocial usefulness into
the research itself: a form of engaged research
that encompasses situated knowledge, dialogical
sensemaking and shared reflexivity (Cunlie,2014;
Haraway, 1988; Shotter, 2010a). This entails cre-
ating a dialogue between conceptual and practi-
cal forms of expertise and knowledge (MacIntosh
et al. 2012); paying attention to people’s contextu-
alized work experiences; and developing an abil-
ity to create knowledge in uncertain and fluid sit-
uations that acknowledge the complexities of lived
experience.
The start point lies in exploring more embedded
forms of knowledge, and we turn to situated
knowledge as one possibility. Situated knowledge
can be broadly defined as knowledge embedded
within a social, historical, cultural and political
time and place that reflects contextual featuresand
lived experiences. It is based on the premise that
we (both academics and practitioners) possess
expertise, tacit and explicit knowledge about our
lived contextualized experience that needs to be
surfaced and understood (Polanyi, 1966), and
encompasses a ‘knowing-from-within’ that is
continually (re)formed as we experience and deal
with situations (Shotter, 2010a). Situated knowl-
edge can be associated with social usefulness
because it encompasses research that is problem
oriented, action based and/or co-produced. But
while this form of research is concerned with
impact on complex practical problems, it is not
always aboutacting in the world with practitioners
to collaboratively generate knowledge. It is this
aspect we wish to explore: how to generatesocially
useful knowledge through engaged research that
foregrounds making sense of experience ‘from
within’ lived collaborative conversations.
We begin bytracing the roots of situated knowl-
edge, highlighting its relevance to developing an
impact-in approach to research and elaborating its
nature through two features that researchers need
to keep in play in their research: movement and
opacity.
Situated knowledge: an openness to movement
and opacity
Situated knowledges require that the object of
knowledge be pictured as an actor or agent, not as
a screen or a ground or a resource [...] where the
agency of people studied itself transforms the entire
project of producing social theory. (Haraway, 1988,
p. 592)
Situated knowledge has been takenup in a number
of disciplines and research communities including
health, feminist studies, education and geography
(Cammarota and Fine, 2010; Ford, 2007; Genat,
2009; Harding, 2004; Lawson, 2014). And while
various forms of situated knowledge have been
adapted in organization studies by practice-based
scholars (e.g. Engestr¨
om, 2016; Hotho, Saka-
Helmhout and Becker-Ritterspach, 2014; Nicolini,
2011; Sole and Edmondson, 2002), the origin of
the term is attributed to Donna Haraway’s 1988
essay ‘Situated knowledges’ where she oers an
emancipatory feminist alternative to traditional
scientific objectivity. We do not have space to ad-
dress the emancipatory aspect of her work; rather
we examine her emphasis on the need to take
responsibility for the impact of our knowledge
claims to ‘buildmeanings[...] that havea chance
for life’ (p. 580). Specifically, we focus on how her
idea of situated knowledges can provide a back-
drop for developing impact-in engaged research
that oers ‘a more adequate,richer, better account
of a world, in order to live in it well and in a
critical, reflexive relation to our own and others’
practices of domination...’ (p. 579). Her concep-
tualization draws attention to key epistemologi-
cal considerations that influence engaged research
practice.
Underpinning situated knowledges is an episte-
mology of location, which calls upon researchers
to address the historical, cultural, economic, social
© 2017 British Academy of Management.
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