Action research a Handbook for Students

participate in current openings, go and see available exhibitions as a visitor, 
or attend possible open lectures or workshops. Thus, they can see for them-
selves who really benefits from the museum’s offer, interact with those people 
and learn their opinions. Perhaps these people will be willing to get actively 
involved in the museum action research project and thus contribute to the 
improvement of this organisation.

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1.2. Building and negotiating relationships with the organisation
in an action research project
Building a relationship with internal and external stakeholders of an organi-
sation participating in action research can be considered the key to its success. 
Ross E. Gray et al. [2000] point out that action research is essentially based on 
various relationships built between the researcher and research (co-)participants 
representing various interest groups in the research. Their type and quality have 
unquestioned influence on the final result of the research work.
This assumption of collectiveness is an important feature of action research. 
This means that contrary to research conducted within the positivist stream, the 
researcher establishes relationships with members of the organisation studied 
not only to collect information from them, but above all to actively include them 
in the research process. Building a team for the researcher to collaborate with 
— which should be a collective process as well — requires them to understand 
relationships, structures, and various roles fulfilled by people in organisations. 
Erving Goffman [2000] emphasises that roles of people in organisations and 
their consequences can vary, and understanding them requires an in-depth re-
flection. Establishing relationships skilfully with members of the organisation 
studied , and building a team together with them is, from the standpoint of ac-
tion research, extremely important for the success of the project, regardless of its 
objectives. Issues concerning the identification of shared values, as well as norms 
and rules that will govern the functioning of the team considered as a research 
community are crucial for this process.
1.2.1. Identification and analysis of stakeholders
Embarking on an action research project the researcher must face the task of 
identifying individuals, groups and organisations which will be directly or indi-
rectly affected by the project. The process entails the need to identify resources, 
the level of impact and the scope of power of particular stakeholders, as these 
will surely affect the course of the research and its results. The purpose of this 
action is not only gaining better understanding of the environment of the or-
ganisation studied, but also initiating participation processes which will mark 
further course of the research.
As Jacques Chevalier and Daniel Buckles [2013] emphasise, the very pro-
cess of stakeholder identification and analysis can be communal, as the scholars 
claim that subsequently discovered individuals and interest groups can, or even 
should be included in the process by the researcher. An example of this action 

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4: The researcher and their relationships with (other) participants of action research
was the project focused on preventing evictions on the outskirts of Mumbai 
[Buckles at al 2013] when residents of a Mumbai slum designed and carried 
out the project together with the researchers. In that project residents in danger 
of eviction by corporate developers decided to gather arguments and evidence 
to convince local authorities to stop the demolition of homes of thousands of 
people in the area. Older residents took it upon themselves to identify all people 
in danger of losing the roof over their heads and collecting documents confirm-
ing the legality of their settlement in the neighbourhood. In the course of this 
action, they also discovered numerous entrepreneurs and NGOs interested in