Today’s pressing political, social, economic, and environmental crises urgently ask for effective policy responses and fundamental transitions towards sustainability supported by a sound knowledge base and developed in collaboration between all stakeholders. This book explores how action research forms a valuable methodology for producing such collaborative knowledge and action. It outlines the recent uptake of action research in policy analysis and transition research and develops a distinct and novel approach that is both critical and relational. By sharing action research experiences in a variety of settings, the book seeks to explicate ambitions, challenges, and practices involved with fostering policy changes and sustainability transitions. As such it provides crucial guidance and encouragement for future action research in policy analysis and transition research. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of policy analysis and transition research and more broadly to public administration and policy, urban and regional studies, political science, research and innovation, sustainability science, and science and technology studies. It will also speak to practitioners, policymakers and philanthropic funders aiming to engage in or fund action research.

This book synthesizes results from a 7-year programme of applied research on community-based approaches to natural resource management in Asia. By presenting field reports of innovative approaches to poverty reduction and sustainable resource use, it provides practitioners with models of ""good practice"" in participatory, community-based resource management, and it demonstrates how site-based research contributes to broader learning in the field of natural resource management and policy. There are 11 case studies featured, from some of the most marginal areas of rural China, Mongolia, Laos, V.

This accessible book gives academics, graduate students, and researchers a comprehensive overview of the vast, varied, and often confusing landscape of interpretive policy analysis. It is both theoretically informed and clear and jargon-free as it discusses the specific strengths and weaknesses of different interpretive approaches--all with a practical orientation towards doing policy analysis

Updated in its 3rd edition, Basic Methods of Policy Analysis and Planning presents quickly applied methods for analyzing and resolving planning and policy issues at state, regional, and urban levels. Divided into two parts, Methods which presents quick methods in nine chapters and is organized around the steps in the policy analysis process, and Cases which presents seven policy cases, ranging in degree of complexity, the text provides readers with the resources they need for effective policy planning and analysis. Quantitative and qualitative methods are systematically combined to address policy dilemmas and urban planning problems. Readers and analysts utilizing this text gain comprehensive skills and background needed to impact public policy.

Action research is a term used to describe a family of related approaches that integrate theory and action with a goal of addressing important organizational, community, and social issues together with those who experience them. It focuses on the creation of areas for collaborative learning and the design, enactment and evaluation of liberating actions through combining action and research, reflection and action in an ongoing cycle of cogenerative knowledge. While the roots of these methodologies go back to the 1940s, there has been a dramatic increase in research output and adoption in university curricula over the past decade. This is now an area of high popularity among academics and researchers from various fields—especially business and organization studies, education, health care, nursing, development studies, and social and community work. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research brings together the many strands of action research and addresses the interplay between these disciplines by presenting a state-of-the-art overview and comprehensive breakdown of the key tenets and methods of action research as well as detailing the work of key theorists and contributors to action research.

Public universities are in crisis, waning in their role as central institutions within democratic societies. Denunciations are abundant, but analyses of the causes and proposals to re-create public universities are not. Based on extensive experience with Action Research-based organizational change in universities and private sector organizations, Levin and Greenwood analyze the wreckage created by neoliberal academic administrators and policymakers. The authors argue that public universities must be democratically organized to perform their educational and societal functions. The book closes by laying out Action Research processes that can transform public universities back into institutions that promote academic freedom, integrity, and democracy.

Doing Action Research in Your Own Organization is the essential resource for anyone embarking on a research project in their own organization or as part of a work placement programme whether in business, healthcare, government, education, social work or third sector organizations. The authors provide an easy-to-follow, hands-on guide to every aspect of conducting an action research project and have added in the Third Edition: - more on politics and ethics to help researchers negotiate gaining access and permission, and building and maintaining support from peers and relevant subsystems within an organization - more on writing an action research dissertation, and treatment of sensitive issues such as: giving feedback to one’s superiors and peers, disseminating the research to the wider community, and handling interpretations or outcomes which may be perceived negatively by the organization involved. - more case examples and reflective exercises taken from a wide variety of organizational settings to aid students and researchers whatever their background discipline.