Dear Harrison,
Yesterday I was reading (almost) all emails on this list. Learned a lot again. What I kept wandering about last evening is your remark about how little attention to OST is paid so far in academic research and publications. Since I am doing research on large scale interventions (Success factors and effects and a practical guide for effective use of LSI) this triggered me: What research questions would you like to be answered in academic research? What would you like OST to be compared with? Then I realized that touches the question: How to see OST and what is it used for? In your book Wave rider you give examples of OST as a method for creating high performance systems. The practitioner in me reacts: Ok, I know it works, let's do it. The academic researcher in me sais: He, interesting, how do I know the high performance system is there? How long will it last? What is the influence of the length of the meeting? Does it ripple off, why/why not? Et cetera. We had two conferences with researchers, practitioners and clients about my research on success factors and effects of LSI. Thanks again Harrison for contributing to the online conference. In the discussions, especially in the live conference on September 17th, a wide gap showed between LSI practice and academic tradition. I think that explains part of the relatively little attention in academic research. Some practitioners say: "we don't need evidence from research, we already know it works", or "research will never be able to grasp the magic of .." . While some researchers say: "It is all self reported success from founders and practitioners with an interest in a positive image", or "If you can't conceptualize it you should try harder". Moreover, you have to work with sophisticated qualitative research methods to do justice to complex situations and the richness of an intervention as OST. It is my opinion most academic institutes still operate in a classic quantitative or linear research tradition. They don't want to burn their hands on what they think wooly stuff, or they simply don't know how to inquire complex interventions. Another problem with finding articles on research on OST is that the phenomenon is labeled with different names. On the level of OST as a large group intervention, or as an interactive method for change more literature is available. But you don't see OST in the title. I gathered a long list of references, so if you are interested let me know. Luckily, there are also practitioners and researchers who see possibilities and added value in academic research. Especially those who combine both activities. What would you want from research? Tonnie Drs. Tonnie van der Zouwen MCM Beneluxlaan 66 5251 LE Vlijmen The Netherlands Tel.: Mobile: E-mail: Internet: +31 73 - 51 11 600 + 31 6 - 50 69 79 82 <mailto:i...@tonnievanderzouwen.nl> i...@tonnievanderzouwen.nl <http://www.tonnievanderzouwen.nl/> www.tonnievanderzouwen.com <http://www.largescaleinterventions.com> www.largescaleinterventions.com * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
