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IDEA NETWORKING:
CONSTRUCTING A PRAGMATIC CONCEPTUAL FRAME
FOR ACTION RESEARCH INTERVENTIONS
Najmeh Hassanli and Mike Metcalfe
University of South Australia
Adelaide
Australia
1
IDEA NETWORKING:
CONSTRUCTING A PRAGMATIC CONCEPTUAL FRAME
FOR ACTION RESEARCH INTERVENTIONS
ABSTRACT
Action research interventions require use of some form of conceptual
frame to guide and evaluate the intervention. Pragmatism offers an
explanation of ideas that enables this conceptual frame to be
constructed inductively from diverse participants’ ideas. They define
ideas as experienced patterns of activity. The purpose of this paper is
to explain why and how this pragmatic explanation of ideas can be
used to induce an action research conceptual frame. As a
demonstration, the paper inducts (emerges) a conceptual frame using
idea networking for service providers in an emerging cultural
accommodation industry. Fifty hours of interviews and site visits
provided 117 individual idea statements which were networked. The
conceptual frame that emerged had five elements: sufficient-
legitimation, selected-market, inclusive-boomi, appropriately-financial,
and collaboratively-empowered. This provides a coordinated, multi-
part, way of evaluating any possible future changes.
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Keywords: Intervention, Conceptual frame(work), Ideas, Pragmatism,
Accommodations Industry
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Action research interventions need a conceptual framework to organize and
evaluate the impact of any intervention (Baskerville and Wood-Harper1998; Midgley
2003; Midgely 2006; Houston 2008; Ison 2010). This frame can be induced from the
participants rather than imposed by the researcher. When conducting action
research, the initial problem definition interviews result in numerous diverse
statements from participants. These express their ideas for how the future
might be. Networking these ideas has been suggested as a means of
consolidating these statements into an induced or participatory conceptual
frame (Alexander 1968; Metcalfe 2007). Idea networking is an auditable
qualitative method for abstracting from participants ideas to something that
can structure action research. However, this fairly new method needs more
explanation of its underlying philosophy of ideas, and more examples of its
application. The purpose of this paper is to explain how and why networking
ideas might be used to induce or emerge an action research conceptual
frame.
There are two main theories or philosophies about ideas. The dominant
Western philosophy of ideas comes from idealism. Plato talks of ideal forms,
3
where everything we see is a poor example of some ideal form, as in the
ideal form of a dog, a woman or a lake. Hume (1748/1999), in more modern
times extends this to ideas. The idea of a lake is the mental image of an ideal
lake. This philosophy of ideas as ideals makes it hard to think about how to
collate peoples’ concerns into conceptual ideas of how to act in the future
(Rorty 1982). There is an alternative philosophy of ideas which is attributed
to neo-pragmatism but which draws heavily on continental philosophy (Rorty,
1982). It does not use the notion of ideal forms. Rather ideas are patterns
recognized from numerous past experiences, mainly from social interactions,
that can be named and provide a means of reflecting on the world. Further
explanation of this is provided below. However, it was not obvious how this
pragmatic explanation of ideas could be used to consolidate the overlapping
and contradictory concerns of groups of people trying to improve the world.
Researchers have used cluster analysis, causal mapping, content analysis
and Axelrod’s decision mapping (1976) to demonstrate that groups have and
need conceptual ideas to direct and coordinate their actions. However many
of these methods are either too time consuming to use with large numbers of
dispersed participants or else they fail to provide practical and actionable
insight (Huff & Jenkins, 2002; Walsh, 2011). Moreover, some have failed to
give much consideration of the philosophy underlying why and how the
conceptual ideas (concepts) are conceived. Some have also failed to align
their assumed philosophy with the research methods used and the purpose
4
of the resultant conceptual ideas (Walsh, 1995). This paper will explore
Alexander’s (1964) suggestion that ideas can be networked. Modern
networking software makes this feasible and their clustering algorithm does
seem to offer a means of consolidating providers’ concerns into manageable
clusters from which patterns can be abstracted. This networking method is
also in need of further explanation, but it does offer a philosophically
grounded means of abstracting the patterns that are conceptual ideas
explained in pragmatism.
The following section will first elaborate on the philosophy of ideas, then the
pragmatic approach be further explained. This explains why ideas might be
usefully networked (Alexander 1964). Next, how idea networking was used
to emerge a conceptual frame for some boomi accommodation research, is
explained. It emerged a five element conceptual frame for how the
accommodations industry might think about its future. The resultant
conceptual frame demonstrates how and why sense can be made from the
pragmatic philosophy of ideas.
DEFINING IDEAS
The term idea, rather than thought, suggests innovation, insight, agreement,
usefulness, and being sparkling or imaginative (Weick, 2006). For those who
believe in rational process, sparkling ideas need to be able to be created
5
from an organised and repeatable process. There has been a tendency in the
past to suggest that creative acts are not able to be produced through
explicit organization. Rather, ideas were portrayed as being the outcome of a
mystical gift, only available to a few clever individuals (Bailin, 2003). The
exact mental processes of the intuitive leap that often precedes an idea are
beyond our present cognitive or neuro-scientific understanding. However,
organizing a rational process for structuring useful, creative, collaborative
ideas seems to be a required and necessary step in creative community
problem-solving.
In everyday language, some ideas are very large and significant while others
are useful but every day. Some do not require much of an intuitive leap but
have a significant impact on whole societies – others are imaginative and
impractical. They can make us gasp or laugh, suggesting some significant
cognitive shifting. If they are new, then, new to whom? Some ideas spawn
others, alter mind-sets and are the key to social and economic innovation. If
anything there are too many ideas.
Like any word with a significant history, the word idea has changed its
meaning and has a range of differing meanings depending on its use and
user (Peirce, 1878; Vandenbosch, Saatcioglu & Fay, 2006; Warfield & Perino,
1999; Watson, 2006). It is often caught up in issues of free will, reality and
whether or not we are born with conceptual ideas like individuality or survival
6
already implanted in our heads. The old philosophical debate over what are
ideas, a word that stems from the Greek “to see”, revolved around the issue
of mental images. An idea, according to David Hume (1748/1999), is
something you can imagine, recollect or recall in your mind’s eye. The idea of
a tree or lake can be formed as an image of a tree or lake in the mind. This
draws on the Platonic view mentioned earlier where this mental image is an
ideal form of a tree or lake of which real trees or lakes are imperfect
examples; ideas are ideals and actual examples are to be compared with
these ideals. The controversy over the definition of ideas in the past has been
whether you can conceive the idea of something you cannot imagine like “a
democracy”. You cannot bring up an image of a democracy in your head,
only examples.
The historic ideals definition of ideas also seems at odds with the modern or
innovation meaning of ideas (Anderson, 2003). Innovators’ ideas are typically
new designs of objects, systems or processes: “He had an idea about how to
redesign the light switch”. Here an idea is how the switch might be rather
than how ideally it is. There needs to be some connection between ideas and
future actions including what needs to be done. The pragmatic interpretation
of ideas as patterns requires these abstraction have some practical
consequence, they are useful. For example conceptual ideas relevant to
switches might include minimalism, micro touch, biometric sensors,
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elegance, or control centre. Each of these suggests particular and differing
future actions. Pragmatic ideas suggest alternative future actions.
The Pragmatic Definition of Ideas As Actions
Pragmatism, at least the stream being referred to in this paper (James,
1911/1996, 1907/1910; Rescher, 2005; Rorty, 1982) is thought to be an
ethical epistemological basis for participatory action because it is pluralistic,
focused on actions, community based, concerned about consequences and
yet still scientific (Shields, 2005). Being pluralistic makes it relevant to policy
makers as idea managers, operating in a social world with powerful
stakeholders who need to be appeased.
Pragmatism seeks useful alternative actions as solutions to social problems,
to improve the world yet adopt the basic tenets of science. It wants
knowledge or ideas to be reasonable, rational and open to empirical study, in
the provision of explanations and justifications to a sceptical audience.
Knowing is an act of interpretation justified with evidence and reasoning
(Dewey, 1938; Metcalfe & Powell, 1995; Rorty, 1982). Experience and
experiment, as learning through social interaction, are given more emphasis
by pragmatism, than under positive science. People learn from experiences
by reflecting on the consequences of past actions. The absence of any use or
8
consequence from a knowledge claim or idea makes it useless. The term
‘useful’ is very pragmatic; knowledge needs to be useful, full of uses or at
least have some use. Knowledge needs to provide suggestions of what
actions to take in the future, how usefully to act to resolve a social concern.
Pragmatism provides an explanation of how we ‘sense-make’ (Weick, 1995)
events as they occur to us, how we think, as we move through the world. We
abstract and then use conceptual ideas or concepts to conceive or interpret
events as they occur to us. Put another way, conceptual ideas provide the
stance, perspective, a priori, or intent (Dennett, 1989; Toulmin, 1972) used to
make sense of or structure our concerns. This reflects Rittel and Webber’s 9b
characteristic of a wicked problem (1973); how the problem is conceived will
affect what is seen as a viable solution. These conceptual ideas are patterns
abstracted from our past experiences. They interpret and so provide what
seems to a reasonable response.
For example, if we are required to attend a meeting across town, the
conceptual idea or concept of punctuality suggests different arrangements
from the conceptual idea of energy conservation. Pragmatic conceptual ideas
or concepts are names for patterns of activity or language generals, not a
representation of something in an abstract mind. Punctuality is the name
given to the abstracted pattern of activities of arriving on time, being reliable
and perhaps being inflexible over timings. The conceptual ideas we are using
9
by default to think about a situation come to use from our past experiences
and may not be obvious to us without careful reflection on why certain
actions seem reasonable. Continuing the example, if we felt being late was
unacceptable and using large car acceptable, then the concept of punctuality
is being used over energy conservation. Pragmatists argue that clear thinking
requires us to make our conceptual ideas explicit. Applying explicit novel
conceptual ideas to think about a problem situation provides explicit creative
alternatives of how to react.
The pragmatist, William James (1890) argues that conceptual ideas need to
be created and justified by their uses, consequences or the activities they
suggest. He used the much debated example of the concept of God. One of
the uses, consequences or patterns of activities this concept suggests is the
alleviation of peoples’ concerns over dying. This makes the concept useful
because it suggests alternative ideas for how to act when facing a life-
threatening situation. James also refers to the uses, consequences or
patterns of activity lost by not having a concept. In the example of “freedom”
this includes increased appreciation of tyranny and the need for sensible
restraint of individuals. The concept of freedom is useful because it suggests
alternative ideas for how to act when facing difficult decisions. James also
explains that new concepts can be derived, implicitly or explicitly, from the
three pattern recognition steps of “compare”, “reflect”, and “abstract”. His
example is the formation of the concept of leaves. He suggests a process of
10
comparing a wide range of different foliage, reflecting on the leaves’
functional similarity, and abstracting the concept of a leaf as a generic term.
The concept of leaves names a pattern of photosynthesis activity undertaken
by plants.
Pragmatism therefore suggests that conceptual ideas come from recognizing
patterns which can then usefully inform future actions. For example,
regarding the boomi accommodation providers in this study, the idea to
develop a collective identity would be a conceptual idea. This might suggest
the action of joining into a professional network of similar businesses. Clearly,
there is some dependency between the conceptual idea and future actions.
Conceptual ideas seem to drive, make intentional, or rationalize possible
alternative actions. However, action, like experiences, may generate new
conceptual ideas. Continuing the example, it may have been the business owners’
experiences in having to deal with the challenges and problems of running the business alone
which generated the new conceptual idea that they form a collective identity.
Idea networking: Background
Recognizing patterns by James’ method of compare, reflect, abstract is easier said than done
especially when dealing with the many varied and conflicting concern of stakeholders.
Community meetings can be used to collect these concerns, but some form of auditable method is
11
needed to analyse them to find pattern is required. Pragmatism tells us the outcome needs to
be some language based, inductively formed, artefact that the participants
can use to structure their future thinking. Pragmatic philosophy provides an
explanation of why stakeholders’ apparently independent concerns should be
collected and somehow patterns be extracted into a conceptual frame. The
individual concerns represent specific examples from which conceptual frame
can be abstracted by pattern recognition. If Miller’s (1956) corrected magic
number is right then abstracting a five element conceptual frame will be
enough. A pragmatist, Alexander (1962) suggested networking as a means
of finding this handful of elements in a conceptual frame from stakeholders
statements.
Networking stakeholders’ idea statements enables them all to be displayed
relative to each other and a clustering algorithm assist in the process of
pattern recognition. The nodes of this network would be the idea statements
and the links represent which concerns are thought to be similar. Rather than
being prescriptive about how to produce and use this network, potential
users are encouraged to research how best to produce and use the basic
notion that participants’ statements be networked linked, paired. For more on
the mechanics of producing an idea network see Metcalfe (2007). These
statements can be collected at planning meetings using focus group,
consensus groups, at interviews or any other idea generation format.
12
Alexander (1964) sees the process of linking participants’ ideas as an
intuitive creative act best performed without formal explanation by those
experienced in the problem domain. However different epistemologies
suggest different ways this judgment is made. Interpretivists and
ethnographists, will want an experienced person to use their experience to
do this creatively and intuitively. Positivists will want impartial judges, and
communitarians will want the participants to do it in a consultative ethical
manner (Trochim, 1989). However done, a random numbered list of idea
statements is required to become the nodes of the network diagram. To
provide the links it is necessary to work down this list underlining keywords
and then deeming idea statements are similar linked, paired) if they have
similar keywords. By similar it is meant the keywords are synonyms, draw on
a similar root metaphors or there is similar intent (Alexander, 1964; Buckle,
2003; Morgan, 1986). However, because of how the resultant network
diagram appears, about 100 statements as nodes) each with between one
and five links has been found to produce a workable network (Metcalfe,
2007).
The numbered statements and their links can be drafted as a matrix. The
rows and columns are the numbers of the statements. In the body of the
matrix a link can be shown as a “1”. This matrix then provides input for
producing the network diagram using network analysis software, e.g.
UCINET6/NETMAP (Borgatti, Everett & Freeman, 2002) or NODEXL.
13
UCINET6/NETMAP is a popular and affordable software with spring embedded
algorithm which will cluster adjacently linked nodes. Discussion on the best
algorithm for clusters is also left for discussion elsewhere. The UCINET6
algorithm has the effect of making the nodes repel each other so
encouraging clusters to be more clearly seen. Typically, the clusters can be
quickly visually identified from the resultant network diagram although
sometimes this requires the use of density and path metric analysis.
METHOD DEMONSTRATION
The Iranian boomi tourist accommodation industry is a loose collection of
informal, locally owned, culturally authentic, accommodation homes for
tourists (Khoshesar, 2012). Boom being a Persian word for “area”, “region” and boomi is
anything of that area or region, native to that location e.g. boomi culture. The families
involved typically also act as tour guides around the local cultural points of
interest. The demand for boomi accommodation has been growing
significantly in recent years, from a very small base. The providers felt it was
time to consolidate themselves as a distinct industry and coordinate any
future plans for how the industry might develop. This would need to be done
in a participatory manner to be effective. Research was required to both
collect the providers’ ideas for the future and also to investigate how these
might be usefully consolidated into a conceptual frame. This conceptual
frame was needed to make sense of their emerging identity and thus
general guidance for how providers might act in the future without 14
diminishing healthy competition (Aas, Ladkin & Fletcher, 2005; Sautter &
Leisen, 1999; Vernon, Essex, Pindar & Curry, 2005).
That strategic groups use conceptual frames to interpret themselves is well
recognized (Kaplan, 2011; Tversky & Kahneman, 1981; Walsh, 1995). Religious and
political groups provide the obvious examples with their differing ideologies.
Conceiving of tourism as an idea exchange industry, cultural preservation or
as co-competition are other examples of conceptual frames that make sense
for a strategic group. But how these sorts of ‘conceptual frames’ can be
methodically complied for a specific problem, from the concerns of individual
stakeholders, is less clear (Huff & Jenkins, 2002; Kaplan, 2011; Walsh, 1995).
Our research investigated how to consolidate the future of the boomi tourist
accommodation providers in rural Iran1. These small businesses can have a
significant contribution to local economies (Lynch, 2005) are regarded as a
key economic development tool in rural regions and can act as a catalyst for
tourism development (Kastenholz & Sparrer, 2009; King & White, 2009).
Their role may be particularly significant in developing countries such as Iran.
One of the key long-term tourism objectives in Iran’s National Tourism
Development and Management Master Plan is the creation of employment
and generation of new income opportunities, particularly in rural areas, with
1 This case study has been published in more detail elsewhere and is include here only to illustrate how a conceptual frame was emerged.
15
a focus on small scale businesses such as guesthouses and home stay
facilities (National Project Office, 2002).
Despite the long history of these accommodation types in many countries
(Moscardo, 2009) and the long history of hospitality in ancient Iran where
caravanserais were used as hostels for tourists (O'Gorman, 2007), the use of
home for the purpose of generating income through accommodation letting
(Lynch, McIntosh & Tucker, 2009) is very new and recent in this country and
goes back to nearly two decades ago. Within the last few years, a network of
boomi accommodation providers has been formed which links those who
have incorporated elements of their local culture in hosting tourists. This
includes the use of boomi architecture, authentic boomi cuisine, boomi music
and handicrafts. These operators live close to nature in villages and country-
side and away from the common bureaucracy and administrative structure of
the country, restoring and preserving the values related to cultural heritage,
handicrafts and tourism (Khoshesar, 2012).
Those involved in this largely informal industry were interviewed in their
native language to ask what problems the industry faced. The data collection
period coincided with the network’s second annual meeting which allowed
access to rich data through the Iranian co-author’s attendance at the two-day
meeting and also helped in building trust with the participants who were to
be interviewed. Interviews lasted on average two to two and half hours with
16
the longest going over three hours. Following each interview, the co-author
recorded details of the setting and her observation of the interview including
how welcoming the hosts were, their relationship and interaction with their
guests, etc. This helped in establishing a context for interpreting and making
sense of the interviews at the analysis stage. In addition, to check the
consistency of the information gained, often observation notes and interview
transcripts were compared. According to Patton (2002) this period of
reflection and elaboration is critical and neglecting it would be to undermine
the rigor of qualitative inquiry.
To gain further insight into government policies and strategies in dealing with
this tourism sector, the researcher also conducted several interviews with the
relevant employees of the national Cultural Heritage, Hospitality and Tourism
Organization CHHTO. These interviews mostly yielded responses that
portrayed lack of recognition of this emerging sector by the government
which led to its lack of support for the businesses.
The Iranian co-author then transcribed and translated fifty hours of interview
and the minutes form the network’s annual meeting into English. Using an
ethnographic epistemology, she used her experience to identify 117
significant statement sentences from the translations. These were numbered
and then analysed by first drafting a table or matrix of statements deemed
similar linked. This involved some interpretation and judgment from knowing
17
the language and being involved in the interviews. An automatic analysis of
the statements would have missed synonyms, pronouns and metaphors plus
would not have easily allowed statements to be linked for differing or
contextual reasons.
For example, statement 25 was linked to statements 31 and 88 because all
three referred to the lack of financial support from government officials and
also “gradual development” as a specific feature of these businesses.
(25) “To reduce the costs, I did most of the things myself…
Whenever I had a bulk of money from the guests who stayed, I’d
spend it on the house…Every time a group of guests left, I used
the money earned to purchase new facilities needed. Having
access to big loans would make things easier but there is no
need for a loan to be able to do this job...”.
(31) “...Getting some financial help would have helped me
achieve my goals quicker but working slowly and persistently is
also possible. You can spend little by little instead of having to
pay the instalments of a loan. Even when you’re offered a loan,
the amount you spend time, energy, money) outweighs the
benefits gained”.
18
(88) “Government supports exist if someone goes after them.
But they do make troubles and difficulty even if they help…
Gradually whatever I earned out of the guests, I spent on the
house. I haven’t asked for a loan but I know if I do I will have to
go to a lot of trouble. The conditions are so hard that it would not
be convenient to get a loan”.
RESULTS OR OUTCOME
The network analysis software UCINET6/NETMAP was then used to produce a
network map from the statement table or matrix which is shown in Figure 1.
The nodes represent the numbered statements and the links represent
similar statements.
19
FIGURE 1.
Boomi Tourist Accommodations Idea Network
Using close visual inspection, the 3D rotation option and/or the Girvan
Newman subgroup identification analysis available within the UCINET6, five
clusters of nodes were identified from the network diagram. These are
highlighted by the use of separation lines and different node shapes in Figure
1. Separating out too few clusters limits the opportunity for creativity and too
many becomes hard to remember. Miller’s magic number 1956) suggests
around five to seven clusters be identified. The clusters give pattern to the
117 statements, where each cluster represents a grouping of like statements.
20
The statements within each cluster were then examined for internal patterns
and what they had in common. From James (1911/1996), a process for giving
recognition to any pattern found within each cluster is to name them, to
represent the cluster as an element in the final conceptual frame. To do this,
the Iranian researcher first listed all the statements within one cluster in a
table and then carefully reflected upon them to determine a conceptual idea
that encompassed the list. Identifying a representative concept for each
cluster is an important interpretative creative act, one that is informed by the
statements within each cluster and by the whole research context. Therefore,
the names selected should be justifiable to the accommodation providers. If
time and access opportunities had permitted, then it would have been
preferable for the participants to have named the clusters.
As an example, looking at the “square” shaped nodes in the left hand cluster
of Figure 1, this was made up of statements like:
(70) “Some guests come here to see “Farzin” [me] and I think
this is putting too much emphasis on individuals... [it] should
become more social and move away from individualism. Maybe
some sort of educational/training program could be implemented
among locals so they’d know how to communicate with tourists
and offer them services”.
21
(12) “Whether we participates the locals or not, depends on
our personality and attitude and our techniques of managing the
accommodation unit. I cannot see it happening any other way.
The characteristics and attitude of the locals is also important in
the decision to participate them or not... At the end, a balance
should be maintained between our want, economic security of
our business, and the locals’ satisfaction”.
(74) “Trying to get familiar with our region’s local culture and
also creating jobs for the people stated as our core values would
make the experience for the guests more authentic”.
Reflecting on these and the other statements in this cluster, the researcher
started to think about the role and support of these businesses for the local
community. The cluster also included statements which implied less
emphasis on the host being the main attraction “host-oriented”) towards
more emphasis on the overall boomi experience for the guests. This
suggested for the accommodations to be sustainable, the operators needed
to use locals more in offering services to guests. So Cluster 3 was named:
Inclusive boomi experience. This concept seems to give pattern to the
statements. The same sort of synthetic thinking was used in identifying the
conceptual idea encompassing the remaining clusters.
22
These were named:
Cluster 1 Sufficient legitimation: a balance needs to be
maintained between interaction of operators and government
bureaucracy.
Cluster 2 Selected market: consciously selecting those
tourists/guests who cause less harm and damage to these
operators and to the local community.
Cluster 3 Inclusive boomi experience: needing to involve locals
in offering primarily a home-oriented cultural experience.
Cluster 4 Appropriately financially structured: looking to sources
of funding which will not distract from the intent of the industry.
Cluster 5 Collaboratively empowered: developing a collective
decision-making identity for the boomi accommodation network
which empowers its members.
Discussion On Conceptual Frame
Idea networking has emerged a five element conceptual frame from a
diverse community. The frame generated provides structure for the
research and for the providers; how they might organize the future of
the boomi accommodations business. Put another way, the five
element conceptual frame makes sense of the diverse list of unrelated
idea collected from the interviews. It can be used to allocate
23
resources, to draft plans and as a system of criteria for evaluating
future decisions. As a Strategic Statement of Intent (Hamel & Prahalad,
2005) the conceptual frame acts as high level objectives, or priorities
that they intend to develop by seeking sufficient legitimisation, a
selected market, offer an inclusive boomi experience, be appropriately
financially structured and seek collaborative empowerment.
The conceptual frame can also be used creativity by calling for suggested
actions that will fulfil two or more of the concepts. For example, some
operators suggested applying for permits from the government. Doing this
can be evaluated against the concepts of legitimisation, and collaborative
empowerment. Having a permit system would help these businesses to be
formally and legally recognized and thus minimize unwanted pressures from
formal and informal organizations. However, to avoid too much interference
from the government, they need to seek an optimum level of legitimisation.
Their collaboration encourages them to have an active role in determining
the required standards and principals for a permit. Also these discussions
could include how best to use relevant regulations and legislations related to
their businesses through some form of lobbying.
Clusters 2 and 3 can be used to evaluate the operators’ suggestions that
they should be attracting more professional tourists considerate of the local
people’s culture and beliefs that tend to cause less tension. However, some
means of increasing awareness among non-professional groups by educating 24
and informing them of the relevant issues could offer alternative
opportunities. The education and training programs for locals who in turn
might educate tourists could itself offer supply chain employment
opportunities and result in an even more authentic and genuine culture
appreciation experience. However, a balance would need to be maintained as
too much reliance on the local services, rather than interaction with a
personable host may reduce the “sense of home” for guests, one of the
distinguishing features of boomi accommodations.
The boomi accommodations collaboration has empowered operators and led
to numerous benefits. They now see that this has placed new obligations on
them about how to collectively develop their industry. Concepts 4 and 5
enable evaluation of the suggestions that this might include collectively
developing some form of financial or market cooperative. Cooperatives are
something the national government is trying to encourage as part of its
economic development program for all industries. Forming a boomi
accommodation cooperative may obligate the government to provide the
accommodation operators with financial support/incentives such as low
interest loans and tax exemptions.
Reflecting more generally, the conceptual frame just inducted from the concerns of those
involved provides a means of coordinating or making sense of possible future actions. As action
researchers have long highlighted, before changes can be made there needs to agreement on how
the problem is to be conceived (interpreted, perceived) (Baskerville & Wood-Harper,1996;
25
Checkland, 2000; Huzzard, Ahlberg & Ekman 2010; Coghlan, 2011; Kajamaa 2012;
Mackenzie, Tan, Hoverman & Baldwin 2012). For example, are their problems to be seen to be
about efficiency, innovation, caring, or so on? Choosing this frame is not easy and yet is crucial
to how the situation is interpreted. Idea networking provides this frame from the concerns of all
those involved, it is participatory not from the literature or from an elite few. Checkland, (2000)
in his soft systems thinking, has long highlighted the need for a frame but does not elaborate
about how this might be induced from the situation itself. Midgely (2006) talks of observation
itself being a form of intervention. However, even observation needs to first make explicit what
frame is to be used to ‘see’ the situation (Rittel and Webber 1972). Otherwise a default frame will
be used which later may not provide the sort of solution being sought from those involved. Not
making the frame explicit might also concern some that the frame has been imposed. Working
on the pragmatic assumption that those who do the work understand more than those to only
theorise, the use of all participants to form the frame is anyway likely to lead to something more
insightful. The frame produced from idea networking is a system for thinking that comprising
five elements (Checkland 2000). This allows for dialectic, which holds the opportunity for
creative thinking provided the combination of concepts is well managed. The suggested method
for inducing this frame is well grounded in pragmatic (James 1907) philosophy. This does not see
ideas as ideals but rather as experienced patterns of activity. This makes the frame much more
suited to action research including as an aid to thinking of possible future actions by the
participants.
CONCLUSION
26
We have argued that the pragmatic theory of ideas provides a basis for
inducing or emerging a conceptual frame in action research from the ideas of
a diverse group of participants. In the example used this was the providers in
the emergent Iranian boomi tourist accommodations industry. Their ideas
were consolidated into a five element conceptual frame for how the industry
might be researched. The five elements or concepts were identifiable from
the clusters generated by networking of the ideas. The abstracted conceptual
frame provides something of an inverted root cause analysis and the
evaluation criteria for the action research. Individual events can be discussed
in reference to one or more of the concepts in the frame. The conceptual
frame provides criteria for evaluating individual actions. For example, the
providers’ suggestion to form a cooperative can now be evaluated and
modified using the collective conception of wanting an organisational
structure that empowers other through collaboration. Also industry norms
and processes could be developed to more directly improve the conceptual
idea of being collaboratively empowered regardless of the cooperative idea.
As a conceptual frame, that organised the ideas collected from those
operating in the boomi accommodation providers industry, it has some
legitimation to claim it represents the research strategy.
Much of the literature in ideas management, including innovation
management assumes the idealism theory of ideas. This includes the
assumption that ideas mysteriously come from gurus (Keupp, Palmié &
27
Gassmann, 2011). However, alternative theories of innovation include the
wisdom of crowds (Surowiecki, 2005), the need for more democracy in the
collection of ideas (von Hipple, 1988), and bottom up idea creation in
workplace routines (Martin, Metcalfe and Harris, 2009). These alternative
theories use a more collective and action based understanding of ideas.
Moreover the extensive literature on innovation (Tropman, 1998) tends to
assume good ideas are precious, hard to find things. However, pragmatism
assumes that there is a problem of an excess of ideas, the problem is rather
how to collate them in a collaborative yet useful manner. The use of
networking was suggested as an alternative to the automated text string
matching of content analysis, cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling
software. All require the social construct of naming, drawing on interpretation
and context to name collated ideas. Networking uses the clustering and
visualization functionality of network analysis and mapping. It explicitly does
not, like cognitive maps, concept maps, frames and mental models, even hint
that its visualizations represent knowledge structures in the mind of
stakeholders (Dreyfus, 2007a; 2007b). Rather, what is being produced is a
shared, linguistic mobile (Latour, 1986) for abducting a conceptual frame
from the clusters as patterns of participants’ individual ideas. It is easier for
participants to express their individual ideas rather than be asked to
articulate a coherent strategy for the future.
28
Based on Alexander’s (1964) Synthesis of form, idea networking is attractive
as a conceptual frame construction method because it displays these
participants’ ideas as a network akin to social network analysis where the
ideas are nodes and the links represent similar or overlapping ideas.
Visualizing the conceptual frame using a network map provides a
classification system that visualizes the number, density and relative position
of each concept in the frame. The overall shape of the network demonstrates
the interrelatedness of the five concepts. It also provides a dynamic, three-
dimensional classification scheme which does not prejudge the names of the
classes, the number of them, or their relative positions, allowing statements
to be a member of any number of concepts. This provides a very egalitarian,
visual, conceptual frame development system, the output of which can be
used to structure decision trees, provide variables in causal models, as
events in Boolean analysis or as the starting point for cognitive mapping
(Huff & Jenkins, 2002).
The use of pragmatic theory to think about ideas in terms of patterns
overcame the assumptions of idealism. Pragmatism fits the role of organising
well in a changing, globalised, pluralistic world. It provides a linguistic, social
interaction, action based, problem solving interpretation of how we think.
Ideas are not objects with attributes to be discovered. Rather they are names
for patterns that inform actions, names that can be part of a collective. Some
of which will be more generic than others, the consequences of enacting
them greater.
29
Future research may look more closely at how the idea statements are linked
(paired), the clustering algorithm and how the resulting clusters are named,
including by whom. However, the pragmatic ideas philosophy used here
would appear to have potential for other action researchers to develop useful
justifiable conceptual frames from participants diverse ideas; ideas that
articulate what the research problem is and how any research might be
structured to design an improved future.
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