Rediscovering Abductive Reasoning in Organization Development and Change Research

Abstract

This article explores how abductive reasoning is central to Mode 2 organization development and change (ODC) research, despite the rarity with which it is made explicit. It differentiates between Peirce’s notions of deduction, induction, and abduction in the field of ODC and explores how Mode 2 ODC research, particularly that involving collaboration between academics and practitioners, draws on abductive reasoning. It is when confronted with an array of puzzling and paradoxical data that insights constitute abductive reasoning, a fundamental element in both the production of knowledge and the development of successful organizational interventions.

A semi-systematic literature review, identifying research opportunities for more sustainable, receiver-led inbound urban logistics flows to large higher education institutions

“…Of note is the breadth of grey literature in this field, and the delay between that material and the publication of peer reviewed literature. Given that much of the grey reports are co-authored by academics, it suggests that the academy needs to plan this earlier work in a rigorous fashion, but also using methodological choices that align the applied work with academic publication, there are multiple versions of action research [39,43] that would be appropriate and the literature review evidences this paucity.…”

Organizational Posttraumatic Growth: Thriving After Adversity

“…As is typical with phenomenon-driven research, our study evolved as it progressed, and we aim to relate the process authentically with all of its messiness (Arino et al, 2016). We analyzed what happened in the organization abductively to develop a plausible explanation of organizational change, drawing on insights from the data and literature at different points across the study without being overly constrained by extant theory (Behfar & Okhuysen, 2018; Shani et al, 2020; Schwarz & Stensaker, 2016). This process is oriented by the observable phenomena (Schumacher & Scherzinger, 2016), in this case, the trauma and its aftermath, which only surfaced as we analyzed the first set of interviews.…”

Researching Change and Changing: Integrating Collaboration and Action Through Interiority

“…By attending to both the data of their consciousness (how they are experiencing, questioning, understanding, and judging) as well as to the data of sense (what they see and hear in the external data) researchers can engage with the empirical data of their experiencing, the intellectual data of their understanding (by abductive reasoning in the context of discovery), and the rational data of their judgments (by deductive or inductive reasoning in the context of verification). In engaging in collaborative research that is directed toward cogenerating actionable knowledge, interiority involves drawing on differentiation of consciousness and attending to what is occurring in the present tense within the context of learning mechanisms (Shani & Docherty, 2003) and particularly to the process of abductive reasoning (Shani et al, 2020).…”