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Conducting research that is both practice- and theory-relevant is important for the service research community. Action research can be a fruitful approach for service researchers studying the transformative role of service research and wanting to make contributions to both the research community and to practical development. By exploring the current use of action research in service research, this study aims to make suggestions for enhancing the contribution to theory and practice development and to propose criteria for research quality for action research in service research.

This study builds on a systematic literature review of the use of action research approaches in service research.

The study makes three main contributions. First, it posits that any action research project needs to consider the four elements of problem identification, theorization, creating guiding concepts and intervention. Second, based on these elements mirrored in service action research, it outlines and analyzes three approaches to action research (i.e. theory-enhancing, concept developing and practice-enhancing). Third, it suggests a move from instrumental to a more conceptual relevance of the research and elaborates on the criteria for research quality.

This study contributes to the understanding of how action research may be applied for conducting high-quality collaborative research in services and proposes measures to enhance research quality in action research projects focusing services.

This paper is an account of collaborative action-based research that centered on a new NCAA Division I football program at a regional southeastern university, and the positive impacts the collaboration had on the multiple stakeholders involved in the research, which were the university’s sport management faculty, the athletic department, and sport management students. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

During the action research, these stakeholders moved through a cyclical process that involved reflection, planning, action, and evaluation. Through the action-based cyclical process that was utilized, each of these stakeholders were able to learn, adapt, participate, and make positive change.

Positive change occurred with the athletic department’s marketing efforts and game day operations, opportunities for sport management students to participate and learn, and development of relationships between two departments.

The cyclical nature of this research model often leads to original hypotheses and research foci to be highly altered during various stages. Another limitation within collaborative action research can be the breakdown in communication among the many parties involved in carrying out this type of research.

While the significance of this study was initially to capture fan information surrounding a new NCAA Division I football program, the stakeholders quickly realized that the action-based research study had more to offer than producing marketing reports for the university athletic department. Inclusion of the students as equal stakeholders in this project proved vital to student learning and involvement. Having the students play such an important role throughout each cycle of the project allowed for additional networking outside the classrooms with potential employers, as well as in-depth discussions and involvement in the classroom when synthesizing and disseminating the marketing information that had been gathered.

The collaboration between two separate departments within a higher education institution was vital to the overall success of the research project. The overall intent of this paper is to provide a practical approach to collaboration among individuals working in different departments of an organization, as the findings from this research project revealed the overall success of the project was only possible through the collaborative effort and joining resources, abilities, areas of expertise, and capabilities.

Diabetes is regarded as a global epidemic with 382 million people globally suffering from diabetes. It also has major implications on patients’ quality of life. There are also high cost of treatment associated with diabetes for both patient and healthcare provider. Telemonitoring represents an excellent technology opportunity to redefine health care delivery. Using technology for home-based care promises the ability to deliver more cost effective care whilst also enhancing quality of care and patient satisfaction. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The current research aims to contribute to the methodological design of action research projects in their use to implementation health technologies such as telemonitoring. In particular, it seeks create a model which can be used to demonstrate the efficacy of the use of the action research method as a viable alternative to the traditional randomised control trials methodology currently employed in healthcare.

The paper contributes towards the methodological design to investigate the area of practice making use of the telemonitoring programme within a Victorian Health Services Network using action research.

It intends to address the research problem of the low utilisation of telemonitoring within Monash Health as a whole, and more specifically within the diabetes unit. In this context the research intends to utilise the benefits of telemonitoring to improve clinical outcomes of patients by increasing insulin stabilisation. It is also intended the research organisation benefits by increased efficiency by decreasing clinical workforce time spent on managing patient insulin data.

The purpose of this study is to share how the learning impact of a remote workshop was improved through action research practices, especially action inquiry and critical reflexivity.

Research design detailed herein consists of one complete cycle of action and reflection. Methods used include: journaling into four territories of experience, free-form journaling, individual and joint reflection using four parts of speech and extended ways of knowing.

Action inquiry and critical reflexivity have shown themselves to be a potent means of improving the learning outcomes of remote Playing Lean workshops. Drawing on early insight, the author suggests several venues for further inquiry.

This paper contributes a novel combination of action research practices that can be used for improving other learning initiatives as well, and an example of how to question the veracity of qualitative findings.

The purpose of this paper is to identify actions and guidelines for enabling and fostering the Industry 4.0 adoption, as well as to understand the role of three ecosystem actors in these actions (i.e. companies, educational organizations and regional policy makers).

52 semi-structured expert interviews in the Tyrol-Veneto cross-border macro-region were carried out and interpreted using the innovation ecosystem concept. In particular, drawing from this latter, six ecosystem building blocks were identified and used to analyze the interviews' content.

The findings allow not only to build a comprehensive framework for action to support Industry 4.0 adoption, but also to confirm the importance of exploring Industry 4.0 through the lens of the ecosystem concept. Indeed, the authors show that R&D activities should be complemented with interorganizational actions, such as training and networking, and that all ecosystem actors should be involved in the Industry 4.0 adoption.

This is among the few studies that adopt the innovation ecosystem perspective to explore best practices for Industry 4.0 adoption, thus overcoming the weakness of existing papers based on a firm-level perspective. It also complements previous ecosystem-based research on Industry 4.0 by exploring the technology adoption side, rather than the technology provision one, and by considering the adoption of a wide set of technologies.

The purpose of this paper is to open up new lines of research into the engagement of corporations during humanitarian crises. The paper provides an introduction to core concepts in the delivery of humanitarian assistance, as well as a comprehensive overview of when, why, how, and to what effect corporations engage in humanitarian action.

Building on extant literature and policy reports, the paper synthesizes concepts and insights to map the interdisciplinary field of research on corporate engagement in humanitarian action.

The paper systematically reviews and describes different dimensions of corporate engagement for delivering humanitarian action and explains key complications that inspire new research questions. In particular, the paper highlights challenges associated with getting corporations to engage in humanitarian action; challenges associated with ensuring effective corporate engagement; and challenges associated with ensuring ethical engagement.

By raising new questions about corporate engagement in humanitarian action, this paper develops an original and positive research agenda for international business, management research, and related fields.

The proliferation of (big) data provides numerous opportunities for service advances in practice, yet research on using data to advance service is at a nascent stage in the literature. Many studies have discussed phenomenological benefits of data to service. However, limited research describes managerial issues behind such benefits, although a holistic understanding of the issues is essential in using data to advance service in practice and provides a basis for future research. The purpose of this paper is to address this research gap.

“Using data to advance service” is about change in organizations. Thus, this study uses action research methods of creating real change in organizations together with practitioners, thereby adding to scientific knowledge about practice. The authors participated in five service design projects with industry and government that used different data sets to design new services.

Drawing on lessons learned from the five projects, this study empirically identifies 11 managerial issues that should be considered in data-use for advancing service. In addition, by integrating the issues and relevant literature, this study offers theoretical implications for future research.

“Using data to advance service” is a research topic that emerged originally from practice. Action research or case studies on this topic are valuable in understanding practice and in identifying research priorities by discovering the gap between theory and practice. This study used action research over many years to observe real-world challenges and to make academic research relevant to the challenges. The authors believe that the empirical findings will help improve service practices of data-use and stimulate future research.

The study aims to investigate how the action research contributes to the collective construction of a discipline in management. This issue was the motivation for the present study, which was developed from the experience of master's degree students attending the post-graduate program in management of an institution in the State of Bahia, Brazil.

The overall objective of this study is to understand the method's effectiveness for this aim, whereas the specific objectives are to identify the commitment of the subjects in the activities proposed and to assess the effectiveness of the use of active methods in the discipline construction. The theoretical background is regarding digital education transformation, active teaching methods and action research. As for the qualitative perspective, the methodological approach of choice was that of participant observation (for data collection) and content analysis.

It was possible to highlight the awakening of critical sense and the effectiveness of action research in enhancing the protagonism of the master's degree students in the construction of their own knowledge.

This study not only contributes to the field of applied social sciences but also opens a precedent for the experience of collective construction of a discipline in another area of knowledge by means of action research. Another factor demonstrating the relevance of this study is the production of essays and articles by master's degree students in which active methodologies were related to themes of interest.

The purpose of this paper is to describe Monash Health’s development of a Policy and Procedure on the abuse of older people in metropolitan Australia. Monash Health is a public healthcare network that consists of six public hospitals and over 40 community health care sites throughout the South East of Melbourne.

An Action Research Action Learning approach was employed to develop a comprehensive set of policy and procedure documents to ensure that Monash Health became compliant with the State Government’s expectations around responding to the abuse of older people in a consistent manner.

Almost 90,000 Monash Health hospital admissions per year are older people aged over 65 years. Senior Monash Health management recognized that staff did not have adequate information, education and resources to consistently identify and respond to situations of elder abuse. What is more, the existing internal Monash Health document Supporting Older People at Risk did not meet obligations stated in the Victorian Government’s Elder Abuse Strategy (2009).

The project’s emphasis upon participatory action research, cooperative inquiry and action learning further resulted in the identification of an opportunity to develop a strategic response to violence and abuse for all patients of Monash Health, not just older people.

This paper presents the results of my learning using my expertise in teacher-research mentoring to address the needs of pre-service teachers and the requirements of the action research course in English language teaching. It reflects on the different procedures of my mentoring model, enriched by the dialogic research mentoring strategies informed by Freire's dialogic pedagogy.

Through this first-person action research, the author aims to improve her teacher-research mentoring practice. As an inquiry into her own actions, the author examines her experiences, her understanding of them, and the potential meaning for her work as a teacher-research mentor during the two years she tutored the action research course. The author explores the procedures of the mentoring model she developed and the effectiveness of dialogic research mentoring in promoting critical consciousness and taking positive action in pre-service English language teachers.

Effective actualization of the teacher-research mentoring process facilitates mentors' refinement and understanding of their roles during teacher-research mentoring. Perceived barriers can be overcome by adopting nine relevant strategies, which can be grouped into three themes: community-building, nurturing competencies, and fostering growth. Accordingly, the research mentoring model incorporates these strategies.

The insights enriched the existing knowledge of the dynamics of mentoring in general and of teacher-research in particular. Additionally, the study offers strategies developed based on my informed actions as the researcher to attain more effective outcomes during the research mentoring process.