Action Research - przygotowanie sądu do zmiany poprzez uczenie się - współpraca praktyków i badaczy
Action Research (AR) is not only the research method or strategy but also the efficient tool supporting knowledge developmentand the introduction of changes in the organization. The aim of using AR is to induce changes in a given area or to convince theparticipants to initiate such changes, in a way that the researcher and the subject expert collaborate to diagnose the problemand find the solution to it. The cooperation of researchers, practitioners, and laymen is the primary assumption while applying the AR approach. The goal of such cooperation is to collect data derived from everyday practice systematically, to analyzethese that data and decide as for the future shape of that practice. The research presented in this paper has been carried outin a public organization, namely the District Court in Gdansk. It referred to the extrajudicial and pro-social activities of thatCourt. Such research aimed to bring the answer to the question of whether the courts as public organizations can undertakepro-social activities, and if yes – what should be the area of such actions. The research was carried out between June 2013 andMarch 2018, i.e., for almost five years.The research methods included: observations of the internal changes in the organization, interviews with the court management, conversations with different groups of stakeholders as well as a quantitative study of their opinions about the quality of thecooperation with that court. The analysis of the results confirms that firstly it is possible to apply the Action Research approachin public organizations, and secondly, that intervention resulting from the use of this research method is effective. It is worthto stress that the pro-social actions initiated by the research are continued despite the change in management of the court andsome political changes as well. One may say that those actions became a part of the organizational routine.The results achieved through that research supplement knowledge on the possibility of carrying out the pro-social actionsby the public organizations, in particular by courts. They fall within the scope of the strategic management discipline and thepublic administration sub-discipline.
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