It can be argued that research on management development should include qualitative research such as narrative inquiry. Narrative inquiry involves an interest in lived experiences as narrated by those who live them (Chase cited in Denzin & Lincoln, 2011). How the researcher conducted the qualitative research was based on beliefs about the nature of the social world and the nature of knowledge, which was summarised in the research philosophy of constructivism. This present study lends itself towards qualitative research as it meets Bogan and Biklen’s (1998, p. 29-33) five features of qualitative research: research has the natural setting as the direct source of data, research is descriptive, researchers are concerned with the process, data is analysed inductively and ‘meaning’ is of a concern. In qualitative research, knowledge can come from the researcher or a participant's interpretations of information instead of through statistical analyses of causal relationships (Horn, 2004). This means that in qualitative research the theory emerges from the collected data (Horn, 2004).
It is suggested that a qualitative approach is applied to management development research due to its complexity (Cohen, et al., 2007), making a qualitative approach relevant for this present study. Management development research involves context and enormous complexities (Berliner, 2002) as it is an “analytical practice that focuses on the process required to produce a valid explanation of educational phenomena” (Bulterman-Bos, 2008, p. 413).
This present study methodology section includes interpreting the expression ‘lived experience’, narrative inquiry and the relationship between the researcher and the participant. The terms ‘narrative inquiry’ and ‘narrative research’ are used interchangeably in the literature (Clandinin, 2007). The term ‘narrative inquiry’ is applied here as it involves the research of experience as a story, but it is mainly a way of thinking about an experience (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006). Narrative inquirers concur that narrative inquiry is the research of experience (Clandinin, 2006; Pinnegar, Danes & Gary, 2007; Thomas, 2012).
3.3.1 Interpreting lived experience
Experience is clearly a complex, constructed reality as it concerns the processes, which include feelings, perceptions and memories as they occur from moment to moment (Jourard, 1971). The expression ‘lived experience’ or Erlebnis in German is borrowed from philosophical German. Stories about experience are normally stories that participants keep to themselves (Grumet, 1991), as a lived experience is not something that is apparent (Dilthey, 1985). Dilthey highlighted the importance of understanding or verstehen in German in social research and the emphasis on lived experiences to see the context in which certain actions take place (Ritchie & Lewis, 2003). In this sense, then, lived experience is personal (Gadamer, 1975). Schutz (1967) argues; however, that meaning does not lie in the experience. Rather, those experiences are only deemed fully meaningful when they are grasped reflectively. In the context of this present study, lived experience can, therefore, only be fully recognised once the BDAL project has been completed and the participants have had time to reflect on their learning.
Memory is an essential entity in narratives as it enables the construction of the narrative. Hinchman and Hinchman (1997) describe memory as the home of narratives. “What counts as a lived experience ... is meant as a unity [and] constitutes itself in memory” (Gadamer, 1975, p. 60). We could say that memory could impact on the recollection of the lived experience and the participant could struggle with finding the lexicon to articulate their lived experience was overcome by the decision to apply hand-drawn images as a research method. It should be noted that experience is not a transparent window on the participant’s world (Braun & Clarke, 2006), and it is difficult to articulate learning.
3.3.2 Narrative inquiry
People shape their daily lives by stories of who they and others are and how they interpret their past in terms of these stories. Story, in the current idiom, is a portal through which a person enters the world and by which their experience of the world is interpreted and made personally meaningful (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006). Narrative inquiry investigates what happened, the importance of that and
how it is conveyed (Thomas, 2012). The essence of narrative inquiry is a "constellation of stories" (Craig, 2009, p. 604) that includes a thick description of events (Clandinin, 2007). Polkinghorne (2007) writes that narrative inquiry confirms how people understand others and themselves. It is through narratives that the world is viewed and understood (Bruner, 1986; Clandinin & Connelly 2000; Coles 1989; Wortham, 2001). Narrative inquiry reveals the meaning of the participants' experiences, as opposed to objective truths (Bailey & Tilley, 2002).
Narrative inquiry was the choice of qualitative methodology in this present study to allow the researcher to study participants lived experience of BDAL (Clandinin & Huber, 2002) as human experience can be expressed as a storied life. Atkinson (cited in Clandinin, 2007, p. 224) wrote that “we are the storytelling species. Storytelling is in our blood. We think in story form, speak in story form, and bring meaning to our lives through story.” Narrative inquiry benefits those involved in management development as it helps to understand the depth and richness of learning and change, which can occur because of adopting an action learning approach (Ruane, 2016).
Educational experiences, including management development experiences, ought to be studied narratively (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), as participants are storytelling organisms who lead storied lives both individually and socially. In addition, narrative inquiry is a methodology that has an extended academic history both in and out of education (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) therefore meeting the context of this present study. Narrative inquiry as a research methodology brings, “theoretical ideas about the nature of human life as lived to bear on educational experience as lived” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990, p. 3). Ruane (2018) in her PhD on participants’ learning experiences on a postgraduate executive action learning programme also applied a narrative inquiry.
Time and context are what distinguishes narrative inquiry from other forms of qualitative research (Simms, 2003). Ricoeur (in Simms, 2003) calls this the ‘threefold present’ where the past, present and future co-exist in the current story. How time potentially transforms the interpretation is fundamental to the construction of narratives in this present study, as there may have been a significant gap in time for the participant between the BDAL experience and the
drawing of the image prior to the in-depth interview. This significant gap of time is important to meet one of Hoggan’s (2016) criterion of relative stability of transformative learning.
In this present study, narratives are an entry point for examining research sub- question one (Q1): To what extent did participants experience individual transformative learning during BDAL? Participants who have had a BDAL experience have important stories to tell. Most importantly, there is a call to research stories from an action learning experience. Ruane (2016) concluded that there is lack of clarity in literature of participants’ stories concerning their experiences during programmes that include action learning.
3.3.3 The relationship between researcher and participant
The participant and the research play a significant role in qualitative research as both contribute to the data. In this present study, the relationship between the researcher and the participant influences the storytelling through the level of collaboration (Bell, 2009; Chase, 2010; Riessman, 2008). The researcher is not separate from the participant in narrative inquiry, as the narrative inquiry process requires a joint construction of the story as it involves a relationship between the researcher and participants (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Ellis & Bohner, 2000).
In this present study, the researcher becomes part of the story as the researcher co-writes the narrative with the participant in the form of an interpretive story. The narrator, who is the participant in the research, chooses what to share, what to limit, what to emphasise and the listener, who is the researcher, chooses what to hear, include and structure the final written story, called the interpretive story. It is virtually impossible for the researcher to be separate from the narrative inquiry.
A kaleidoscope of understanding will be the end result (De Cock, 1998), all of which are deemed true at that particular time and situation: “Who we take ourselves to be at any one point in time depends on the available storylines” (Davies, 1993, p. 4). This means that the research requires a tolerance for paradox and ambiguity, as stories are characterised by multiple voices, perspectives, truths and meanings.