In 1996, Coghlan noted the absence of relevant reading materials for his students pursuing a

Master of Professional Practice Degree. He developed notes for his sessions, picking up on
the issues the students raised, and began to frame what he termed “insider action
research.” This led to the publication of Doing Action Research in Your Own Organization,
coauthored with Brannick; their book is now recognized as a core text for action researchers
undertaking insider action research around the world. Insider action research is understood
as action research that is undertaken by complete members of an organization in order to
inquire into the workings of their own organizational system and bring about achange
through first-, second-, and third-person inquiry (Coghlan and Brannick 2014). In the age of
ongoing professional development and education, interest in insider action research as a
way of examining the application of extant theory to practice and generating
insightstowardactionableknowledgehasincreased.Withthisinterest,insideraction research
has gained a place on MBA programs and as a method for doctoral research giving rise to a
raft of publications from diverse areas such as industry, education, healthcare, and social
work including manager-led and practitioner-led projects (Coghlan and Brannick 2014).
Coghlan and Brannick framed the key issues and challenges associated with insider action
research as preunderstanding, role duality, and organizational politics, each of which may
reflect strengths and challenges in terms of being within and knowing the system and
challenges in terms of difficulties in identifying and interrogating theories in use. Through his
insider action research writing, Coghlan introduced practitioners to the world of OD and
action research. This is particularly

306G. Hynes

significant in sectors such as healthcare, where different professional groups face the
challenges of introducing change or developing practice within a complex system without
any prior OD training and experience and often with minimal training in change
management. Since the first edition, Coghlan has built a body of work around insider action
research, addressing theoretical, practical, and organizational themes. He has since
incorporated his Lonergan-based ideas as underpinning knowing in action and first-person
inquiry in insider action research writing, bringing a focus on practical knowing, first-person
inquiry, and the scholar practitioner.

Encyclopedia of Action Research

In 2010, Sage invited Coghlan to be the lead editor on a proposed Encyclopedia of Action
Research. Coghlan approached Mary Brydon-Miller, whose field is participatory action
research, to coedit, and they built an editorial group representing a spread of expertise in
the field of action research. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research was published in
2014 with 320 entries, bringing the increasingly diffuse and dynamic nature of action
research and the settings in which it is undertaken together for the first time. The
encyclopedia explored the entire area of action research and included an examination of
theoretical and methodological trends in the field. It also offered insight into the diffusion of
action research, the relationships between different modalities, and the relevance of
philosophical concepts to actionoriented inquiry (Brydon-Miller and Coghlan 2014; Dick
2015; Greenwood 2015.)
Editorship and Heritage

Coghlan was invited to contribute to the Academy of Management Annals with a paper
about action research in which he provided a rich exploration of action research, its history,
the varieties of its expression, and its rejected place in the academy (Coghlan 2011). In a
separate publication, Coghlan traced the history, modes of expression, and evolving
relationship of OD and action research (Coghlan
2012).HealsocollaboratedwithShaniintwofour-volumesetsthatbrought together
theseminalpapersintherespectivefieldsoforganizationdevelopment(Coghlanand Shani 2010)
and action research in business and management (Coghlan and Shani 2016). These volumes
mapped the terrain in both fields and, in so doing, provided researchers with a foundation
on the breadth, richness, and depth of OD and action research. They also captured the OD
and action research narrative as both fields developed over the years. In OD, they offered
seven core characteristics that – though understood differently by different generations –
remain core, namely, OD as continually evolving, OD as reflexive, OD as collaborative
research, OD work as embedded in relationships, OD as relevant in any context, and
educating for OD. Of the five special issues for OD journals that Coghlan edited or coedited,
one – completed in 1995 for the Journal of Managerial Psychology, with Schein and Argyris
among the contributors – focused on action science and organizational

19David Coghlan: The World of the Scholar Practitioner and Practical Knowing 307

research. Other special issues included those mentioned earlier (Coghlan and Shani 2009),
which addressed the scholar practitioner – focusing on Schein’s work – as well as Action
Research on insider action research (Coghlan and Holian 2007). Coghlan guest-edited a
special Organization Development Journal issue on OD in voluntary organizations in 1996
and a special issue on “Grandmasters of OD” in 1997. This was a novel undertaking, whereby
he invited those whom he considered to be OD grandmasters to contribute their reflections
on 30 years in the field. This issue became the most sought-after and reprinted issue of that
journal. In 2006, Coghlan coedited another special edition, this time with Joe McDonagh on
OD and IT (McDonagh and Coghlan 2001.)