DRL038 Designing and Executing Engaged Organizational Research (Autumn 2026)

Engaged scholarship has emerged as a key response to the long-standing debate about the gap between theory and practice. It emphasizes participatory research with stakeholders to understand and solve complex organizational problems. Despite the increasing emphasis on impact, industry collaboration, and practice-based research, few PhD courses systematically address the execution and publication phases of engaged organizational research. This PhD course develops candidates’ capacity to design, theorize, and publish engaged organizational research that responds to complex, real-world problem situations in collaboration with key stakeholders. Drawing on the tradition of engaged scholarship and critical engaged research, participants will learn how to develop and translate practice-based problem framings into robust theoretical contributions and publishable outputs. The course is unique as it addresses critical aspects of engaged scholarship, including negotiating access and roles, conducting participatory and reflexive fieldwork, navigating ethical and political complexities, and working with practitioners to co-produce and transform empirical findings into publishable academic contributions. Through seminars, hands-on design workshops, and a practitioner reflection session with experienced industry managers, candidates will learn a broad family of engaged approaches (e.g., action-oriented, critical, and participatory designs) and how different paradigms, modes of engagement, and forms of collaboration affect knowledge production. The course also includes a dedicated module on publishing engaged scholarship in top-ranking journals, equipping students with strategies for positioning, structuring, and defending practice-based contributions.

The course is supported by NORDAB, The Norwegian Doctoral Academy in Business

This course would meet the criterion related to methodology-content of the course package if you are registered to the PhD Logistics program at Molde University College

Knowledge:

At the end of this course, a successful candidate will be able:

• Demonstrate advanced understanding of the principles and methodological foundations of engaged scholarship.
• Explain how organizational, political, and ethical conditions interact and shape research processes in field-based studies.
• Identify expectations and challenges related to publishing engaged scholarship in premier academic journals.

Skills:

At the end of this course, a successful candidate will be able:

• Design feasible and theoretically rigorous research projects in collaboration with real organizations.
• Gain organizational access and negotiate research agreements, NDAs, and collaboration conditions.
• Conduct interviews, observations, shadowing, and document analysis in organizational settings.
• Handle researcher positionality, organizational politics, and changing access conditions.
• Ensure ethical and legal compliance, including GDPR and responsible data governance.
• Develop strong publication strategies for engaged scholarship.

General competence:

At the end of this course, a successful candidate will be able:

• Critically reflect on the researcher's dual role as both a knowledge producer and a collaborator.
• Communicate research value effectively to both academic audiences and practitioners.
• Navigate dilemmas related to academic independence, confidentiality, and co-produced knowledge.

Teaching is designed to be applied and experiential and includes:

• Interactive lectures delivered
• Case discussions
• Fieldwork simulations and role-play
• Practitioner guest session
• Research design consultations

NB: Active participation in person is mandatory.

• Research design portfolio: access strategy, fieldwork plan, stakeholder and risk analysis, ethical assessment, and a revised empirical design. The research design portfolio is developed progressively across modules and integrates access strategy, fieldwork planning, ethical assessment, and publication positioning.
• Oral examination: 40-minute defence of the fieldwork plan and publication strategy.
• Grading scale: A - F