Sociaal onderzoek en beleid: de interveniërende variabele "onderzoeksstructuur"

Samenvatting

In the sociology of organizations, outside consultants are assumed to be superior to internal researchers as agents of change & policy-making. 75% of all behavioral research in US industry, is conducted by outside consultants. In an analysis of 120 organizations in the Netherlands, industrial relations (40), Urban planning (40), & social welfare & public health (40), projects of applied social research conducted by external & internal researchers are compared with respect to their impact on organizational policy-making. Analysis of variance for testing differences between "over-all policy impact-scores" leads to the following conclusions: (1) change agents themselves are not the most accurate source for appraising their influence on organizational decision-making--policy makers being more knowledgeable, (2) the location of the investigated problem, within the organization or in its task-environment, acts as an intervening variable in utilizing applied social research, (3) applied social research conducted by outside consultants has a significantly lower impact upon organizational policy-making than projects conducted by inside researchers, & (4) due to higher rates of communication & consensus between researcher & policy-maker, the 'context' of the internal researcher is better adjusted to the incremental structure of organizational policy-making. 4 Appendices present information about sampling, research procedure & scores. 2 Tables, 1 Figure, 4 Appendices. AA.