ABSTRACT
This chapter describes Schein’s notion of clinical inquiry/research, which he describes as an expression of action research where the researcher is invited into the organisation in order to be helpful. Schein has argued that the knowledge obtained by traditional research methods frequently does not reflect what things are really like in organisations and so is inadequate for studying organisational processes. In this chapter, Schein located clinical inquiry/research in relation to other research approaches in terms of levels of researcher and system initiation of and involvement in the research, and he elaborated the clinical perspective of the researcher as focused on helping the system. The questions for study and reflection at the end of the chapter invite the readers to reflect on their own philosophy of research.
