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Lessons Learned From a 5-Year Project Within the Department of Veterans Affairs

Applying Theories of Interpersonal Aggression and Organizational Justice to the Development and Maintenance of Collaborative Social Space

Teachers College, Columbia University

Joel H. Neuman

State University of New York at New Paltz

Daniel R. Kowalski

Kowalski Consulting and Management LLC

Rita Kowalski

Work Life Consulting LLC

Although much has been written about the importance of generative learning to organizational effectiveness, less is known about the creation and maintenance of the "social space" necessary to foster such learning. This article describes how, as an exercise in sensemaking the authors conceptualized their experience in the establishment and preservation of such space within a 5-year action research project at the United States Department of Veteran Affairs and how theories of interpersonal aggression and organizational justice inform development of this kind of space. To this end, the authors discuss each stage of this process, which was experienced as (a) enrollment (identification of focal issues/needs, enabling conditions, social networks), (b) negotiations leading to peripheral understanding among participants (confronting tensions about methods, data, norms, roles, power, control), (c) the threshold (a "fuzzy boundary" separating collaborative from conventional social space), and (d) the emergence of collaborative social space.

Key Words: generative learning • organizational justice • action research • collaboration • interpersonal aggression and cooperation

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