Mirror, Mirror Outside My Wall: Reflexive Impacts of Insider/Outsider Collaborative Inquiry on the Insider Researcher

Abstract

Based to a considerable extent on Margaret Archer’s approach to reflexive agency, we discuss a multi-year insider/outsider research collaboration that has taken place in a University-based Centre designed to bring academics and management practitioners together to conduct applied research and learn from each other. We focus in particular on the experiences of the insider researcher, showing how, based on her reflexive practice, the collaboration has led to both scholarly contributions and changes in practice in the Centre and her University. In doing so, we flesh out the importance of reflexivity and its important impacts on academic-practitioner collaborations. In long-term insider/outsider collaborations that provide psychologically safe places, outsider researchers can metaphorically hold a mirror up to insider researchers that foster their reflexivity and its subsequent impacts.