Writing a blog for the Actor-Reality Construction network could be both rewarding and impactful.
Firstly, the reward comes from many sources (which are of course subjectively defined). In my own case, I think the reward could be an intellectual debate, possibly sparked by a single idea that would be in its infancy (i.e. not necessarily publishable in peer-reviewed scientific outlets, yet) but still intriguing for our network members. Let me take an example, in Berlin meeting, in March/2019, we discussed pragmatic constructivism from a very bottom-up perspective. That is to say, while meeting participants shared their recent research agenda and findings, the chairman (in this case Teemu Laine) started to construct a visual summary of the debate. While I assume the visual summary needs to be revised and revised again in order to become a vastly useful tool for pragmatic constructivism, it sure sparked discussion! (Thank you Hanne and Lennart Nørreklit, Jakob Liboriussen, Morten Jakobsen, Lino Cinquini and Andrea Tenucci, for your valuable contributions to the discussion!) A similar, preliminary but again intriguing idea could spark a discussion among the network. Who knows which kind of possibilities there are ahead of us!
Secondly, the impact could be (again depending on the author) either academic or practitioner-oriented. On the academic side: new academically interesting ideas could be discussed and sort of “tested” among the network, perhaps long before peer-review submissions. This would be very welcome peer support that at least I would be interested in. How I see it, an ongoing discussion among the network has been considered to be very important, be it a book co-authoring exercise or the development of our working teams. A blog, in my vision, would not replace any of such discussions but provide an extra channel for this discussion to emerge. On the managerial side: while academic journals might not be continuously read by a wide managerial audience, a blog post could reach these managers more easily, and with a concise and useful message. So there could be many types of blog posts, with perhaps different target audiences – and with different impacts respectively.
So if you’re interested in writing a blog on this ARC network website, please contact me! 🙂
Tuomas