PRACTICES 420 This chapter tells the story of our explicit decision to introduce participation as a key feature of a large-scale, multi-year, US-based research project to study social change lead- ership. We invited those who would have been the ‘subjects’ of the research to co- inquire about their experience of leadership. Embracing participation opened up and enriched the research in many ways. It also generated tensions and challenges that would have been absent had we followed a more traditional qualitative research path. Given the action turn, more and more qualitative researchers are including elements of action research in their work, yet this marriage is not straightforward. We provide hard-earned insights about the trade-offs of combining these approaches. The research took place as part of a foun- dation-funded recognition program for social change leaders. Our decision to make the research participatory grew out of our posi- tion at the center of several competing inter- ests: of participants, ourselves and our research community, and the funder. Choosing to honor each of these relation- ships led to a hybrid design that combined elements of action research and traditional 28 Taking the Action Turn: Lessons from Bringing Participation to Qualitative Research Sonia Ospina, Jennifer Dodge, Erica Gabrielle Foldy and Amparo Hofmann-Pinilla This chapter tells the story of our decision to introduce participation as a key feature of a qualitative research project about social change leadership. We analyze the context that influ- enced our choice to create a ‘hybrid’ design; discuss the subsequent choices we made about our ‘positionality’ vis-à-vis research participations and the kind of knowledge we produced; and reflect on the tensions these choices created with respect to control over the research process, its action orientation, and whose voice was represented. Embracing participation enriched the research but also provided hard-earned lessons about the trade-offs of taking the action turn. Reason & Bradbury (2e)-3562-Ch-28.qxd 9/24/2007 5:35 PM Page 420