‘When shall we three Meet Again’ PPRIG as a Practitioner–Practitioner–Researcher Collaboration Approach

This paper presents, discusses, and illustrates the practitioner–practitioner–researcher inquiry group (PPRIG) as a novel collaborative research approach involving practitioners as active partners instead of passive informants. Based on involvement of inside and outside practitioners vis-à-vis a particular organization, PPRIG taps into outside practitioners' specific potential for alternative ways of observing, reflecting, and sense-making, to better explore and understand the how and why of management phenomena and to develop practical solutions. By systematically adding an outside practitioner perspective to the widespread insider (practitioner) and outsider (researcher) perspective in collaborative research, PPRIG responds to certain key criticisms of collaborative methods by giving precise guidelines for achieving such collaboration. PPRIG thus complements and extends existing research methods in the field of collaborative research. Moreover, by addressing the communication and collaboration challenges with a structured three-step approach, it addresses key criticisms and answers fundamental questions about how to conduct collaboration between researchers and practitioners.