From pragmatist Mary Parker Follett, researchers oriented towards community development as part of their participatory research engagements, may draw inspiration regarding community as process (1919), the evolvement of a situation in circular responding of everyone involved, and Follett’s concept of integrative, creative experience (1924[2013]) as a nodal point in community development and the becoming of selves. ‘Togethering’ a situation in whole-a-making (Ibid.) across occasions, actors, fields, and time, have been explored in diffractive inquiry (Revsbæk & Beavan, forthcoming) drawing on Karen Barad’s diffractive methodology of reading insights through one another (Barad, 2007; 2014) in a proliferating process of continued differencing that brings “inventive provocations” which are “good to think with” (Dolphijn & van der Tuin, 2012, p.50). ‘Togethering situation’ as an integrative attitude of inquiry relevant to participatory research is exemplified, drawing on empirics from an action research collaboration between university-based researchers and social care professionals and managers to improve employee onboarding and induction in a Danish care institution for adults with developmental disabilities. Originated as an attitude of inquiry across fields of research and in creative collaborative writing between different researchers (Revsbæk & Beavan, forthcoming), in participatory research a togethering of situation may be conducted across and including different groups of actors in a case study, across case studies, or across case study situations and those in the research literature. As such, the proposed attitude of inquiry from Mary Parker Follett’s concept of ‘Gesammtsituation’ (1924[2013]), responds to the debated concerns of how to combine postqualitative practices of ‘thinking with theory’ with participatory research aimed in part at community development (Mazzei & Jackson, 2023). Responding to the idea of organizational socialization as kin-work (Gilmore & Harding, 2021), the paper explores the idea of togethering situation for community building in participatory research on organizational onboarding.

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