Handbook of Qualitative Organizational Research

Innovative Pathways and Methods

Kimberly D. Elsbach, Roderick M. Kramer, Kimberly D. Elsbach, Roderick M. Kramer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317908777
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art, innovative approaches to qualitative research for organizational scholars. Individual chapters in each area are written by experts in a variety of fields, who have contributed some of the most innovative studies themselves in recent years. An indispensable reference guide to anyone conducting high-impact organizational research, this handbook includes innovative approaches to research problems, data collection, data analysis and interpretation, and application of research findings. The book will be of interest to scholars and graduate students in a wide variety of disciplines, including anthropology, organizational behavior, organizational theory, social psychology, and sociology

Part I Introduction, History, and Context of Qualitative Methods

1 Introduction In Search of Innovative Pathways and Methods in Qualitative Research

Kimberly D. Elsbach and Roderick M. Kramer

DOI: 10.4324/9781315849072-2

It is our pleasure to introduce this collection of 43 original essays, all of which focus on the most innovative qualitative methods currently in use in the organizational sciences. This is the first handbook to provide a comprehensive compilation and overview of the latest innovative approaches to qualitative research specifically aimed at organizational scholars.

Inspiration for the Volume

There were several sources of inspiration that motivated this volume. First and foremost was a thoughtful and provocative article by Jean Bartunek, Sara Rynes, and Duane Ireland that appeared in the Academy of Management Journal in 2006. This article published a list of the 17 most interesting organizational papers published in the last 100 years. These papers were identified by Academy of Management Journal board members—all of whom are leading organizational scholars cognizant of the best work being done in their respective areas. A total of 67 board members nominated 160 articles as exceptionally interesting; those articles that received two or more nominations were deemed the most interesting. Of these exceptional articles, 12 (71%) involved qualitative methods.

This result strongly mirrors our own experience as organizational researchers. Although both of us have used a variety of methods in our organizational research (ranging from experimental lab studies and surveys to computer-based, agent simulations), our favorite studies by far have been our qualitative studies (including those we have done together). One of the qualities we have come to most appreciate, even cherish, about qualitative research is the sense of discovery and the opportunity for genuine intellectual surprise. Rather than merely seeking to confirm a preordained hypothesis or “nail down” an extrapolation drawn from the extant literature, our inductive studies, we found, invariably opened up exciting, unexpected intellectual doors and pointed us toward fruitful empirical paths for further investigation. In short, if life is largely all about the journey rather than destination, as the adage asserts, we've found qualitative research most often gave us a road we wanted to follow.

Together, then, our own experiences, along with the findings of Bartunek, Rynes, and Ireland, led us to wonder about the use of qualitative methods to produce such an overrepresentation of stimulating and thought-provoking papers. In particular, we were interested in learning more about how purveyors of qualitative methods used innovative approaches to data collection, design, analysis, and interpretation on the way to their discoveries.

To help us pursue this objective, we enlisted the aid of over 80 scholars—each an expert in a particular qualitative method or approach. These scholars, who include both seasoned veterans of the methodology as well as those new to the practice, represent the cutting edge in qualitative organizational research. Each of these experts has published empirical articles using his or her particular methods, and, as a collection, these articles are at the vanguard of new and creative methodological approaches that have not (yet) been recognized in the mainstream literature. Thus, they are uniquely suited to provide insight on how qualitative methods can best serve those who, like them, seek pathways to cool ideas and interesting papers.

Organization of the Volume

The volume is organized around a variety of broad, major themes suggested to us by the contributors. These include innovations in research settings, research designs, forms of data, data collection, data analysis, and multimethod approaches. The volume also includes an introductory section providing a rich history and context for these methods, as well as a final chapter outlining the challenges and opportunities facing qualitative researchers in the years to come. We briefly describe these book sections next.

The history and context of qualitative organizational research. This section includes two chapters that set the stage for the volume by providing up-to-date accounts of how and where qualitative methods have been used in organizational scholarship. Chapter 2, by Rynes and Bartunek, picks up where their original AMJ article left off and provides convincing evidence that qualitative methods continue to produce some of the most innovative and interesting papers in organizational research. Chapter 3, by Mauskapf and Hirsch, provides a detailed historical account of the trajectory of qualitative methods, reflecting trends in opportunities, agendas, and technologies available to organizational scholars. Both of these chapters help to validate the notion that qualitative methods do, in fact, produce cool ideas and interesting papers. The following sections of the book illustrate the specific ways in which that may be done.

Innovative research settings. This section includes six chapters that describe how researchers may leverage innovative research settings through qualitative methods. Chapter 4, by Chen, examines the use of extreme cases in qualitative research, addressing some common criticisms of their use and providing guidance in how best to leverage them in developing theory. Chapter 5, by Fayard, Van Maanen, and Weeks, explores the use of corporate settings for conducting contract ethnography (i.e., ethnography that is sponsored by the corporation being studied) and argues that the entanglements that arise from such arrangements (e.g., diverging interests of ethnographer and corporation) may actually provide unique insights and open up innovative ways of doing ethnography. Chapter 6, by Snook and Khurana, describes how the elite business school is an apt setting for studying leaders (whom they call “elites”) and may fill important gaps in our understanding of how and why leaders act. Chapter 7, by Rogers, Toubiana, and DeCelles, examines unconventional research contexts (e.g., prisons) and discusses how some “less objective” approaches to data collection (such as feeling emotion and showing encouragement) might be useful in gaining insight in these settings. Chapter 8, by Walsh and Bartunek, discusses the value in studying novel phenomena (i.e., phenomena that one encounters that currently are undefined or unexplored—such as the authors’ encounters with organizations that have an “afterlife”) and provides a set of tools for gaining the most from such studies. Finally, Chapter 9, by Zilber, provides an ethnographic technique for examining organizational fields (i.e., the social space between organizations and societies), which should help researchers gain insight about this elusive, interorganizational phenomena. Together, these chapters provide guidance to researchers studying problems that are often only observable in unique (and at times, intractable) research contexts.

Innovative research designs. This section includes nine chapters that focus on creative research designs that may be used with qualitative methods. Chapter 10, by Haedicke and Hallet, describes how qualitative research designs may be the key to uncovering the recursive relationships identified by researchers of “inhabited institutionalism.” They identify how a move toward inductive research is critical to understanding the process of institutionalism that defines this new perspective. Chapter 11, by Anderson, illustrates how a multipronged research design that includes a number of qualitative data collection and analysis techniques (e.g., narrative analysis, visual sorting, and repertory grid analysis) may be ideally suited to the study of entrepreneurial firms that are highly dynamic and informal. Chapter 12, by Hargadon, outlines how the construction of microhistorical case studies (i.e., case studies of the thoughts and actions of individuals in the past) may be an effective research design for exploring larger historical phenomena (e.g., how breakthroughs unfolded in scientific communities). Chapter 13, by Harrington, describes how the research design of “immersion ethnography” may be effective, where less intensive methods fail, in studying the behavior of elites (e.g., CEOs) in organizations. Chapter 14, by Evans, Huising, and Silbey, discusses how research designs that involve “team ethnography” (i.e., in-place data collection by a team of individuals) may improve descriptive, interpretive, and theoretical validity beyond that achieved through individual ethnography. Chapter 15, by Livne-Tarandach, Hawbaker, Lahneman Boren, and Jones, presents a framework for using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (i.e., a method of comparing numerous case studies or dealing with large amounts of qualitative data) as a research design to provide validity to qualitative findings and to connect qualitative and quantitative data in theory development. Chapter 16, by Bechky and O'Mahony, examines how research designs involving comparative qualitative field studies (i.e., multiple studies of the same general phenomena across distinct contexts) may be exceptionally useful for developing novel insight about processes, improving the generalizability of findings, a...