Composing Qualitative Research

Karen Golden-Biddle is Professor of Organizational Behavior and Everett W. Lord Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Boston University School of Management.  She currently serves as Senior Associate Dean, with responsibility for faculty, research and curricular innovation at the undergraduate and graduate levels. In her research, Karen studies organizational and system change, and has published more than 50 articles and two books: Composing Qualitative Research (Golden-Biddle and Locke, 2007) and Using a Positive Lens to Explore Social Change and Organizations (Golden-Biddle and Dutton, 2012). Her most recent article (2013), "How to change your organization without blowing it up," is published in Sloan Management Review. Karen is the recipient of a number of teaching awards and was the 2003 recipient of the Robert McDonald Award for the Advancement of Research Methodology from the Academy of Management. She received her BA degree from Denison University and MBA and PhD degrees from Case Western Reserve University.  Karen studies organizational and system transformation, and is especially interested in highly professionalized settings such as healthcare and universities with socially significant missions. Karen Locke is W. Brooks George Professor of Business Administration at the College of William and Mary’s school of business, where she is a member of the management area. She joined the faculty there in 1989 after earning her Ph.D in organizational behavior from Case Western Reserve University. Her work focuses on developing a sociology of knowledge in organizational studies with an emphasis on the production of scientific texts and on the use of qualitative research for the investigation of organizational phenomena. She has published in journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, and Studies in Organization, Culture and Society, and has authored Grounded Theory In Management Research. Her current work continues her interest in the processes of qualitative researching and focuses on exploring and explicating their creative and imaginative dimensions. Karen also serves as an associate action editor for Organizational Research Methods and as a member of the editorial board of Academy of Management Journal.

"For professionals and students in the social sciences and management, Golden-Biddle and Locke explain how to transform field work experience of qualitative research into journal articles."

• IntroductionWriting about WritingWriting our FieldworkFocus on “Story”Organization of ChaptersThe Style and Practice of Our Academic WritingThe Predominant Style of Academic Writing: Unadorned and DisembodiedExperiencing the Practice of Academic WritingThe Style and Practice of Academic Writing: Interested and Persuasive DiscourseOur Writing TaskCrafting a Theorized StorylineEstablishing Theorized StorylinesDeveloping the Theorized StorylineCompelling BeginningsNovel Use of MethodologyData-Theory CouplingStorylines with Field and Theory ComplicationsCharacterizing the StorytellerStoryteller in the Guise of Institutional and Human ScientistInstitutional and Human Storyteller in Relationship to the StudiedInstitutional and Human Portrayals as Technically Competent StorytellerInstitutional and Human Scientist as Field Knowledgeable StorytellerRe-Writing the StoryRe-writing the Manuscript Prior to Journal ReviewRe-writing the Manuscript During the Journal Review ProcessRe-writing the Articulated Theorized StorylinesReflections on the Re-Written ManuscriptsConclusionConcluding CommentsAppendix: Articles Used as IllustrationsReferencesIndexAbout the Authors