Qualitative Research in Business and Management

Emma Bell is Professor of Organisation Studies at the Open University. Her research explores culture and materiality in organizations using qualitative methods of inquiry. She is the author of: Business Research Methods (2018 with Alan Bryman and Bill Harley), A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Management Research (2013 with Richard Thorpe) and Reading Management and Organization in Film (2008). She is co-editor of The Organisation of Craft Work: Identities, Meanings and Materiality (2018), Major Works in Qualitative Research in Business and Management (2015) and The Routledge Companion to Visual Organization (2014).  Emma’s research has been published in journals including Organization Studies, Human Relations, Academy of Management Learning & Education, Organization and British Journal of Management. She completed her PhD at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2000 based on an ethnographic study of payment systems and time in the chemical industry.

Enlightening, provocative, argumentative, and formidably perceptive, this collection conveys the richness and complexity of organizational life while also holding the keys to its amelioration. While qualitative research studies in organization and management may still be outnumbered by their quantitative counterparts, we can see here how and why they hold the upper hand in transforming theory and practice.

• VOLUME ONE: CLASSICAL AND CONTEMPORARY STUDIESBanana Time: Job Satisfaction and Informal Interaction - Donald RoyPerceptions and Methods in Men Who Manage - Melville DaltonMen and Women of the Corporation - Rosabeth KanterManufacturing Consent - Michael BurawoyBreakfast at Spiro’s: Dramaturgy and Dominance - Michael RosenThe World of Corporate Managers - Robert JackallEngineering Humour: Masculinity Joking and Conflict in Shop-Floor Relations - David CollinsonExtract from Crafting Selves: Power Gender and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace - Dorinne KondoEngineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High-Tech Corporation - Gideon KundaTheorizing Managerial Work: A Pragmatic Pluralist Approach to Interdisciplinary Research - Tony WatsonRational Choice Situated Action and the Social Control of Organizations: The Challenger Launch Decision - Diane VaughanStrategizing as Lived Experience and Strategists - Dalvir Samra-FredericksPower Control and Resistance in ‘The Factory that Time Forgot’ - Mahmoud Ezzamel et al.Extract from Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job - Julian OrrExtract from The Business of Talk: Organizations in Action - Diedre BodenExtract from Investigating Small Firms: Nice Work? - Ruth HollidayNarrative Interviewing and Narrative Analysis in a Study of a Cross-Border Merger - Anne-Marie SöderbergSpeech Timing and Spacing: The Phenomenon of Organizational Closure - François Cooren and Gail T. Fairhurst,VOLUME TWO: METHODS APPROACHES TECHNIQUES: GUIDES AND EXEMPLARSThe Infeasibility of Invariant Laws in Management Studies: A Reflective Dialogue in Defence of Case Studies - Tsuyoshi NumagamiThe Interview: From Neutral Stance to Political Involvement - Andrea Fontana and James FreyRethinking Observation: From Method to Context - Michael Agrosino et al.Notes on (Field) notes - James CliffordThe Textual Approach: Risk and Blame in Disaster Sensemaking - Robert GephartTriangulation in Organizational Research: A Re-presentation - Julie Wolfram Cox and John HassardThe Storytelling Organization: A Study of Performance in an Office Supply Firm - David BojeSemiotics and the Study of Occupational and Organizational Cultures - Stephen BarleyThe Use of Grounded Theory for the Qualitative Analysis of Organizational Behaviour - Barry TurnerReflecting on the Strategic Use of CAQDAS to Manage and Report on the Qualitative Research Process - Mark Wickham and Megan WoodsLongitudinal Field Research on Change - Andrew PettigrewHistorical Perspectives in Organization Studies: Factual Narrative and Archeo-Genealogical - Michael RowlinsonAction Research: Explaining the Diversity - Cathy Cassell and Phil JohnsonPhotography and Voice in Critical Qualitative Management Research - Samantha WarrenMoments Mixed Methods and Paradigm Dialogues - Norman DenzinVOLUME THREE: PRACTICES AND PREOCCUPATIONSExtract from The Discipline and Practice of Qualitative Research - Norman Denzin and Yvonna LincolnLearning to Be a Qualitative Management Researcher - Catherine Cassell et al.Getting In Getting On Getting Out and Getting Back - David Buchanan et al.Reflections on the Researcher-Researched Relationship: A Woman Interviewing Men - Terry ArendellReal-Time Reflexivity: Prods to Reflection - Karl WeickTowards an Integrative Reflexivity in Organizational Research - Leah Tomkins and Virginia EatoughAppealing Work: An Investigation of How Ethnographic Texts Convince - Karen Golden-Biddle and Karen LockeThe Philosophy and Politics of Quality in Qualitative Organizational Research - John Amis and Michael SilkObjectivity and Reliability in Qualitative Analysis: Realist Contextualist and Radical Constructionist Epistemologies - Anna Madill et al.Whatever Happened to Organizational Ethnography: A Review of the Field of Organizational Ethnography and Anthropological Studies - S.P. BateWorking with Pluralism: Determining Quality in Qualitative Research - Mark Easterby-Smith, Karen Golden-Biddle and Karen LockeThe Role of the Researcher: An Analysis of Narrative Position in Organisation Theory - Mary Jo HatchThe Professional Apprentice: Observations of Fieldwork Roles in Two Organizational Settings - John Van Maanen and Deborah KolbIn Defense of Being “Native”: The Case for Insider Academic Research - Teresa Brannick and David CoghlanEthics and Ethnography - Robert DingwallExtract from Qualitative Methods in Management Research - Evert GummessonMaking Sense as a Personal Process - Judi MarshallMy Affair with the “Other”: Identity Journeys across the Research-Practice Divide - Laura EmpsonVOLUME FOUR: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTSSecrecy and Disclosure in Fieldwork - Richard MitchellOrganization Science as Social Construction: Postmodern Potentials - Kenneth Gergen and Tojo Joseph ThatchenkerryFarewell to Criteriology - Thomas SchwandtReflexive Inquiry in Organizational Research: Questions and Possibilities - Ann CunliffeThe Action Turn: Towards a Transformational Social Science - Peter Reason and William TorbertSigning My Life Away? Researching Sex and Organization - Joanna BrewisEvaluating Qualitative Management Research: Towards a Contingent Criteriology - Phil Johnson et al.Postcolonialism and the Politics of Qualitative Research in International Business - Gavin Jack and Robert WestwoodOrganization Studies and Epistemic Coloniality in Latin America: Thinking Otherness from the Margins - Eduardo Ibbaro-ColadoFitting Oval Pegs into Round Holes: Tensions in Evaluating and Publishing Qualitative Research in Top-Tier North American Journals - Michael PrattHegemonic Academic Practices: Experiences of Publishing from the Periphery - Susan Meriläinen et al.,Case Study as Disciplinary Convention: Evidence from International Business Journals - Rebecca Piekkari, Catherine Welsh and Eriikka PaavilainenManagerialism and Management Research: Would Melville Dalton Get a Job Today? - Emma BellWays of constructing research questions: gap-spotting or problematization? - Jörgen Sandberg and Mats Alvesson