Qualitative Organizational Research
Written by: Gillian Symon and Cathy Cassel
2. Philosophies Underpinning Qualitative Research
Any process of methodological engagement inevitable articulates an attachment to particular
philosophical or metatheoretical commitments that have implications for research design.
- They have practical consequences for the way we do research in terms of our topic,
focus of study, what we see as ‘data’, how we collect and analyse the data, how we
theorize and how we write up our research accounts.
o Methodology includes both philosophical assumptions and the methods.
Epistemology
Episteme means knowledge or science, and logos means ‘knowledge’ ‘information’, ‘theory’
or ‘account’.
- Epistemology is being concerned with the knowledge about knowledge.
o What do we mean by the concept ‘truth’ and how do we know whether or not
some claim is true or false?
The positivist epistemological commitment argues that it is possible to objectively, or
neutrally, observe the social world in order to either test theoretical predictions or to describe
cultural attributes.
- However, the subjectivist argues that in observing the world we inevitably influence
what we see and the notions of truth and objectivity are merely the outcomes of
discursive practices which mask rather than eliminate the researcher’s partiality.
o There is an epistemological choice here which influences the form that
qualitative research takes between an objectivist and a subjectivist
epistemological stance.
Ontology
Ontos means being, and logos means knowledge.
- Ontology is being concerned with the essence of phenomena and the nature of their
existence.
o Does the phenomenon that we are interested in exists independent of our
knowing and perceiving it – or is what we see and usually take to be real an
outcome of these acts of knowing and perceiving?
Realist assumptions entail the view that it exists ‘out there’ independent of our perceptual or
cognitive structures à it is real and it is there potentially awaiting inspection and discovery by
us.
- Subjectivist assumptions entail the view that we take to be social reality is a creation,
or projection, of our consciousness and cognition.
Positivism
The most significant characteristics of positivism are:
1. The claim that science should focus on only directly observable phenomena, with any
reference to the intangible or subjective being excluded as being meaningless.
2. Theories should be tested, in a hypothetico-deductive fashion, by their confrontation
with the facts neutrally gathered from a readily observable external world.
In the hypothetico-deductive method the aim is to produce generalizable knowledge through
the testing of hypothetical prediction deduced from a priori theory.
- It entails the researcher’s priori conceptualization, operationalization and statistical
measurement of dimensions of actors’ behaviour rather than beginning with their
socially dervived (inter)subjective perspective.
Disadvantage of positivism:
- Concern about the lack of attention given to the subjective nature of human thought
and actions.
,Qualitative Neo-positivism
Qualitative positivism or neo-empiricism has a commitment to a theory-neutral observational
language (it is possible to neutrally apprehend the facts ‘out there’), however is based on
personal interaction and subjective experience.
- What is out there is presumed to be independent of the knower and is accessible to
the trained observer or ethnographer following the correct procedures.
o A situation with tension between subjectivist attention to actors’ meanings
and an objective treatment of them as phenomena that exist ‘out there’
independent of observer’s identification of them.
The ideal for neo-positivist qualitative research interviewers as being ‘a maximum,
transparent research process', is characterized by objectivity and neutrality.
- Researchers attempt to remove themselves from the process, presenting instead an
objective picture, free from the potential taint of their assumptions and values.
Interpretivism
Prasad (2005: 13) suggests that ‘all interpretive traditions emerge from a scholarly positions
that takes human interpretation as the starting point for developing knowledge about the
social world’.
- Commitment to verstehen, which entails accessing and understanding the actual
meanings and interpretations actors subjectively ascribe to phenomena in order to
describe and explain their behaviour trough investigating how they experience,
sustain, articulate and share with others these socially constructed everyday realities.
o The researcher becomes a focal point of interest in some interpretivist
traditions.
Each tradition of interpretivism appropriates and extends the central tenets of interpretivism
quite uniquely.
- Hermeneutics: the key principle underlying is that the meaning of a part can only be
understood if it is related to the whole.
o No one comes to interpretation with an open mind, rather there is the pre-
understanding of the phenomenon that we already have.
§ This pre-understanding informs understanding and so on, leading to
a greater understanding of both.
- Ethnomethodology: interested in the ways in which interpretive schemas are put
into practice and accepted, altered or rejected.
o Concept of sensemaking: focus upon paying attention to how individuals or
groups retrospectively make sense of events such as disasters or crises.
Critical theory
Critical theory focuses on the inherent connection between politics, values and knowledge
and thereby provokes a deeper consideration of the politics and values that underpin and
legitimize the authority of scientific knowledge.
- Orientation towards investigating issues such as exploitation, asymmetrical power
relations, distorted communication and false consciousness.
o Fundamental is the belief that these systems can be transformed to enable
emancipation, which involves a continuing process of critical self-reflection
and associated self-transformation.
The role of the critical theorist is to critique these forms of scientism and create opportunities
for change.
- The outcomes of research are influenced by the subjectivity of the social scientist and
his or her mode of engagement, which leads to the production of different versions of
an independently existing reality that we can never fully know à reflexivity is
important.
o For knowledge to be legitimate it must be grounded in the consensus
achievable in an ideal speech situation where discursively produced
agreement results from argument and analysis without any resort to coercion,
distortion or duplicity.
,From a critical theory perspective, qualitative researchers should be concerned to develop
new modes of engagement that allow participants to pursue interests and objectives that are
currently excluded by the dominant management discourses.
Postmodernism and poststructualism
Postmodernists put forward a perspective where all knowledge is indeterminate: what we take
to be reality is itself created and determined by those actors of cognition. The social world is
not seen as external to us, waiting to be discovered; everything is relative to the eye of the
beholder.
- What we take to be knowledge is constructed in and through language.
o Reality can have an infinite number of attributes, since there are as many
realities as there are ways of perceiving and explaining.
o Influential upon our linguistically derived sensemaking are our social
interactions in various milieu, which bias us towards particular ways of
viewing the world.
Qualitative research from this perspective focuses upon gaining an understanding of a
situation at a particular point in time, recognizing that this only one of a number of possible
understandings.
- Postmodernism demands that researchers are sceptical about how they engage with
the world, the categories they deploy, the assumptions they make, and the
interpretations they impose.
o It enables us both to know more and yet doubt what we know.
Postcolonialism and indigenous epistemologies
Postcolonialism is extraordinarily relevant to management and organization studies because
it offers an alternative historical explanation for many commonplace business practices that
have their origins in colonial structures.
- The intensification of globalization makes postcolonialism especially pertinent in that
it becomes particularly important in understanding some its less visible and more
unsavoury facets.
Indigenous scholarship has become more apparent within the literature. Throughout the world
the relationship between indigenous people and academic research is being challenged.
For qualitative management and organizational researchers, such epistemological
approaches offer new ways of critiquing management processes and practices and that
possibility of framing research questions in innovative ways.
Conclusion
To have credibility, qualitative research papers must address the following four areas:
1. The theoretical positioning of the researcher, including motives, presuppositions and
personal theory, which leads them towards and shapes a particular inquiry.
2. The congruence between methodology, reflecting the beliefs about knowledge that
arise from the philosophical framework being employed, and the methods or tools of
data collection and analysis.
3. Strategies to establish rigour – in other words they must evaluate their research in a
way that is philosophically and methodologically congruent with their enquiry.
4. The analytical lens through which data are examined in terms of the epistemological
and ontological assumptions researchers make in engaging with their data.
The challenge is not to be able to fit one’s research approach neatly into any particular
category but to ensure self-reflexivity and an awareness of the various ways in which our
philosophical assumptions have influenced our research.
, 5. Reflexivity in Qualitative Research
What is Reflexivity?
Reflexivity is an awareness of the researcher’s role in the practice of research and the way
this is influenced by the object of the research, enabling the researcher to acknowledge the
way in which he or she affects both the research process and outcomes.
- Researcher reflexivity involves thinking about how our thinking came to be, how a
pre-existing understanding is constantly revised in the light of new understandings
and how this in turn affects our research.
Some researchers may query the difference between reflection and reflexivity, however:
- Reflection suggests a mirror image which affords the opportunity to engage in an
observation or examination of our ways of doing, or observing our own practice.
- Reflexivity is more complex, involving thinking about our experiences and questioning
our ways of doing.
There are two key elements embedded within reflexive research:
1. Interpretation: is influenced by the assumptions of the researcher doing the research,
their values, political position, use of language.
o Calls for the utmost awareness of theoretical assumptions, the importance of
language and of pre-understandings brought to the research.
2. Reflection: we reflect on how our intellectual, perceptual, theoretical, ideological,
cultural, textual and cognitive principles and assumptions inform the interpretation.
Reflexivity enables the research processes and outcomes to be open to change and adaptive
in response to these multiple layers of reflection.
Conceptualizing Reflexivity
Conceptualizations of reflexivity will vary according to the researcher’s own epistemological
and ontological assumptions.
- An objectivist view assumes a form of pre-existing social reality, which can be
researched by an independent researcher, where what is described exists
independent of the researcher’s description of it.
o Reflexivity may be used as a technique for evaluating the role of the
researcher in the research process, often with a view to eradicating bias in
research design and analysis, in order to maintain the objective position of
the researcher.
- A subjectivist view questions the independent existence of reality and the
researcher’s role in researching it, suggesting that knowledge is socially constructed.
o Reflexivity is used to question knowledge claims and enhance the
understanding by acknowledging the values and preconceptions the
researcher brings to that understanding.
- For postmodernists, the social construction of reality is constituted within discursive
and textual practices, where no fixed truths are privileged.
o Reflexivity is often centred on the process of writing and interpreting text, in
all its various and multiple forms.
Cunliffe’s conceptualization of ‘radical-reflexivity’ suggests that researchers need to go further
than questioning the truth claims of others, to question how we as researchers (and
practitioners) also make truth claims and construct meaning.
Processes of Reflexivity
Hibbert et al. (2010) describe four steps that collectively encapsulate a meta-process of
reflexivity, which integrates reflection and recursion (repetition):
1. Repetition: an individual reflects in a relatively self-focused manner and recursivity
occurs passively.
2. Extension: includes some building of new principles or understandings that connect
with well-known principles with a conscious involvement in change.
3. Disruption: doubting, unsettling element of reflexive research.
