Ann L Cunliffe

Pushing Action Research Toward Reflexive Practice

Managers today increasingly find themselves facing unexpected problems, needing to learn how to cope with complex environments and to take action in an often chaotic flow of events. This article discusses how researchers can engage managers in a form of dialogical action research, capable of nurturing knowledge and change. This is achieved by creating space for collaborative dialogue between managers and researchers, and supplementing it with the integration of a reflexive writing practice. We first present methodological reflections related to the challenges of sustaining management practice through action research. Second, we explicate dialogical action research and illustrate the reflexive writing practice through two vignettes which provide opportunities to reflexively explore “how things work” in managers’ organizational contexts. This forms the basis for sustaining participation and learning at individual and collective levels. Finally, we identify and discuss the specific conditions and limits of such an approach.

The politics of access in fieldwork: Immersion, backstage dramas and deception

Gaining access in fieldwork is crucial to the success of research, and may often be problematic because it involves working in complex social situations. This article examines the intricacies of access, conceptualizing it as a fluid, temporal, and political process that requires sensitivity to social issues and to potential ethical choices faced by both researchers and organization members. Our contribution lies in offering ways in which researchers can reflexively negotiate the challenges of access by (a) underscoring the complex and relational nature of access by conceptualizing three relational perspectives—instrumental, transactional, and relational—proposing the latter as a strategy for developing a diplomatic sensitivity to the politics of access; (b) explicating the political, ethical, and emergent nature of access by framing it as an ongoing process of immersion, backstage dramas, and deception; and (c) offering a number of relational micropractices to help researchers negotiate the complexities of access. We illustrate the challenges of gaining and maintaining access through examples from the literature and from Rafael’s attempts to gain access to carry out fieldwork in a police force.

Embedding Impact in Engaged Research: Developing Socially Useful Knowledge through Dialogical Sensemaking

This paper explores how we can embed impact in research to generate socially useful knowledge. Our contribution lies in proposing a form of engaged research that draws upon situated knowledge and encompasses dialogical sensemaking as a way of making experience sensible in collaborative researcher−practitioner conversations. We draw attention to the intricacies of doing socially useful research and illustrate how five conversational resources can be used within dialogical sensemaking through an example of a research project in which impact and relevance were embedded and where researchers and practitioners worked together to resolve an important social and organizational issue.

Management Learning: Legacies and future possibilities

Over the last year, we have undergone a number of changes at Management Learning that have prompted us to look back at the journal’s past and think about its future. We, of course, face the pressures of every academic journal editorial team in terms of impact factors and rankings, regardless of the politicized and normalizing nature of these metrics. But the journal’s 45-year-long history and the distinguished and influential scholars who have been part of it provide a far more important reference point that shapes the journal’s current and future intellectual identity and scope. This legacy features prominently as we move toward the journal’s half century and continue to publish papers that “push the boundaries of thinking and challenge us to engage with our roles and responsibilities as educators, researchers, writers and thinkers in new, critical, and socially relevant ways” (Cunliffe and Sadler-Smith, 2015: 4). In reflecting on this legacy and positioning the journal for the future, we changed our strapline in 2015 to The Journal for Critical, Reflexive Scholarship on Organization and Learning. This highlights the type of scholarship Management Learning has always published and continues to value. It positions the journal as distinct from others in the field by granting a wider “licence to think” about learning, “daring to be different” in the perspectives offered, and continuing to provide an outlet for “comparatively unconventional” (Grey, 2009: 353)—and more interesting (Bartunek et al., 2006), research articles. Articles published in the journal are often highly creative and innovative, both methodologically, for example, using visual methods or taking an autoethnographic approach, and also stylistically, through the pursuit of non-esoteric and engaging styles of writing that draw the reader in by telling a good story. We firmly believe that Management Learning plays an increasingly important role in the face of the pressures of today’s neoliberal educational and learning environment by maintaining an intellectual space where authors can explore ideas in thoughtful and provocative ways. “Learning” and “organizing” are terms which are understood broadly within this journal to refer to a wide range of macroand micro-level practices that are not confined to courses, curricula, and programs

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SOCIAL BUSINESS: RETROSPECTIVE AND PROSPECTIVE RESEARCH

Social Entrepreneurship and Social Business (SE/SB), inclusive business, businesses with social impact and a higher purpose are becoming increasingly important both in academia and the busi -ness world (Sassmannshausen & Volkmann, 2013). Since the influential article by Dees (1998), many different perspectives about social entrepreneurship and social business have been dis-cussed in academia. On the management side, these types of businesses have also proliferated in the last decades. Yunus with his work leading Grameen Bank has inspired many other entrepre -neurs and organizations to create a new kind of business more embedded with a social purpose.The main purpose of the Social Entrepreneurship and Social Business (SE/SB) field is to diminish vulnerabilities and social inequalities in the world. Indeed, SE/SB are emerging as prac -titioners of market forces that play an integrative role in bridging sustainable business models with society needs, that still exist because of opportunities arising from government gaps.According to Yunus (2010), one of the goals of SE/SB is to reduce poverty. Therefore, another stream of thought that is aligned with SE/SB is the Base of the Pyramid (BoP). From the semi-nal article by Prahalad and Hart (2002) much has been debated about BoP and how businesses might have a social impact. From a first approach based on the idea of a market base, the BoP field has evolved to a more inclusive perspective that has some relations to the concepts of SE/SB and currently has some of the same challenges of creating more inclusive approaches.The purposes of this article are twofold: firstly to examine some of the main themes dis-cussed about SE/SB up to the moment and secondly to present some major themes that we believe will be the focus in the next years.

Continuing to build community in qualitative research

Purpose – This short paper celebrates the tenth year Anniversary of QROM by highlighting the importance of continuing to build community and support for qualitative researchers across the world. It also elaborates the relationship between the journal and the biennial international Qualitative Research in Management conference. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Review article. Findings – The importance of a supportive community of qualitative scholars. Originality/value – The need for collaboration.

The Challenges of Gaining Access

Gaining access in fieldwork is crucial to the success of any research project, and many times can be problematic because it involves working in complex social situations. Yet literature on the topic is relatively rare. The objective of this paper is to examine the intricacies of access, conceptualizing it as a fluid, temporal and political process that requires sensitivity to social issues and to the potential ethical choices faced by both the researcher and members of the organization. Our contribution is twofold: 1. Enhancing empirical understanding of the nature of access and the micro- practices involved in obtaining and maintaining access; 2. Based on the work of Punch (1986) and Goffman (1959), we conceptualize access as a relational process of infiltration, backstage negotiation, and deception. Framing access in this way draws attention to the need to be reflexively sensitive to its emergent, political and ethical nature. We illustrate the challenges of gaining and maintaining access and the micro-...