Karen Locke

Constructing Opportunities for Contribution: Structuring Intertextual Coherence and “Problematizing” in Organizational Studies

Examining a sample of journal articles, we develop a grounded theory of contribution that shows how organization studies theorists textually construct opportunities for making contributions to the ...

Perspective—Making Doubt Generative: Rethinking the Role of Doubt in the Research Process

In this paper, we want to shift the attention of our scholarly community to the living condition of doubt and its underappreciated significance for the theorizing process. Drawing on Peirces notion of abduction, we articulate the relationship between doubt and belief in the everyday imaginative work central to theorizing, and establish the role played by doubt as abductions engine in these efforts. We propose three strategic principles for engaging and using doubt in the research process. In concluding, we explore our fields overemphasis on validation to the exclusion of discovery processes and to the detriment of excellence in theorizing. We call for a broadening of our notions of “methodology” to incorporate discovery processes and to begin their explication.

Working with pluralism: determining quality in qualitative research

This Feature Topic contains four articles that address the determination of quality in qualitative research by exploring the use of criteria from the perspective of reviewers, editors, and/ or authors. In this introductory article, the authors assert that these explorations represent an important move away from employing listings of static criteria to adjudicate and develop qualitative research. In its place, we see the making of quality as situated in methodological pluralism that occurs both in comparison with quantitative research and also within qualitative research. This fact complicates and enriches the task of determining quality and also suggests ways forward for the academic community.

Field Research Practice in Management and Organization Studies: Reclaiming its Tradition of Discovery

This review reasserts field researchs discovery epistemology. While it occupies a minority position in the study of organization and management, discovery-oriented research practice has a long tra...

Why do we Ask them to Write, or Whose Writing is it, Anyway?

This articles intent is to refocus the way in which we as educators think about and structure written assignments in our courses. Specifically, the authors argue for a shift in priorities: away from general skills such as the mechanics of writing or general analytic capability and toward a more particular focus on the specific ideas of unique individuals. They argue that by so doing, students are more likely to improve both their analytical and written skills. The authors illustrate this approach by describing the way in which they structure assignments, provide feedback, and create a climate for writing in organization behavior and accounting theory courses.

Using Knowledge in Management Studies An Investigation of How We Cite Prior Work

We know little about the impact of prior scholarly work. Focusing on citation frequency, studies have overlooked the question of how prior work is used. The authors argue for the development of a richer empirical foundation on which to base discussions of impact; its creation requires a situated and relational methodological approach incorporating an assumption of citation heterogeneity and comparative analyses of citation content in context with that of the referenced focal article. Conceiving focal articles as architectures of knowledge claims, the authors examine how knowledge from three award-winning articles is subsequently used during a 6-year period in 489 citations. Analyses generate a typology of prior knowledge use in citing and also disclose differences in prior knowledge use in each focal article. This situated and relational examination provides a more nuanced understanding of how prior work shapes ongoing knowledge development.

The Design of Member Review: Showing What to Organization Members and Why

Noting various forces prompting qualitative researchers to incorporate some form of member review into their studies, this article aims to help researchers anticipate and develop their own considered strategies for designing and executing this process. Drawing on existing discussions of member review in the sociological and anthropological literature, the article develops a framework that suggests different ways in which member reviews might be designed and executed, it outlines the types of challenges researchers may anticipate during execution of the designs and highlights the positive and negative influences that creating the opportunity for such challenges can have on the research. A dissertation-based case study illustrates how challenges to the research arising from execution of a particular member review design unfolded in practice and forms the basis for considering how researchers might respond when research participants take exception to what we write.

Pragmatic Reflections on a Conversation About Grounded Theory in Management and Organization Studies

This commentary offers reflections on the conversation about grounded theory in management and organization studies. It highlights the institutional context in which we are having this conversation, noting its consequences for grounded theory practice. It also raises questions about the definition and boundaries of grounded theory, including the role of theory in the analytic process, and it argues for a pragmatic consideration of its research practices.

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.

Book Review: Book Review: Locke

What can one expect from ‘‘a very short, fairly interesting, and reasonably cheap book’’ about a field that has seen an explosion in methodological reflection and writing during the past 25 years? It turns out quite a lot—though perhaps not what one might anticipate. Students of qualitative research stumped by the number, range, and variety of available methodological publications won’t find a short and straightforward primer on qualitative research techniques in this volume. David Silverman has elsewhere written such excellent introductory textbooks (e.g., Silverman, 2005). Instead, what they and more seasoned researchers will find in the 144 small pages is the articulation of a veteran scholar’s foundational principles for qualitative inquiry, first elaborated in the body of the book and then distilled into a set of bullet-pointed imperatives in the book’s ‘‘very short conclusion.’’ The book is a personal and deliberately provocative statement. Indeed, its reading evoked a series recently running on public radio stations: This I Believe is a show based on a 1950s radio program in which Americans from various walks of life share the personal philosophies and core values that guide their daily life. In this very short book, Silverman pulls together a set of ideas expressed in various lectures to share his ‘‘this I believe’’ about conducting qualitative research. The price of entry into his beliefs is his personal theoretical vocabulary and practice approach. So what does Silverman believe? His autobiographical introduction, which recounts his conversion from hypothetico-deductive approaches to qualitative work shaped first by Schutz’s phenomenology of the everyday and then by the ethnomethological approaches of Cicourel, Garfinkle, Saussure and Saks, sets the stage and foreshadows some of the principles. For example, reflecting back on the work that provided the early theoretical foundation for his qualitative scholarship, Silverman comments that he now finds it somewhat ‘‘over-theorized.’’ He suggests, ‘‘Perhaps I had been so enthused by a newly discovered theory that I hadn’t allowed myself to be sufficiently, challenged, even surprised by my data’’ (p. 5). In the tension between the theoretical and the empirical, Silverman believes that as qualitative researchers we habitually, and increasingly, underemphasize the empirical, resulting in work that is less theoretically alive than it might otherwise be. Chapter 1, accordingly titled ‘‘Innumerable Inscrutable Habits: Why Unremarkable Things Matter’’ (p. 11), elevates the mundane, the taken-for-granted backdrop, as a site for qualitative research attention. Drawing effectively on the use of photographs as well as excerpts from literary sources, Silverman emphasizes the importance of describing in detail what may seem plain and obvious and of pushing through the boredom that attending to the ordinary will first engender. His argument: It is precisely our categorization of a situation as unremarkable that conceals something surprising that may be happening. By exploring his examples of what at first glace might appear to be everyday ‘‘in Organizational Research Methods 13(3) 600-602 a The Author(s) 2010 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav http://orm.sagepub.com