Qualitative Research in Business and Management

Emma Bell is Professor of Management and Organisation Studies and Head of the Centre for Economics and Management at Keele Management School. Her research is framed by a desire to understand cultures and belief systems in organizations. She has also studied business improvement initiatives and organizational change. Emma was a member of the British Academy of Management Council, and is current Co-Chair of the US Academy of Management Critical Management Studies Division. Her early working life included a period as a graduate trainee in the UK National Health Service. Emma's PhD was an ethnographic study of payment systems and organizational time in the chemical industry. She has always been interested in methods and methodologies of management research and the ways in which management knowledge is created. Recently, Emma has been involved in a number of projects related to visual analysis of organizations and management. She is a founding member of InVisio - the International Network of Visual Studies in Organizations, and worked on an ESRC Researcher Development Initiative to promote the development of visual analysis in management research.

VOLUME ONE: CLASSICAL AND CONTEMPORARY STUDIES Banana Time: Job Satisfaction and Informal Interaction - Donald Roy Perceptions and Methods in Men Who Manage - Melville Dalton Men and Women of the Corporation - Rosabeth Kanter Manufacturing Consent - Michael Burawoy Breakfast at Spiro's: Dramaturgy and Dominance - Michael Rosen The World of Corporate Managers - Robert Jackall Engineering Humour: Masculinity Joking and Conflict in Shop-Floor Relations - David Collinson Extract from Crafting Selves: Power Gender and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace - Dorinne Kondo Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High-Tech Corporation - Gideon Kunda Theorizing Managerial Work: A Pragmatic Pluralist Approach to Interdisciplinary Research - Tony Watson Rational Choice Situated Action and the Social Control of Organizations: The Challenger Launch Decision - Diane Vaughan Strategizing as Lived Experience and Strategists - Dalvir Samra-Fredericks Power 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 Orr Extract from The Business of Talk: Organizations in Action - Diedre Boden Extract from Investigating Small Firms: Nice Work? - Ruth Holliday Narrative Interviewing and Narrative Analysis in a Study of a Cross-Border Merger - Anne-Marie Soederberg Speech Timing and Spacing: The Phenomenon of Organizational Closure - Francois Cooren and Gail T. Fairhurst, VOLUME TWO: METHODS APPROACHES TECHNIQUES: GUIDES AND EXEMPLARS The Infeasibility of Invariant Laws in Management Studies: A Reflective Dialogue in Defence of Case Studies - Tsuyoshi Numagami The Interview: From Neutral Stance to Political Involvement - Andrea Fontana and James Frey Rethinking Observation: From Method to Context - Michael Agrosino et al. Notes on (Field) notes - James Clifford The Textual Approach: Risk and Blame in Disaster Sensemaking - Robert Gephart Triangulation in Organizational Research: A Re-presentation - Julie Wolfram Cox and John Hassard The Storytelling Organization: A Study of Performance in an Office Supply Firm - David Boje Semiotics and the Study of Occupational and Organizational Cultures - Stephen Barley The Use of Grounded Theory for the Qualitative Analysis of Organizational Behaviour - Barry Turner Reflecting on the Strategic Use of CAQDAS to Manage and Report on the Qualitative Research Process - Mark Wickham and Megan Woods Longitudinal Field Research on Change - Andrew Pettigrew Historical Perspectives in Organization Studies: Factual Narrative and Archeo-Genealogical - Michael Rowlinson Action Research: Explaining the Diversity - Cathy Cassell and Phil Johnson Photography and Voice in Critical Qualitative Management Research - Samantha Warren Moments Mixed Methods and Paradigm Dialogues - Norman Denzin VOLUME THREE: PRACTICES AND PREOCCUPATIONS Extract from The Discipline and Practice of Qualitative Research - Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln Learning 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 Arendell Real-Time Reflexivity: Prods to Reflection - Karl Weick Towards an Integrative Reflexivity in Organizational Research - Leah Tomkins and Virginia Eatough Appealing Work: An Investigation of How Ethnographic Texts Convince - Karen Golden-Biddle and Karen Locke The Philosophy and Politics of Quality in Qualitative Organizational Research - John Amis and Michael Silk Objectivity 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. Bate Working with Pluralism: Determining Quality in Qualitative Research - Mark Easterby-Smith, Karen Golden-Biddle and Karen Locke The Role of the Researcher: An Analysis of Narrative Position in Organisation Theory - Mary Jo Hatch The Professional Apprentice: Observations of Fieldwork Roles in Two Organizational Settings - John Van Maanen and Deborah Kolb In Defense of Being "Native": The Case for Insider Academic Research - Teresa Brannick and David Coghlan Ethics and Ethnography - Robert Dingwall Extract from Qualitative Methods in Management Research - Evert Gummesson Making Sense as a Personal Process - Judi Marshall My Affair with the "Other": Identity Journeys across the Research-Practice Divide - Laura Empson VOLUME FOUR: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS Secrecy and Disclosure in Fieldwork - Richard Mitchell Organization Science as Social Construction: Postmodern Potentials - Kenneth Gergen and Tojo Joseph Thatchenkerry Farewell to Criteriology - Thomas Schwandt Reflexive Inquiry in Organizational Research: Questions and Possibilities - Ann Cunliffe The Action Turn: Towards a Transformational Social Science - Peter Reason and William Torbert Signing My Life Away? Researching Sex and Organization - Joanna Brewis Evaluating 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 Westwood Organization Studies and Epistemic Coloniality in Latin America: Thinking Otherness from the Margins - Eduardo Ibbaro-Colado Fitting Oval Pegs into Round Holes: Tensions in Evaluating and Publishing Qualitative Research in Top-Tier North American Journals - Michael Pratt Hegemonic Academic Practices: Experiences of Publishing from the Periphery - Susan Merilaeinen et al., Case Study as Disciplinary Convention: Evidence from International Business Journals - Rebecca Piekkari, Catherine Welsh and Eriikka Paavilainen Managerialism and Management Research: Would Melville Dalton Get a Job Today? - Emma Bell Ways of constructing research questions: gap-spotting or problematization? - Joergen Sandberg and Mats Alvesson

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. -- Robin Stanley Snell Emma Bell and Hugh Willmott have put together four volumes of historically rich, analytically inclusive and vivid accounts of carrying out qualitative research in business and management settings. The volumes take readers through canonical, classic works to significant contemporary developments - in both theory and method - reflecting the changing organizational contexts in which current research is set. The editors provide a thoughtful introduction and guide to the materials. This is without doubt the most comprehensive and broad treatment of qualitative research I have ever encountered. It will have a long shelf life, deservedly so. -- John Van Maanen