From Convention to Alternatives: Rethinking Qualitative Research in Management Scholarship
这篇社论探讨了管理学定性研究中过度依赖单一惯例的问题，提出在理论角色、抽样实践、质量标准和理论化风格四个方面的替代方案，旨在激发作者突破常规、推动创新理论化。
The field of management is a rich, open and complex area of scholarship that allows for various philosophical, theoretical and methodological perspectives. Traditionally, the British Journal of Management (BJM) has embraced this diversity and proactively shaped research practices (through empirical and methodological contributions) to promote different genres and styles of writing and theorizing. As a result, qualitative research in BJM proliferates, providing further opportunities to explain management phenomena in the research environments in which they naturally occur from the perspective of those who experience them (i.e. key actors). The beauty of qualitative research is that it draws from a range of paradigmatic lenses, methods, means of inference and theorizing styles. Despite its promising diversity, qualitative inquiry is often reduced to a single template or disciplinary convention, stifling authors’ creativity and hindering novel theorizing in management scholarship (Pratt, Sonenshein and Fieldman, 2020). While conventions can be useful for legitimizing academic discourses, they are also meant to be problematized so as to help scholars capture changing phenomena and drive the field forward. The purpose of this editorial is to offer alternatives on how to rethink qualitative research and question the disciplinary convention in management scholarship. In doing so, we extend recent discussions on revisiting conventions by addressing four key challenges confronted by qualitative researchers. These are linked to the role of theory, sampling practices, quality criteria and theorizing styles in qualitative research. Our aim is to inspire prospective authors to design and write qualitative submissions, moving beyond conventions and drawing on alternatives that foster novel theorizing. Conventionally, qualitative research has been associated with induction. Driven by Glaser and Strauss's (1967) grounded theory and the legitimacy crisis of qualitative inquiry in the field of management studies, scholars have strongly embraced inductive theory-building by allowing conceptual categories to emerge from data. While the label of ‘induction’ has been loosely used and revisited in numerous contexts, it has largely invited researchers not to constrain themselves by pre-existing theory at the outset of a study limiting the theorizing potential of qualitative research to exploratory or discovery purposes. Despite the considerable influence of inductive theory-building in qualitative scholarship, critics from different disciplines and philosophical traditions suggest that in order to develop a richer understanding of the world, we need to connect to prior theory (Johnson and Duberley, 2015). Abduction as a form of scientific inference distinguished by pragmatist philosopher Charles Sander Peirce has gained considerable traction as a means for revisiting the relationship between theory and data in qualitative inquiry. Abduction starts with the acknowledgement of an anomaly or a surprise that challenges the expectations of the researcher and prompts them to ask for an explanation. Expectations are shaped by preconceptions, worldviews and beliefs rooted in researchers’ experiences and exposure to theories. Theories are consulted from the outset of a study and confronted in the light of new observations, whereas redirection of a study allows for different theoretical lenses to emerge or submerge. Abduction challenges the myth of induction regarding the constraining role of theory and establishes the need for consulting multiple theoretical lenses as a means to detect surprises, ask questions and make observations. It offers qualitative researchers a ‘vocabulary to articulate how they iterate between theory and data’ (Paavilainen-Mäntymäki et al., 2019, p. 230) and allows them to move beyond inductive exploration, making several theoretical contributions such as theory extension, refinement, elaboration and testing. While a niche of qualitative studies employs abduction for data-analysis purposes, practices leading to novel theorizing, such as problematizing the obvious, being open to counterintuitive evidence and iterating (or dropping) theoretical lenses to form possible explanations are still under-represented in the field of management. Sampling is at the heart of theorizing from qualitative inquiry, albeit it is not always discernible from sections on methodology. Discussion of the selection of sites, respondents and data sources rarely explains why the chosen phenomenon and its context warrant investigation. Under a positivistic undertone, sampling is reduced to a single decision that researchers address at early phases of a study, assuming a static view of the field. A priori selection of multiple observation units, settings or cases is mundane for engaging in comparisons, detecting regularities and achieving the ultimate goal of generalization. It follows that sampling occurs with very limited information on the phenomenon and its context, underplaying the inherent naturalistic and temporal qualities of qualitative research. We suggest that it is possible to capture the dynamism and uniqueness of the field by revisiting sampling conventions. We point to an alternative view of sampling as an emergent and adaptive process that assumes that the course of the study cannot be charted in advance and key phenomena become progressively crystallized as the investigation unfolds and the link between the empirical and theoretical realms is refined. This under-utilized alternative facilitates selection of valuable for theorizing, unusual or unexpected instances that gradually unfold in the field, as well as the combination of different strategies (e.g. maximum variation, criterion sampling – instead of a generic application of purposeful sampling) for picking out respondents, cases and data sources that serve different and changing lines of inquiry. As far as sample size is concerned, the convention of ‘the more, the better’ is increasingly challenged by recent discussions on the value of single-site studies not only for process thinking, but also for comparison, replication and variance-based theorizing (Bansal, Smith and Vaara, 2018). Qualitative scholars learn more about a phenomenon as they study it. We suggest that this progressive learning needs to be reflected in their sampling choices, namely making real-time, more daring and contextually relevant decisions in the field. It can further inform sample size decisions by combining replication and richness in innovative (dual-mode) research designs. Evaluating the quality of qualitative inquiry has fuelled a longstanding debate in management research (e.g. Johnson, Buehring, Cassell and Symon, 2006). This is due to the co-existence of various philosophical traditions and paradigmatic lenses under the umbrella term of qualitative research. While paradigmatic pluralism is desirable, it is also confusing or not well appreciated when it comes to quality benchmarks. Increasingly, what constitutes ‘good’ qualitative research becomes an unsolvable problem for many qualitative scholars. Traditionally, qualitative research has settled to a single set of criteria mimicking deductive quantitative scholarship or drawing from qualitative positivist traditions. Such criteria seek to establish the representativeness of qualitative samples, the neutrality of qualitative researchers, the replicability of findings, as well as ‘mainstream’ conceptions of reliability and validity. The application of universal quality criteria undermines rather than enhances the trustworthiness of qualitative research. It further promotes proceduralism (Bell, Kothiyal and Willmott, 2017) and contributes to the ‘replication crisis’ (Pratt, Kaplan and Whittingham, 2020) of the field. Establishing ‘golden standards’ creates confusion for qualitative scholars who struggle to conform to such standards, which compromise the interestingness of story-telling and the iterative nature and rich texture of their study. Obviously, ‘one size does not fit all’ and the lack of boilerplate points to different paths to evaluate quality. This invites management scholars to match their philosophical commitments to particular forms of inquiry and evaluation (which can confront or follow the disciplinary conventions). For instance, criteria used to evaluate quality from a positivistic stance (e.g. construct validity, external validity and reliability) may not capture quality in a study that adheres to an interpretivist or social constructivist ontology. Establishing alternatives to tackle trustworthiness of qualitative inquiry strengthens paradigmatic pluralism, ontological coherence of research designs and theorizing by promoting different types of knowledge claims. This assumes paradigmatic awareness, namely in-depth philosophical understanding of criteria appropriate to the knowledge-constituting assumptions and design of a study, as well as when and how to employ them. Such awareness can pave the way for rigour, diversity and creativity in qualitative manuscripts and contribute to paradigmatic and theorizing pluralism. Qualitative research offers space for inquisitive, contextualized and counter-intuitive theorizing, fitting to the broad range of phenomena and paradigmatic traditions of the management discipline. Yet, we do not see this multiplicity of perspectives reflected in what is being published in our field of scholarly inquiry. Indeed, qualitative research is pushed in a direction of propositional theorizing with the purpose of developing theory transferable across contexts. Despite its popularity, propositional theorizing has been heavily criticized for narrowing ‘the remit of qualitative research in general by channelling the theoretical contribution of qualitative studies in the direction of factor-analytic propositional or variance models’ (Cornelissen, 2017, p. 368). Concerns have been raised that formulated propositions in qualitative research are narrow in scope, static, loosely connected to each other, capturing trivial cause–effect relationships. Moreover, while qualitative research is assumed to be context sensitive, propositional theorizing has been criticized for overrating generalizability to contextual sensitivity. In search of theorizing alternatives that reconcile context and explanation, Paavilainen-Mäntymäki et al. (2019) point to the genre of ‘contextualized explanation’ to capture generative mechanisms in context and time, moving explanations from the general (away from context) to the idiographic level. Similarly, Conrelissen (2017) highlights the potential of narrative and typological theorizing styles in advancing respectively processual or multi-dimensional understanding of investigated phenomena. It should be noted that plurality in theorizing implies not only consideration of different theorizing genres but also combination of (new) methods (e.g. visual methodologies, multimodality, longitudinal and historical methods), data sources and analytical approaches to generate insights from the field. Set against this background, qualitative research becomes not only suitable for propositional theorizing, but also for teasing out causal mechanisms and structures, and testing theory. Our goal in this editorial has been to offer alternatives to qualitative research in management scholarship, problematizing the convention. We join voices with Pratt, Kaplan and Whittington (2020, p. 7) and encourage qualitative scholars to rethink their methodological practices and act as ‘bricoleurs’, embracing ‘creativity, agency and craft’ in qualitative management research. We note that qualitative practices are shaped and revisited by scientific communities (authors, editors and reviewers) and the ability to evaluate the quality of qualitative submissions assumes an understanding of the idiosyncrasies and paradigmatic pluralism of qualitative research. Failing to embrace this diversity not only proliferates the divide between quantitative and qualitative research but also results in qualitative researchers misinterpreting each other's work and thus generating paradigmatic tensions. Increasingly, BJM is responding to those challenges by assigning methodology experts to evaluate submissions and publishing editorials and articles in its ‘methodology corner’ that provide insights into different methodological issues and promote methodological pluralism.