Critical Management Research

Reflections from the Field

Emma Jeanes, Tony Huzzard, Emma Jeanes, Tony Huzzard

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781473908666
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: R&D
• Index: Business

This is an invaluable collection of reflections and experiences from world-class researchers undertaking Critical Management Studies (CMS).

The editors and contributors reflect on ethics and reflexivity in critical management research, and explore the identity of the critical researcher both as an individual and working within collaborative projects. Using contemporary accounts from those engaged in real world fieldwork they outline what critical management is, and explore its relationship to management research.

The book discusses the implications of critical management when:

• Developing research questions
• Managing research relationships
• Using various methods of data collection
• Writing accounts of your research, findings and analysis.

Grounded in practical problems and processes this title sets out and then answers the challenges faced by critical researchers doing research in organization and management studies.

Part I Approaching The Field

Two Problematization meets mystery creation: Generating new ideas and findings through assumption-challenging research

Mats Alvesson

Jörgen Sandberg

Introduction

A key objective of research is to develop new ideas and theoretical contributions. This is somewhat different from what is normally emphasized in methodology, namely, procedures that enable precision in description and analysis. In the latter, the issues of interest include validity, reliability, ‘data collection’ (depth and richness in the production of empirical material) and ‘data processing’ (how data are codified, categorized, analysed, interpreted and written). Such methodological procedures can be ‘tight’ or ‘soft’. For example, a tight procedure may stress a fixed interview schedule and codification, while a soft procedure may emphasize the importance of having ‘been there’, in-depth interviewing, and interpretations that are fair to the experience of subjects.

Our purpose in this chapter is not to develop methodological procedures for generating more accurate and ‘objective’ representations of reality or of the authentic experiences and meanings of people; rather, our purpose is to discuss ways of generating interesting and potentially influential new ideas and theoretical contributions. This is of particular interest for critical studies in which the key aim is not so much the ‘mirroring’ or ‘mapping’ of reality, but instead the encouragement of novel ideas and path-breaking thinking. Breaking away from dominant constructions and institutions calls for some latitude from an overly strict focus on empirical details and slavishly following methodological procedures. But as good ideas and contributions require a grounding in empirical examinations – or, in a strong sense, how reality looks and can be understood – critical and theory-developing research are not in contradiction to, or disconnected from, empirical ambitions. Nevertheless, doing research – both theoretical and/or empirical – with the intention of developing new ideas often requires ‘data’ to stimulate imagination and creativity, rather than a narrow focus on ensuring that data mirrors reality: whether in the form of representing a phenomenon ‘out there’ (facts) or in the form of the experiences, beliefs, feelings or cognitions of subjects under study (meanings).

More specifically, for a theory to become interesting and influential it needs to attract attention from other researchers and practitioners, to lead to enthusiasm, to generate ‘aha’ and ‘wow’ moments, to trigger responses such as ‘I have not thought about this before’ or ‘perhaps I should rethink this theme’, and possibly to act as an effective tool for animating dialogue and reflexivity among practitioners. During the last four decades, originating with Davis’s (1971) seminal sociological study, a large number of researchers have shown that rigorously executed research is typically not enough for a theory to be regarded as interesting and influential: it must also challenge an audience’s¹ taken-for-granted assumptions in some significant way (e.g. Astley, 1985; Bartunek et al., 2006; Weick, 2001). In other words, if a theory does not challenge some of an audience’s assumptions, it is unlikely to receive attention and become influential even if it has been rigorously developed and received substantial empirical support. Of course, not all forms of assumption challenging are in line with a critical management studies (CMS) agenda – CMS assumptions of the rotten nature of capitalist society, patriarchy, managerialism and other typical subjects can (and should) themselves also be scrutinized – but the research ideal of assumption challenging is broadly congruent with, and supportive of, the CMS project of unsettling dominant worldviews and constructions of reality. Emancipation means that a fixed set of beliefs are opened up for critical examination with the intention of increasing ethical awareness and autonomy (Alvesson and Willmott, 2012).

However, although this growing body of literature has clearly shown the importance of assumption challenging for developing novel research ideas, it has been considerably less clear about how we can productively go about challenging assumptions as a means for developing more interesting and influential theories. In previous studies, we have suggested two major ways of producing new ideas through assumption-challenging research, namely through problematization (e.g. Alvesson and Sandberg, 2013) and through mystery creation (e.g. Alvesson and Kärreman, 2011). The problematization methodology is used for critically scrutinizing and challenging dominant assumptions in a field, while the mystery methodology uses empirical material as a source for constructing breakdowns and mysteries in social life. The former emphasizes critical examination of existing theory and studies within a field with the aim of questioning established truths and lines of thinking. The latter means that one tries to mobilize empirical material as a dialogue partner to talk back to established knowledge and through that encourage rethinking.

In this chapter we elaborate how these two assumption-challenging methodologies can be combined, as a way to come up with something new and unexpected, not just to represent reality or to apply, conform to, or modify a framework. Of course, new ideas come partly through serendipity and creative ingenuity, and partly by using existing theories/ideas in a novel way, but using ‘creative’ methodologies can also be beneficial in this process. We start by describing what we call the problematization methodology, followed by the methodology for mystery creation. Then we show how they can be productively set in interaction to generate new ideas and contributions.

Constructing research questions through problematization

It is important to consider what strategies researchers use for constructing and formulating research questions from existing literatures. Although a range of issues influences the purpose of a study, such as the researcher’s knowledge and interest or what kind of research is likely to attract funding, the most crucial influencing factors are probably existing theory and empirical studies. The framing impact of earlier research is typically very strong. No researcher starts to study mergers, strategies, leadership or teamwork without ‘knowing’ something about previous thinking and studies in the area. The most prevalent strategy for constructing research questions in the context of established work is gap-spotting (Sandberg and Alvesson, 2011). It is by looking for different knowledge ‘gaps’ in existing literature that research questions are constructed. One common strategy is trying to spot confusions in the literature that need to be rectified. The most prevalent strategy is neglect-spotting in which the researcher tries to identify areas that are overlooked, under-researched, or lack empirical support and, in response to this neglect, construct a research question. A third route is application-spotting. Here, the researcher searches for an absence or shortage of a particular theory or perspective in a specific area of research, and then seeks to apply the theory in this new area. For example, CMS advocates commonly use a specific framework, such as gender, Foucault or Marxism. The specific framework is applied, perhaps even imposed on the object of study, which means that the object of study is typically being constructed in line with the favoured approach. Gender students find discrimination and Foucauldians find power exercising disciplinary effects. A common motive for such application-spotting studies is that nobody has applied the specific framework to a specific (sub-)area of research before. By applying it for the first time, the study generates knowledge that fills an identified gap in the literature.

While gap-spotting research is a central ingredient in most theory development, it is unlikely to produce interesting and influential knowledge contributions. As pointed out above, for research to be seen as interesting and influential, it is not enough to improve existing theory; it also needs to challenge its audience’s taken-for-granted assumptions in some significant way. Gap-spotting studies and their emphasis on filling gaps in existing theory tend to reinforce rather than challenge existing theories in any significant way and are, therefore, incapable of producing something new and interesting. A gap-spotting researcher applies, reproduces and varies or adds to existing knowledge, but does not substantively challenge it. This is because in gap-spotting research, the assumptions underlying the existing literature are more or less taken as given and, thus, reproduced. When the assumptions underlying a specific theory are reproduced, the theory is reinforced rather than challenged in any substantive way. This assumption-reproducing way of working, such as applying a framework, a vocabulary and a set of ‘truths’, therefore, counteracts what is typically seen as interesting – ideas and knowledge that challenge an audience’s assumptions and show that what they thought was true or self-evident is actually not so (Alvesson and Sandberg, 2013; Davis, 1971).

In order to support efforts to more deliberately and systematically identify and challenge the assumptions underlying existing literatures, we suggest the use of problematization as a methodology for generating research questions. By this we do not mean a minor critical scrutiny of a concept or a truth claim, but a more open-minded critical inquiry, where the basic assumptions underlying existing literatures are examined and unpacked.

Advocating a genuine problematization approach does not mean that a problematizer is ‘a blank slate’ or position-free. A developed pre-understanding is a key feature of any researcher (as an academic and social being), and is brought into play in any intellectual enterprise. Any problematization necessarily takes its point of departure within a specific metatheoretical position (i.e., epistemological and ontological stance: Tsoukas and Knudsen, 2004: Chapter 1) as well as within the cultural framework into which the researcher has been socialized through upbringing, education and work. The ambition is therefore normally not – nor is it typically possible – to totally undo one’s own position; rather, it is to unpack it sufficiently so that some of one’s ordinarily given assumptions are scrutinized and reconsidered in the process of constructing novel research questions. Here reflexivity is key: the careful thinking through of one’s position and how it easily locks the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• One Introduction
• Part I Approaching The Field
• Two Problematization meets mystery creation: Generating new ideas and findings through assumption-challenging research
• Three Researcher collaboration: Learning from experience
• Part II In the field
• Four Critical ethnographic research: Negotiations, influences, and interests
• Five Critical action research
• Six Doing research in your own organization: Being native, going stranger
• Seven Critical and compassionate interviewing: Asking until it makes sense
• Eight Critical netnography: Conducting critical research online
• Part III Out of the field
• Nine Motifs in the methods section: Representing the qualitative research process
• Ten Thickening thick descriptions: Overinterpretations in critical organizational ethnography
• Eleven Conceptually grounded analysis: The elusive facticity and ethical upshot of ‘organization’
• Part IV Reflections on the field
• Twelve Writing: What can be said, by who, and where?
• Thirteen Conclusion: Reflexivity, ethics and the researcher
• Index