Lakshmi Balachandran Nair, PhD – Department of Business and Management, LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome, Italy

Series: Organization, Business and Management
BISAC: BUS085000; BUS000000; SOC019000
DOI: 10.52305/RBPT9001

“This book explores the large domain of qualitative research in social sciences in a modern way, with a specific focus on organization studies. It has the merit to remind organization studies scholars that there is more to qualitative research than just case studies or interviews. Through an examination of older and newer ways of conducting qualitative data collection, data analysis, and reporting within and outside the discipline, this book provides organizational researchers with a plethora of approaches to choose from. An insightful, yet compact book which points to new (methodological) directions in research pursuits” – Luca Giustiniano, Professor, LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome, Italy

“As a scholar who does mixed methods research and with a great passion for rich and thick data, I find this book a very useful guide that will give organizational scholars a clear picture of what qualitative researchers do and what can be done more (better). This is a very useful book for researchers who prefer an evidence-based approach over normative guidelines. It shows that qualitative templates can be transformative and flexible rather than as a strict formula. A must have for new researchers and anyone interested in research without numbers.” – Yanto Chandra, Professor, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, (Incoming professor in City University of Hong Kong), Hong Kong

“This book goes beyond the “how to do” recipes for conducting qualitative research which are available aplenty in the market. Instead, it holds a mirror to organization studies and discusses how published authors have actually conducted and reported qualitative research in the disciplinary area. Furthermore, the book acknowledges how organization studies can still adopt and adapt new methodologies and data collection techniques from other, related disciplines. Subsequently, the book facilitates methodological advancement in organization studies through roadmaps and suitable examples.” – Michael Gibbert, Professor, Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland

This book discusses qualitative research in the context of organization studies, in an evidence-based manner. From using innovative research methods to including online spaces in their investigation, organizational researchers are experimenting and exploring the methodological possibilities offered by qualitative approaches. This book deliberates on ongoing trends as well as new qualitative methods which can be adopted by organizational scholars. The first chapter of the book discusses the motivation for the book and introduces the subsequent chapters. In the second chapter, the innovativeness of qualitative research methods in published articles is discussed. This chapter points out several innovative qualitative methods that organizational researchers can utilize– use cases, participatory inquiry research, narrative research, thematic analysis, thematic network analysis, critical interaction technique, Delphi technique, and domain analysis. The third chapter uses a theoretically developed coding scheme to deliberate on the involved research actions and key components in published grounded theory studies. The purpose of the chapter is to discuss which actions/key components are underutilized and under referenced in organization studies. The fourth chapter discusses a categorization of online spaces, focusing mainly on the roles played by these spaces in qualitative data collection. A four-step road map for guiding organizational scholars who are interested in using online spaces in their data collection is also provided thereafter. The fifth chapter concludes the discussion on the trends in qualitative research, discusses the takeaways of the book, and provides some directions for further exploration. This book thus aims to demonstrate the potential of the discussed qualitative methods as well as data collection and analysis techniques, by presenting examples from published research in organization studies and other closely related disciplines where methodological plurality is more prominent.