1997 Research Methods Forum
No. 2 (Summer 1997)

What Are We Doing When We Cite Others’ Work in the
Methodological Accounts We Provide of Our Research Activities?

Karen Locke
The College of William and Mary

Writing is a central activity of our profession. Indeed, it is through our written products—books, conference papers, and, notably, the official research article—that our organization studies community constitutes and maintains much of its work and power (Golden-Biddle & Locke 1997). And, citing is one of the hallmarks of the formal writing performed by members of knowledge-creating professions. Organization studies is no exception. We write into our methodological accounts a complex of citations or an intertext (Locke & Golden Biddle, 1997) through which we organize previous methodologically related publications to create a location for our current work’s investigative approach. I’d take a little space to focus attention on this routine aspect of writing into our own articles the work of our methodological predecessors. And, do this by considering how we represent particular paradigms and research approaches that fall under the qualitative methods umbrella - as well as how we represent ourselves vis a vis the same when write this section of our research articles.

"Qualitative Methods" is a broad and roomy umbrella of a category—even in Organization Studies. Just how broad was clearly brought home during a study of the writing practices displayed in wholly qualitative articles published in Administrative Science Quarterly and Academy of Management Journal over a twenty year period (Locke and Golden-Biddle, 1997). Among the 81 publications in that sample, we noted positivist (e.g. Ross & Staw, 1993), postpositivist (e.g. Kahn, 1993), interpretive (e.g. Prasad, 1993) and postmodern (e.g. Boje, 1995) orientations. And, among the research approaches used we found critical hermeneutics (e.g. Phillips & Brown, 1993), textual analyses (e.g. Gephart, 1993), semiotics (e.g. Barley, 1983), historical analyses (Kieser, 1989), and the testing of theoretical propositions (e.g. Ross & Staw, 1993). With such diversity increasingly represented under the qualitative methods umbrella, we need to take special care in the portrayal of the informing paradigms and research approaches. The representational issues raised by our citing practices have implications for our own written products, for the works we cite, and for qualitative methods in general.

So, what works do we choose to write into our methodological intertexts? How do we select the publications that we portray as having directly informed our methodological orientation and operational choices. It seems straightforward enough, we write in those works that played such a role. However, given the space limitations of journals and the attendant impossibility of recounting all the works that may have informed our current investigative paradigm and methodological approach; given, also, the political context in which we write, where part of our task as researchers/ authors is to pass muster with adjudicating audiences of reviewers, editors, and professional colleagues (Golden-Biddle & Locke, 1997), there are considerable pressures to cite the works and approaches that we believe our audience views as legitimate and credible. Regardless of whether they directly informed or are consistent with our present work. In a recent article, I considered the referencing of The Discovery of Grounded Theory in the Academy of Management Journal as a case in point (Locke, 1996). Here the selective invocation of this 30 year old work with little acknowledgment of subsequent developments of the approach by the originators or other methodologists raised a number of questions. Is this publication being represented in methodological intertexts because of its imputed canonical status? Has it become a legitimating element in a boiler plated format for writing up the methods section of any qualitative study? Having indicated that our work is informed by a particular investigative approach, have we no responsibility for keeping up with and representing its methodological developments?

Similarly, does the selective citing of elements of this approach to indicate the use of some operational procedures while excluding others suggest that we are writing away the integrity and coherence of this method? A particular work counts as a contribution to knowledge not by virtue of its having been written up, but by its having been positively adjudicated by a small audience or reviewers, and, most significantly, by its being subsequently cited in future publications (Winsor, 1993). What about a work counts as knowledge within a particular scholarly community will depend on how that community represents that work in its citing practices. For example, if The Discovery of Grounded Theory primarily is cited to indicate a iterative process of data/theory comparison, then, the work is rewritten as a broad general approach and the specific operational procedures that are the foundation of the approach disappear from the community. And, what are the consequences on our ability to discuss our investigative processes when legitimation drives the construction of our methodological intertexts and works are cited perhaps long after are their specific contents have faded from memory? Certainly, these citing practices are not restricted to grounded theory—the invocation of a "thick description" (Geertz, 1973) also pops into mind.

There is, perhaps, a feel of inclusiveness that goes along with writing at a time when postmodernism has made its presence felt. And, the variety of investigative paradigms and operational procedures that are appearing in mainstream journals through which researchers identify themselves reinforces this sense. Inclusiveness is underscored, too, in the active encouragement of cross-disciplinary work. However, as Richardson (1994) points out, the postmodern contention that no single knowledge tradition or method holds a privileged status does not mean that we can reject all approaches. Similarly, the increasing breaking or crossing of disciplinary boundaries does not mean that particular disciplinary boundaries can be ignored and that researchers can randomly position themselves with regard to any or all traditions. For example, when we propose to develop a social constructivist account of a phenomenon from a triangulated data collection strategy constructing a simultatneously constructivist and positivist intertext, we present ourselves as coupling traditions that have fundamentally different world views. Or, when we claim to develop a grounded theory from a population that has been randomly selected. How does one think about studies that cobble paradigms, approaches and procedures in this way? This willy nilly cobbling presents our own work as confused, and it writes away the distinct perspectives and contributions each paradigm, approach and procedure can bring to the study of organizations. Again, the integrity and coherence of particular paradigms and methodological approaches and of our proposed study is undermined.

Up until this point, I have suggested that our citing practices have significant implications for the representation and preservation of particular methods publications as well as for the presentation of our own empirical work. The representation of qualitative methods as a domain, however is also at stake. As we rewrite, reproduce, and organize the work of particular methodologists and researchers and we are rewriting and reproducing the methodological literatures that fall under that qualitative methods umbrella. In the same way that the intertexts we write recreate the contributions of particular works, our rewriting and reorganization of these works recreates the domain of qualitative methods. In effect, what qualitative means in organization studies is enacted in the research publications qualitative researchers generate, and as part of that, in the accounts we provide of our investigative paradigms, methodological approaches and specific procedures.

When we select to write into our methodological intertexts the works that we believe carry the most legitimacy, regardless of the role they played in informing a study, not only do we misrepresent the work and our own investigative approach , we also run the risk of delegitimizing other works through their exclusion. And, thereby we contribute to a narrowing of the qualitative domain.

When we only partially represent a work—selecting as best fits a justificational enterprise—not only are we selectively representing a contribution, we also contribute to the representation of qualitative methods as embracing a scattered pick-as-you-choose orientation to organizational inquiry. Similarly, when we cobble together references to divergent, even incompatible paradigms and procedures, we obscure the particular disciplinary traditions, and we write away the variety in qualitative methods and the particular differences that exist among approaches. And, just as importantly, we rewrite and represent the domain of qualitative methods as an incoherent grab bag of paradigms, research approaches and procedures in which research practices, including their underlying philosophical assumptions, can be arbitrarily combined. In this confused and contradictory representation of the domain, coherent practices of inquiry are undermined, as is our ability as a community to publicly discuss what we do.

References

Barley, S.R. (1983). Semiotics and the study of occupational and organizational cultures. Administrative Science Quarterly, 28, 393-413.

Boje, D. M. (1995). Stories of the storytelling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as "Tamara-Land." Academy of Management Journal, 38, 997-1035.

Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.

Gephart, R.P. (1993). The textual approach: Risk and blame in disaster sensemaking. Academy of Management Journal, 36,1465-1514.

Golden-Biddle, K., & Locke, K. (1997). Composing qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Kahn, W.A. (1993). Caring for the caregivers: Patterns of organizational caregiving, Administrative Science Quarterly, 38, 539-563.

Kieser, A. (1989). Organizational, institutional, and societal evolution: Medieval craft guilds and the genesis of formal organizations, Administrative Science Quarterly, 34, 540-564.

Locke, K. (1996). Re-writing the discovery of grounded theory after 25 years? Journal of Management Inquiry, 5, 239-245.

Locke, K., & Golden-Biddle, K. ( in press;1997) Constructing opportunities for contribution: Structuring intertextual coherence and problematizing in organizational studies. Academy of Management Journal.

Phillips, N. & Brown, J.L. (1993). Analyzing communication in and around organizations: A critical hermeneutic approach. Academy of Management Journal, 36,1547-1576.

Prasad, P. (1993). Symbolic processes in the implementation of technological change: A symbolic interactionist study of work computerization, Academy of Management Journal, 36, 1400-1429.

Richardson, L. (1994). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 516-529). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

Ross, J. & Staw, B.M. (1993) Organizational escalation and exit: Lessons from the Shoreham nuclear power plant. Academy of Management Journal, 36, 701-732.

Winsor, D. (1993). Constructing scientific knowledge in Gould and Lewontin’s "The Spandrels of San Marco." In J. Selzer (Ed.), Understanding scientific prose (pp. 127-143). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.