Call for Papers

The practices of applying research methods are based on negotiated standards in a community of researchers. For qualitative research, this includes templates, rules of thumb, coding protocols, and several more. Ultimately these templates come to be taken for granted as appropriate approaches to research. Considering the complexity and the ambiguities in conducting qualitative research in particular, researchers may model what is reported in published work. Over time this may evolve into a focus on a narrow repertoire of qualitative research that appears to be associated with publication success. A process of chasing legitimization by following others’ templates from published papers gravitates toward standardization if enough researchers follow it, enough reviewers and AEs request it, etc.
 
This may be the case even if that practice might entail profound limitations for the realization of a method’s full potential, which impairs or may even be harmful to the conduct of subsequent research by perpetuating a narrow set of research practices or even deficient research methods. Not only do these practices limit what we can learn from our research by prioritizing the legitimization of findings based on following agreed-upon paths, but the enforcement of and socialization toward templates also lead to standardization (Cilesiz & Greckhamer, 2022) that hinders necessary adaptability and innovation in research methods that would allow for the application of more suitable research methods.
 
At the same time, most researchers would readily agree that some agreement on judging what constitutes good rather than bad applications of a method and how to differentiate ‘good’ from ‘bad’ research are needed. Put differently, both an ‘anything goes’ approach in which methodological applications remain haphazard and applied with little methodological skill and transparency as well as a mechanistic application of templates are undesirable for and impair qualitative research practice. In this sub-theme, our purpose is to bring together papers that critically examine and advance approaches that navigate tensions between standardization/legitimization and adaptability/innovation/creativity necessary to create both meaningful and rigorous qualitative research. In doing so, we aim to advance how qualitative researchers can successfully demonstrate the detail and rigor of their work as well as advance qualitative methodologies.
 
A core strength of qualitative research methods is the variety of different approaches, for example, with regard to the underlying epistemological and ontological traditions (Bansal et al., 2018, Gephart, 2004), the data and materials that can be analyzed (e.g., text, numbers, pictures, graphs, audio files, movies, objects, etc.), the content that can be assessed (e.g., the discourse between people or in the media, team dynamics and processes, narratives of people’s life or experiences, etc.), or how the data are analyzed. In addition, qualitative research methods also offer flexibility and the potential to engage in bricolage and adapt methods to particular research questions, samples, or contexts in which data are collected (e.g., Denzin & Lincoln, 2017; Gehman et al., 2018, Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Pratt et al., 2022; Yin, 2009). In short, qualitative research methods represent a very powerful tool for researchers because the researcher can mould them to the needs of the data and the sample.
 
A first step to realize the potential of qualitative research methods to support innovative and flexible research is to enable researchers and reviewers to clearly identify, articulate, and demonstrate what rigor means, how it should be operationalized, and how trustworthiness in the application of qualitative methods can be established. Currently, perceptions of procedural rigor (i.e., following a standardized set of steps) dominate methodological discussions, which is strongly driven by pressures to adopt definitions and operationalizations for rigor that mimic those that dominate quantitative research (e.g., Harley & Cornelissen, 2022). Instead, rigorous qualitative research should be grounded in an alignment and coherence between ontological and epistemological assumptions, research questions, characteristics of contexts of qualitative data, as well as the application and adaptation of the chosen method to conduct the research, collect and analyze the data, and draw conclusions (e.g., Harley & Cornelissen, 2022; Köhler, Smith, & Bhakoo, 2022).
 
A second step involves the willingness and ability of qualitative researchers to identify templates for conducting qualitative research and to question their mechanistic application, so they are able to evaluate when templates help and when they hinder. Doing so can also be a starting point for identifying and assessing the potential of creating more flexible methodical applications of qualitative approaches. This step can be facilitated by reaching greater clarity about what makes qualitative methods and their application rigorous while enabling researchers to address research question and phenomena that are unique, novel, complex, dynamic, and at times even elusive. The time is ripe that we step back to re-evaluate and reset current trends regarding how the field applies qualitative research methods.
 
The goal of this sub-theme is to stimulate conversation amongst organization studies researchers about contemporary trends and tensions in qualitative research methods. For this purpose, we invite work on qualitative methods that identifies productive ways to move away from ill-suited template convergence and toward a diversity of approaches. We also invite papers that engage critically with how we employ research methods to support and facilitate our theorizing, which thereby could stimulate creative approaches that foster and leverage researchers’ awareness that theory and methods are interdependent and that the methods we use consequently greatly influence the findings from our research and the conclusions we draw for theorizing. Such awareness is further necessary to stop some of the worrying trends mentioned above (e.g., Köhler et al., 2022; Mees-Buss et al., 2022). These goals are in line with the theme of the EGOS Colloquium 2025, and they should speak to organization studies scholars who value and aim to advance unconventional, critical, and creative research in their methods and theory.
 
With this sub-theme, we want to create room for methodological work that is taking stock, contemplating, and responding to calls for change (Bartunek, 2019) regarding the field’s methodological practices and subsequent theorizing. Possible topics include but are not restricted to:

• What methodological trends are worrying and why? How do they curb creativity in our research?

• What are the consequences of these trends for the content and quality of the field’s theorizing efforts?

• How do we need to (re)conceptualize rigor to better align with and harness the strengths of qualitative research methods?

• Where and when is the use of template suitable and what kinds of theorizing does it produce?

• What are ontological and epistemological foundations of templates that should be considered when choosing their application?

• Which alternative methodological approaches foster more creative and critical evaluation of underlying tensions, dynamics, and processes that lead to deeper and more impactful theorizing?

• Which methodological practices best support the process of innovative theorizing?

• What quality criteria of qualitative research do we need to discuss, revise, or introduce to make qualitative research applications more methodical and transparent being considerate of their own epistemological traditions?

• What are potentially useful research methods to expand our field of research and broaden our lenses of exploration, leading to new discoveries and new ways of seeing?

• How could we encourage greater diversity of methods, including critical methods, to advance organization theory?

These topics are indicative only. We generally welcome papers that critically engage with the tensions between standardization and flexibility/creativity as well as the resulting interdependencies between theory and methods. We are open to conceptual, empirical, and methodological papers.
 

References

• Bansal, P., Smith, W., & Vaara, E. (2018): “New Ways of Seeing through Qualitative Research.” Academy of Management Journal, 61 (4), 1189–1195.

• Bartunek, J.M. (2019): “Contemplation and Organization Studies: Why contemplative activities are so crucial for our academic lives.” Organization Studies, 40 (10), 1463–1479.
• Cilesiz, S., & Greckhamer, T. (2022): “Methodological socialization and identity: A bricolage study of pathways toward qualitative research in doctoral education.” Organizational Research Methods, 25 (2), 337–370.
• Denzin, N.K., & Lincoln, Y.S. (2017): The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research (5^th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
• Gehman, J., Glaser, V.L., Eisenhardt, K.M., Gioia, D., Langley, A., & Corley, K.G. (2018): “Findings theory method fit: A comparison of three qualitative approaches to theory building.” Journal of Management Inquiry, 27 (3), 284–300.
• Gephart, R.P., Jr. (2004): “Qualitative research and the Academy of Management Journal.” Academy of Management Journal, 47 (4), 454–462.
• Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1967): The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine Publishing Company.
• Harley, B., & Cornelissen, J. (2022): “Rigor with or without templates? The pursuit of methodological rigor in qualitative research.” Organizational Research Methods, 25 (2), 239–261.
• Köhler, T., Smith, A., & Bhakoo, V. (2022): “Templates in qualitative research methods: Origins, limitations, and new directions.” Organizational Research Methods, 25 (2), 183–210.
• Mees-Buss, J., Welch, C., & Piekkari, R. (2022): “From templates to heuristics: how and why to move beyond the Gioia methodology.” Organizational Research Methods, 25 (2), 405–429.
• Pratt, M.G., Sonenshein, S., & Feldman, M.S. (2022): “Moving Beyond Templates: A Bricolage Approach to Conducting Trustworthy Qualitative Research.” Organizational Research Methods, 25 (2), 211-238.
• Yin, R.K. (2009): Case Study Research: Design and Methods (4^th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
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