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Sub-theme 14: [SWG] Qualitative Restudies: Retheorizing in a Changing World

Convenors:
Tine Köhler
University of Melbourne, Australia
Catherine L Welch
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Maria Rumyantseva
University of Sydney, Australia

Call for Papers

Call for short paper (pdf)

The purpose of this sub-theme is to stimulate research and theorizing from qualitative work, diversifying the theorizing potential of qualitative research methods in our field. More specifically, with this sub-theme, we aim to inspire the community of organization scholars to advance our knowledge of modern organizations by realizing the potential of qualitative restudies for retheorizing.

A restudy is an empirical study which is designed to enable systematic comparison with the original data, analytical results, or field setting of a prior study. Restudies could extend the original theorizing, reconstruct it in meaningful ways, refute existing theories, or add new lenses and theoretical perspectives.

In returning to original studies and their empirical sites, qualitative restudies allow organization scholars to explore how our interpretations and theorizing are shaped by theoretical and methodological traditions, historical contexts, institutional structures, and researcher backgrounds. By acknowledging the situatedness of inquiry, restudies pave the way for more critical and sustained engagement with phenomena of interest, the populations and contexts in which we explore them, and the theoretical legacy on which we build our work (Köhler et al., 2025; Rumyantseva & Welch, 2023). They are the basis for retheorizing; that is, for conducting studies that return to existing empirical work in order to reevaluate the theoretical conclusions generated.

In promoting novel research designs for retheorizing, this sub-theme makes a distinctive contribution to two pressing debates in the OS field: (1) How to expand avenues for theorizing and energize and renew theorizing efforts. (2) The so-called replication crisis, which to date has either excluded qualitative research altogether, or threatened to impose inappropriate criteria on qualitative work (Pratt et al., 2020). Although qualitative research does not replicate in the same way quantitative work does—i.e., repeating an existing study to test if the result will be the same—it offers a powerful and theoretically generative alternative: Returning to an existing study with expectation of a different result.

Restudies are a way for theories to stay both nuanced and relevant: We do not study unchanging phenomena but engage with a dynamic world that challenges our preconceptions of it. At the same time, methodological and theoretical trends evolve, affecting the lenses through which we view the phenomena we study. There is no single way to do a restudy, as restudies can be conducted on any established theories or empirical sites that are relevant to current debates and concerns in organization studies. This provides ample basis for a sub-theme that intends to showcase a range of possibilities for approaching restudies.

Given the focus of the sub-theme, we will only be soliciting qualitative submissions. Critically, our focus on retheorizing is underpinned by researchers’ critical reflective and interpretive skills. This means that papers employing machine learning tools (such as Generative AI and others) will not fit the call. Our hope for the sub-theme is to represent qualitative work based on diverse theoretical, methodological, and philosophical traditions.

We welcome submissions related to established theoretical traditions focused on organizations and organizing. We encourage submissions to look broadly at organization studies phenomena, theories, and contexts. Submissions from relevant sister disciplines that study organizations are also encouraged, such as restudies on organizations from sociology and business history perspectives.

The following represent promising starting points for restudy efforts:

  • Seminal empirical research in organization studies: Do their theoretical conclusions still hold today and if not, why not?

  • Iconic, high-profile organizations that have been regularly featured in past studies: Have they changed to such an extent that our understanding of them, and what they exemplify, is now misleading?

  • Corporate failures and fallen heroes: Why were we so wrong about them, and what are the implications for current theories?

  • Research settings undergoing major disruption and transformation: Are broader political and societal changes impacting organizations in such a way that they challenge our existing theoretical understanding?

  • Access to previously inaccessible datasets: What do these new data sources reveal about empirical cases that we thought we knew?

  • Methodological innovations: How does applying new methodological approaches change the conclusions we draw from existing data or cases?

  • Epistemic shifts: Would the application of different onto-epistemological lenses (e.g., feminism, hermeneutics, intersectionality, decolonial views) to core organizational phenomena lead us to different conclusions and interpretations and diversify our theoretical understanding?

The sub-theme is open to and actively encourages other types of restudies that do not fall into the above examples.

A note to submitters:
This sub-theme is related to a special issue call for papers on Qualitative Restudies: Retheorizing in a Changing World in Organization Studies, the official EGOS journal. It is not a requirement for participation in the sub-theme to also submit to the special issue, nor is it a requirement for submission to the special issue to participate in the sub-theme. Nevertheless, prospective authors interested in submitting to the Organization Studies special issue might find it useful to present their research ideas in this sub-theme and get some advance feedback.
 

References
  • Köhler, T., Rumyantseva, M., & Welch, C. (2025). Qualitative restudies: Research designs for retheorizing. Organizational Research Methods, 28(1), 32–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/10944281231216323
  • Pratt, M. G., Kaplan, S., & Whittington, R. (2020). Editorial essay: The tumult over transparency: Decoupling transparency from replication in establishing trustworthy qualitative research. Administrative Science Quarterly, 65(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839219887663
  • Rumyantseva, M., & Welch, C. (2023). The born global and international new venture revisited: An alternative explanation for early and rapid internationalization. Journal of International Business Studies, 54(7), 1193–1221. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-023-00613-2


Tine Köhler is Professor of International Management in the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include cross-cultural management, cross-cultural communication and coordination, group processes, qualitative research methods, research design, meta-analysis, and regression. Tine is co-Editor-in-Chief of 'Organizational Research Methods' and a former associate editor of 'Academy of Management Learning and Education' and of 'Organizational Research Methods'. Her work has been published in leading journals including 'Journal of Management', 'Organizational Research Methods', 'Human Resource Management', 'Journal of International Business Studies', 'Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice', and 'Psychological Methods'.
Catherine L Welch is Chair of Strategic Management at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, and a distinguished visiting professor at Aalto University, Finland. Her work on qualitative research methods and process approaches to studying firm internationalization has appeared in leading journals in international business and management. She has a track record of launching new disciplinary conversations and advocating methodological and theoretical pluralism. Catherine is a member of the 'Journal of International Business Studies' Research Methods Advisory Committee and an associate editor of 'Organizational Research Methods'. She was a co-founder of the Academy of International Business (AIB) Research Methods Shared Interest Group (RM-SIG).
Maria Rumyantseva is a Senior Lecturer and Academic Fellow in Innovation Studies at the University of Sydney Business School, Australia. She has a strong track-record of publishing interdisciplinary research that extends and challenges the current theoretical understanding of innovation management, and its interactions with related fields, including strategy and international business. Maria uses process-based research methodologies to reveal new patterns of how innovation works in practice and to critically revisit established theories. She has published in 'Strategic Management Journal', 'Journal of International Business Studies', 'Journal of World Business', and 'Organizational Research Methods' among others.