Evaluating Qualitative Management Research - Johnson Et Al. - 2006

International Journal of Management Reviews Volume 8 Issue 3 pp. 131156 131

Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2006, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

International Journal of Management Reviews (2006)doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2370.2006.00124.x

Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKIJMRInternational Journal of Management Reviews1460-8545 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 200683ORIGINAL ARTICLEEvaluating qualitative management research: Towards a contingent criteriologyXX

Evaluating qualitative management research: Towards a contingent criteriologyPhil Johnson,1 Anna Buehring, Catherine Cassell and Gillian Symon

The term qualitative management research embraces an array of non-statistical researchpractices. Here it is argued that this diversity is an outcome of competing philosophicalassumptions which produce distinctive research perspectives and legitimate theappropriation of different sets of evaluation criteria. Some confusion can arise whenevaluation criteria constituted by particular philosophical conventions are universally appliedto this heterogeneous management field. In order to avoid such misappropriation, this paperpresents a first step towards a contingent criteriology located in a metatheoretical analysisof three modes of qualitative management research which are compared with the positivistmainstream to elaborate different forms of evaluation. It is argued that once armed withcriteria that vary accordingly, evaluation can reflexively focus upon the extent to which anymanagement research consistently embraces the particular methodological principles thatare sanctioned by its a priori philosophical commitments.

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to develop a heuristicframework as a first step towards guiding theevaluation of qualitative management research.This concern with criteriology is very importantbecause, despite the historical dominance ofquantitative methodology in English-speakingcountries (see: Daft 1980; Stablein 1996;Stern and Barley 1996), for many years qual-itative research has also made a significantcontribution to many substantive areas ofmanagement research. For example, much

qualitative research has focused upon the natureof managerial work (Dalton 1959; Jackall1988; Mintzberg 1973; Watson 1977; Watson1994) and the impact of organizational controlsystems (Lupton 1963; Kunda 1992; Willmottand Knights 1995). Other qualitative researchhas been concerned with relations with employees(Armstrong et al. 1981; Collinson 1992; Gouldner1954) as well as the everyday experience ofwork (Giroux 1992; Kondo 1990; Meyerson1994; Rosen 1985; Roy 1960; Van Maanen1991) and issues such as gender and identityat work (Ely 1995; Kanter 1977; Martin 1990;

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Evaluating qualitative management research

Parker 2000; Pollert 1981). However, even acursory inspection of this genre would revealhow qualitative management research, especiallyin Europe (Usdiken and Pasadeos 1995), isbeing inspired by an expanding array ofmodes of engagement which philosophicallyvary (see Prasad and Prasad 2002) and therebytacitly promulgate different forms of evalua-tion. Therefore, any evaluative framework musttake into account this increasing diversity. This,we shall argue, may be done by encouragingthe reflexive application of the appropriateevaluation criteria contingently foregroundedin the philosophical assumptions articulatedthough the mode of engagement deployed bythe management researcher.

Defining Qualitative Research

Given the diverse modes of engagement notedabove, qualitative management research initiallyappears to be a commonly applied umbrellaterm for the use of a vast array of non-statisticaldata collection and analysis techniques, whichhave forged some tentative linkages through ashared, yet often tacit, rejection of methodologicalmonism. According to Held (1980, 161) meth-odological monism represents the culminationof the Enlightenment project: a universalmathematically formulated science as themodel for all science and knowledge. Thereforein some respects, qualitative management researchseems to be defined by what it is not.

For Ross (1991, 350) allegiance to method-ological monism entails the notion that onlynatural science methodology can provide certainknowledge and enable prediction and control.Monism is usually expressed via the deploymentof erklaren in social science. Here, humanbehaviour is conceptualized and explaineddeterministically: as necessary responses toempirically observable, measurable andmanipulable causal variables and antecedentconditions (Outhwaite 1975) which are inves-tigated through Poppers (1959) hypothetico-deductive method with the aim of producinggeneralizable nomothetic knowledge. Typically,the observation and testing of theoretical

predictions entail the researchers a priori con-ceptualization, operationalization and statisticalmeasurement of dimensions of respondentsbehaviour rather than beginning with theirsocially derived (inter)subjective perspectives.Indeed, for Lessnoff (1974, 96), human subjectivityis often specifically excluded from explana-tions of behaviour because such subjective causesare taken to be empirically unobservable (e.g.Abel 1958) and hence inadmissible as genuinelyscientific explanations.

In contrast, qualitative research is usuallyrecognized as having a direct concern withverstehen (see Outhwaite, 1975). This entailscapturing the actual meanings and interpreta-tions that actors subjectively ascribe to phenomenain order to describe and explain their behaviourthrough investigating how they experience,sustain, articulate and share with others thesesocially constituted everyday realities (see:Alvesson and Deetz 2000; Denzin and Lincoln1994, 2000; Guba and Lincoln 1994; Patton 1990;Schwandt 1994, 1999; Van Maanen 1979,1998). Although whether or not this engagementis possible in an objective manner has beensubjected to much debate (Seale 1999a,b), suchcommitments to verstehen are also premisedupon the idea that to follow the approach ofthe natural sciences in the study of the socialworld is an error, because human action,unlike the behaviour of non-sentient objects inthe natural world, has an internal subjectivelogic which is inter-subjective in the sensethat it is created and reproduced throughsocial interaction. This is why these ongoingprocesses through which the social world isaccomplished must be understood in order tomake human action intelligible (Laing 1967,53). So, as Guba and Lincoln (1994, 106)note, quantitative measures of phenomena andstatistical reasoning are seen to impose anexternal researcher-derived logic which excludes,or at best distorts rather than captures, actorsinter-subjectivity from the data collected. Hence,qualitative management research has been seenas arising in response to these perceived limi-tations in conventional quantitative managementresearch (e.g. Prasad and Prasad 2002), while

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its necessarily flexible and emergent charactersimultaneously makes it particularly difficultto pin down (Van Maanen 1998, xi).

However, a shared commitment to verstehendoes not explain the heterogeneity evident inqualitative management research: a characteristicwhich suggests that considerable differencesunderlie the initial appearance of similarityusually invoked by the term qualitative. Patton(1990, 153) may go some way to explainingthis conundrum by showing how qualitativeresearch generally articulates various researchquestions that derive from different researchperspectives which have specific disciplinaryroots (see also Snape and Spencer 2003). So,while it is important to note that qualitativeresearch is generally a classification that embracesa large number of different research activities(see Cassell and Symon 2004; Schwandt 1994),this diversity is exacerbated in managementresearch precisely because of its multi-disciplinary (Brown 1997) and inter-disciplinary(Watson 1997) nature. However, it is also evidentthat a significant influence upon how qualitativeresearch is variably constituted lies in howresearchers often articulate competing philo-sophical commitments. These commitments entaildifferent knowledge-constituting assumptionsabout the nature of truth, human behaviour,representation and reality etc. (Altheide andJohnson 1994; Guba and Lincoln 1994), whichimplicitly and explicitly present differentnormative definitions of management research(see Morgan and Smircich 1980). Such dissensusis not replicated in the quantitative mainstreamwhere philosophical consensus has enabledthe development of explicit evaluative criteriaand limited any controversy to debates abouthow to meet those benchmarks most effectively(Scheurich 1997; Schwandt 1996).

The Need for a Contingent Criteriology

Owing to the variability of qualitative man-agement research, providing criteria for itsevaluation becomes a problematic process,because what constitutes good research becomesa polysemous, and therefore somewhat elusive,

concept. While this suggests a need for caution,there is also the danger that, without evaluativeguidelines, this research will struggle to convincesome audiences of its legitimacy especiallythose who occupy the quantitative mainstream.But if we accept that it is important that meth-odological issues in qualitative managementresearch should be transparent and hence opento critical scrutiny, we also must be alert to howconfusion can inadvertently arise. For instance,as Bochner (2000, 267) forcefully argues, evalu-ation criteria constituted by particular philo-sophical conventions may be universally appliedas if they were culture-free, and hence indis-putable, to what is a heterogeneous field inspiredby a number of different epistemological andontological dispositions which thereby articulatea range of competing justificatory logics.

This problem of misappropriation is oftenignored in reviews of evaluation criteria formanagement research (e.g. Mitchell 1985;Scandura and Williams 2000), where it wouldseem, metaphorically, that one size is presumedto fit all. In other words, these reviews aresomewhat philosophically parochial, and tendto lack much sensitivity to difference, byproducing what amounts to a one-sided reduc-tionism. Even writers who promote qualitativeresearch (e.g. Kirk and Miller 1986; Miles andHuberman 1994; Strauss and Corbin 1990; Yin1994) have tended to transfer into its evaluationnotions such as objectivity, validity, reliabilityand generalizability with little modification.But such evaluative criteria tacitly articulatepositivist philosophical assumptions (see Alvessonand Deetz 2000; Alvesson and Skoldberg 2000;Johnson and Cassell 2001) which serve toundermine and subordinate the alternativephilosophical stances being articulated bymuch, but by no means all, of the work producedby qualitative management researchers. Thus,one of the key barriers to the use and publicationof qualitative management research could bethe monological application of assessmentcriteria (Symon et al. 2000). Clearly, suchmisappropriation is not a trivial matter, notleast of all to those management researcherswhose work might be unintentionally misjudged.



Given this context, it is crucial that manage-ment researchers are able to deal with theensuing uncertainty caused by the profusion ofphilosophical perspectives, research techniques,modes of presentation, etc. evident here by beingable to assess qualitative management researchfairly, using the appropriate evaluation criteriain a reflexive manner. Hence, the aim of thispaper is to compare three approaches toundertaking qualitative management researchwith the positivist mainstream and therebymake some initial steps towards developinga criteriology that enables different sets ofevaluation criteria to be contingently deployedso that they fit the researchers mode ofengagement. This sensitivity initially requiresthe development of a metatheory of evaluationbefore proceeding to identify the possibleevaluation criteria appropriate to different genresof management research. This paper will thenconclude by considering the implications of theproposed contingent criteriology for manage-ment research.

Developing a Metatheory of Evaluation

Metatheoretical examination involves elucida-tion of the overarching structures of thoughtwithin a substantive domain so as to explorethe divergent philosophical conventions whichinform different perspectives: the often subliminala priori knowledge-constituting assumptions whichtacitly organize theoretical and methodologicalvariation. Here, such examination serves as aheuristic device to describe and explain thecontingent nature of assessment in managementresearch generally, and foster an understandingof understanding which promotes consistencybetween knowledge-constituting assumptions,methodology and evaluation.

Management research is often characterizedas lacking paradigmatic development, in a Kuhniansense (Kuhn 1970), because of theoretical andmethodological diversity (see Pfeffer 1993,1995; Van Maanen 1995a). Table 1 attempts tocapture this diversity by illustrating four modes ofengagement which have been widely debated

Table 1. Four approaches to management research

Knowledge-constituting assumptions:

Modes of engagement in management research

Ontological status of human behaviour/action Epistemology

Ontological status of social reality

Methodological commitments

Examples of research questions

1. Positivism Determined Objectivist Realist Quantitative methods to enable erklaren

What are the causes of variable x?

2. Neo-empiricism Meaningful inter-subjective

Objectivist Realist Qualitative methods to enable verstehen

How do people inter-subjectively experience their worlds?

3. Critical theory Meaningfulinter-subjective

Subjectivist Realist Qualitative methods to enable a structural phenomenology or critical ethnography

How do people inter-subjectively experience the world in a particular socio-historical period and how can they free themselves from this domination?

4. Affirmative postmodernism

Discursiveinter-subjective

Subjectivist Subjectivist Qualitative methods to enable deconstruction

How and why are particular inter-subjectively derived discourses being voiced while others are silenced?


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and are thought to influence many substantiveareas of management research (see: Alvessonand Wilmott 1996; Alvesson and Deetz 2000;Griseri 2002; Hancock and Tyler 2001; Laughlin1995). These orientations, along with theirattendant methodological commitments and keyresearch questions, are portrayed as engaged inphilosophical struggles as protagonists deploydifferent sets of knowledge-constituting assump-tions about: the ontological status of humanbehaviour/action; epistemology; and the onto-logical status of social reality.

So, strictly speaking, since the four modesof engagement illustrated in Table 1 exist syn-chronically, they cannot constitute paradigms at least given Kuhns (1970) diachronic specifi-cation of the term. Hence, they are probably moreakin to Kuhns pre-paradigmatic stage of develop-ment. For Kuhn (1957, 1970) the early stagesof the development of a science are character-ized by diversity, in that there is no universallyaccepted set of theoretical and methodologicalcommitments organized into a received para-digm rather no one is prepotent and therebyconstitutes an overarching paradigm (see Kuhn1977, 295) that governs puzzle-solving. AsPfeffer (1993) has observed, managementresearch is characterized by the existence ofvarious competing pre-paradigmatic approacheswhich disagree over basic epistemologicalassumptions and interpret the same areas ofinterest in divergent ways which influencehow researchers engage. However, to claimthat their proponents practice their trades indifferent worlds (Kuhn, 1970, 150) so thatmeaningful communication is not possible(Jackson and Carter 1991, 117) would seem tobe an exaggeration, given the epistemic zonesof transition (Gioia and Pitre 1990) betweenthe different modes of engagement illustratedin Table 1. Nevertheless, it is also evident that,by accepting the assumptions of one mode ofengagement, one always will deny some ofthe assumptions of alternatives. Therefore, themodes of engagement illustrated in Table 1are, to a degree, mutually exclusive in the sensethat management researchers cannot operate intwo modes simultaneously in the same piece

of work without some fear of self-contradiction.For instance, they would struggle to be both a neo-empiricist and a critical theorist at the sametime, but researchers can understand what theseperspectives mean and why they might beseen as legitimate or illegitimate from differentperspectives. So despite the propensity for mutualcontradiction, mutual understanding is possi-ble otherwise this paper in itself would beinconceivable. Below, in order to develop suchmutual understanding, we explore three philo-sophical points of departure illustrated in Table 1that have had an impact upon the constitutionof management research.

First, as we have already noted, key philo-sophical differences emerge over the signifi-cance of human inter-subjectivity in explainingbehaviour and its appropriateness to scientificinvestigation. Some philosophers (e.g. Abel1958; Neurath 1959) have rejected the inves-tigation of human subjectivity for two mainreasons: (1) it is taken to echo the residues oftheology (Neurath 1959, 295) as it is meta-physical and therefore beyond reliable empiricalinvestigation; (2) its investigation wouldundermine methodological monism and preventsocial science emulating the operational successesof natural science. However, as numerous scholars(e.g. Blumer 1969; Geertz 1973; Harre and Secord1973; Laing 1967; Morrow and Brown 1994;Shotter 1975) have repeatedly argued, meth-odological monism entails a deterministic stancewhich treats people as if they were analogousto unthinking entities at the mercy of externalforces, whereas any human being is an agentcapable of making choices based upon his orher inter-subjectively derived interpretation ofthe situation. Hence, social scientists, in order toexplain human action, have to begin by under-standing the ways in which people, through socialinteraction, actively constitute and reconstitutethe culturally derived meanings, which theydeploy to interpret their experiences and organizesocial action.

The second point of departure is arounddifferent epistemological assumptions. Locatedin a Cartesian dualism, an objectivist view ofepistemology presupposes the possibility of a



neutral observational language: a view fromnowhere (Nagel 1986), where our sensoryexperience of the objects of an external realityprovides the only secure foundation for socialscientific knowledge (e.g. Ayer 1971; Reichen-bach 1963; Wittgenstein 1922). Truth, ascorrespondence, is to be found in the researcherspassive registration of the positively given the facts that constitute reality (Comte 1853).In contrast, a subjectivist view of epistemologyrepudiates the possibility of a neutral observationallanguage: language does not allow access to,or representation of, reality. As Sayer (1981, 6)has commented, with this shattering of inno-cence, any form of the empiricist claim thatobjective knowledge can be founded upon directsensory experience of reality is dismissed and,inevitably, any account produced by researchersmust be therefore some form of social construction(see: Berger and Luckmann 1967; Burr 1995).

The third point of departure concerns theontological status of reality. A realist viewassumes that social reality has an independentexistence prior to human cognition, whereas asubjectivist ontology assumes that what wetake to be reality is an output of human cognitiveprocesses. As shown in Table 1, an objectivistepistemology is necessarily dependent onrealist ontological assumptions one cannotmaintain the ideal of a neutral observationallanguage while simultaneously assuming thatreality does not exist independently of onesact of cognition. Although rival assumptionsabout the ontological status of human action/behaviour differentiate neo-empiricism frompositivism, both schools articulate objectivistepistemological assumptions combined withrealist assumptions about the ontological statusof reality. In contrast, a subjectivist epistemologycan be combined with either subjectivist or realistassumptions about reality (see Bhaskar 1978;Margolis 1986; Putnam 1981) a point oftenmissed by other metatheoretical schemes(e.g. Burrell and Morgan 1979). The formercombination forms a particular type of postmod-ernism, often called affirmative,2 where realitybecomes an outcome of discursive practices(e.g. Baudrillard 1983). The latter is a Kantian

(Kant, 1781) position typical of critical theory(Bernstein 1983, 18). This differentiates betweensocially constructed realities-for-us and reality-as-it-is by suggesting that there is an externalreality independent of, yet resistant to, humanactivity which ultimately remains unknowable(Kolakowski 1969; Lakoff and Johnson 1999;Latour 1988; Sayer 1981) yet simultaneously,and recursively, imposes pragmatic limits uponthe viability of our social constructions. The resulthas been variously termed subtle (Hammersley1992, 5054) or transcendental (Bhaskar 1986,7275) realism: where knowledge of a mind-independent and extra-discursive reality is alwaysinter-subjectively constituted and maintained,possibly through the use of shared, but oftenunnoticed, metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 1980;Morgan 1986) which affect the ways in whichreality is conceptualized, communicated and actedupon.

Below we shall explore how these four rivalphilosophical positions affect the constitutionof evaluation criteria in management research,with specific reference to deployment inqualitative management research.

Constituting Evaluation Criteria in Management Research

Positivism

It is important to begin our development of acontingent criteriology with positivism, as thismode of engagement continues to dominatemanagement research. So here we shall usepositivism as a foil against which criteriologicalcomparisons will be made. Indeed, owing to itsmainstream status, there continues to be thepossibility that evaluation criteria relevant topositivism have gained the status of common-sense benchmarks which might be inadvertently,and inappropriately, imported into the assess-ment of management research when the latterdeploys non-positivistic knowledge-constitutingassumptions.

Poppers (1959) falsificationist hypothetico-deductive methodology has largely supersededthe empiricistverificationist origins of positivism


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(see Comte, 1853; Mill 1874) so as to deal withthe problems of induction first identified byHume (1739/1965). Falsificationism maintainsimportant positivist commitments: an objectivistepistemology, a realist ontology and method-ological monism (see Johnson and Duberley2000). The result is that Poppers modifiedpositivist methodology emphasizes objectivedata collection in management research so as totest hypotheses by having built in extensivemeans for protecting against personal biases(Behling 1980, 489) which thereby militateagainst fanciful theorizing (Donaldson 1996,164).

Here positivists try to ensure their view ofscientific rigour by deploying particular con-ceptions of validity and reliability evaluativecriteria which assume that phenomena areindependent of the researcher, and the method-ology used, provided that the correct proce-dures are followed. As Scandura and Williams(2000) note with regard to management research,the deployment of such criteria are pivotal toenabling progress through the assessment of thevarious methods used by management researchers.Here, progress in management research entailsa pursuit of truth that is a closer and closerfitting of our theories to the one objective realitywe presume exists (Mitroff and Pondy 1978,146). For other commentators (e.g. Hogan andSinclair 1996, 439) although positivist methodsare imperfect, they have a direct bearing uponmanagement practice, as they are not onlyrational, theoretically derived, and dependenton replicable and generalizable empiricalvalidation, they also enable the description,explanation and prediction of individualbehaviour in organizational settings whichpromises to improve the effectiveness ofmanagers by conferring the power of control(see also Donaldson 1996).

Through erklaren, the aim is to gain accessto the causal relations that are thought to beembedded in an a priori, cognitively accessiblereality. This is pursued by managementresearchers methodologically creating, orsimulating, conditions of closure which allowempirical testing and are crucial to ensuring

internal validity (e.g. Behling 1980; Davis 1985;Di Maggio 1995; Donaldson 1996, 1997).Although often working in the quasi-experimentalconditions which usually apply in managementresearch (Cook and Campbell 1979; Luthanset al. 1985; Orpen 1979; Wall et al. 1986), keyquality concerns of this experimental logicinclude: ensuring that every respondent withinan experimental group has experienced the sameexperimental treatment physically manipulatedby researchers; valid and reliable quantitativemeasures of variance in the dependent variable;matching control and experimental groupsso as to rule out the influence of extraneousvariables; generalizing findings to a definedpopulation beyond those respondents partici-pating in the research. Whether their aim ishypothesis testing or population description,survey researchers have similar quality concerns.For instance, they must evaluate construct validityby considering the adequacy of the operation-alization processes through which they havetranslated the abstract concepts they need tomeasure, and statistically analyse, into valid andreliable sets of standardized indicators articulatedin questionnaires (see Reeves and Harper 1981;Schoenfeldt 1984; Schriesheim et al. 1993;Simons and Thompson 1998). These instrumentsare administered by various means to statisticallyrepresentative samples to ensure external validity(see Simsek and Veiga 2000, 2001). In the caseof hypothesis testing analytical surveys, internalvalidity is pursued through the use of increas-ingly complex statistical procedures which enablecontrol over extraneous variables and the meas-urement of variance in both independent anddependent variables (see Allen et al. 2001).

In positivist management research, becauseof the underlying commitment to a correspond-ence theory of truth, the aim is to ensure distancebetween the researcher and the researched sothat research processes and findings are notcontaminated by the actions of the researcher.Hence, a key evaluation criterion pertains tothe reliability of findings in the sense thatdifferent researchers, or the same researcheron different occasions, would discover the samephenomena or generate the same constructs in



the same or similar settings (Lecompte and Goetz1982, 32). In other words, reliability refers tothe extent to which studies can be replicated(ibid. 35). Hence assessment of reliabilityrequires the use of clear methodological protocolsso that regulation by peers, through replicationand the deployment of the organized scepticismso pivotal to Mertons (1938, 259) scientificethos, would be, in principle, possible.

Therefore, it is evident that reliability dependsupon the a priori philosophical commitment thatthe world is both stable and neutrally accessible.Such an ontological and epistemological stanceis retained in neo-empiricism where, however,qualitative methods predominate. Nevertheless,as we shall illustrate, in neo-empiricism, reliabilitybecomes a contentious issue because a simul-taneous commitment to verstehen means thatresearch design and fieldwork emerges out of,and is largely limited to and dependent upon,specific research settings. This makes thepossibility of replication problematic and alsoquestions the continued relevance of otherpositivist evaluation criteria, as generalizabilitybecomes problematic.

Neo-empiricism

The term neo-empiricist is used by Alvessonand Deetz (2000, 6074) to categorize thosemanagement researchers who assume thepossibility of the unbiased and objectivecollection of qualitative empirical data (seealso: Denzin and Lincoln 1994; Putnam et al.1993) and who simultaneously reject falsifica-tionism in favour of induction. Elsewhere, thismanagement research has been more generallycalled qualitative positivism (Prasad and Prasad2002, 6) because researchers use non-quantitativemethods within largely positivistic assumptions.Here, we use the term neo-empiricist specificallyto refer to those qualitative positivists who relyupon an array of qualitative methods to developinductively thick descriptions of the patternsin the inter-subjective meanings that actors useto make sense of their everyday worlds and whoinvestigate the implications of those interpre-tations for social interaction. Often, these data

are used to generate grounded theory thatparsimoniously explains and predicts behaviour(see Morse 1994) through the deployment ofGlaser and Strausss (1967; see also Locke 2000;Partington 2000; Strauss and Corbin 1990)constant comparative method or analytic induction(e.g. Johnson 1998).

Within this interpretive agenda, neo-empiricistsconstrue the passivity and neutrality of theresearcher as a separation of the knower-researcher from his/her inductive descriptionsof other actors inter-subjective cultural expe-riences which await discovery (Denzin 1971,168; Glaser 1992, 16). As Schwandt (1996, 62)puts it, this third-person point of view privilegesthe consciousness of the management researcher(see also Knights 1992; Van Maanen 1995b)by retaining the idea that there is a world out thereto be discovered and explored in an objectivemanner. Hence, the dispute with mainstreampositivism is centred upon what is open to direct,neutral, observation through sensory experienceand the continuing relevance of induction inthe social sciences (Marcus 1994). These phil-osophical commitments have led some writersto reject the idea that such qualitative researchis philosophically distinct from quantitativeresearch and to apply unreconstructed positivistevaluation criteria directly (e.g. Kirk and Miller1986; Lecompte and Goetz 1982).

According to others, these differences arephilosophically significant, and therefore theyhave attempted to revise positivist evaluationcriteria to reflect this inductive agenda througharticulating alternative ways of demonstratingthe qualitative researchers objectivity andscientific rigour that displace mainstreamconceptions of validity and reliability. Forinstance, in their early work, Lincoln and Guba(1985) emphasized the need for qualitativeresearchers to provide various audit trails, in aself-critical fashion, that allow audiences to makejudgements for themselves as to its rigour. Hencethey suggest the following general principleswhich replace: internal validity with credibil-ity (authentic representations); external validitywith transferability (extent of applicability);reliability with dependability (minimization of


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researcher idiosyncrasies); objectivity withconfirmability (researcher self-criticism). Mean-while, Morse (1994) focuses upon the inductiveanalysis of qualitative data. This begins with whatshe calls comprehension and learning about asetting, which is followed by synthesizing andidentifying patterns in the data to produce cat-egories, then theorizing to produce explana-tions that fit the data, and recontextualizing byabstracting the emerging theory to new settingsand relating it to established knowledge.Throughout, a significant issue is that the mana-gement researcher must provide an account ofhow the inductive analysis of the organizationalsettings under investigation was accomplishedby demonstrating how concepts were derivedand applied as well as showing how alternativeexplanations have been considered but rejected(see Adler and Adler 1994; K.D. Locke 1996;Miles and Huberman 1994).

Hammersleys contribution (1989, 1990, 1992)adds to the above evaluation criteria by suggestingthat qualitative researchers ought to be internallyreflexive through critically scrutinizing theimpact of their field roles upon the researchsetting and findings so as to reduce sources ofcontamination, thereby enhancing naturalismor ecological validity (see also: Bracht and Glass1968; Brunswick 1956; Cicourel 1982; Pollnerand Emerson 1983). So, a key aim in managementresearch would be to gain access to memberstheories-in-use (Argyris et al. 1985) and themultiple inter-subjective perspectives that aboundin both the formal and informal organization(Pettigrew 1985), while avoiding over rapportwith those members and going native. In this,it would be necessary to treat organizationalsettings as anthropologically strange (Ham-mersley 1990, 16) while demonstrating socialand intellectual distance and preserving ana-lytical space (Hammersley and Atkinson 1995,115). As Seale notes (1999a, 161), throughrevealing aspects of themselves and the researchprocess as a traceable audit trail, this approachstresses how researchers must demonstrate theirhard won objectivity, thereby establishing thecredibility, dependability and confirmabilityof findings.

As noted above, because the promise ofreplication is more problematic in qualitativeresearch, as so much depends upon the socialsetting in which research takes place, depend-ability may be further demonstrated through aparticular form of triangulation. This entailsthe contingent use of multiple researchers, multipleprimary and secondary data sources and collectionmethods to cross-reference and substantiatethe objectivity of findings by demonstratingtheir convergence and consistency of meaning(see Leininger 1994; Lowe et al. 2000; Miles andHuberman 1994).

Perhaps the most controversial aspect ofneo-empiricisms naturalistic concern withpreserving research settings is that, owing to thesmall samples used, although generalization withina setting is possible, the qualitative researchercan rarely make claims about the settingsrepresentativeness of a wider population, andtherefore any claims to positivist conceptionsof external validity are always going to betenuous (see Lewis and Ritchie 2003). However,for Mitchell (1983; see also Stake 2000) sucha traditional conception of external validity showsa confusion between the procedures appropriateto making probabilistic inferences from surveyresearch and those which are appropriate to whathe calls case studies. He argues that analyticalthinking about survey data is based upon bothstatistical and logical (i.e. causal) inference,and that there is a tendency to elide the formerwith the latter in that the postulated causalconnection among features in a sample maybe assumed to exist in some parent populationsimply because the features may be inferredto co-exist in that population (Mitchell 1983,200). He proceeds to argue that, in contrast,inference in case study research can only belogical and derives its generalizability not fromsampling, but from unassailable logical infer-ence based upon the demonstrated all-inclusivepower of the inductively generated and testedtheoretical model (ibid., 190; see also: Fieldingand Fielding 1986, 89; Strauss 1987, 3839).

Sometimes, neo-empiricists advocate a plu-ralistic methodological orientation (e.g. Lecompteand Goetz 1982; McCall and Bobko 1999)



which pragmatically combines qualitative andquantitative work to investigate differentdimensions of actors behaviour. Here, thedifference between various methods is perceivedas being one of trade-off between mainstreampositivist evaluation criteria such as reliability,internal and external validity and neo-empiricistcriteria such as ecological validity. The notionof trade-off illustrates the need to use quantitativeand qualitative methodologies to triangulatefindings so as to locate an objects exact position(Jick 1979, 602) and overcome the bias inherentin a single-method approach (Campbell andFiske 1959). This is why pluralists argue thatquantitative and qualitative methodologies donot reflect a fundamental philosophical conflict.Rather, they complement one another in a varietyof ways that add to the credibility of a study.However, this rapprochement is only tenablewithin neo-empiricist philosophical assumptionswhich recognize the importance of actors inter-subjectivity and the consequent need for, andpossibility of, verstehen, while simultaneouslyrecognizing the influence of external causalvariables upon behaviour (see McLennan 1995).For the pluralist, qualitative methods are the mostappropriate for fulfilling their commitment tothe exploration of actors inter-subjective worldsbut usually within a version of variable analysis(Blumer 1969) which also has to deployquantitative methods.

For instance, within this pluralist position,qualitative methodology could also be usedwithin a hypothetico-deductive framework tocontrol the extraneous variables that interpretiveresearchers would see as deriving from thesocial context in which research takes place(i.e. the indexical nature of actors observedbehaviour) and actors consequent variableinterpretation of designated independent variablesmeasured by quantitative procedures. In thismanner, qualitative research is seen to improvethe internal validity of quantitative researchby attending to ecological validity (Cicourel1982; Schuman 1982). Alternatively, method-ological pluralism may also arise from a com-mitment to linking micro-analyses of individualor group action(s) with a macro-structural

analysis of society (see Fielding 1988). Forinstance, in this form of methodological pluralism,the researcher provides a quantitative analysisthat seeks to explain causally and contextualizeholistically qualitative descriptions of actorsinter-subjectively derived interpretations (Boyle1994). Underlying either approach is the aimof providing what Fay (1975, 8485) hascalled quasi-causal accounts, where in thesesorts of conditionship relations, consciousnessfunctions as a mediator between the determiningantecedent factors and the subsequent actions.

In sum, neo-empiricist methodologicalpluralism considers that combining quantitativeand qualitative methods is not only viable, itactually would significantly improve managementresearch in terms of mainstream positivist criteria.However, such a stance can only be maintainedby accepting the relevance of both verstehen anderklaren to social science and by assumingthat there are not significant philosophicaldifferences at play something, as we have shown,which not all neo-empiricists are prepared toagree with, and hence they limit their work to thedeployment of qualitative methods.

Within all neo-empiricism, there lurks a tensionbetween an empiricist impulse that emphasizeshow inductive descriptions of cultures shouldcorrespond with members inter-subjectivityand an interpretive impulse that suggests thatpeople socially construct versions of reality culturally derived processes which somehowdo not extend to the neo-empiricists own researchprocesses (see Hammersley 1992). It is thisempiricist assumption that is questioned bysocial constructionists through their claim thatinterpretation applies to both researchers andthe researched. As Van Maanen (1988, 74) argues,social constructionism dismisses the possibilityof a neutral observational language, becausesuch a possibility can only be sustained throughthe deployment of a rhetoric of objectivity thatprivileges the consciousness of the researcher.It is in this repudiation of the researchersability to be a neutral conduit and presenter ofactors inter-subjectivity that we can identify thepoint of departure of two competing social con-structionist approaches to qualitative management


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research: critical theory and postmodernism alongwith their attendant evaluation criteria.

Critical Theory

In some cases, scholars whose early work wehave initially classified as neo-empiricist havesubsequently developed a social constructioniststance. For instance, at one point, Lincoln andGuba (1985, 293) reject what they construe asnaive realism in favour of multiple constructedrealities (ibid., 295), while Hammersley (1990,1992) also argues for subtle realism. Yet thesewriters fail to translate this apparent philosophicalshift immediately into a congruent set of eval-uation criteria. As we have shown, the criteriathey do propose still rely upon privileging theconsciousness of the researcher relative to theresearched.

In response to this criticism of their early work(1985), Guba and Lincoln (1989, 1994) replacedtheir neo-empiricist evaluation criteria throughdeveloping what amounts to a consensus viewof truth expressed through their criterion ofauthenticity, where research findings shouldrepresent an agreement about what is consideredto be true. To demonstrate authenticity, researchersmust show how different members realities arerepresented in any account (fairness). Moreover,researchers must also show how they have helpedmembers develop a range of understandings ofthe phenomenon being investigated and appreciatethose of others (ontological and educativeauthenticity), while stimulating action (analyticalauthenticity) through members empowerment(tactical authenticity). Here, it is evident thatGuba and Lincolns social constructionistcriteriology has striking parallels with thedevelopment of critical theory, inspired by theFrankfurt School, in management research.The latter has grown out of an overt rejectionof positivist philosophical assumptions and,by implication, a critique of managementprerogative, to articulate a consensus theory oftruth intimately linked to participatory approachesto management research whose aim is eman-cipation. Here, it is important to trace how partic-ular constitutive assumptions, originating with the

Frankfurt Schools critique of positivism, haveled to a distinctive approach to qualitative manage-ment research with the articulation of commen-surate evaluation criteria.

Some management researchers (Grey 1997;Grey and Mitev 1995; Thomas 1997) have arguedthat positivism is pivotal to management, as itenshrines managerial prerogative in a persuasiveclaim to expertise grounded in objectiveknowledge. However, as Grey and Willmott(2002) explain, this positivist stance has beenundermined by those who have argued that thepossibility of a neutral observational language,and conceptualizations of truth as correspondencewith reality, are merely the outcomes of pres-tigious discursive narratives which inevitablymask partiality. With this attack, the claim thatmanagement prerogative is founded upon atechnical imperative to improve organizationalefficiency, justified and enabled by objectiveanalyses of how things really are, crumbles(Fournier and Grey 2000; R. Locke 1996).However, this repudiation of positivism posesa problem since, if we reject the possibility ofscientific objectivity, how can we aspire to presentanything more than mere speculation?

Inspired largely by Habermass (1984, 1987a)inter-subjective theory of communicative action,this epistemological conundrum translated into ademand for the discursive democratization ofsocial practices by critical theorists (e.g. Alvessonand Willmott 1996; Beck 1992; Deetz 1992;Forrester 1993). For instance, in his early workHabermas (1972, 1973, 1974a,b) argued thatpositivisms limitation of the sciences to entitiesthat were assumed to be immediately availableto sensory experience helped to remove meta-physical and religious dogmas from the realmof science. Although erklaren may be appropriatefor the non-sentient domains of the naturalsciences, according to Habermas (1973, 176) socialphenomena are not governed by causal regu-larities and, significantly, the epistemologicalimposition of such relations may entrap peoplein objectified pseudo-natural constraints. Thisis because positivisms presupposition of a neutralobservational language allows positivists toignore the effects of the knower upon what is



known and thereby insulates them from any formof epistemological reflexivity.

For Habermas, all knowledge is contaminatedat source by the influence of socio-cultural factorsupon sensory experience (Habermas 1974b, 199).In this manner, Habermas substitutes theempiricism of the correspondence approach totruth with a social constructionism based upon theobject-constituting activity of epistemic humanbeings. Nevertheless, like Kant (1781), he acceptsthe existence of a reality independent of humansubjectivity which imposes limitations uponhuman endeavours through the contingencyof its ultimate constants (Habermas 1972, 33) butwhich humans simultaneously shape throughtheir deployment of epistemological categories(1974a, 89).

In order to avoid the problems associated withrelativism that can arise with any dismissal ofepistemic objectivity (see McCarthy 1980, 295),Habermas (1974a) proposes a new epistemicstandard: the ideal-speech situation, wherediscursively produced consensus is induced whenthat consensus derives from argument andanalysis without the resort to coercion, distortionor duplicity. Such an ideal expresses Habermassemancipatory interest which, located in theprinciple of self-reflection upon their organi-zational predicaments, aims to liberate peoplefrom asymmetrical power relations, dependenciesand constraints. For Habermas (1984), such com-municative rationality and attendant episte-mologically legitimate organizational practiceswill only occur where democratic social relationshave been already established (see Forrester1993, 57).

But democratic communication can be a facadein which the more powerful deploy a rhetoricof democracy to impose their own preferencesupon, and silence or marginalize the less powerful(see Marcuse 1964). So, for critical theorists,it is only through the participation of all in demo-cratic discourse and, crucially, through the priordevelopment of a critical consciousness,3 that sucha scenario may be avoided. Here the task is:

first to understand the ideologically distortedsubjective situation of some individual or group,

second to explore the forces that have caused thatsituation, and third to show that these forces can beovercome through awareness of them on the part ofthe oppressed individual or group in question. (Dryzek1995, 99)

The aim is to de-reify extant organizationalpractices (see: Beck 1992; Friere 1972a,b; Fuller1993; Unger 1987; Warren 1995) throughdeveloping a self-conception in which membersare knowledgeable subjects who are able todetermine and change their situation, as opposedto powerless objects determined by an immu-table situation. Through such critical reasoninglies emancipation and freedom as the negotiationof alternative renditions of reality creates novelquestions, inaugurates new problems and makessocially transformative forms of organizationalpractice sensible and therefore possible (Gaventaand Cornwall 2001). Epistemologically legitimateknowledge arises only where it is the outcomeof such empowered democratic collective dia-logue. Moreover, because different modes ofknowing have different interest-laden ends, itfollows that the self-aware selection of mode,as opposed to an alternative, is inevitably alsoa matter of collective ethical dialogue (see:Bernstein 1991; Rheg 1994).

The evaluation criteria that derive from criticaltheorys philosophy centre on five interrelatedissues. First, because any knowledge is a productof particular values and interests, researchersmust reflexively interrogate the epistemologicaland political baggage they bring with them(Kincheloe and McLaren 1994, 265). Second,through critical interpretation (Denzin 1998, 332)and what amounts to a structural phenomenology(Forrester 1993) or critical ethnography (Morrowand Brown 1994; Thomas 1993), researchersattempt to sensitize themselves and participantsto how hegemonic regimes of truth affect thesubjectivities of the disadvantaged (Marcusand Fisher 1986; Putnam et al. 1993). Third,positivist conceptions of validity are overtlyrejected and replaced by democratic researchdesigns to generate conditions that approximateHabermass ideal speech situation (e.g. Broadbentand Laughlin 1997) and are dialogical (Schwandt


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1996, 6667). Pivotal is the credibility of theconstructed realities to those who have par-ticipated in their development (Kincheloe andMcLaren, 1994). Fourth, positivist concernswith generalizability are rejected in favour ofwhat Kincheloe and McLaren call accommo-dation, where researchers use their knowledgeof a range of comparable contexts to assesssimilarities and differences. Fifth is whatKincheloe and McLaren call catalytic validity.This is the extent to which research changesthose it studies so that they understand the worldin new ways and use this knowledge to changeit (see also Schwandt 1996, 67).

As noted earlier, it is evident that the evaluationcriteria deriving from critical theory closelyparallel Guba and Lincolns (1989, 1994) ownincreasing emphasis on authenticity. As withcritical theorys Kantian philosophy, their socialconstructionist stance directs qualitative man-agement research into a processual project thatemphasizes researchers and participants reflexiveand dialogical interrogation of their ownunderstandings and the hegemonic discoursesof the powerful. The aim is to engender newdemocratically grounded self-understandingsto challenge that which was previously taken tobe authoritative and immutable, thereby reclaimingalternative accounts of organizational phe-nomena and the possibility of transformativeorganizational change (see, Alvesson 1996;Beck 1992; Gaventa and Cornwall 2001; Park2001; Unger 1987).

Postmodernism

Recently, postmodernism has attracted the interestof management researchers, and a new formof qualitative management research has emergedwhere suitably reformulated ethnographies(Linstead 1993a, 6568) have become the thelanguage of postmodernism (Linstead 1993b,98; see also: Ely 1995; Giroux 1992; Kondo1990). However, we must be cautious here,for postmodernism is a label used to refer toa range of heterogeneous approaches to man-agement research. Here it is useful to follow anumber of commentators who have differentiated

between what they label soft, scepticalor resistant postmodernism from hard,affirmative or reactionary postmodernism(Alvesson and Deetz 1996, 2000; Kilduff andMehra 1997; Rosenau 1992; Tsoukas 1992).The first set of labels refers to a postmodernismthat is similar to what we have called criticaltheory, where the ontological existence of thesocial world is recognized (Tsoukas 1992, 648)while focusing on the role discourses playin constituting asymmetrical power relationsthrough the social construction of what istaken to be real. For Alvesson and Deeetz(1996, 2000), the close relationship with crit-ical theory is only too evident since, throughcritique and reflexivity, resistant postmod-ernism seeks to denaturalize and challengerepressive discursive practices while avoidingrelativism through using democracy as anepistemic standard. Indeed, it seems to be thisform of postmodernism that Habermas (1987b)refers to when he argues that postmodernismmay be subsumed within, and be invigoratedby, critical theory. Likewise, Kincheloe andMcLaren (1994) clearly assume that their criteriafor evaluating critical theory would equallyapply to this first form of postmodernism.However, this is not the case with hard,affirmative or reactionary postmodernismwhere a subjectivist ontology comes to the fore,and a demarcation with critical theory becomesclearer (see Alvesson and Deetz 1996, 210).Here the promulgation of specific evaluationcriteria inspired by this form of postmodernismremains somewhat nebulous.

For instance, affirmative postmodernistssometimes accuse critical theorists of presentingdiscourses as being constituted by non-discursiveconditions (e.g. Quantz 1992). Affirmative post-modernists see that such essentialism lies incritical theorys guiding presupposition thatstructurally based oppression and exploitationlie hidden beneath appearances: an essentialismwhich is further articulated in its concern withenabling emancipation through democratization.Such presuppositions are dismissed by post-modernists as unsustainable grand or metanarratives which arbitrarily assume the validity



of their own truth claims (Rosenau 1992, xi).Of course, such a stance is itself an expression ofa distinctive epistemological and ontologicalposition from which we can infer specificevaluation criteria for affirmative postmodern-ist management research, despite the denialsof some postmodernists (e.g. Lyotard 1984).

As we have indicated, both forms of post-modernism are highly sceptical about the rep-resentational capacity of language. Indeed, alllinguistic manifestations are precarious, asthere can be no single discoverable true mean-ing. There are only numerous different polyse-mous interpretations which are also pivotal tothe social construction of organizationmembers subjectivities and are the means bywhich power struggles occur (Boje 1995;Westwood and Linstead 2001). However,affirmative postmodernists also think thatdiscourses actively create and naturalize,rather than discover, the objects (i.e. simulacra)which seem to populate our (hyper)realities(Baudrillard 1983). The result is that knowl-edge, truth and reality become construed asprecarious linguistic constructs potentiallyopen to constant revision but which are oftenstabilized through scientists, and otheractors, performative ability (Lyotard 1984).Therefore, much qualitative managementresearch is seen to adopt a spurious objectivitythat is only maintained through the rhetoricalskill of the researcher (see: Linstead 1993a,b;Tyler 1986). Given this subjectivist ontologi-cal and epistemological stance, the affirmativepostmodernist must accept the relativistposition that there are no good reasons for pre-ferring one inter-subjectively accomplishedrepresentation over any other.

For some affirmative postmodernists (e.g.Mulkay 1991; Smith 1990; Smith and Deemer2000), their commitment to relativism meansthat the development of specific evaluativecriteria for the outcomes of qualitative inquirycannot be sanctioned. Indeed, any evaluationper se is construed as a modernist (i.e. posi-tivist) anachronism, because phenomena areconstituted by the methodologies used by theresearcher to examine them. Therefore, any

evaluative criteria may be rejected as rhetoricaldevices in a hegemonic scientific discourse,which masks the researchers own subjectivityto produce truth-effects. Indeed, as Billig andSimon (1994, 6) note, this form of post-modernism could promote a promiscuousstance that denies any chance of developingcriteria for judging the quality of any manage-ment research, including the postmodern, sincesuch evaluation frameworks themselves mustrepresent discursively constituted regimes ofpower and must be subverted. Nevertheless,there is a tacit evaluative agenda embeddedwithin affirmative postmodernistists own stancethat valorizes and promotes specific researchpractices that are aimed at undermining anyhegemonic discursive activity.

If language can rhetorically produce as manyrealities as there are modes of describing andexplaining (see Baudrillard 1983, 1993; Chia1995; Jeffcutt 1994), affirmative postmoderniststend to repudiate any representational aspirationsfor qualitative research in favour of an evocationof plurality and indeterminacy. The aim is toopen up any attempted discursive closure to amultiplicity of divergent possibilities by sub-verting conventional ways of thinking that havebeen inter-subjectively established. Therefore,a key task is to display and unsettle the discursiverules of the game through deconstruction. Forinstance, Linstead (1993a) illustrates howpostmodernism directs organizational ethnog-raphers to explore ways in which certain realitiesare produced and reproduced through memberstextual strategies. Here, the ethnographer attemptsto expose how there are always deferred ormarginalized meanings within any form ofspeech or writing which can be revealed throughdeconstruction: the dismantling of such textsso as to reveal their internal contradictions,assumptions and different layers of meaning,which are hidden from the naive reader/listenerand unrecognized by the author/speaker asthey strive to maintain unity and consistency(see also Boje 2001; Carter and Jackson 1993;Cooper 1990; Czarniawaska-Joerges 1996; Kilduff1993; Martin 1990). Therefore, affirmativepostmodernists deny that any linguistic


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construction, including their own (see Cliffordand Marcus 1986), produced in any social setting,can be ever settled or stable: it can always bereflexively questioned as layers of meaningare removed to reveal those meanings whichhave been suppressed, sublimated or forgotten(Chia 1995) in the act of speaking or writing.

So a key endeavour is to understand theways in which discourses are sustained andundermined rather than to make claims abouta reality independent of human cognition(Edwards et al. 1995). Therefore deconstruc-tion cannot get the deconstructor closer to afixed, or privileged, truth. Indeed, meaningis always precarious and local (Linstead andGrafton-Small 1992), and every text expressesa hidden narrative logic concerning discursiveauthority, gender, power and knowledge (Clough1992, 5) which deconstruction (re)presents forreflexive analysis. However, power and historywork through them in ways authors cannotfully control (Clifford 1986, 7). So at most,deconstruction can only invoke an alternativesocial construction of reality within a textwhich itself is amenable to further interrogationso as to expose its underlying narrative logic and so on, ad infinitum. As Derrida (1976, 51)argues, when protected by a contrived invisi-bility, the authorial presence behind a text exertsauthority and privilege unless the text isdeconstructed: something which applies toaffirmative postmodernists as much as anyoneelse. In order to pursue this commitment bydestabilizing their own narratives, some post-modernists have challenged and eschewed thedominant conventions of writing throughpromoting an awareness of the author(s) behindthe text, thereby undermining asymmetricalauthority relations between author and reader(e.g. Ashmore 1989; Burrell 1997; Edwards andPotter 1992; Nason and Golding 1998; Woolgar1989). Indeed, the resultant unsettling, or par-alogy (see Lyotard 1984), is pivotal, as itavoids the authorial privileging upon whichany discursive closure depends (Ashmore et al.1995; Foucault 1984) and encourages the pro-liferation of discursive practices which post-modernists call heteroglossia (see Gergen 1992).

So it is a preference-less toleration of the pol-yphonic (many voices) which is pivotal for theaffirmative postmodernist, as any discursiveclosure, whether grounded in democraticconsensus or otherwise, implies the arbitrarydominance of a particular discourse whichserves to silence alternative possible voices andprevent the dissensus and heteroglossia whichcould otherwise ensue (see Rhodes 2001;Rosenau 1992). The resultant approach refinesour sensitivity to differences and reinforcesour ability to tolerate the incommensurable(Lyotard 1984, xxv).

Therefore, within affirmative postmodernepistemological and ontological commitments,any evaluation of qualitative management researchcan only be concerned with how research unsettlesthose discourses that have become more priv-ileged than others by encouraging resistance andspace for alternative texts, discourses, narrativesor language games without advocating anypreference (e.g. Barry 1997; Barry and Elmes1997; Boje 2001; Currie and Brown 2003;Ford 1999; Gergen and Thatchenkerry 1996;Treleaven 2001). As have noted above, a keycriterion relates to how the author is decentredto avoid any authorial privileging which wouldresult in the anathema of discursive closure.Hence, a key issue in the evaluation of affirmativepostmodernist management research concernshow it helps people to think about their ownand others thinking so as to question thefamiliar and taken-for-granted by empoweringmultivocal authors to manipulate signifiers tocreate new textual domains of intelligibilitywithout imposing discursive closure (Chia 1995;Cooper and Burrell 1988; Kilduff and Mehra,1997; Treleaven 2001; Tsoukas 1992).

Conclusions

Evaluation is a significant issue for everyoneinvolved in the academic labour process: weall evaluate others research, we also evaluateour own research which is, in turn, eventuallyevaluated by others. Indeed, so many aspectsof our career prospects are dependent on theoutcomes of such processes. Moreover, in an



age when the economic viability of many UKuniversity management schools and depart-ments depends upon their performance in theResearch Assessment Exercise, how the out-comes of management research are evaluatedhas taken on an even greater significance.Meanwhile, the expanding popularity ofqualitative management research seems to haveaccompanied an increasing divergence in theforms that it takes. Here, we have attempted toillustrate how the label qualitative manage-ment research embraces a diverse array ofpractices, which creates problems with regardto how to undertake its evaluation and hassimultaneously engendered a growing senseof confusion (see Prasad and Prasad 2002).We have simultaneously argued that this diversityand confusion are outcomes of the varyingknowledge-constituting assumptions whichlegitimize distinctive perspectives and researchagendas, while promulgating particular evalu-ation criteria. In doing so, we have traced thisarray of competing normative positions whichare available for the evaluation of qualitativemanagement research.

Here, it is important to note that, in anyresearch, management or otherwise, adoptinga priori knowledge-constituting assumptionsis unavoidable, as there is no space availableto the researcher that is not regulated by someorganizing philosophical logic. Hence, wemust focus our attention upon the often unnoticedphilosophical commitments and disagreementsthat pervade management research. However,as has long been noted (e.g. Burrell and Morgan1979), embracing any set of knowledge-constituting assumptions is always conten-tious, for there is no single, incontestable schemeof ontological and epistemological commitmentswhich may be deployed to protect and regulateany (management) research. Philosophicalstruggle is always immanent. Therefore, try-ing to articulate one set of all-embracing,indisputable, regulative standards to interrogateand methodologically police qualitative man-agement research, so as to discipline practi-tioners, would seem both a forlorn hope andan unfair practice. As Scheurich (1997) notes,

the danger here is that boundaries are estab-lished which seek to exclude that which ques-tions or attacks the status quo (see also Bochner2000). For Scheurich, such boundaries are alwaysideological power alignments which createinsiders and outsiders. Nevertheless, as we havetried to show, although these boundaries maybe exclusionary, they are not arbitrary, and itis possible to identify how particular episte-mological and ontological positions do legiti-mate particular research aims, make certainmethodological commitments, and suggest thecontingent application of specific evaluationcriteria (see Table 2).

Table 2 highlights the importance of evalu-ating any qualitative research project from withinthe particular logic of justification articulatedby its immanent philosophical stance. The aimsof management research are different in eachmode of engagement illustrated in Table 2, as aresult of the underlying philosophical assumptions.The quality criteria by which work in eachmode of engagement may be evaluated arealso different. The key issue here is that, when weare assessing the extent to which qualitativemanagement research is of value, we applythe appropriate assessment criteria. It is, forexample, ludicrous to evaluate affirmativepostmodernist research in terms of objectivityor correspondence, as expressed throughdifferent forms of validity, reliability andgeneralizability, as such criteria are dismissedby these postmodernists as tools of a hegemonicdiscourse which are legitimated by the veryregimes of truth encoded into the sociallyestablished metanarratives that they seekto overthrow through deconstruction andheteroglossia.

Therefore, the proposed contingent criteriologyis a heuristic device which aims to help sensitizemanagement researchers to the particular qualityissues that their own, and others, research shouldaddress and how these issues are social pro-ducts created by human beings in the course ofevolving a set of practices (Bochner 2000, 269).Of course, practising management researchersdo not necessarily operate consistently withina particular stance and do vary their approach


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within a specific piece of research a processdubbed ontological oscillation (Burrell andMorgan 1979, 266; Weick 1995, 3438). But,by implication, the proposed criteriologysuggests that researchers should follow whatWillmott (1998) calls the new sensitivity inmanagement research by simultaneously artic-ulating and reflecting upon their particularphilosophical commitments, then exploringtheir methodological and criteriological

consequences as resources for contingentevaluation. Likewise, such a sensitivity shouldbe appropriated by the various epistemologicalgatekeepers who socially patrol the boundariesof peer-reviewed management journals thegold standard of this disciplinary field (seeBedeian 2004).

The awareness that can result from suchinterrogations may help management researchersmatch their philosophical preferences to

Table 2. Contingent criteriology: a first step

Modes of engagement: Positivism Neo-empiricism Critical theory

Affirmative postmodernism.

Underlying philosophical assumptions

Real-world independent of humancognition which science can neutrally access to produce privileged knowledge.

Real and inter-subjective worlds which science can neutrally represent and explain.

Reality as-it-is can never be known by science because of the operation of the a priori inter-subjective processes which produce realities-for-us. Power asymmetries socially produce hegemonic versions of reality.

Hyper realities produced through discourses, narratives, language games etc.

Research aims Description of the world, and explanation through prediction, to improve management decision making.

Discovery of the inter-subjective to describe and explain human action in and around organizations.

To understand managerial hegemony: to explore its causes and to develop strategies through dialogue to change the situation.

To understand the ways in which discourses/texts are sustained and inter-subjectively constitute subjectivities and identities.

Methodological commitments

Methodological monism: erklaren and deductive testing of hypotheses through quantification.

Verstehen to inductively describe and explain patterns of actors inter-subjective meanings sometimes contextualized by pluralistic quasi-causal accounts.

Critical ethnographies/structural phenomenologies to facilitate transformational change and emancipation based upon reflexive understanding.

Deconstruction of texts, whether written or spoken; new styles of writing which challenge authorial presence.

Evaluation criteria for assessing management research

Internal validity, external validity, construct validity and reliability.

Internally reflexive audit trails to demonstrate credibility, dependability, confirmability, and ecological validity; transferability/logical inference.

Accommodation, catalytic validity and various forms of authenticity expressed in and through epistemically reflexive dialogue grounded in discursive democracy.

Heteroglossia to give voice to previously silenced textual domains; unsettling of the hegemonic; articulation of incommensurable plurality of discourses, narratives etc. which de-centre the author through multivocality.



particular forms of inquiry and evaluationwhich articulate the often tacit conventions ofa specific academic community. This requiresmanagement researchers to: subject theirphilosophical assumptions to sustained reflectionand evaluation through their confrontation withpossible alternatives; deliberate the implicationsof their informed choices for research practice;be consistent in their actual engagements withmanagement practices and be clear about howthey meet specific but philosophically contingentevaluation criteria. Such transparency andreflexivity may empower audiences by enablingtheir understanding of the philosophical contextin which the work was produced. Peer-evaluationcan then also focus upon the extent to which theresearch project consistently embraces themethodological principles that the author claimsto follow. We suggest, therefore, that thisprocess applies both to how we should evaluateour own management research and to how weshould evaluate the work of others. Moreover,the transparency created by such interrogationscould function as a means of communicationbetween schools of thought at a metatheoreticallevel and may serve to empower mutualunderstanding through a dialogue with, and areceptiveness to, the orientations of others.Nevertheless, we must not be complacent aboutthe institutional barriers which may exist andhinder the adoption of such a contingent cri-teriology in practice. As illustrated in Sternand Barleys (1996) account of how one man-agement discipline (organization theory) becameinstitutionalized, we also need to be alert tohow and why, in particular social contexts,certain research practices become valued anddeemed to be the norm, while others aresometimes discounted as aberrations withlittle value for management research.

In conclusion, it is important to emphasizethat we have argued that any (management)research is embedded in specific knowledge-constituting assumptions. Of course, this appliesas much to this work as to anyone elses. Theirony here is that, in developing a contingentcriteriology located in a philosophical analysisof management research, we must undermine

some schools of thought in that overview. Aswe have argued, no one, including ourselves,can stand outside their own epistemologicaland ontological commitments. By pointing tohow researchers must take into account theirown philosophically contingent role in pro-ducing management research, we tacitly adoptan anti-foundationalist stance which opposesthe view that knowledge can be founded uponan unassailable epistemological base which maybe taken for granted. Moreover, by attemptingto interrogate the overarching structures ofthought which justify particular approaches tomanagement research, the very act of writingthis kind of paper tends to undermine bothpositivist/neo-empiricist notions of objectivityand the affirmative postmodernists suspicionof the authoritative monologue. In this manner,we confront the conundrum of epistemologicalcircularity one cannot have knowledgeabout knowledge without already deploying apriori knowledge-constituting commitments (seeJohnson and Duberley 2000, 36). So here wemight inadvertently undermine some of thepositions we analyse, in and through the veryact of writing. As Neurath (1944, 47) has noted,such dilemmas are inevitable as, epistemolog-ically, we are never able to start afresh fromthe bottom. It is hoped that this paper con-tributes to the new sensibility by enhancingmanagement researchers reflexive awarenessof these dilemmas and by encouraging us to admitto them publicly and cope with them as best wecan, for perhaps we can never transcend them.

Acknowledgement

This work was sponsored by the Economic andSocial Research Councils Research MethodsProgramme: Grant No H33250006. We shouldalso like to thank the three anonymous reviewerswho gave us valuable feedback on the devel-opment of this paper.

Notes

1 Corresponding author: Professor Phil Johnson,Sheffield University Management School, 9


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Mappin Street, Sheffield S1 4DT, UK; e-mail:[email protected]

2 This is usually labelled hard, affirmative orreactionary postmodernism (Alvesson and Deetz1996, 2000; Kilduff and Mehra 1997; Rosenau1992; Tsoukas 1992) and we shall differentiatethis form of postmodernism from soft, scepticalor resistant postmodernism, which seemsmore closely allied to critical theory, owing to itsontology, later in the paper.

3 With regard to the development of a criticalconsciousness, Habermas (1972, 214) considerspsychoanalysis to be the only prototype of ascience that incorporates the self-reflection ofcritical science. This is because psychoanalysisinvolves depth hermeneutics (ibid., 218) inwhich distorted texts of the client-patientsbehaviour become intelligible to him/her throughself-reflection. Such self-reflection is enabledby the analysts attempts to interpret the clientsbehaviour and experiences in terms of causesidentified through reference to Freudian Theory ofNeurosis. Through reflection upon the analystsinterpretations during therapy, the client maybegin to see her/himself through the eyes ofanother and learns to reflect on these symptomsas off shots of his own behaviour (ibid., 232). Inthis fashion, the patient becomes liberatedfrom the terror of his/her own unconsciousnessas previously suppressed, and latent determinantsof behaviour are revealed and thereby losetheir power. While the accuracy of Habermassexegesis does not specifically concern us here, itis important to note that, as a model for criticaltheory, it has been subject to widespread criticism,which might explain why this aspect of hiswork is usually downplayed in favour of hispositioning of democracy and the ideal speechact as an epistemic standard. For instance, Held(1980) argues that Habermass conception ofenlightenment through psychoanalytical dialoguefails to specify how this might be transposed tothe political and social domain. According toHeld, Habermas mistakenly elides ideologicaldistortion with neurosis, and this deflects atten-tion from the connection of ideology with theclash of material interests (ibid., 394). It is thisconnection that critical theorists explorethrough ideological critique, reflexivity anddemocratic reform commitments that have adirect bearing on research processes in man-agement research (see Jermier 1998) rather than

the deployment of Habermass psychoanalyticalmodel.

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