Pages: 26

Contextually, reflexive knowledge about climate change has induced an awareness that we live in a state of heightened awareness of the precariousness of life on earth. The planetary boundaries for life on the planet are increasingly being challenged by changes to its conditions because of climate change, freshwater use, rate of biodiversity loss, land use, global nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, chemical pollution, atmospheric aerosol loading, ozone depletion, and ocean acidification. The second one-in-five-hundred-year flooding in the past year is occurring in the state in which these words are being written, just a few months after the previous flood thus designated. Not only floods but also pestilence have marked the times in which the book has been written. The novel coronavirus, causing the disease COVID-19, has unleashed major institutional changes in everyday life. Statements of purpose: Introducing the reader to some of the contemporary challenges and responses to them in doing qualitative research. Methodology: A broad but brief introduction to contemporary qualitative research approaches and the idea of using ‘exemplary research’ for direction in research. Findings: Qualitative research is not just limited to interviewing people; it can include naturally occurring data, whether observed, audio or video recorded; documents, digital data and traces – anything and everything can be considered as data. Originality and value: After reading this chapter, students and other researchers will be exposed to the possibility of multiple approaches to enacting research.

Pages: 17

This chapter uses narrative semi-fiction to guide scholars using qualitative research methods to negotiate access to organizations to collect data for organizational research. We use narrative semi-fiction to reflect on how researchers in training move from access challenges to research insights. Researchers negotiating access to fieldwork must reflexively account for themselves, their commitments, the events studied, as well as research interlocutors. The latter can include multiple embodied natures (e.g., overworked and poorly trained attendants, professional colleagues, companion species, endangered turtles) as well as socio-material realities (e.g., protocols, organizational strategies, inscriptions, meaningful spaces) with which their investigations become entangled. Linking to narrative semi-fiction to elaborate fieldwork stories illustrates how different access problems can lead to research insights and socio-material data. Statements of purpose: Using narrative semi-fiction as a guide for scholars seeking to negotiate access to collect qualitative data for research. Methodology: We link up with narrative semi-fiction to reflect on how researchers in training move from access challenges to research insights. Findings: To negotiate access to research sites, researchers must reflexively account for themselves, their commitments, the events studied as well as the heterogeneous research interlocutors, including multiple embodied natures (e.g., overworked and poorly trained attendants, professional colleagues, companion species, endangered turtles) and socio-material realities (e.g., protocols, organizational strategies, inscriptions, meaningful spaces) entangled with their investigations. Originality and value: We link up with narrative semi-fiction to illustrate access stumbles as data that can lead to research insights and socio-material data.

Pages: 20

This chapter addresses the challenges of writing a literature review that develops theory. The story shows how a student researcher developed an empirical method for gaining insight from an exemplary publication. Doing this enabled him to write a literature review, developing a theoretical approach using narrative fiction for research and teaching. The research-based narrative demonstrates how fiction has been used in organization and management theory (OMT) in connecting writers, readers and topics. The aim is to generate creative responses from readers interested in writing emergent literature reviews as a way of developing theory by using research-based narrative fiction. Statements of purpose: To address the challenges of writing a literature review to develop theory. Methodology: The research-based narrative fiction is used to address the challenges of writing a literature review to develop theory; the story shows how a Brazilian student developed an empirical method for gaining insight from an exemplary publication to write a literature review to develop a theoretical approach of narrative fiction to research and teaching experience. Findings: The research-based narrative fiction demonstrates how narrative fiction has been used to connect writer, reader and subject. Originality and value: We use research-based narrative fiction to generate creative responses in readers interested in writing emergent literature reviews to develop theory.

Pages: 32

This chapter introduces and uses an analysis of controversies as a guide for researchers collecting and analysing qualitative data. Although rarely used, the cartography of controversies is a powerful tool for mapping conflicts and disagreements in social relationships. We draw on this research method to describe the process of investigating conflicting interests in an organization, in this case, in carnival production in Brazil. We show how the method of a cartography of controversies helps to create guidelines for collecting and analysing data. Using this approach, it is possible to identify different practices and perspectives that lead actors to perform specific realities. We use the paradigm of a screenplay and ethnographic fiction to frame the narrated story, presenting the study findings through creative writing. Statements of purpose: We introduce and use controversies analysis as a guide for researchers collecting and analysing qualitative data, presenting the study findings through creative writing. Methodology: We draw on the cartography of controversies as a qualitative research method of data collection and analysis to describe the process of investigating conflicts interests in carnival production. Findings: We show how the cartography of controversies can be helpful for scholarship to create guidelines for collecting and analysing data so that it is possible to identify different practices and points of view that lead actors to perform specific realities. Originality and value: the cartography of controversies is a powerful tool for mapping conflicts and disagreements in social relationships and it is rarely used. In addition to introducing this tool, we use the paradigm of a screenplay and ethnographic fiction to frame the narrated story.

Pages: 17

This chapter discusses the challenges of writing a qualitative research paper. Our narrative addresses inclusive organizations and organizing, using the literary genre of the short story and tools of fictional writing (e.g., description, action, dialogue, internal thought, interior monologue, flashbacks, memory recall). Using these tools, we address a way of reporting research conducted on vocational education for deaf students that is inclusive of their ways of constructing the world. We draw on work experiences with disability contexts, fieldwork notes on management learning approaches to deaf students as well as transcripts of interviews with workers organizing disabled people’s education, some of whom had a hearing disability, while others did not. Narrative fiction allows writers, subjects and readers to relate to complex, paradoxical, sensitive, emotional and ambiguous realities and singular experiences. People’s judgments and experiences of living with disability are illuminated by a narrative that links issues ordinarily considered as private problems to an understanding of them as public issues. We merged scenic (aesthetic) and narrative (categorical) methods to problematize ableism and definitions of disability in the workplace, relating to social context and impairment while connecting with broader issues related to the management of learning with students with a disability, in this case, deafness. Statements of purpose: To discuss the challenges of writing a qualitative research paper that theorizes aesthetically about inclusive disability organizations and organizing, in which the findings must be presented in ways that work for the writer (authors), readers (students, academics, researchers, professionals, editors, reviewers) and subjects (research interlocutors). Methodology: The literary genre of the short story, using the tools of fictional writing (e.g. description, action, dialogue, internal thought, interior monologue, flashbacks, memory recall), is used to theorize aesthetically about vocational education with deaf students from our disability research experience, our work experiences with disability, examination of fieldwork notes of management learning of deaf students and interview transcripts of workers with and without disabilities that are organizing disabled people’s education. Findings: Narrative fiction allows scholars, as writers, subjects and readers, to live and enact complex, paradoxical, sensitive, emotional and ambiguous realities and singularities, engaging people in considering the lives of disabled people’s experiences and judgements. Originality and value: This chapter addresses the challenges of writing a qualitative research paper theorizing aesthetically about management learning with students with a disability, in this case deafness, merging scenic (aesthetic) and narrative (categorical) methods to problematize ableism and definitions of disability in the workplace as the result of social context and impairment.

Pages: 14

Drawing on different styles of creative writing, the book provides a distinctive approach to enacting qualitative research. Central issues for conducting qualitative research that are addressed included negotiating access, reviewing the literature, collecting/analysing data, theorizing and writing up research creatively. Using a storytelling approach, readers were presented with approaches for understanding texts, concepts, techniques and protocols. Each chapter brought an innovative perspective on one qualitative research process topic. Although we offered specific examples of phenomena and organizations throughout the book to illustrate our explanation in each chapter, the approach presented can be used in other contexts. When reading this book, researchers should relate its ideas and challenges to their research design and the conditions faced in fieldwork. Researching through qualitative research methods requires flexibility in the continuous back and forth between research design, data collection and analysis, writing and theorizing. We recognize and assume this condition to be a strength and not a weakness of qualitative research.