Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Advancing research methods is central to advancing management and organization studies. Hence, organizational researchers have increasingly focused on the important relationship between methods and theory (Bansal et al., 2018; Gephart, 2004; Pratt, 2008; Pratt & Bonaccio, 2016). Building on this development as well as on our successful EGOS Colloquium 2024 sub-theme 18 (“Advancing Qualitative Methods: Strengthening Alignment of Theory and Methods in Empirical Organization Studies”) and EGOS Colloquium 2025 sub-theme 55 (“Advancing Qualitative Research Methods: Moving Away from Templates towards Creative, Adaptive, and Flexible Methods”), our goal with this complementary sub-theme is to provide a platform for a community of scholars to critically examine and extend advanced analytical approaches to theorize organizations, their environments, and their dynamics. In this sub-theme, we aim to contribute to this goal by further demystifying existing methodological tools and techniques and by extending the repertoire of practice for theorizing from qualitative research.
 
While there is no shortage of instructional material that describes analytic techniques related to getting to know and managing one’s raw data and summarizing its core content (i.e., coding, extraction of themes, case summaries), methodological treatments of more advanced analytic processes that focus on building insights from those initial raw data analyses in order to generate theory are still rare (Klag & Langley, 2013; Locke et al., 2022). This is because researchers – in the pursuit of ‘rigor’ and ‘validation’ – too often become fixated on procedural technicalities of how methods are carried out (Mees-Buss et al., 2022). Therefore, the methods sections of research papers often list the analytical steps the authors followed and how they processed the raw data they collected, rather than offering substantive detail about the skillful, advanced theorizing work they engaged in beyond capturing the content of their raw data. Yet, this advanced analytical work is central to emerging theoretical contributions to organization studies. Therefore, we need to continue to develop advanced analytic approaches and techniques for the methodological toolkits of qualitative researchers.
 
With this sub-theme, we thus provide a platform to discuss existing, emergent and new approaches that facilitate advanced theorizing in qualitative research. Our goal is to bring together researchers whose work aims to contribute to creating and equipping an analytic toolbox of advanced analytical techniques, which builds on notions of ‘disciplined imagination’ (Weick, 1989), ‘conceptual leaping’ (Klag & Langley, 2013; Langley, 1999), ‘generative doubt’ (Locke et al., 2008, 2022), ‘contemplation’ (Bartunek, 2022), ‘interpretive rigor’ (Mees-Buss et al., 2022), and others. In particular, we plan to encourage a more critical engagement of the research community with how we employ and present such advanced research methods that support and facilitate our theorizing. This is particularly important in light of recent trends toward ‘mindless’ validation and templating in qualitative work (e.g., Cortina et al., 2022a, 2022b; Harley & Cornelissen, 2022; Köhler & Cortina, 2021, 2023; Köhler et al., 2022; Mees-Buss et al., 2022), rather than advanced analytical processes such as ‘creative bricolage’ (Cilesiz & Greckhamer, 2022; Pratt et al., 2022) that facilitate ‘theoretical divergence’ (Cornelissen, 2017).
 
We believe the EGOS community of organization studies scholars will be a productive setting for these conversations, because organizational research often leads the innovative use of qualitative methods to theorize organizations (e.g., sensitizing concept by Jarzabkowski et al., 2012; temporal maps by Kaplan & Orlikowski, 2013; composite narrative by Smets et al., Jarzabkowski et al., 2015; etc.), but at the same time can be unconventional and critical in their use of methods and theory.
 
With this sub-theme, we want to create room to take stock, contemplate and make more transparent the skillful, advanced processes of theorizing from qualitative research. Possible topics include but are not restricted to:

• Introducing and developing advanced qualitative analytical approaches for theorizing

• Offering specific critique of or advancing methodological practices that support theorizing

• Developing, discussing, critiquing, and integrating existing approaches

• Presenting techniques of methodological bricolage to advance theorizing

• More generally advancing links between qualitative data analytic methods and theorizing

• Discussing consequences of these approaches for the content, quality, and direction of the field’s theorizing efforts

• Discussing ontology, epistemology, methodology and its links to theorizing

• Encouraging greater diversity of theorizing, incl. discussing the critical role of methods

 
These topics are indicative only. We generally welcome papers that critically engage with the nexus of advanced analytic techniques and theorizing, and are open to conceptual, empirical, and methodological papers. As our focus is on the advanced analytic stages, which are underpinned by researchers’ critical reflective, interpretive, and theorizing skills, papers discussing the use of machine learning tools (such as generative AI and others) will not fit this Call for Papers.
 

References

• Bansal, P., Smith, W.K., & Vaara, E. (2018): “New ways of seeing through qualitative research.” Academy of Management Journal, 61 (4), 1189–1195.
• Bartunek, J.M. (2019): “Contemplation and Organization Studies: Why contemplative activities are so crucial for our academic lives.” Organization Studies, 40(10), 1463–1479.
• Cilesiz, S., & Greckhamer, T. (2022): “Methodological socialization and identity: a bricolage study of pathways toward qualitative research in doctoral education.” Organizational Research Methods, 25 (2), 337–370.
• Cornelissen, J. (2017): “Preserving theoretical divergence in management research: Why the explanatory potential of qualitative research should be harnessed rather than suppressed.” Journal of Management Studies, 53 (3), 368–383.
• Cortina, J.M., Köhler, T., Keeler, K.R., & Pugh, S.D. (2022a): “Situation strength as a basis for interactions in psychological models.” Psychological Methods, 27 (2), 212.
• Cortina, J.M., Köhler, T., Sheng, Z., Keeler, K.R., Nielsen, B.B., Coombs, J.E., & Ketchen, D.J. (2022b): “Restricted Variance Interactions in Entrepreneurship Research: A Unique Basis for Context-as-Moderator Hypotheses.” Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 47 (5), 1995–2016.
• Gephart, R. (2004): “Qualitative research and the Academy of Management Journal.” Academy of Management Journal, 47 (4), 454–462.
• Harley, B., & Cornelissen, J. (2022): “Rigor with or without templates? The pursuit of methodological rigor in qualitative research.” Organizational Research Methods, 25 (2), 239–261.
• Jarzabkowski, P.A., Lê, J.K., & Feldman, M.S. (2012): “Toward a theory of coordinating: creating coordinating mechanisms in practice.” Organization Science, 23 (4), 907–927.
• Kaplan, S., & Orlikowski, W.J. (2013): “Temporal work in strategy making.” Organization Science, 24 (4), 965–995.
• Klag, M., & Langley, A. (2013): “Approaching the conceptual leap in qualitative research.” International Journal of Management Reviews, 15 (2), 149–166.
• Köhler, T., & Cortina, J.M. (2021): “Play it again, Sam! An analysis of constructive replication in the organizational sciences.” Journal of Management, 47 (2), 488–518.
• Köhler, T., & Cortina, J.M. (2023): “Constructive replication, reproducibility, and generalizability: Getting theory testing for JOMSR right.” Journal of Management Scientific Reports, 1 (2), 75–93.
• Köhler, T., Smith, A., & Bhakoo, V. (2022): “Templates in qualitative research methods: Origins, limitations, and new directions.” Organizational Research Methods, 25 (2), 183–210.
• Langley, A. (1999): “Strategies for Theorizing from Process Data.” Academy of Management Review, 24 (4), 691–710.
• Lê, J.K., & Schmid, T. (2022): “The practice of innovating research methods.” Organizational Research Methods, 25 (2), 308–336.
• Locke, K., Feldman, M., & Golden-Biddle, K. (2022): “Coding practices and iterativity: beyond templates for analyzing qualitative data.” Organizational Research Methods, 25 (2), 262–284.
• Locke, K., Golden-Biddle, K., & Feldman, M.S. (2008): “Making Doubt Generative: Rethinking the Role of Doubt in the Research Process.” Organization Science, 19 (6), 907–918.
• Mees-Buss, J., Welch, C., & Piekkari, R. (2022): “From templates to heuristics: how and why to move beyond the Gioia methodology.” Organizational Research Methods, 25 (2), 405–429.
• Pratt, M.G. (2008): “Fitting oval pegs into round holes: tensions in evaluating and publishing qualitative research in top-tier North American journals.” Organizational Research Methods, 11 (3), 481–509.
• Pratt, M.G., & Bonaccio, S. (2016): “Qualitative research in IO psychology: Maps, myths, and moving forward.” Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 9 (4), 693–715.
• Pratt, M.G., Sonenshein, S., & Feldman, M.S. (2022): “Moving beyond templates: A bricolage approach to conducting trustworthy qualitative research.” Organizational Research Methods, 25 (2), 211–238.
• Smets, M., Jarzabkowski, P., Burke, G., & Spee, P. (2015): “Reinsurance trading in Lloyd’s of London: balancing conflicting-yet-complementary logics in practice.” Academy of Management Journal, 58 (3), 932–970.
• Weick, K.E. (1989): “Theory construction as disciplined imagination.” Academy of Management Review, 14 (4), 516–531.