The sage dictionary of qualitative management research

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The Sage Dictionary of
Qualitative Management Research

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Acknowledgement
This dictionary is a companion to a complimentary title, The Dictionary of Quantitative
Management Research, edited by Luiz Moutinho and Graeme Hutcheson, that will be
publishing shortly. Luiz is the Series Editor for both volumes and his early contribution to this edition is acknowledged.

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The Sage Dictionary of
Qualitative Management Research

Compiled and edited
by

Richard Thorpe
Robin Holt

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© The editors and contributors 2008
First published 2008
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research
or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this
publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in
any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission
in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic
reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be
sent to the publishers.
SAGE Publications Ltd
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Typeset by C&M Digitals (P) Ltd., Chennai, India
Printed in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press Ltd, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
Printed on paper from sustainable resources

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Contents

List of Figures and Tables

vi

List of Contributors

vii

What is Management Research?
Why a Dictionary?

1
10

The Sage Dictionary of Qualitative Management Research

13–229

References

230

Index

276

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List of Figur es and T ables

Figures

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

A basic activity system model
An organizational composite map
The characteristics of middle range thinking
Postcard
The compass of relational research
Two approaches to explaining strategic change
SSM’s cycle of learning for action

21
53
132
159
167
174
206

Tables
1
2
3
4
5

Companion entries
Applying complexity theories to organizations
Selected approaches to emotion research – a summary
Methodological approaches in a sample of recent management
research articles
The 12 Ps of reconfiguring practice

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48
88
135
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List of Contributors

EDITORS

Richard Thorpe is Professor of Management Development and Deputy Director

of the Keyworth Institute at Leeds University Business School. His interests
include: performance, remuneration, and entrepreneurship, management learning
and development and leadership. He has sought to develop these interests at all the
institutions in which he has worked. His early industrial experience informed the
way his ethos has developed. Common themes are: a strong commitment to
process methodologies and a focus on action in all its forms; an interest in and
commitment to the development of doctoral students and the development
of capacity within the sector; a commitment to collaborative working on projects
of mutual interest. He is currently the President of the British Academy of
Management and a member of the UK’s ESRC Training and Development Board.
Robin Holt is a Reader in Strategy and Ethics at the University of Liverpool
School of Management. He has an abiding interest in questions of being and
identity that emerge from our wealth creating activity. He has published in
Organization Studies, Human Relations and Research Policy and is currently coauthoring a book on Strategy without Design: The Efficacy of Everyday Detours.

CONTRIBUTORS

Fran Ackermann is a Professor based in the Department of Management
Science at the Strathclyde Business School. Her research has predominantly
focused on messy complex problems, in particularly strategy making, with a
preference for action research. Along with Colin Eden she has developed an
approach called Journey Making which has as its foundation cognitive mapping.
As such she has considerable experience in using the technique for strategy
making and capturing/analyzing rich qualitative data.
Mats Alvesson is a Professor of Business Administration at Lund University,
Sweden. He has published extensively on organizational culture, qualitative
methods and critical theory. His recent books include Postmodernism and Social

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Research (Open University Press, 2002), Studying Management Critically, edited
with Hugh Willmott (Sage, 2003), Knowledge Work and Knowledge Intensive Firms
(Oxford University Press, 2004) and Changing Organizational Culture (Routledge,
2007, with Stefan Sveningsson).
Lisa Anderson is a Lecturer in HRM at the University of Liverpool Management
School. Her research interests centre on action learning and management and leadership development, particularly in the SME sector. Other areas of interest
include social learning, especially how language use in groups helps to create
critical reflection.
Elena Antonacopoulou is Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the
University of Liverpool Management School and Director of GNOSIS, a
dynamic management research initiative. She is also a Senior Fellow of the
Advanced Institute of Management Research. Her principal research interests
include change and learning processes in organizations. Her work is published
in Organization Studies, Journal of Management Studies, Academy of Management
Review. She serves on the editorial board of Organization Science, Academy of
Management Learning and Education Journal Society, Business and Organization
Journal and Irish Journal of Management.
Tore Bakken is an Associate Professor at the Norwegian School of Management
BI in Oslo. He completed his sociological thesis on systems theory at the

University of Oslo. His current empirical work includes a study of risk in food
production, and an examination of the notions of mind and social reality in John
Searle’s philosophy of language and Niklas Luhmann’s sociology of autopoietic
systems.
Pat Bazeley provides training, assistance, time out (and good food) to
researchers at her retreat at Bowral, Australia. She has expertise in making sense
of both quantitative and qualitative data and in using computer programs for
management and analysis of data. She also enjoys experimenting with new ways
to integrate analysis of text and numeric data.
Emma Bell is a Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies at Queen Mary,
University of London. Prior to this she worked at the University of Warwick and
Manchester Metropolitan University. She has published articles in Journal of
Management Studies, Human Relations and Organization and is the co-author of a
book with Alan Bryman, Business Research Methods (2004).
Robert Blackburn PhD is Director of Research, Faculty of Business and Law,
HSBC Professor of Small Business Studies and Director of the Small Business
Research Centre, Kingston University. He is editor of the International Small
Business Journal (Sage) and Vice President of the Institute of Small Business and
Entrepreneurship. His academic output is prolific and his books include

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Researching the Small Enterprise (with James Curran) (Sage, 2001) and Intellectual
Property and Innovation Management in Small Firms (ed. Routledge, 2003).
David M. Boje holds the Bank of America Endowed Professorship of Management
(awarded September 2006), and is past Arthur Owens Professorship in Business
Administration (June 2003–June 2006) in the Management Department at New
Mexico State University. Professor Boje is described by his peers as an international
scholar in the qualitative areas of narrative, storytelling, postmodern theory and critical ethics. He has published nearly 100 articles in journals, including Management
Science, Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of
Management Review and the International Journal of Organization Studies.
Ulrik Brandi is a doctoral student at the Learning Lab Denmark, The Danish
University of Education. He is a student in the Doctoral School of Organizational
Learning (DOCSOL) and his project is on organizational learning and change
and the relation between the two. His empirical field is public organizations and
his theoretical sources of inspiration draw on pragmatism and neo-pragmatism.
David Bricknall had a career as a solicitor in industry before deciding to pursue
a PhD in order to try to understand and make sense of what he had been doing.
His current research interests are the strategic exploitation of technology and
the intuitive nature of strategic decisions.
Jane Broadbent is Deputy Vice Chancellor at Roehampton University. She has
a range of refereed publications aligned to management and accounting change
in the public sector. Recent research (with Richard Laughlin) includes a project
to study Performance Management in Higher Education Institutions. A study of
the Private Finance Initiative has resulted in a range of academic and policy
inputs and an on-going three year collaboration with colleagues in Australia.
David Buchanan is Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Cranfield

University’s School of Management, UK. He holds degrees in business administration and organizational behaviour from Heriot-Watt and Edinburgh Universities.
Research interests include change agency, change management, research methods,
and organization politics. Current projects include a study of links between corporate governance and organizational performance in healthcare.
John Burgoyne is Professor of Management Learning in the Department of
Management Learning in the Management School, University of Lancaster, of
which he is a founding member, and Professor of Management Learning at
Henley Management College. A psychologist by background he has worked on
the evaluation of management development, the learning process, competencies
and self-development, corporate management development policy, career formation, organizational learning, knowledge managing, the virtual organization and
leadership.

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Bernard Burnes is Professor of Organisational Change in the Manchester
Business School. His research covers organizational change in its broadest sense.
This includes the history, development and current state of organizational change,
organizational and inter-organizational behaviour, leadership, strategy, and culture.

Catherine Cassell is Professor of Occupational Psychology and Director of
Postgraduate Research Programmes at Manchester Business School. She has a long
term interest in, and commitment to, the use of qualitative research techniques in
management and organizational research. Together with Gillian Symon she has
published a number of books and articles in this area and co-edits Qualitative
Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal.
Peter Checkland worked in R&D in ICI for fifteen years, after which time he
led the action research team at Lancaster University which produced the SSM
approach to real-world problems. This work has been recognized in four honorary
doctorates, medals from the UK Systems Society and the OR Society, and a
‘Most Distinguished Contributor’ award from the British Computer Society.
Robert Chia is Professor of Management at the University of Aberdeen and
Visiting Professor at Strathclyde University Graduate Business School. He was
a senior editor of Organization Studies, and is a member of the international advisory board for Journal of Management Studies and Management Learning. His
research interests revolve around the issues of strategic leadership and foresight,
complexity and creative thinking, contrasting East–West metaphysical mindsets
and critical cultural studies. He is the author of three books and numerous international journal articles, as well as book chapters.
Ian Clarke is Professor of Marketing at Lancaster University Management
School and Senior Fellow of the EPSRC/ESRC Advanced Institute of Management
Research (AIM). His main research interests lie in decision-making and sensemaking processes within senior management teams and their impact on strategy
processes and practices.
Jean Clarke has now completed her PhD in Entrepreneurship and is now a
Researcher at Leeds University Business School. She completed her MSc in
Occupational Psychology in the University of Sheffield in 2004. She has an interest in visual methods, particularly visual ethnography and the use of moving
images. She is also interested in ideas in the area of relational constructionism
and relating them to the field of entrepreneurship.
Gail P Clarkson is a Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at Leeds University
Business School, The University of Leeds, UK. Gail’s research is focused on
gaining a deeper understanding of how managers can engage employees in
employment relationships that will enhance individual and organizational

performance and well-being. A second stream of research is related to the
development and validation of research methods.
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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Stewart Clegg is a prolific publisher in the leading academic journals in
management and organization theory as well as the author of many books, one of
the most recent of which is Power and Organizations (with David Courpasson and
Nelson Phillips, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005, Foundations of Organization
Science series).
Ian Colville has a first degree in psychology, and a masters and PhD in management. He is fascinated by what people do, and this explains his abiding interest
in organizing and sensemaking. He is married with three daughters, who collectively transcend sensemaking.
Robert Cooper is a visiting professor in the Centre for Culture, Social Theory
and Technology, Keele University. He writes mainly on the general theme of
social and cultural production. He has published widely on the relationship
between technology and modern organizing, on technology and mass society,
and on the social and cultural aspects of information.
Joep Cornelissen is Professor of Corporate Communications at Leeds
University Business School. He previously worked at the Amsterdam School of
Communications Research, University of Amsterdam. His research interests

include the management of corporate communications and the use of metaphor
in management and organization theory and practice. He is author of Corporate
Communications: Theory and Practice (Sage). His research articles on metaphor
have appeared in Academy of Management Review, Organization Studies, British
Journal of Management, Journal of Advertising Research, Human Relations,
Psychology and Marketing and the Journal of Management Studies.
Anne-Marie Cummins is Lecturer in Sociology and a Fellow at the Centre for
Psycho-Social Studies at the University of the West of England and the UK
editor of Organisational and Social Dynamics. She works as an independent
consultant and has acted as a staff member on national and international Group
Relations conferences.
Ann Cunliffe is the Albert & Mary Jane Black Endowed Professor of Economic
Development, Department of Organizational Studies, The Robert O. Anderson
School of Management, The University of New Mexico. Her publications include
articles in Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies and Human
Relations. In 2002 she received the Breaking the Frame Award from the Journal of
Management Inquiry for the article ‘that best exemplifies a challenge to existing
thought’. She is currently Associate Editor for Management Learning and on the
editorial boards of Organization Studies, Human Relations, the Scandinavian Journal
of Management and the Journal of Organizational Change Management.
Ardha Danieli is a Lecturer in Qualitative Research Methodology and
Organizational Analysis at Warwick Business School. Her research is concerned
with issues of social and economic inclusion, with a specific interest in equality,
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diversity, gender and disability. Her work has been published in Personnel
Review, Disability and Society and Communities and Nations.
Barry Davies is Associate Dean for research at the University of Gloucestershire
Business School. He studied at what are now the universities of Bolton, Central
Lancashire, Lancaster, and Cranfield. He researches into retail environments and
their effects on customers, decision support in marketing and issues in globalization.
Probably a pragmatist, he uses a variety of approaches in his work.
Lex Donaldson is Professor of Management in Organizational Design in the
Faculty of Business of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He
has a PhD from the University of London. He is the author of seven books on
organizational theory, organizational structure and management. In addition, he
has written numerous journal articles.
Fraser Dunworth is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Head of CAMHS
Psychology and Clinical Lead for North Derbyshire CAMHS. In a previous
career he was an actor, director and writer. His research interests are in how
young people and their families experience mental health issues.
Mark Easterby-Smith is Professor of Management Learning at Lancaster
University. He has written extensively on management research methodology and
organizational learning. From 2003–2007 he was a senior Fellow of the UK’s
Advanced Institute of Management (AIM) research initiative. His current research
covers the links between organizational learning and dynamic capability, the competitive strategies of successful multinationals operating in the China market, and
the way high technology companies attempt to learn from their customers.
Bente Elkjaer is a Professor in organizational and workplace learning at the
Learning Lab Denmark, The Danish University of Education. She is the head

of the Doctoral School of Organizational Learning (DOCSOL) and the current
editor-in-chief of Management Learning. Her research interest is to develop an
understanding of organizational learning based upon pragmatist philosophy
(John Dewey) and sociology (Anselm Strauss).
Boris Ewenstein did this work as a Research Associate at the Tanaka Business
School, Imperial College, London. He now works as a consultant for McKinsey
and Company in the Berlin office. His research interests include organizational
knowledge and knowing, the process of reflexivity, and the sociology of formal
and informal learning.
Jason Ferdinand is a Lecturer in Management at the University of Liverpool
Management School. His research interests include managing knowledge,
economic and industrial espionage, and piracy. The majority of his work is
framed by dialectical materialism and conducted through ethnographic investigation.

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Jason has a particular interest in the application of Marxist theory in trans-disciplinary
research projects.
Bent Flybjerg is Professor of Planning, at Aalborg University, Denmark and Chair

of Infrastructure Policy and Planning at Delft University of Technology, The
Netherlands. He was twice a Visiting Fulbright Scholar to the USA, where he did
research at UCLA, UC Berkeley, and Harvard University. His most recent books in
English are Making Social Science Matter, Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of
Ambition and Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice. His books and articles
have been translated into 17 languages. Bent Flyvbjerg is currently doing research
on power, truth, and lying. Further details at .
Steve Fox is Professor of Social and Management Learning at Lancaster
University. He is interested in interdisciplinary research and theory spanning
social, organizational and management learning.
Jeff Gold is Principal Lecturer in Organisation Learning at Leeds Business
School, Leeds Metropolitan University. He is the co-author of Management
Development, Strategies for Action (with Alan Mumford), published by the
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in 2004. The fourth edition
of his textbook on Human Resource Management (with John Bratton) was published
in 2007 with Palgrave Macmillan.
Ian Greenwood is Lecturer in Industrial Relations and Human Resource
Management in the Work and Employment Relations (WERD) Division of Leeds
University Business School, University of Leeds, UK. His current research interests
include: workplace skills; the industrial relations of team working; community
unionism; the impact of restructuring in the steel industry.
Michelle Greenwood is on the faculty in the Department of Management,
Monash University, where she teaches and researches in the area of business
ethics. Her specific fields of interest are ethical issues in HRM, stakeholder
theory and social and ethical auditing. Michelle’s research has been published
in international journals and she currently serves on the editorial board of the
Journal of Business Ethics.
Mauro F. Guillén is the Dr Felix Zandman Endowed Professor of International
Management at the Wharton School and Professor of Sociology in the
Department of Sociology of the University of Pennsylvania. His work has to do

with the social and cultural context in which organizations operate. His current
research deals with the internationalization of the firm, and with the impact of
globalization on patterns of organization and on the diffusion of innovations. His
most recent books are The Rise of Spanish Multinationals (Cambridge University
Press) and The Taylorized Beauty of the Mechanical (Princeton University Press).
He is also the author of The Limits of Convergence: Globalization and

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Organizational Change in Argentina, South Korea, and Spain (Princeton University
Press, 2001) and Models of Management (The University of Chicago Press, 1994).
Evert Gummesson is Professor of Marketing and Management at the
Stockholm University School of Business, Sweden. His research interests are
services, relationships, networks and qualitative methodology. His book
Qualitative Methods in Management Research has been reprinted and revised
continuously since 1985. Since 2000 he has published ten articles and book
chapters on methodology and theory development.
Mark Hall is a Lecturer in operations and project management in the Department
of Management at the University of Bristol. He has researched and published on a

range of topics related to operations and project management, including public
sector culture, sustainable development, risk behaviour and quality management.
He holds a PhD in international management and cultural theory.
Karen Handley is a Senior Lecturer in the HRM and Organisational Behaviour
department at Oxford Brookes University. Her business research interests
include management learning, client-consultancy projects and relationships, and
communities of practice. She has recently completed an ESRC-funded project,
Knowledge Evolution in Action: Client-Consultancy Relationships (http://www.
ebkresearch.org/). Before joining academia, Karen worked in the financial services
industry and as a management consultant at PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Elaine Harris is Professor and Head of Department of Accounting and Finance
and Head of Leicester Business School’s Graduate Centre at De Montfort
University. She teaches Research Methodology and Project Management and
has developed a framework for project risk assessment, based on action
research. Elaine is currently Chair of CHA, Secretary of the MCA, and a member of
ACCA’s Research Committee.
John Hassard is Professor of Organizational Analysis at Manchester Business
School (University of Manchester) and Senior Professorial Research Associate at
the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. His main research interests
lie in theories of organization, critical management studies, and the empirical
analysis of industrial change. On these subjects he has published 12 books and
more than 100 research articles.
John Hayes is Professor of Management Studies, Leeds University Business
School. He has published ten books and over 60 papers. His latest books are
Interpersonal Skills at Work (Routledge, 2002) and The Theory and Practice of
Change Management (2nd edn. Palgrave, 2007). His research interests focus on
cognitive style and processes of change and development in organizations. Professor
Hayes has worked as a consultant for a number of organizations including
British Gas, British Petroleum, Delphi, Lucas, ICI, NHS, Reckitt and Coleman,
Glaxo, British Telecom, Nestlé, the RAF, the US Army and the Yorkshire Bank.

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Tor Hernes is Professor of Organization and Management at the Norwegian
School of Management BI in Oslo, where he is Head of the Department of
Innovation and Economic Organization. His main interest lies with process
theorizing. Drawing inspiration from the work of Alfred North Whitehead, his current project consists of developing a theoretical framework to account for
processes of organization and innovation.
Vivien Hodgson is Professor of Networked Management Learning in the
Department of Management Learning and Leadership at Lancaster University
Management School, Lancaster, UK. Her research interests are related to the
students’ experiences of learning in higher education and management learning,
particularly in the context and use of technology supported open and collaborative
learning approaches. Further details available at: .
uk/dml/profiles/143/
Heather Höpfl is Professor of Management at the University of Essex. She has
a long-time interest in organizational symbolism and narratives. In the 1980s she
worked as a tour manager for a touring repertory company and is a former chair
of SCOS. She is currently co-editor of Culture in Organizations. Her recent publications have been concerned with aesthetics, narratives and mythologies.
Masahide Horita, having formerly worked at Durham Business School, is

currently Associate Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering,
University of Tokyo. His areas of interest include decision-making, public
management, problem structuring methods and collaborative argumentation.
Shelby D. Hunt is the Jerry S. Rawls and P. W. Horn Professor of Marketing at
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas. A past editor of the Journal of Marketing
(1985–87), he is the author of numerous books, including Foundations of Marketing
Theory: Toward a General Theory of Marketing (M.E. Sharpe, 2002), Controversy in
Marketing Theory: For Reason, Realism, Truth, and Objectivity (M.E. Sharpe, 2003),
and A General Theory of Competition: Resources, Competences, Productivity,
Economic Growth (Sage, 2000). One of the 250 most frequently cited researchers in
economics and business (Thompson-ISI), he has written numerous articles on
competitive theory, strategy, macromarketing, ethics, relationship marketing,
channels of distribution, philosophy of science, and marketing theory.
Phil Johnson was, until recently, a Reader in Management and Organization at
Sheffield Hallam University. Now he is Professor of HRM at Sheffield
University. He has published mainly in the areas of research methodology, epistemology and organization studies. His current research is into alternative forms
of organizational governance.
Jong Jun is Professor Emeritus of Public Administration at California State
University at East Bay and Visiting Professor at Leiden University in the
Netherlands. He received his PhD from the University of Southern California and
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is a fellow of the US National Academy of Public Administration. He has published
numerous books, symposium issues, and over 50 articles in professional journals.
Panagiotis Kokkalis is a Senior Lecturer in Strategy at Manchester
Metropolitan University Business School, UK. The focus of his research is on
tacit knowledge in organizational settings. He has presented a number of
research papers at international conferences including the British Academy of
Management, and the European Academy of Management.
Ann Langley is Professor of Strategic Management and Research Methods at
HEC Montréal. She obtained her PhD in administration at HEC in 1987. Her
empirical research deals with strategic decision-making, innovation, leadership
and strategic change in pluralistic organizations and notably in the healthcare
sector. She has a particular interest in qualitative and process research methods.
Richard Laughlin is Professor of Accounting at King’s College London, University
of London. He has a range of publications most of which are related to methodological issues and to understanding the organizational and human effects of
changes in accounting, finance and management systems in organizations and society, with a particular emphasis on the public sector. Recent research projects include
studies of performance management in higher education institutions and the private finance initiative in the UK and public–private partnerships in Australia.
Stephen Linstead is Professor of Critical Management at The York Management
School. He co-edited The Aesthetics of Organization (Sage, 2002) with Heather
Höpfl and co-founded the Art of Management and Organization series of conferences. His current interests include post-punk music and organization, The Clash,
Georges Bataille and the political aesthetics of Jacques Ranciere.
Karen Locke, PhD, is W. Brooks George Professor of Business Administration at
the College of William and Mary’s School of Business. Dr Locke’s work focuses
on developing a sociology of knowledge in organizational studies and on the use
of qualitative research for the investigation of organizational phenomena. Her
work appears in journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Organization
Science, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Management Inquiry and
Studies in Organization, Culture and Society. She has authored Grounded Theory In

Management Research and co-authored Composing Qualitative Research. Dr Locke
also serves as an associate action editor for Organizational Research Methods and as
a member of the editorial board for the Academy of Management Journal.
Robert MacIntosh did a PhD in engineering management at the University of
Strathclyde before transferring to a business school post. He currently holds a
Chair in Strategic Management at the University of Glasgow and his two main
areas of research interest are strategic change and the methods which underpin
practice-relevant management research.

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William Mackaness is a Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Geography, School
of GeoSciences, at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests are in
automated cartography, and the role of visualization in qualitative reasoning.
Automated cartography explores ideas of constraint-based reasoning. Visualization
and cognition are key research themes in the delivery of information over
mobile devices which forms a third area of research.
Donald MacLean graduated in Physics from Strathclyde University, received
his PhD in optoelectronics from the University of Cambridge and spent ten

years working in the optoelectronics industry. In 1991 he began lecturing in
strategic management and is now a Senior Research Fellow at the University of
Glasgow. His interests lie in the development of alternative conceptions of strategy,
leadership, organization and management.
Allan Macpherson is a Senior Lecturer in HRM and Organizational Behaviour
at Liverpool University’s School of Management. He has worked on a number
of research projects using qualitative methods concerned with management
development, network learning and the evolution of business knowledge in
small firms. Current research is focused on the use of objects that mediate collective learning in small firms and barriers to collective learning.
John McAuley is Professor of Organisation Development and Management in
the Faculty of Organisation and Management, Sheffield Hallam University. He
is Head of Programmes: Research Degrees. He has published in the areas of
change management, organization behaviour, organization theory, research
methods and the work of professionals.
Sara McGaughey is a Professor of International Management at the Strathclyde
Business School, University of Strathclyde. Her research explores processes
within international entrepreneurship, strategy and knowledge management
across borders, and her interest in methods of representation, such as dramas
and cartoons, crosses these fields. Sara has a forthcoming book on narratives and
international entrepreneurship, and her work has been published in journals
including Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies and
Journal of World Business.
Hugh McLaughlin is Director of Social Work and Social Policy at the
University of Salford. Hugh is a qualified social worker and before entering
academia was an Assistant Director of Social Services. He has published in the
fields of management, child care and more recently in the fields of social inclusion
and meaningful service user involvement in research.
Reijo Miettinen (PhD in Social Psychology) is Professor of Adult Education at the
University of Helsinki. He is Vice Director of the Center for Activity Theory and
Developmental Work Research, University of Helsinki. He has directed since 1995

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a research group that studies innovation networks, producer-user interaction, and
the free/open source development model (FOSS) in software development, and the
as well as other forms of internet-mediated distributed knowledge production.
Eamonn Molloy is a University Lecturer in Technology and Operations
Management at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and a Fellow of
Green College, Oxford. He holds a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from
the University of Lancaster and is interested in theories of technology, organization, practice and agency.
Stephanie J. Morgan, BSc, MSc, PhD, Chartered Psychologist, is Director of
Crosslight Management Ltd and an Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck, University
of London. She consults and carries out research on various aspects of work
including outsourcing, staff motivation, customer service, technology-related
change, and managing diversity. She has a special interest in qualitative methods
and the use of technology in research.
Alan Murray lectures in Accounting and Corporate Social Responsibility at
Sheffield University’s Management School. His research focuses on the interaction
between financial markets and the social and environmental aspects of business.

He sits on the executive committees of the British Accounting Association and
the British Academy of Management.
Sara Nadin is a Lecturer in HRM/Organisational Behaviour at the University of
Bradford’s, School of Management. She obtained her PhD from Sheffield
University’s Management School in 2004 and has published in the areas of qualitative research methods, gender, the psychological contract, and small businesses.
Ajit Nayak is a Senior Lecturer in Strategy and International Business at the
Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, UK. His research
interests are 1) creativity, innovation and change, 2) ontological, epistemological
and methodological issues in organization studies, 3) self and identity in the
workplace, and 4) entrepreneurship, corporate governance and Indian elites.
Ajit received his PhD entitled ‘Creative Management: A Decentred Perspective’
in 2004 and has published in Organization Studies.
Wilson Ng holds a UK Research Council’s Robert’s Fellowship in Corporate
Governance at Leeds University Business School. He has an MA and PhD in
Management Studies from Cambridge and an MBA from London University.
Wilson conducts company research on the growth and development of familycontrolled firms in Europe and East Asia using both a case study and a mixed
methods approach.
Cliff Oswick holds a Chair in Organization Theory and Discourse at the
University of Leicester. His research interests focus on the application of aspects
of discourse to the study of organizations and organizing. He has published work
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in a range of international journals, including contributions to Academy of
Management Review, Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies, Organization,
and Organization Studies.
Krsto Pandza is Senior Lecturer in Technology and Management at Leeds
University Business School. His research activities centre on understanding the
role of technology and operations in creating and sustaining a competitive
advantage in technology-intensive organizations. He is especially interested in
the role of managerial agency within dynamic organizational phenomena,
specifically exploring how managers deal with uncertainties associated with the
future, and this explains his interest in Delphi methodology.
Mike Pedler works with people in organizations on learning processes and
practices. He is known for his work on action learning, the learning organization
and leadership development. He is Professor of Action Learning at Henley
Management College and holds Visiting Professorships at the Universities of
York and Lincoln. He edits the journal Action Learning: Research and Practice.
Luke Pittaway is the Director of the Enterprise and Regional Development
Unit and Director of Research for the White Rose CETLE at the University of
Sheffield. His research focuses on business-to-business networking, entrepreneurial behaviour and entrepreneurship education. He also engages in the practice of enterprise through his involvement in a university spinout company, two
family businesses and the development of a social enterprise led by students at
the University of Sheffield (Sheffield SIFE Ltd).
Marlei Pozzebon is Associate Professor at HEC Montréal. She holds a PhD in
administration from McGill University. Her research interests are the political
and cultural aspects of information technology implementation, the use of structuration theory and critical discourse analysis in the information systems field,
business intelligence and social responsibility, the role of information technology in
local development and participatory practices.
Robert W. Putnam, PhD., is a partner and co-founder of Action Design, a firm
that educates leaders and agents of organizational learning and change. He is a

co-developer of action science, an approach to inquiry that emphasizes knowledge
for action. He earned his doctorate in Counselling and Consulting Psychology
from Harvard University. He holds a BA in Political Science from Syracuse
University and was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.
Annie Pye began her academic career working with Professor Iain Mangham
from whom she learnt much about the role and relevance of dramatic performance
in understanding organizational performance. She is Professor of Leadership at
the University of Exeter where she continues to research and write about senior
executive teams running complex organizations.

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Julia Rouse is interested in the relationship between small business and social
structures, particularly the structures of class, region and gender. Her research
includes various longitudinal studies of the experiences of small business
owner–managers, employing both qualitative and quantitative methods. Julia
currently works as a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Enterprise at
Manchester Metropolitan University Business School.
Mark N.K. Saunders BA, MSc, PGCE, PhD, FCIPD, is Professor of Business

Research Methods and Assistant Dean (Research and Doctoral Programmes) at
Oxford Brookes University Business School. Mark undertakes research on trust
and justice perspectives on the management of change and research methods.
He is co-author of six books including Research Methods for Business Students,
now in its fourth edition.
Julie Schönfelder is Head of Branding at the Siemens Networks Headquarters
in Germany. She completed her PhD in marketing with a focus on branding at
Manchester Metropolitan University, England. She has published in the areas of
branding and research methods and appears as a guest speaker at international
conferences in these areas.
Brian Simpson has held senior roles in employer relations and mainstream
human resources alongside commitments in teaching. He is currently Deputy
Director of Human Resources at Manchester Metropolitan University, and for
the past ten years has had responsibility for management and organizational
development.
David Sims is Professor of Organizational Behaviour, Cass Business School,
Associate Dean, and Director of the Centre for Leadership, Learning and
Change. His research interests are in living, leading, thinking, learning and
storying. He has applied these interests to topics as diverse as why people get angry
in organizations, middle managers’ motivation, agenda shaping, consulting skills
and mergers.
J.-C. Spender served in experimental submarines in the Royal Navy, studied engineering at Oxford (Balliol), worked as a nuclear submarine reactor engineer and as
a merchant banker with Slater-Walker Securities. His PhD thesis (Manchester
Business School) won the Academy of Management’s 1980 A.T. Kearney PhD
Research Prize, later published as Industry Recipes (Blackwell, 1989). He served on
the faculty at City University (London), York University (Toronto), UCLA, and
Rutgers and was Dean of the School of Business and Technology at SUNY/FIT
before retiring in 2003. Now researching, writing, and lecturing widely on
strategy and knowledge management in US, Canada, and Europe, with Visiting
Professor appointments at Cranfield, Leeds, and Open Universities.

Andrew Sturdy is Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Warwick Business
School, University of Warwick, UK. He has a particular interest in critical
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approaches to work and organizations including the study of management ideas
and knowledge.
Alexander Styhre (PhD, received from Lund University) is a Professor in the
Department of Technology Management, Chalmers University of Technology,
Gothenburg, Sweden. Alexander is interested in the use of knowledge in organizations and has conducted research in the automotive, pharmaceutical, and construction industries. His most recent book is The Innovative Bureaucracy
(Routledge, 2007).
Peter Svensson is Associate Professor of Business Administration at Lund
University, Sweden. His research interests include marketing work, knowledge
production in business life, marketing/management knowledge, qualitative
method, discourse theory, critical social theory and its relevance for marketing
and management studies.
Gillian Symon is Senior Lecturer in Organizational Psychology at Birkbeck,
University of London. Her main research interests lie in the areas of technology
and organization, where she has applied a rhetorical approach to examining
their mutual social construction, and in the promotion of qualitative research in

general. For more details about Gillian’s work see: www.bbk.ac.uk/manop/
orgpsychology/staff/symon/symon.shtml
Scott Taylor is currently working as a Lecturer in Management in the
Department of Accounting, Finance and Management, University of Essex. His
research centres on the tensions and conflicts that people feel in workplaces or
through work. He is particularly interested in religious or spiritual influences on
work, smaller companies, and post-structural analytical approaches.
Torkild Thanem is an Assistant Professor in the School of Management and
Economics, Växjö University, Sweden. Torkild was formerly a Research
Fellow in the School of Business, Stockholm University, and he has been
a Visiting Scholar at the University of Oregon and Stanford University.
Torkild’s research focuses on the organization and non-organization of space
and embodiment in urban planning and health promotion, and his work has
been published in Culture and Organization, Organization Studies and
Organization.
Russ Vince is Professor of Leadership and Change in the School of
Management, the University of Bath. The focus of his research is on management
and organizational learning, leadership and the management of change. Russ is
Editor-in-Chief of the international academic journal Management Learning.
Tony Watson is Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Nottingham
University Business School. His interests cover industrial sociology, organizations,
managerial and entrepreneurial work and ethnography. Current work is on the
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relationship between the shaping of the ‘whole lives’ of managers and entrepreneurs and the shaping of the enterprizes within which they work.
Elke Weik is a Lecturer at the Centre for Critical Management Studies of the
University of Leicester. She works in the field of organization theory, but relates
much of her work to social theory and philosophy as well. Her current research
includes studies on process theory and philosophy as well as an empirical
project on the institutionalization of birth practices in Germany.
Hugh Willmott is Research Professor in Organization Studies, Cardiff Business
School. Current research projects are connected by a common theme of exploring
the relevance and application of poststructuralist understandings of agency,
power and change for studying diverse aspects of management and organization.
He has published 20 books and numerous papers in leading social science and
management journals and currently serves on the editorial boards of the
Academy of Management Review, Organization Studies and Journal of Management
Studies. Further details can be found on his homepage: l.
pipex.com/town/close/hr22/hcwhome
Julie Wolfram Cox holds the Chair in Management at Deakin University,
Australia. Julie received BA (Honours) and MA (Research) degrees in psychology
from the University of Melbourne and holds a PhD in Organizational Behaviour
from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, USA. Her research interests
include critical and aesthetic perspectives on organization theory and research,
particularly organizational change.
Martin Wood is Senior Lecturer at York Management School, University of
York, and was previously a member of faculty at both Exeter and Warwick
Universities. As an educator and researcher Martin has continued to explore the
ideas and problems of management and organization studies as they relate to

process-oriented social and political theory. His current research looks at leadership
in relation to philosophical issues of identity and difference.
Carol Woodhams is a Reader in Human Resource Studies at Plymouth
Business School. Her primary research interests include examining equal opportunities within small- to medium-sized enterprises, debates of human resources
and disability equality and the impact of disability equality legislation. She is a
Chartered Fellow of the CIPD.
Mike Zundel is currently a Doctoral Researcher at Manchester Metropolitan
University Business School. His research focuses on practice perspectives in
organizational settings and he has presented his work at international conferences such as the British Academy of Management and the Organization Studies
Summer Workshop. He has previously worked for Hewlett-Packard and IBM in
Germany.

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Why do we inquire into activities of wealth creation? At its most general, this inquiry is defined
by its aim: to become more aware of and find meaning in, social experience. From such awareness comes the possibility of influence, both within the institutional structures and objects we
encounter, create and use, and over our own development in terms of character and conduct.
Using this influence we can satisfy what Alfred Whitehead (1929a: 14, 23) calls our three-fold
urge: ‘to live, to live well, to live better’; and so to transform life into a potentially good and

better life. Managerial research is a particular and increasingly important form of such influence; its concerns being those aspects of social life that are broadly concerned with the production and distribution of material wealth through some form of social organization, whether an
entrepreneurial venture, a corporation, a public department, a profession, an occupation, and
so on. Often the term ‘management’ relates to an improvement in performance, however this
may be determined, but the root of the word comes from the French main meaning ‘to handle
and direct something’, whether it is simply the taking and application of decisions, or more
broadly, a concern with the possible effects of such decisions. As a practice of handling action,
management has become increasingly pervasive, touching many sections of many societies,
almost like a transformational force akin to how engineering came to pervade the nineteenth
century. What is handled can include a multitude of things, from physical objects and production and distribution spaces to human emotions such as dissent or expectation. In covering all
manner of such objects, procedures and actions, managers are not restricted to a particular craft
or locale – they can practise their skills across many different organizations in many different
places. Once the preserve of private companies, management initiatives are now experienced
in a myriad of organizational conditions: voluntary organizations, government offices, schools,
prisons and international advisory bodies to name a few. Developments in communication, production and distribution technologies have served to catalyse this institutional a range. They
have made possible a division of labour, a separation of agency and ownership, and a geographical reach that has meant this production and distribution of goods, services and knowledge
rarely occurs in one place under the auspices of a single person. Our products are made by
many hands and machines, our services can be delivered from remote places, our organizations
can be owned and influenced by many different interests and our knowledge arises from many
sources. With this separation between imaginative judgements, planning, ownership and execution comes an increasing need for co-ordinating wealth-creating effort across activities, times and
spaces, and hence a need for managers. As economies grow in terms of net product, as material
expectations rise, as managerial behaviours become increasingly sophisticated, and as the shareholder form of such economies becomes increasingly the norm, these management activities are
becoming ever more pervasive.
While there is broad recognition of the basic nature and extent of such management activity,
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is how we should understand, present and judge it. It is to pursue this understanding, presentation and judgement that the field of management research is devoted, a field that, from tradition,
has been occupied by a number of disciplines from the social sciences. So to understand what
we mean by managerial research we have to understand both what we mean by social science
and why management as an activity is amenable to such scientific study. Among those who
study managers, the activity of management and the wider organizational structures and effects
complicit with managerial endeavour, agreement across the disciplines has proved difficult to
reach. Psychologists, sociologists, mathematicians and anthropologists each have their own
setups in the field of management studies, setups whose own traditions, paradigms, worldviews
and tools cast the character and influence of management and managerial problems in particular forms. So where some researchers emphasize an overtly technical understanding of management as though it were akin to social engineering or eugenics, others emphasize its inherently
political nature. Whether managers are akin to caliphs, architects, or technicians is open to constant debate. Some may deem the role inherently praiseworthy where others remain suspicious
of or antagonistic to its influence. Similarly, where some researchers might argue that what they
are studying are individuals and the cognitive patterns associated with subjective judgement and
decision-taking, others regard the appropriate unit of analysis to be wider, sometimes objectifying forces, such as the structural influence of foreign direct investment, or the influence of nonnegotiable cultural traditions. This variety of perspectives and approaches in the field can make
any attempt to locate the edges of management research activity a messy one. This is why
Whitehead’s identification of the three-fold urge informing human inquiry is instructive. What
defines a field is not so much common methods or units of analysis, but its influence on human
problems. The influence he envisages coming from any form of broadly scientific activity is not
despotic in its nature, but a self-control emerging from the capacity to see things anew, to envisage how the world is and so how it can be both different from the way it is, and better. It is this
ability to see things anew that Whitehead argues as the root of good science, irrespective of the
field or discipline. For a social science this ability involves researchers recognizing the intimate
relationship between their perspectives and the experience of the ongoing problems people have.
Social science involves researchers in an internal and ongoing relationship with the human experiences that form the raw material for the data by which they make sense of the social world.
From a management research perspective, these problems can be those of managers and their
colleagues, or those under the influence of managers, including the researchers themselves, or

those in the thrall of management as an idea or even ideal. As life goes on, so the problems
change; they are not fixed, universal or entirely tractable, and as social scientists the researcher’s
job is to reflect and attempt to make sense of this. It is only by recognizing this complicity with
the phenomena they research that management researchers can realize the kind of influence that
Whitehead talks about, because it is only from this recognition that management can be understood in terms of its potential rather than a formally defined field.
Take, for example, the problems that first prompted Frederick Taylor to associate inquiry into
managerial life with a science. These included the problem of how to better control growing
organizational size; how to instil order into workers and how to rid the influence of greed from
investment cycles. Each of these problems was experienced by Taylor within a specific milieu,
a shop or factory, set within a wider economic sector such as retail or steel manufacture, and
within the even wider environs of the USA and international economies. Hence Taylor’s problems were both local and global; there were immediate concerns of payment schedules set
against the equally pressing backdrop of the changing demographics, technologies and economic
aspirations of an increasingly internationalized workforce. His response was to insist management activities adopted clear and consistently applied methods (time and motion studies,
psycho-physiological testing), planning (simple hierarchical structures, rationalized production
systems) and standardization (task separation, common parts) (Guillén, 2006: 4). These
2