Methods Clinics
On a regular basis, we invite progressive thinkers from the field to help us in our endeavour of understanding what methodology and methods can be for each and every one of us. Critical, eye-opening and challenging - the objective of the Methods Clinic is to bring in new or alternative perspectives and to dive deeper into a particular method. At the same time, we try to create room to discuss ideas and concerns related to our own research.
NEXT:
Studying Multiple Ontologies Within and Beyond Organizations – But How? /w Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes
CLINICS:
Elite Interviewing with Laura Empson
Netnography with Robert V. Kozinets
Reflexive Methodology with Mats Alvesson
Making Sense of Research Through Story with Tricia Cleland Silva and Paulo de Tarso Fonseca Silva
Organizational Discourse Analysis with Dan Kärreman
Developing Theory about the Development of Theory with Henry Mintzberg
Generating Theory by Abduction with Andrew Van de Ven and Alf Steiner Saetre
Hauntological Readings with Justine Grønbæk Pors (CBS)
Designing the Study with Barbara Czarniawska
The Art of Writing Conceptual(-Only) Articles with Kaisa Koskela-Huotari
Upcoming Methods Clinics
Methods Clinics: Studying Multiple Ontologies Within and Beyond Organizations – But How? /w Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes (Hanken School of Economics, Finland)
21 September 2023
The ontological aspects of how humans know, view, and relate to the world beyond themselves are essential in understanding how sustainability is organized in practice, within and beyond formal organizations. Within the modern ontology it is often assumed that there is just ‘one reality out there’ and that humans are neutral observers of an objective world, or that their different perspectives are expressions of cultural/epistemic components through which they view the world. But what happens when this assumption about a separate and singular world ‘out there’ no longer holds true? From a relational perspective it is said that worlds/objects/reals emerge through the relations that are forged among humans and other entities. Furthermore, Indigenous ontologies hold that nature is not an object or a resource that can be exploited for human purposes as it is alive and holds its own will and agency to act. This presentation dwells into the ways in which we can study organizational contexts in which such ‘pluriversal’ ontological constructs manifest themselves. We discuss what the role of researchers is when navigating such pluriverse of ways of worlding
What: Studying multiple ontologies within and beyond organizations – but how? /w Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes (Hanken School of Economics, Finland)
When: 21 September 2023, 9:30-11:00 am (CET/Stockholm time)
Where: Hybrid seminar on Zoom (a link will be shared upon registration) and at SSE (room tbd.)
What to do: Register by emailing us at methodslab@hhs.se and join us online! No pre-readings for the session.
About: Maria Ehrnström Fuentes is associate professor at the department of Management and Organization at Hanken School of Economics in Finland and holds a docent title in Global Development Studies and University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on ‘the pluriverse’ of worlds where the interactions and contestations among people, places, and nonhumans shape different pathways towards sustainable and regenerative futures. She has an extensive record of critically examination of the ontological politics of CSR in the Latin American rural and peasant communities impacted by forestry extrativism. Currently she studies farmer-led grassroots movements engaged in building regenerative landscapes and the ontological transformations involved in these more-than-human organizational practices.
Previous Methods Clinics
Methods Clinic on Activist Research Methods in Practice: The Case of Suing an Algorithmic Decision-Making System /w Charlotta Kronblad (Stockholm school of Economics)
25 October 2022
In this Methods Clinic, we will discuss academic activism and different methods involving deliberate interventions. Specifically, I will tell the story of how I stumbled across an unlawful Algorithmic Decision Making (ADM) system in the setting of public-school placements and decided to sue the city that employed it. I used the lawsuit as a method to explore how the legal system deals with errors stemming from flawed algorithmic systems. I found that the legal system today lacks competence to deal with algorithmic evidence and that current legal tools and institutions are not updated for the digital reality that surrounds them. My activist research approach continues as I am trying to change current institutions by initiating a public debate around these issues.
What: Activist Research Methods in Practice: The Case of Suing an Algorithmic Decision-Making System /w Charlotta Kronblad (PostDoc, Stockholm school of Economics)
When: 25 October 2022, 13:00-15:00 (CET/Stockholm time)
Where: Zoom, a link will be shared upon registration
What to do: Register by emailing us at methodslab@hhs.se and join us online! No pre-readings for the session.
About: Dr. Charlotta Kronblad is a former lawyer, with ten years of experience from the legal field, who researches the digital transformation of this very setting. Charlotta holds a PhD in digital transformation from Chalmers University of Technology and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the House of Innovation at Stockholm School of Economics. The PostDoc is connected to the Swedish Center for Digital innovation. Her current research focuses on the implementation of algorithmic decision making in the public sector and its social and legal justice implications.
Methods Clinic on Elite Interviewing with Laura Empson (Bayes Business School, formerly Cass)
01 June 2022
While the term ‘elite interview’ is rarely defined in the methodological literature, it broadly relates to power asymmetry and relative privilege between interviewer and interviewee. The aim of this seminar is to explore the distinct methodological challenges of elite interviewing and identify how best to overcome them.
For more than 25 years I have interviewed many hundreds of senior professionals in elite professional organizations. They are typically relatively powerful, highly educated, and self-assured, working in organizations which guard their external image very carefully. In this seminar I reflect upon what I have learnt from my experiences as a researcher and from speaking to senior practitioners about their own experiences of being interviewed by researchers. In general, researchers know very little about how we come across to our interview subjects, or what they consider effective and ineffective, and why.
In this seminar I will address issues relating to: gaining access, preparing to interview, establishing authority, building rapport, going deeper, dealing with difficult interviewees, and how to maintain critical distance.
This (hopefully) highly interactive seminar is an opportunity for you to reflect upon you experiences to date and to share any questions and concerns about your future research interviews.
When? 1 June 2022, 10:30-12:00 (CET/Stockholm time)
Where? Our first hybrid seminar – join us on Zoom or in-person at Stockholm School of Economics.
Some spots for in-person participation available on a first come first serve basis (please indicate your preference already when registering with us). Otherwise, you will receive a Zoom link upon registration as always 😊
How? Register by emailing methodslab@hhs.se.
Laura Empson is Professor in the Management of Professional Service Firms at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) in London, Director of the Centre for Professional Service Firms, and Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Law School. She also serves on the Strategic Advisory Board of the Journal of Management Studies.
She has dedicated almost 30 years to researching professionals and the professions. Her research in the context of professional service firms encompasses diverse themes such as: leadership and governance; identity and organisational change; mergers and acquisitions; knowledge management and innovation; professional careers and diversity; and hybrid working.
Alongside her dozens of publications in leading academic journals, she has published three books with Oxford University Press – her latest is Leading Professionals: Power, Politics, and Prima Donnas. She acts as an advisor to many of the world’s leading professional organizations, as well as to the UK government.
She was previously Associate Professor at the University of Oxford. Before becoming an academic, Laura worked as an investment banker and strategy consultant. She has a PhD and MBA from London Business School.
Methods Clinic on Netnography with Robert V. Kozinets (University of Southern California)
10 May 2022
In a world where so much of what we read and study is online, knowing how to approach the task of researching digital and social media can be difficult. One of the most specific and modernized methods of conducting research in the digital sphere is netnography.
In this cozy evening seminar, we dive into the method of netnography, led by none other than the scholar who originally developed it in 1995: Professor Robert V, Kozinets.
Robert V. Kozinets is the Jayne and Hans Hufschmid Chair of Strategic Public Relations and Business Communication at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and Marshall School of Business in Los Angeles, California. He has developed methods and theories widely used around the world. His work seeks a deep understanding of the intertwining worlds of technology and culture—technocultures—and the networks, institutions, myths, and algorithms underpinning them. Interrogating the relationships between technology, media, belief, and desire, for over two decades his research has pushed field boundaries towards more cultural and passionate ways of knowing for business and scholarship. That work has been published in a variety of forms, including books, peer-reviewed articles, blogs, Tweets, research videos (on YouTube), and poetry.
When: 10 May 2022, 18:00-20:00 (CET/Stockholm time)
What: Netnography with Professor Robert V. Kozinets (University of Southern California)
Where: We stay digital to connect speakers and participants from all around the world. A Zoom link will be shared upon registration.
To Do: Register and join us online! Upon registration, you will also receive two preliminary readings.
Please sign up before the 9th of May by emailing us at methodslab@hhs.se.
In this session, I want to invite participants to consider poetry as a way of analyzing and representing data. In the first part of the session, I will illustrate how I turned to poetry in my own research when I got stuck using conventional methods of (qualitative) analysis. Conventional academic writing does not leave much space for addressing embodied and affective aspects of research. Poetic inquiry focuses on what touches, moves, or changes us in the research, as well as what our interlocutors are moved or touched by. It thus offers possibilities for attending to affect and embodiment as these play out in our research. By playing with the rhythm of the text, poetry enables researchers to better approach the chaotic and not-yet-known experiences; the part of the research that escapes us when we use conventional, linear academic writing. In the second part of the session, I want to invite participants to experiment poetic inquiry of their own research materials. I will provide a short exercise to get to know this methodology. For this purpose, all participants are asked to bring a research text to the session (e.g. an interview transcript, an observation report, a policy document, an academic paper, or anything else that has text and is related to the research).
Noortje van Amsterdam is Assistant Professor Organization Studies at Utrecht School of Governance. Her research focusses on bodies and health in organizations. Informed by feminist poststructuralist theory, intersectionality and new materialism, Noortje aims to explore the materialities, affective flows and ideological power structures that shape inequalities related to embodied signifiers such as gender, dis/ability, age, race/ethnicity and size. She uses both conventional qualitative methodologies such as interviews and observations and creative methodologies such as Arts-Based Research, visual methods, autoethnographic writing and poetic inquiry. Noortje’s work has appeared in international peer-reviewed journals such as Organization Studies, Gender, Work and Organization, Culture and Organization, and European Journal of Women’s Studies, in edited volumes, and online www.poetryatwork.me
When: 24 March 2022, 15:00-17:00 (CET/Stockholm time)
What: Poetic Inquiry: What can we learn from analyzing data like poetry? with Noortje van Amsterdam (Utrecht School of Governance)
Where: We stay digital to connect speakers and participants from all around the world. Zoom link will be shared upon registration
To Do: Register and join us online! Upon registration, you will receive one preliminary reading.
Please sign up before the 24th of March by emailing us at methodslab@hhs.se.
There are more and more calls for conceptual(-only) articles that integrate existing knowledge, bridge previously unconnected ideas, and bring forth new perspectives that can significantly broaden the scope of thinking within a research field. Conceptual articles also tend to be rather highly cited. Despite these benefits, conceptual articles are often considered challenging to write as they require skills not often taught in doctoral programs and they do not have commonly accepted templates as readily available as do empirical articles.
The aim of this seminar is to unveil some of the mystery associate with the “art” writing conceptual articles and point to useful resources in the process. The seminar explains how a conceptual(-only) article differs from an empirical research article, offers detailed guidance for compellingly framing a conceptual article and “templates” for the theorization process. The seminar is particularly aimed at scholars writing or interested in writing conceptual articles, but the discussion on article positioning and types of theoretical contributions will also benefit scholars working with empirical research.
Kaisa Koskela-Huotari is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Marketing and Strategy of Stockholm School of Economics. Kaisa’s research interests lie at the intersection of service-dominant logic, institutional theory, and systems thinking. She uses these perspectives in her, often conceptual, work to learn more about change in social systems and inform the understandings of innovation, service design and market evolution. Her articles have been published in the Journal of Service Research, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Service Management, Journal of Strategic Marketing among others. Kaisa serves as the Assistant Editor of the AMS Review, the only marketing journal that focuses exclusively on conceptual(-only) articles.
When: 17 November 2021, 14:00-16:00 CET/Stockholm time
What: The Art of Writing Conceptual(-Only) Articles with Kaisa Koskela-Huotari
Where: Zoom, a link will be shared upon registration
To Do: Register and join us online! Pre-readings will be shared upon registration.
Please sign up before the 17th of November by emailing us at methodslab@hhs.se.
"Assuming that you have chosen the phenomenon you wish to study (because you are curious about it, and because nobody else has studied it, or studied it properly, (which you have checked in your literature review), it is the time to answer the question: “How shall I conduct my study?". In my presentation, I review several options, illustrating them with examples."
Barbara Czarniawska is a Senior Professor of Management Studies at Gothenburg Research Institute, School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She is also Doctor honoris causa here at Stockholm School of Economics, at Copenhagen Business School, Helsinki School of Economics, and University of Aalborg. Her research takes constructivist perspectives on organizing focusing on action nets. Her methodological interests cover fieldwork techniques and the narrative approach in social science studies, with much more to say.
When: 21 October 2021, 14:00-16:00 CET/Stockholm time
What: “Designing the Study” with Barbara Czarniawska
Where: Zoom, a link will be shared upon registration
To Do: Register and join us online! No pre-readings so far but we might share some closer to the date.
Please sign up before the 21st of October by emailing us at methodslab@hhs.se.
Hauntological readings. Thinking with ghosts when reading your empirical material.
This session presents ideas about hauntology as offered by Jacques Derrida and Karen Barad to discuss forms of readings that draw attention to the ghostly forces at work in different empirical contexts. To think with ghosts, I will argue, is one way to disturb one's initial reading of a data set and look for other possible interpretations. Particularly, theoretical and methodological attention to ghostly forces can help bring out questions about the politics of management and organising.
Building on broader discussions about non-representational theory and methods, we will develop a repertoire of different analytical strategies for noticing questions about exclusion, inheritances, forgotten pasts and other possible futures in empirical material.
These theoretical and methodological discussions will also lead us to reflect upon how our individual thinking and writing are entangled to broader transformations of what it means to be a researcher today. Thinking with ghost reminds us that we are connected to past ideas and struggles as well as to futures that might not yet be entirely lost.
Justine Grønbæk Pors is an Associate Professor at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School (CBS). Her research focuses on the contradictions and paradoxes of contemporary policy transformations. She is particularly interested in subjectivity, affect and ghosts. Justine is a member of the ephemera collective.
When: 23rd of September, 14:00 - 16:00 (CET)
What: Seminar consisting of presentation + discussion
Where: Not the haunted house, but Zoom! We will remain virtual for now and a link will be sent out upon registration!
To Do: A copy of the reading will be sent upon registration.
Please sign up by emailing us at methodslab@hhs.se.
We continue our theory-themed discussion with another Methods Clinic, open to everyone interested in learning more about abduction and its role in generating theory.
The need for understanding how new ideas and hunches are created that may subsequently lead to new theories or models has never been greater for academics and practitioners. Abduction provides a mode of reasoning for achieving this. It is a form of generative reasoning that begins with observing and confirming an anomaly, generating and evaluating hunches that may explain the anomaly, for subsequent deductive constructing and inductive testing
Although abductive reasoning is being recognized in the management literature, it requires more systematic development to be useful for theory creation. Professors Andrew Van de Ven (University of Minnesota) and Alf Steiner Saetre (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) argue that abduction can inform management scholars in creating theories in three important ways. In the assigned reading for this Clinic (view below), Van de Ven and Steiner Saetre begin by proposing four key steps in abductive reasoning of observing and confirming anomalies and generating and evaluating hunches. They then go beyond individual reasoning to examine collective social-psychological processes of generating new theories, and follow that with a proposal on specific ways for disciplined imagination in abductive reasoning.
When: 11th May, 15:00 - 17:00 (Stockholm time, CET) / 08:00 - 10:00 (Minnesota time)
What: Seminar consisting of presentation + discussion
Where: Zoom, a link will be shared upon registration
To Do: Please read Steiner Sætre, A. & Van de Ven, A. (2021). Generating theory by abduction. Academy of Management Review. Published online under https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2019.0233.
A copy of the reading will be sent upon registration. Please come with your questions to make the most out of the session :-)
Please sign up before the 11th of May by emailing us at methodslab@hhs.se.
To be or not to be - a theory!
We dip our toes into a toolbox of theorizing, by bringing you a Methods Clinic in a Q&A style with Professor Mintzberg on the process of theory development. In this one-hour session we center the discussion - propelled by your questions - around the chapter Developing Theory about the Development of Theory published in the Handbook of Middle Management Strategy Process Research.
Henry Mintzberg (https://mintzberg.org) is the John Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Mintzberg, who is also a collector of sculptures made by beavers, is renowned for his extensive research in management studies, specifically for his seminal work on The Nature of Managerial Work, but also for his body of work on strategic management and organizational design, education and learning, the case for corporate social responsibility, and many others.
When: 15th April, 18:00 - 19:00 (Stockholm time) / 12:00 - 13:00 (Montréal time)
Where: Zoom, a link will be shared upon registration
To Do: Please read Developing Theory about the Development of Theory (paper will also be shared upon registration), and come well prepared to make the most out of the session.
Please sign up before the 14th of April by emailing us at methodslab@hhs.se.
Organisational Discourse Analysis with Dan Kärrenman
CANCELLED:
Unfortunately due to pandemic-related reasons this Clinic has been cancelled.
Clinic on "The Epistemological Value of Shadows, and the Politics of Visibility in Qualitative Research" with Professor Afshin Mehrpouya, HEC Paris
26 May 2020
As silence is celebrated by sound, complexity highlights simplicity in a legacy of contradiction that leads the gaze from what is loud and visible to what might be neither. “Thus darkness illuminates,” writes Junichiro Tanizaki, and though it is easy to remain an admirer of such expression, it is a subject desiring to be picked up, questioned, examined. Does the invisible construct matter? How and why do we attach immaterial values to material entities? What is there to be found in shadows and flaws for a scientist? What does the presence of shadows tell us? And what role does aestheticism play in what we do?
Together with Afshin Mehrpouya from HEC Paris, we will discuss the epistemological value of shadows and the politics of visibility in qualitative inquiries in our upcoming seminar. Afshin is an associate professor of accounting and management control systems at HEC Paris, where he researches the role of performance measurement in transnational governance. His interests lie in the construction and use of calculative knowledge forms such as rankings and ratings.
Readings:
Tanizaki Jun’ichirō - In Praise of Shadows
Clinic on Reflexive Methodology with Mats Alvesson, Lund University
30 January 2020
We started this new seminar series with Professor Mats Alvesson from Lund University talking about Reflexive Methodology.
The ambition of reflexive methodology is to produce more interesting, more creative and unexpected research results through re-thinking conventions and opening up for more varied and challenging uses of research questions, fieldwork practices, modes of interpretations and styles of writing.
In this Clinic, we discussed what reflexivity implies in theoretical and practical terms for our research, ranging from asking interesting and relevant research questions to study design or analyzing empirical material.
Readings:
Alvesson, M., & Sandberg, J. (2013). Constructing Research Questions: Doing Interesting Research. London: Sage.
Alvesson, M., & Sköldberg, K. (2017). Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research (3rd Ed.). London: Sage.