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In this chapter, I explore traditional notions of secondary data in qualitative research and consider the ways in which these are continually being reimagined in the digital age. I situate this discussion in respect to data typologies and, more reflexively, in relation to our need as researchers to make data real. I consider contemporary understandings of reuse in relation to secondary data, focusing particularly on qualitative interview data. Recognizing those who are already forging a path, I then suggest how we might move beyond notions of reuse and reimagine secondary data in the digital age. To illustrate these points, I highlight relevant studies drawing data from a range of online spaces, and finally summarize key considerations and challenges.

This chapter draws upon our experiences of using materials in research interviews. We build on the work of Woodward (2016, 2020) by reflexively exploring how our use of material objects; in this case, Lego enabled both participants and researchers to connect more fully with the entrepreneurial phenomena under investigation (Williams et al., 2021). In doing so, we unpack how our use of objects reveals the research interview as a more complex phenomenon than is typically represented (Gubrium et al., 2012).

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the experience of “growing up” with QROM in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the journal.

Personal reflection.

Reading, writing and reviewing for QROM has given the inspiration and confidence to develop the author’s own qualitative research practice, but the author hopes it does not stop there. The author looks forward to the next ten years.

To revisit the editors’ original question and ask: why do the author still need QROM?

Retiring from work used to signify the end of paid employment and a transition to focus on life outside the workplace. From this perspective, the work-life interface may have no relevance for the retired. However, recent changes, particularly resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, suggest that conceptualizations of both retirement and the work-life interface are more fluid, ambiguous, and complex. In this chapter, we first set the scene, reviewing how and why the traditional concept of retirement has changed so dramatically. Drawing on empirical data from contemporary media, we then consider how the current experience of the older worker and retiree are being reframed in neoliberal terms, emphasizing individual responsibility to remain not just fit and healthy but also productive, through a wide range of activities. We then focus on the impact of COVID-19, highlighting how pre-pandemic structural inequalities have been exacerbated, resulting in a range of responses in both levels of retirement and work by older people. We conclude by suggesting that retirement and its work-life interface need to recognize lived experience as dynamic, messy, and varied and implicated in wider structural features of both the economy and society.

The purpose of this paper is to expand recent discussions of research practice in organizational ethnography by engaging in a reflexive examination of the ethnographer's situated identity work across different research spaces: academic, personal and the research site itself.

Examines concerns with the traditional notion of “being there” as it applies to ethnography in contemporary organization studies and, through a confessional account exploring the author's own experiences as a PhD student conducting ethnography, considers “being […] where?” using the analytic framework of situated identity work.

Identifies both opportunities and challenges for organizational ethnographers facing the question of “being […] where?” through highlighting the situated nature of researchers’ identity work in, across and between different (material and virtual) research spaces.

The paper provides researchers with prompts to examine their own situated identity work, which may prove particularly useful for novice researchers and their supervisors, while also identifying the potential for incorporating these ideas within organizational ethnography more broadly.

The paper offers situated identity work as a means to provide renewed analytic vigour to the confessional genre whilst highlighting new opportunities for reflexive and critical ethnographic research practice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine an oft‐neglected aspect of qualitative research practice – conducting a pilot – using the innovative approach of “e‐research” to generate both practical and methodological insights.

Using the authors’ “e‐research” pilot as a reflexive case study, key methodological issues are critically reviewed. This review is set in a broader context of the qualitative methods literature in which piloting appears largely as an implicit practice. Using a new and emerging approach (“e‐research”) provides a prompt to review “autopilot” tendencies and offers a new lens for analysing research practice.

The authors find that despite an initial focus on “practical” aspects of data collection within their “e‐research”, the pilot opened up a range of areas for further consideration. The authors review research ethics, collaborative research practices and data management issues specifically for e‐research but also reflect more broadly on potential implications for piloting within other research designs.

The authors aim to offer both practical and methodological insights for qualitative researchers, whatever their methodological orientation, so that they might develop approaches for piloting that are appropriate to their own research endeavours. More specifically, the authors offer tentative guidance to those venturing into the emerging area of “e‐research”.

This paper offers insight into an oft‐ignored aspect of qualitative research, whilst also engaging in an emerging area of methodological interest.