Chun Guo, Jane K. Miller, Melissa S. Woodard, Daniel J. Miller, Kirk D. Silvernail, Mehmet Devrim Aydin, Ana Heloisa da Costa Lemos, Vilmante Kumpikaite-Valiuniene, Sudhir Nair, Paul F. Donnelly, Robert D. Marx and Linda M. Peters
The purpose of this paper is to test a mediated model of the relationship between self-concept orientation (individualist and collectivist) and organizational identification…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to test a mediated model of the relationship between self-concept orientation (individualist and collectivist) and organizational identification (OrgID, Cooper and Thatcher, 2010), with proposed mediators including the need for organizational identification (nOID, Glynn, 1998) as well as self-presentation concerns of social adjustment (SA) and value expression (VE, Highhouse et al., 2007).
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from 509 participants in seven countries. Direct and mediation effects were tested using structural equation modeling (AMOS 25.0).
Findings
Individualist self-concept orientation was positively related to VE and collectivist self-concept orientation was positively related to nOID, VE and SA. VE mediated the relationship between both self-concept orientations and OrgID. In addition, nOID mediated the relationship for collectivist self-concept orientation.
Practical implications
This study identifies underlying psychological needs as mediators of the relationship of self-concept orientation to OrgID. Understanding these linkages enables employers to develop practices that resonate with the self-concept orientations and associated psychological needs of their employees, thereby enhancing OrgID.
Originality/value
This study provides a significant contribution to the OrgID literature by proposing and testing for relationships between self-concept orientations and OrgID as mediated by underlying psychological needs. The results provide support for the mediated model as well as many of Cooper and Thatcher’s (2010) theoretical propositions, with notable exceptions.
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Arturo E. Osorio, Banu Ozkazanc-Pan and Paul F. Donnelly
While entrepreneurship may be driven by personal interests and lifestyle choices, entrepreneurial actions are not only economically driven opportunity-searching processes but also…
Abstract
While entrepreneurship may be driven by personal interests and lifestyle choices, entrepreneurial actions are not only economically driven opportunity-searching processes but also enactments of social transformation that may or may not lead to socioeconomic benefits. We advance that exploring these entrepreneurial processes can inform a theory of the firm that may explain how socioeconomic processes shape the socioeconomic environment of communities while serving individuals. This article discusses several understandings of the firm, as theorized in extant literature. Guided by these different conceptualizations, we present a case study of an artist and artisan cluster in Western Massachusetts to demonstrate various understandings of entrepreneurial processes. By way of conclusion, we develop the idea of the firm as a geographically embedded relational understanding aiding entrepreneurs to achieve personal goals while coconstructing their local environment.
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Paul F. Donnelly, Yiannis Gabriel and Banu Özkazanç‐Pan
The Guest Editors’ intent with this special issue is to tell tales of the field and beyond, but all with the serious end of rendering visible the largely invisible. This paper…
Abstract
Purpose
The Guest Editors’ intent with this special issue is to tell tales of the field and beyond, but all with the serious end of rendering visible the largely invisible. This paper aims to introduce the articles forming the special issue, as well as reviewing extant work that foregrounds the hidden stories and uncertainties of doing qualitative research.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors advance their arguments through a literature review approach, reflecting on the “state of the field” with regard to doing research and offering new directions on reflexivity as an ethical consideration for conducting qualitative research.
Findings
Far from consigning the mess entailed in doing qualitative research to the margins, there is much to be learned from, and considerable value in, a more thoughtful engagement with the dilemmas we face in the field and beyond, one that shows the worth of what we are highlighting to both enrich research practice itself and contribute to improving the quality of what we produce.
Originality/value
This paper turns the spotlight onto the messiness and storywork aspects of conducting research, which are all too often hidden from view, to promote the kinds of dialogues necessary for scholars to share their fieldwork stories as research, rather than means to a publication end.
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François Lambotte and Dominique Meunier
The research process is commonly viewed as a succession of linear, structured and planned practices that exclude informal and unplanned practices, engaging with the unexpected or…
Abstract
Purpose
The research process is commonly viewed as a succession of linear, structured and planned practices that exclude informal and unplanned practices, engaging with the unexpected or the uncertain. The authors’ aim is to explore this aspect of researching in connection with the narratives of researchers as they oscillate between past and present, theory and empiricism.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors first draw on the concept of “bricolage” to validate informal research practices as researchers seek to lend “thickness” to their research. To deal with the apparent “messiness” of research narratives, they apply the concepts of kairotic time and action nets. Kairotic times are key moments in research narratives when actions, under tension, interconnect to form action nets, which, in turn, generate meaning or knowledge.
Findings
The authors analyse two research episodes. The first recounts how personal experiences and contingencies influence a researcher's choice of research objects and his associated theoretical reflections. The second highlights how some concrete difficulties in choosing a field and gaining access trigger a set of actions that force a researcher to review his initial choices and to reposition himself methodologically. Discussing the concept of kairotic time, the authors show the importance of context and timing and demonstrate how stories build around a gravitational point. From there, they discuss how the concept of action nets, breaking linearity, helps to envision research practice not as a sequence, but as networks of actions that produce scientific outcomes.
Originality/value
This paper provides an operational method of using kairotic time and action nets to account for, and acknowledge, the messiness in research narratives.
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Melissa S. Woodard, Jane K. Miller, Daniel J. Miller, Kirk D. Silvernail, Chun Guo, Sudhir Nair, Mehmet Devrim Aydin, Ana Heloisa da Costa Lemos, Paul F. Donnelly, Vilmante Kumpikaite-Valiuniene, Robert Marx and Linda M. Peters
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between individual- and country-level values and preferences for job/organizational attributes.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between individual- and country-level values and preferences for job/organizational attributes.
Design/methodology/approach
Survey data were collected from 475 full-time employees (average of nine years work experience, and three years in a managerial position) enrolled in part-time MBA programs in seven countries.
Findings
Preference for a harmonious workplace is positively related to horizontal collectivism, whereas preference for remuneration/advancement is positively related to vertical individualism. The authors also find a positive relationship between preference for meaningful work and horizontal individualism, and between preference for employer prestige and social adjustment (SA) needs.
Research limitations/implications
Although the sample comprised experienced, full-time professionals, using graduate business students may limit generalizability. Overall, the results provide initial support for the utility of incorporating the multi-dimensional individualism and collectivism measure, as well as SA needs, when assessing the relationships between values and employee preferences.
Practical implications
For practitioners, the primary conclusion is that making assumptions about preferences based on nationality is risky. Findings may also prove useful for enhancing person-organization fit and the ability to attract and retain qualified workers.
Originality/value
This study extends research on workers’ preferences by incorporating a new set of values and sampling experienced workers in a range of cultural contexts.
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This paper aims to explore the scope of fiction writing in academic research as a way of studying “messier” aspects of the process, such as emotion.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the scope of fiction writing in academic research as a way of studying “messier” aspects of the process, such as emotion.
Design/methodology/approach
The author reflects on her “lived experience” of conducting doctoral research, five years earlier and re‐searched for the paper, by composing a fictional narrative that aims to capture some of the emotional and other complexities of the process.
Findings
The author demonstrates that fictionalisation opens possibilities for a deeper probing of the emotional aspects of the research experience. Her conclusion is that this method can help researchers to think about the processes of writing, reflexivity, and emotion. It can also be useful to academic writers more widely, by showing how fiction writing techniques can convey some of the more complex aspects of their day‐to‐day activities.
Practical implications
The paper can act as a model for extending academic writing skills in the area of fiction, by introducing characterisation, plot and dialogue.
Originality/value
This paper offers an original account of the emotions of the doctoral writer, situated within current discourses on emotion, fiction writing and methodology. It will be of value to scholars of arts, humanities and social sciences.
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Juliette Koning and Can‐Seng Ooi
Researchers rarely present accounts of their awkward encounters in ethnographies. Awkwardness, however, does matter and affects the ethnographic accounts we write and our…
Abstract
Purpose
Researchers rarely present accounts of their awkward encounters in ethnographies. Awkwardness, however, does matter and affects the ethnographic accounts we write and our understanding of social situations. The purpose is to bring these hidden sides of organizational ethnography to the fore, to discuss the consequences of ignoring awkward encounters, and to improve our understanding of organizational realities.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents awkward ethnographic encounters in the field: encounters with evangelizing ethnic Chinese business people in Indonesia (Koning), and visiting an artist village in China (Ooi). Based on analysing their awkwardness, and in the context of a critical assessment of the reflexive turn in ethnography, the authors propose a more inclusive reflexivity. The paper ends with formulating several points supportive of reaching inclusive reflexivity.
Findings
By investigating awkward encounters, the authors show that these experiences have been left out for political (publishing culture in academia, unwritten rules of ethnography), as well as personal (feelings of failure, unwelcome self‐revelations) reasons, while there is much to discover from these encounters. Un‐paralyzing reflexivity means to include the awkward, the emotional, and admit the non‐rational aspects of our ethnographic experiences; such inclusive reflexivity is incredibly insightful.
Research limitations/implications
Inclusive reflexivity not only allows room for the imperfectness of the researcher, but also enables a fuller and deeper representation of the groups and communities we aim to understand and, thus, will enhance the trustworthiness and quality of our ethnographic work.
Originality/value
Awkwardness is rarely acknowledged, not to mention discussed, in organizational ethnography.
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The purpose of this paper is to provide a more expansive recounting of the process of fieldwork, taking place over a number of years in diverse locations, in order to show how…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a more expansive recounting of the process of fieldwork, taking place over a number of years in diverse locations, in order to show how research design develops through the process of field research, as well as to highlight the complexity of fieldwork, especially issues of access, identity, and power.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on the author's fieldwork experiences in Sierra Leone, working from and expanding upon fieldnotes from time in the field. Reflexive, autoethnographic personal narratives of fieldwork experiences are juxtaposed with theoretical writing about ethnographic observation and qualitative research.
Findings
The expansive discussion of the process of fieldwork and the development of the research project through time demonstrates and explicates the complexity and temporal dimensions of qualitative field research. Issues of access, identities, and power/privilege are also crucial aspects of the fieldwork process.
Research limitations/implications
This paper shows the importance of acknowledging and articulating the development of fieldwork and research design over time and in different places. It also discusses the complexity of fieldwork due to issues of access, identity, and power. Its claims are limited by its focus on one case, the author's fieldwork.
Social implications
This piece will help members of society better understand the process of qualitative fieldwork. Given its format and writing style, this piece can be easily read and understood by interested members of the public.
Originality/value
This paper provides narratives and commentary that provide a more complete picture of the practice of field research and the development of research design over the course of time and in diverse locations. This will be valuable to researchers, especially those preparing for field experiences for the first time or for their first time in a particular field, as well as students interested in learning about qualitative fieldwork practices.
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The purpose of this paper is to display and critically reflect upon how field experiences in the research process interacted with the author's subjectivity and shaped her…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to display and critically reflect upon how field experiences in the research process interacted with the author's subjectivity and shaped her construction of knowledge about organisational conflict.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on Weick's theoretical framework of sensemaking and the notion of reflexivity as a resource for dealing with research experiences, the paper presents empirical narratives that explore how research experiences of negotiating access to information and emic categories of conflict in the field, analysing events and morally deciding which stories from the field are conflict stories, and dealing with ethical dilemmas in the process of doing research about conflict constitute common factors that influenced the author's construction of knowledge about organisational conflict.
Findings
The paper shows that the way we organise and make sense of research experiences shapes our process of theorising and the actual production of knowledge in a research field.
Research limitations/implications
We should document and display the process of theorising in our research and thoroughly pursue what we experienced in the field, because this will create thoroughness to our research and add to, not devalue, the knowledge we produce.
Originality/value
This paper highlights the process of theorising in organisational research. The empirical narratives presented in the paper contribute to the narrow display within the field of how we, as organisational researchers, mobilise our theorising and construct knowledge.
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Gavin Breslin, Tandy Jane Haughey, Paul Donnelly, Ciaran Kearney and Garry Prentice
The World Health Organization estimates that millions of people across the world experience mental health problems, yet traditionally athletes have been poorly supported to manage…
Abstract
Purpose
The World Health Organization estimates that millions of people across the world experience mental health problems, yet traditionally athletes have been poorly supported to manage their mental health. The purpose of this paper is to apply the Theory of Planned Behaviour to determine the effect of a mental health awareness programme on sports coaches’ knowledge and intentions to offer support to athletes who experience mental health problems.
Design/methodology/approach
Adult coaches (n=244) were recruited to attend the Mood Matters in Sport Programme mental health awareness intervention or act as a control. A 2 (group) × 2 (time) quasi-experimental design was adopted. All participants completed the Mental Health Knowledge Schedule and Reported and Intended Behaviour Scale at the beginning and end of the programme. Two months postprogramme delivery focus groups were conducted.
Findings
A mixed analysis of variance showed a significant interaction effect wherein there were improvements in mental health knowledge and intentions to offer support compared to the control group. Focus group findings provided further detail on how to support mental health awareness in sport clubs.
Practical implications
Knowledge and intentions to offer support can be enhanced through a short mental health awareness programme. The already established social networks available in sport clubs can provide a natural environment for delivering mental health awareness programmes. The programme facilitated discussion on mental health issues and highlighted that future programmes should contain more sport-related examples (i.e. case studies, videos, etc.).
Originality/value
This is the first study to apply the Theory of Planned Behaviour to mental health awareness programmes in a sport setting.