Tamara Journal of Critical Organisation Inquiry

Reflexivity in Research: The Role of the Researcher, the Research Process, and the Nature of Facts in the Study of Organizations

Attitudes to these issues have changed considerably over the past twenty five years as has the acceptability of various qualitative approaches. Because qualitative studies do not usually start from a strict theory or model, reflexivity on the researcher's part is an essential part of the research process.

How to Become a Knowledge Holder: Creating a Piece of Scientific Knowledge with Originality

In this paper we discuss the meaning of newness in research in the times when new paradigms of science are emerging and the sciences have become more and more fragmentary. In the positivistic and monolithic era of social science, before Kuhn and year 1966, methodologies and methods interpreting newness were simpler. In this paper it is argued the newness is more and more in the text itself, and that the dynamics of texts comes from interrelations between the subject of the text (the researche...

Ethical Reflexivity and Epistemological Weakness

It is customary to promiscuously interconnect the well-established methodological conception of sociological reflexivity to multi-level metatheoretical analyses, representational tactics and strategies, self-conscious knowledge-production processes and, in general, epistemological questions and answers. However, Western reflexive thinking about culture, rationality, and scientific knowledge often tends to (somehow) reproduce the self-assured "one epistemological size fits all" standpoint of E...

Singularity of Qualitative Research: From Collecting Information to Producing Results

It is generally accepted that the choice between a qualitative and a quantitative approach appears to be dictated by the criteria of effectiveness regarding the orientation of the research (to create or to test). The main objective of qualitative research is to create a methodology for approaching, understanding, analysing and explaining management phenomena at a social or company level. The objective of this contribution is to present a reflection aiming at understanding qualitative research...

Engaging in Reflexive Acts - Sharing Experiences On Reflexivity in Empirical Qualitative Research*

In this article, we present an experiential narrative of reflexivity in qualitative empirical research. Through a dialog of three researchers on their research processes we highlight the issues of reflexivity in empirical research and show the ways by which a researcher's ontological and epistemological presumptions inform decision making throughout the research process. Generalizing from our own research experience, we call for academic discussion on the experiential knowledge researchers ha...

'Is Becoming a Researcher Some Kind of Role-Playing' - Roles of the Researcher in the Process of Forming the Identity

The first seminar as a PhD student: it was the first impression for me of the way to become a researcher. The roles taken during the research process formed my identity in many ways: sometimes I was like a tourist, sometimes a spy, a missionary or a prisoner. All the roles taken during the research process formed the identity in one way or another. Some roles are of more a social origin, some are more individualistic. In this article it is revealed how the roles can form the identity growth p...

The False Coin of Reflection? Contributions, Reflection and the Economic Logics of Academia

Reflection is often viewed as a specific intrapersonal process of epistemological questioning, but this is by necessity only part of the phenomenon. I will here argue for a critique of reflection and vanity in the social sciences by way of an inquiry into the academic economy. By recasting this as a hybrid phenomena, and then showing how such a reading can be used to reflect on the nature of reflection in academic work, I try to outline a project of developing a post- moralizing social scienc...

Reflections From a Blind Eye

[...] the artist always relies on a blindness which cannot be recognised, which is found in the blinding play of absence and presence.\n It relates to a movement across a space and is characterised by the markings it leaves behind, An extraction is something drawn out by force, dragged from one place to another, Consequently, to draw the blind beyond its obvious associations has a range of meanings which are about movement across a space and more particularly about a forced movement. Derrida...

The Arts of Michael Moore and American Soft Power

Michael Moore is one of the most disputed authors and filmmakers in the United States. The purpose with this article is to try to shed some new insights and understandings of Moore's political views as they are represented in his book "Dude, Where's My Country?" and film "Fahrenheit 911". By applying insights from international relations theory, we are trying to get a better understanding of Moore's political views by putting his views within the framework of "soft power". According to the so...

By Any Means Necessary? Ethnographic Access, Ethics and the Critical Researcher

This paper aims to analyse the implications of negotiating ethnographic research access following research ethical codes and remain coherent with Critical Management Studies (CMS) principles. Through this reflective account, we seek to address the field of Organisation Studies (OS), where ethnographic research access has attracted little theoretical scholarly attention, and also to contribute to the renewed focus on ethical research practice within CMS literature. In addition, we also aim to ...

Global Trafficking Networks and Business Studies34

This paper outlines the contours of the global network society and then searches for 'the masters' of this emerging environment. Judging from the management talk on flexible, decentralized and adaptable networked enterprises, these masters are found in the large global corporations, but closing in on practice, evidence rather points in the direction of illegal, or partly illegal, global networks. In the paper, we use global trafficking networks as the benchmark example, arguing that they are ...

Excess of Rationality?; About Rationality, Emotion and Creativity. A Contribution to the Philosophy of Management and Organization

Organizations are sometimes said to be overly rational, and it is argued that more attention should be given to the soft side, including feelings and emotions. In the same vain it is said that creativity and rationality do not match. On the other hand however, one can trace the idea of organizations being less rational than supposed. This paper explores the view that 'excess of ...' can only be evaluated on the basis of a nuanced view of rationality and an adequate insight into the relationsh...

Immutable Ethics: A Non-Theistic Treatise in Defense of the Universality and Unchangeability of Right and Wrong

Modern popularist teaching presents ethics as situational and relativistic. Rather than using this current approach a more classical and reactionary methodology that calls for the reevaluation of some of the elder philosophies that regarded right and wrong in the context of absolutism is required. Confusion between the concepts of beliefs, values, morals, laws, and ethics has increased to the point where many people today consider these related ideas as synonymous. It is essential to discuss ...

A Eulogy, a Foil, and a Rebuke: To Whom, in Which Order, and Why?

[...] do not ask Rasheed do the impossible, like walking over waters, crossing the beach spearhead, and knocking daringly at the AOM gates. [...] while the pendulum swings, I would remember the aphorism: "Never make a decision too early." [...] if the pendulum stops, I would recall the final theatrical trope: "It ain't over till the fat lady sings."