The power of richness: How can qualitative research help us ask better questions? Martha S. Feldman University of California, Irvine

Qualitative research as a way of disrupting/questioning assumptions Some famous assumptions disrupted by qualitative research Hawthorne experiments: human interaction not important to productivity Trist and Bamforth: specialization increases productivity Goffman: self is independent of situation Garfinkel: norms not created in context March et.al: decision-making as linear Lave: cognitive ability can be measured independent of context in practice Martin: culture as neither shared nor fragmentary

Some recent research disrupting assumptions Dutton and Dukerich: Organizational identity influenced by interactions outside organization Worline: Courage as a set of actions rather than individual trait Michel: Amplifying uncertainty can increase organizational knowledge Feldman: Routines can be a source of learning and organizational flexibility and change

Criteria (Weick, 1989) That’s interesting (assumption of moderate strength is disconfirmed) That’s absurd (strong assumption is disconfirmed) That’s irrelevant (no assumption is activated) That’s obvious (strong assumption is confirmed)

My story Early research experiences Training in quantitative/statistical - “Just assume it!” First research project - re-oriented research question when assumption disrupted Later research experience Studying processes that produced stability in organizational routines Noticed that routines change Proposed new way of understanding routines that encompasses change and stability

Abduction Abduction – theorizing through disciplined guessing Pragmatic inquiry: the transactional conjunction of experience, self and ideas. Experience Self Ideas

Experience Rich experience – data gathering 4+ years of ethnographic research Over 1000 hours of observation; over 100 hours of participation; formal interviews; informal conversations; 40,000 internal s Longitudinal comparisons of annual or semi-annual routines Cross sectional comparisons of units and hierarchical levels in organization

Experience, cont. Rich experience – data analysis Analyzed data using meta-theories Ethnomethodology, semiotics, dramaturgy, deconstructions Developed examples of analyses for course and Sage book, Strategies for interpreting qualitative data. Multiple perspectives provided more ways of connecting and understanding observations

Ideas Started from traditional assumptions about organizational routines a la Cyert and March, Nelson and Winter, Cohen et al. Routines best conceptualized as a unified entity: a program, an organizational skill, a heuristic Routines as relatively stable May respond to outside forces Resistance common response

Ideas, cont. Traditional ideas did not help me What I could explain with these ideas had already been explained Some observations were unexplained Needed a new set of ideas Practice theory – Giddens, Bourdieu, Orlikowski, Latour, Carlile

Self Reluctant to focus on change Previous research led to questions about stability: Order without design I believe stability is important Disciplinary background in political science and political theory – how is order possible? Theoretical background in phenomenology – how do we make order out of the sea of phenomena?

Self, cont. Outsider status Faculty position in Political Science Dept. and Public Policy School Routines often studied by economists Social support Women academics at UM interested in organizations Need to publish Associate needed to come up for full

Lessons? Power of richness? The complexity of rich data and data analysis provides doubt opportunities Doubt can be debilitating or generative Making doubt generative (Locke, Golden-Biddle and Feldman, forthcoming in Organization Science) Embrace doubt as a constructive part of the process of inquiry Nurture hunches Disrupt order