A draft of paper that appears as
Grounded Theory Rearch methods,Companion to Organizations,Joel A.C.Baum,ed.,
Blackwell Publishers(2002),pp.849-867.
Deborah Dougherty,Professor,Management and Global Business Department,Rutgers
University
The purpo of qualitative rearch is to delineate some of the esntial qualities of complex social phenomena.Many concepts in organizational theory,such as learning, replicating routines,power,authority,dynamic capabilities,or chaos,involve intricate webs of caus,effects,process,and dynamics:they are about qualities.Qualitative analysis characterizes the webs so we can appreciate what the phenomenon is really like in practice, how it works,and how it is affected by other patterns in the organization.Qualitative rearch is bad on the principle that social life is inherently complex,which means that organizational issues are inextricably bound up in ongoing social action among people in the situation(Geertz, 1973;Giddens,1979;Strauss,1987;Azevedo,this handbook).People are continually making n of and
enacting organizational life by interacting with each other and by invoking taken-for-granted practices and understandings.Organizational issues are“sticky,”or connected with, part of,and affect the context.The goal of qualitative rearch is not to describe complex phenomena,but rather to identify a few central themes that explain why and how a particular phenomenon operates as it does in a particular context.
This chapter summarizes my approach to the qualitative analysis of complex organizational phenomena,which is grounded theory building.Grounded theory building (GTB)builds theory,it does not test or verify theory.GTB theories capture the inherent complexity of social life by conceptualizing organizational issues in terms of their interactions with the actual context of practice.The goal of grounded theory is to tea out,identify,name, and explicate a few core themes that capture some of the underlying dynamics and patterns in the “blooming,buzzing confusion”that is organizational life.In other words,GTB reaches into the “infinite profusion”of social action in organizations to sift out the gist of a particular phenomenon.GTB is a way to understand why and how structures,conditions,or actions(for example)might ari,to explore conditions under which their effects might change or stay the same,and to qualify their temporary and emergent aspects.The inconsistencies in some organizational theories and the limited variance that is explained indicate that the theories need
to be re-fashioned,indeed re-grounded,to capture a richer,more realistic understanding of issue in ongoing organizational action.Grounded theory building is a way to systematically capture richer,more realistic understandings in our theories.The method therefore contributes significantly to both the quality and the reach of organization studies.
The goal of this chapter is to articulate,in a pragmatic fashion,both the promis and the challenges of GTB for the field of organization studies.A“hands-on”emphasis is uful two reasons.Epistemological discour provides important information about the underlying logics of this kind of study,and the knowledge it develops and why(e Azevedo,this handbook). Methods literature reviews highlight core differences between,boundaries around,and possible connections among various approaches.But a pragmatic discussion,like grounded theory building in general,provides additional insight by illustrating the approach’s contribution to organization studies within the actual flow of everyday rearch practice.Moreover,my basic argument is that grounded theory building brings important(and I think esntial)capabilities to the field,but to realize this potential the community of rearchers as a whole needs to address the challenges GTB faces.The challenges are not particular to this method,but reflect “growing pains”for organization studies overall as the field attempts to mature.Rather than exhort organization rearchers to“do so
mething,”this hands-on emphasis allows me to suggest veral particular and doable practices through which the rearch community can effectively grapple with the challenges of both GTB and organization rearch more generally.I hope to prompt a reasonable dialogue about how the field can enhance all kinds of good rearch.
FOUR PRINCIPLES FOR GROUNDED THEORY BUILDING Even a practical description of a rearch approach begins with a general conceptual framework for two reasons.First,putting our conceits aside for a moment,many organization theorists know very little about qualitative methods.Few receive the same extensive training in qualitative methods as they do in quantitative ones,and so may unthinkingly apply inappropriate or irrelevant rearch principles to the development or peer review of a grounded theory study. While general values for good rearch may apply to all methods,grounded theory’s particular techniques for choosing a topic,gathering and organizing data,carrying out the analysis,and drawing systematic inferences differ fundamentally from the familiar techniques of theory testing rearch that most people have been trained in.A rearch effort bad on mixed up principles
may result in less than nsible or uful results.More pragmatically,any rearch is a complex enterpri,and rearchers become stuck and confud.The principles map this particular terrain,hel
ping to identify problems and alternate possibilities.
Inrt table1about here
Table1outlines four principles that guide grounded theory building rearch so it captures the inherent complexity of social life in an effective,uful manner.The table also notes the rearch task(s)that each principle in particular illuminates,and two rules of thumb that connect each principle to rearch practice.
Principle#1:GTB Should Capture the Inherent Complexity of Social Life
The first principle re-iterates the overarching perspective for qualitative rearch: grounded theory building should capture the inherent complexity of social life.This principle frames the rearch questions and how they are approached.The subject of GTB is always actual,ongoing organizational phenomena,not existing theory or constructs,and GTB rearch questions concern how and why actual organizational phenomena occur,play out,emerge.
GTB centers on the“blooming,buzzing confusion”of social life,going beneath or beyond such constructs as“density dependence,”“job satisfaction,”“race,”or“functional structure,”for example,to
e what people actually do and think,how they enact such structures,how the many process in the situation might interact dynamically,and how,why,or under what conditions the enactments might“slip.”The object is to create new theory or to elaborate upon existing ones by discovering and articulating core themes and patterns among them that explain the particular organizational phenomenon being studied.Grounded theory is more a“process”than “variance”approach(Mohr,1982;e Langley,1999;Pentland,1999),and emphasizes the views of the people in the situation,which is referred to as“verstehen”(e Van Maanen,1979,for a primer on the social lf;Strauss1987).
Rule#1:Explore Unique Characteristics of a Phenomenon:Exploring unique aspects of a phenomenon helps a rearcher to capture the inherent complexity of social life becau doing so pushes the rearcher to get deeply into the actual situation and try to understand all the nuances,interplays,and connections.Exploring unique characteristics is less about looking at“outliers”and more about delving into a phenomenon deeply enough to understand how all the issues interact.For example,in his analysis of the Mann Gulch Disaster
(a major forest fire in which13smoke jumpers died),Weick(1993)delved deeply into unique events,thoughts,and actions of the men in that situation.From that,he produced a general theory of
how organizations unravel,what the social conditions of such unraveling are,and how organizations might be made more resilient.In part becau he explored the unique characteristics of this event,Weick’s theory about the relationships of role structure and meaning takes a variety of possible contingencies into account,and enables us to think about the unraveling of structure when the and other contingencies might vary.Capturing unique events in general terms reflects deepness.
Rule#2:Look for Social Action that Underlies Manifest Structures:Second,look for the social action that underlies apparent order and generates unique,complex variations.“Social action”refers to the patterns of thinking and acting that are collectively meaningful to people in the situation,and includes the interactions through which people generate and enact shared interpretive schemes,tho schemes themlves,and the frameworks of roles,rules,procedures, routines,and so on that embody meanings(Hinings,Brown and Greenwood,1988;Barley, 1996).I emphasize interpretive schemes,but one might study other kinds of social action such as grammars(Pentland and Reuter,1994)or the variety of ideas that constitute feminist approaches(Calas and Smircich1996).My point:get past a construct and its presumptions of order,and explore tho presumptions in practice.The complexity of social life tells us that all organizational issues that reflect meaning,like norms,strategies,job roles,
“power distance,”or even bridges being built(Suchman,1987),have an emergent quality,since any one is a unique, contingent actualization of a general phenomenon(Sahlins,1985).Suchman(1987) emphasizes“situated action,”that people do not plan actions and then follow through without reflection,but rather are guided by partial plans that are locally contingent.
GTB studies do not assume that a certain structural element or condition will operate in the theoretically proscribed manner,since people may understand it or enact it in surprisingly diver ways.Indeed,the replication of a structural element with high fidelity over time would be a worthy site for an in-depth study!Put another way,any theme must be in the data(Strauss, 1987).If a certain theme is expected but not en,the rearcher gathers more data that would reasonably contain instances of that theme.But the ,race,industry,job specialization,leadership)must be in the data or it cannot become part of the theory.
For example,one might theorize that the more an organization relies on specialized labor, the more knowledge it can absorb.A theory testing study would measure specialization and knowledge absorption,and then correlate the two.Grounded theory building eks to understand how,why,and under what conditions does specialization lead to knowing more. GTB goes past the construct to ask how do people understand their specialization and its relationships to work and responsibility.Leonar
d and Iansiti(summaries in Leonard-Barton, 1995)have explored questions like the for innovation.Their findings suggest that people can be deeply specialized and still work collaboratively on innovation if they can e their own work in terms of its contribution to the project overall.Less innovative specialists insist that problems be first translated into the principles of their own experti.The effects of specialization are not only a matter of quantity,but of quality–or how people understand them.
Principle#2:The Rearcher Must Interact Deeply With the Data: The cond principle of grounded theory building is that the rearcher interacts deeply with the data,carrying out a detailed,microscopic investigation.Some practices for how to engage in a deep interaction with the data is illustrated in the next ction,so here I summarize two rules of thumb that guide the development of data for grounded theory building.
Rule#3:Data Must Convey Social Action:Interacting deeply with the data means that one examines the data cloly,exploring“what is going on here”and looking at minute changes. The data must enable such clo interaction,and usually come from obrvations,interviews, letters,stories,photographs,archival details,and other“text-like”material that convey social action.However,a study might incorporate a variety of data types and sources,mingling in abstracted
measures perhaps with richer archival accounts and interviews.Provided the rearcher can articulate clear,reasonable connections between data and the underlying complex of social action being studied,what constitutes data is open.
I u open interviews to capture people’s stories of everyday practice in new product development,becau the reflect people’s interpretive schemes about customers,technology, and product work(my subjects).To understand connections between behaving and thinking,it would be appropriate to obrve behavior as in ethnography,or perhaps to participate in the social action as in participant obrvation or action rearch.Hirsch(1986)explored the transformation of corporate governance as takeovers became prominent for the first time during
