Reflecting on the Reflective Conversation

Abstract

This brief essay develops three points to stretch the reflective conversation. One agrees that we need a more expansive understanding of qualitative research because doing qualitative research is doing real science. The second synthesizes insights in the conversation to develop three ways that grounded theory building (GTB) provides unique benefits to management research and complements conventional deductive work. With theory as our middle name, GTB generates new theory, something essential to a complex field with considerable fragmentation and ambiguity. Deductive research tests already established theory. Building defines the active process of gathering and analyzing data, and the conversationalists identify the bountiful array of approaches that already exist—if only all scientists would make some effort to understand them. Grounded means capturing the situated details and contingencies rather than abstracting them away since we need to understand the “things” of any phenomenon and how they interrelate if we are to build elegant new understandings. I offer suggestions for next steps in each area. My third point: Let’s get over the idea that qualitative methods means using qualitative data.