Abstract
Research failure feels like it only happens to me.
But, where are research failures? Everywhere.
What are research failures? Anything.
Who’s had research failures? Everyone.
Research failure feels like it only happens to me.
To celebrate this IJQM special issue on research failure, we call for better research failure. Research failure that is less stigmatized and stigmatizing. Research failure that is more open, healthier, and, ultimately, improves future research more. From the special issue, you will recognize that research failures come in many forms, happen for many reasons, and justify many various remediation. The only seeming constant is that research failures aren’t often discussed or harnessed sufficiently. Missed entirely, spun-away, or cautiously interpreted—the gift of research failures are indeed seldom fully formed or borne (Clark, 2014). We need to, and can, fail better.
The papers in the issue raise provocative questions: what do the accounts reveal about research failures and how scholarly communities are seen to navigate these mishaps? What made the failures occur? Where is the learning? As Eckert (2020) captures: do the research failures represent failed research or failed researchers? The following manifesto continues our long-term interest in recognizing and harnessing research failure better (Clark & Thompson, 2013), owning it (Clark & Sousa, 2015 , 2019) and sharing it for the benefit of ourselves and others (Clark & Sousa, 2018a; Sousa & Clark, 2019), and future research (Clark, 2014). More than anything, when we conceived this special issue, we did not anticipate the sheer bravery that the authors would show. The accounts are courageous and candid; reflective and reflexive. In common, none readily anticipated that aspects of their research would fail. We applaud their efforts to lead the counter-narrative to prevailing research cultures which, from corridor conversations to journals, systemically stigmatize, ignore and waste research failures.
Research Failures: A Reflection on the Special Issue
As this collection of papers exemplifies, research failure is best understood as a continuum— spanning an almost innumerable range of manifestations (Firestein, 2016). Even in the edition’s but half dozen papers, there’s both considerable diversity yet also tight cohesion in the research failures discussed, which occurred in: Every stage of the research process, from ontology (Eckert, 2020), design (Ciuhan & Iliescu, 2020), methodological frameworks (Ciuhan & Iliescu, 2020), data collection (Cohen-Miller, Schnackenberg, & Demers, 2020; Eckert, 2020) and analysis (Ciuhan & Iliescu, 2020) and community engagement (Held, 2020) All facets of research, including: the physical, such as how data are generated (Gregory, 2020); the social, such as in community relations (Held, 2020); participant rapport (Eckert, 2020); and cultural contexts (Gregory, 2020). Established (Eckert, 2020) to novel research methods (Cohen-Miller, Schnackenberg & Demers, 2020; Gregory, 2020)
Failures can relate to absence (Held, 2020; Wohlfart, 2020) or presence (Gregory, 2020); ourselves (Wohlfart, 2020) or others (Held, 2020); the overt and obvious (Eckert, 2020; Wohlfart, 2020) to the tacit and hidden (Ciuhan & Iliescu, 2020). The failures were explained in many different ways, including but not confined to, individual issues, such as: foundational misunderstandings of participants (Eckert, 2020; Held, 2020), lack of adequate preparation (Held, 2020; Wohlfart, 2020) or prior experience (Wohlfart, 2020), lack of field work (Eckert, 2020; Held, 2020), and pressures created from external deadlines (Held, 2020). Broader contextual factors contributed too, including: inadequacies in the methodological literature (Ciuhan & Iliescu, 2020), disciplinary silos and tensions (Gregory, 2020) and the sheer complexity of the research being done (Eckert, 2020; Gregory, 2020; Held, 2020).
Positively, the failures lead to many benefits, contributing to better understanding and methodological innovation (Cohen-Miller, Schnackenberg, & Demers, 2020), clarification of research priorities (Held, 2020), the need for higher cultural sensitivity (Held, 2020). Beyond the studies themselves, authors better realized the wide prevalence of research failure (Eckert, 2020), the use of failures for improving research quality (Eckert, 2020) and the need for safer and more supportive spaces and sharing of research failures (Eckert, 2020). Notably rich paradoxes were raised, common around challenging learning experiences (Clark & Sousa, 2018b), including rigid flexibility (Cohen-Miller, Schnackenberg, & Demers, 2020), and uncomfortable reflexivity (Eckert, 2020).
We need research failures to benefit future research more and more often. Better research failure serves a bigger purpose. The research failure has to first be acknowledged, then understood, and then harnessed to improve future research. Leveraging the insights from these accounts of research failure, we offer the following manifesto for better research failure.
