Crafting Qualitative Research

This book provides an overview of qualitative research models and their applications in organization and management studies. Focusing on the philosophical underpinnings and practical implications of diverse qualitative methods, this comprehensive text offers a guided tour of the options available to qualitative researchers, highlighting aspects of research design, execution, and analysis in each tradition. In clear, readable prose, the author offers insight into the ambiguities, tensions, and interconnections of diverse qualitative research traditions without resorting to oversimplification. The book's four main sections include examples and applications specifically designed for the field of management. Each chapter is devoted to a specific methodology, describing techniques and applications as well as current controversies and emerging issues. Summary boxes and practical examples will help the reader to navigate this terrain and generate research that is both relevant and of high scholarly quality. With its detailed and easy-to-understand coverage, this will be the text of choice for students working with qualitative methods in organization studies, consumer research, public administration, information systems, and media and communication studies. Instructors teaching qualitative approaches in a research methods course and researchers wanting to acquaint themselves with non-positivist traditions will also find this a useful resource.

Pushkala Prasad is the Zankel Chair Professor of Management and Liberal Studies at Skidmore College, USA.

1. Qualitative Research as Craft: Postpositivist Traditions and Research Styles Part I: The Interpretive Traditions 2. Symbolic Interactionism: Searching for Self and Meaning 3. Hermeneutics: The Interpretation of Texts 4. Dramaturgy and Dramatism: Social Life as Theater and Stage 5. Ethnomethodology: The Accomplishment of Ordinary Lives 6. Ethnography: Cultural Understandings of Natives Part II: Traditions of Deep Structure 7. Semiotics and Structuralism: The Grammar of Social Reality Part III: The Critical Traditions 8. Historical Materialism: Class, Conflict, and Domination 9. Critical Theory: Hegemony, Knowledge Production, and Communicative Action 10. Feminism and Gender Studies: Sex and Sexuality in the Social World 11. Structuration and Praxeology: Transcending Dualisms Within Frameworks of Power Part IV: Traditions of the "Post" 12. Postmodernism: Playing with Images and the "Truth" 13. Poststructuralism: Discourse, Discipline, and Deconstruction 14. Postcolonialism: Unpacking and Resisting Imperialism 15. Conclusion: Tradition, Improvisation, and Quality Control