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Engaged Participant Observation Engaged Management ReView Volume 2 Issue 1 Charting a New Territory: Practitioner- Article 1 Scholarship in Action 2018 Engaged Participant Observation: An Integrative Approach to Qualitative Field Research for Practitioner-Scholars Daniel Robey Georgia State University, [email protected] Wallace T.F Taylor Georgia State Universtity, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.case.edu/emr Part of the Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons, and the Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License Recommended Citation Robey, Daniel and Taylor, Wallace T.F (2018) "Engaged Participant Observation: An Integrative Approach to Qualitative Field Research for Practitioner-Scholars," Engaged Management ReView: Vol. 2 : Iss. 1 , Article 1. Available at: https://doi.org/10.28953/2375-8643.1028 https://commons.case.edu/emr/vol2/iss1/1 This Essay Papers is brought to you for free and open access by CWRU Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Engaged Management ReView by an authorized editor of CWRU Commons. EDITORIAL NOTE Engaged Participant Observation: In their article “Engaged Participant Observation: An Integrative Approach to Qualitative Field Research for Practitioner-Scholars,” Dan Robey and Wallace Taylor An Integrative Approach to address an important epistemological and practice question of research inquiry carried out by a practicing Qualitative Field Research for management scholar. The key challenge they discuss is that nearly all practice-oriented qualitative and inti- Practitioner–Scholars mate ‘practice close’ inquiries assume a separate and distinct role for the researcher and the manager being studied. There are separate minds and bodies origi- Daniel Robey Wallace Taylor nating from different social worlds where the scholar Georgia State University Georgia State University seeks to understand and account for the behaviors of the practitioner while the practitioner is the recipient of the knowledge. They are bound together with a shared goal of improving the situation and knowledge that ABSTRACT underlies action. As the authors note, this separation of roles and concerns cuts across all dominating forms Participant observation is an appropriate research method for engaged of qualitative inquiry starting from ethnographies practitioner–scholars seeking in-depth insights available from qualitative and ending in recent forms of engaged management scholarship or action research. But what if the roles are field research. Conventional approaches to participant observation include contextual and fluid and the hat of the scholar and the ethnography and action research. However, conventional approaches hat of the practitioner are changed from one context to as they originally were developed assumed that the roles of practitioner another? How should we think of validity and objectiv- and scholar are separate. We propose a new approach, engaged partici- ity; how should we handle ethical issues of collecting pant observation, that recognizes the integration of research and practice and analyzing data; and how can we keep these roles roles and strives for both scientific and pragmatic rigor. We illustrate the in tension in a productive dialectic? The article does application of engaged participant observation, and its particular tensions, not fully address all the concerns related to this topic. based on the completed executive doctoral dissertation conducted by the We are left with a host of lingering issues. The authors second author and supervised by the first author. We address the ten- pose boldly and clearly the challenges of practitioner sions associated with engaged participant observation, including issues of scholar inquiry and engage the reader with a thoughtful identity, potentially biased interpretation, ethical conduct, and publication. argument around what the key tensions are and how to become aware of them and handle them productively Our analysis compares these issues across three participant observation in the heat of inquiry. The result is an intriguing opening methods and provides pragmatic guidance for qualitative field research in into the alternative practice oriented epistemologies organizations in which the researcher is an engaged participant. that characterize practitioner scholarship. The article is a must read to all students and faculty engaged in mentoring and guiding students participating in prac- titioner oriented doctoral programs as it clearly poses the issues we are all dealing with daily. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did it while working with the authors to bring the article into the daylight. 1 Engaged Management ReView JULY 2018, VOL. 2, NO. 1 Special Issue on Charting a New Territory INTRODUCTION Practitioner scholarship promises to ac- although useful to researchers who are tion), including the need to address both celerate the practical application of re- not practitioners, are not appropriate for scientific and pragmatic rigor in publica- search findings by combining the separate the emerging model of practitioner schol- tions. We conclude with recommendations roles of practitioner and scholar, thus pro- arship. We therefore offer a modified ap- for the training of practitioner–scholars ducing “practitioner–scholars.” With their proach, engaged participant observation, needing to acquire skills to navigate the proximity to real-world problems and their which is more suitable to the needs of the new territory of practitioner scholarship research skills, practitioner–scholars can practitioner–scholar. in action. bridge the divide between academic re- search and the problems situated in prac- Our approach calls on practitioner–schol- tice settings. Ideally, practitioner–scholars ars to exercise two kinds of rigor in their would generate research findings that work. Scientific rigor is well established in meet the rigorous scientific standards for the many research methodologies that theory and methodology while simultane- might be applied systematically to gen- ously generating problem solutions that erate valid knowledge. Although this type can be implemented. The metaphors of of rigor is often pitted against relevance pipelines, bridges, and partnerships that to practice, we argue that pragmatic rigor commonly are used to convey closure of should also be applied as a complement the gap between research and practice to scientific rigor. Pragmatic rigor refers to can therefore be set aside as scholarship the criteria used in judging the relevance and practice become integrated. of research to practical problems. The tensions between scientific and pragmat- Among the challenges of a more integrat- ic rigor are most often experienced when ed approach to management scholarship practitioner–scholars seek to publish their is the need to adapt traditional research work. We recommend closer attention to methods to the special requirements of criteria for evaluating the pragmatic rigor the practitioner–scholar. We focus in this of studies so that publication decisions essay on the methodology of participant can be based on the achievement of both observation (Jorgensen, 1989), which is scientific and pragmatic criteria (Robey & highly valued as an approach to gener- Markus, 1998). ating qualitative field research data. Par- ticipant observation involves the use of We organize our arguments as follows. direct observations by researchers who First, we assess the applicability of two participate in various ways in the activi- established methods used in qualitative ties they are studying. Although many re- field research: ethnography and action re- search methods might be imported intact search. Neither of these is deemed appro- from traditional academic practice (e.g., priate for the practitioner–scholar, leaving surveys, experiments, simulations, data a void in the methodological toolkit of mining), traditional participant observa- practitioner–scholars seeking to conduct tion might not be directly appropriable. participant observation studies in their Standard approaches involving participant own work settings. Second, we describe observation include ethnography and ac- engaged participant observation and dis- tion research, each of which immerses cuss four of its challenges: identity and researchers deeply into problem contexts. relationship work, potentially biased inter- Deep immersion, in turn, generates po- pretation, ethical conduct, and dissemina- tential role conflicts and tensions that tion through publication. These challenges can compromise the scientific validity of a produced tensions in our personal experi- field study. Both ethnography and action ence with engaged participant observation research offer guidance for resolving the (Taylor, 2015), which prompted efforts to tensions between research and practice, resolve them. Third, we discuss the ways allowing participant observers to miti- that tensions are managed across all three gate the problems posed by conflicting approaches (i.e., ethnography, action re- roles. These methodological guidelines, search, and engaged participant observa- 2 Engaged Management ReView JULY 2018, VOL. 2, NO. 1 Special Issue on Charting a New Territory TRADITIONAL PARTICIPANT ROLES Classic ethnographies focused on indig- Ethnographers often gain access as vol- IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: enous non-Western cultures and were unteers, students, interns, or some other ETHNOGRAPHY AND ACTION published
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