Field Research Practice in Management and Organization Studies: Reclaiming its Tradition of Discovery

Abstract

This review reasserts field research's discovery epistemology. While it occupies a minority position in the study of organization and management, discovery-oriented research practice has a long tradition of giving insight into new, unappreciated and misappreciated processes that are important to how work is accomplished. I argue that while methods discourse has long emphasized that particularizing data and an emergent research design are productive for discovery, little to no attention has been paid to the conjectural processes necessary to imaginatively interpret these observations. I underscore them. What is the future for discovery work in business schools today? Issues arise when an increasing interest in discovery-oriented research is expressed in an institutional context that is bounded off from field research's home disciplines and is dominated by a validation epistemology. In light of this current context, I offer some initial thoughts on the work to be done to maintain fieldwork's discovery tradition in management and organization studies.