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Editorial Essay: The Tumult over Transparency: Decoupling Transparency from Replication in Establishing Trustworthy Qualitative Research
Abstract
Management journals are currently responding to challenges raised by the “replication crisis” in experimental social psychology, leading to new standards for transparency. These approaches are spilling over to qualitative research in unhelpful and potentially even dangerous ways. Advocates for transparency in qualitative research mistakenly couple it with replication. Tying transparency tightly to replication is deeply troublesome for qualitative research, where replication misses the point of what the work seeks to accomplish. We suggest that transparency advocates conflate replication with trustworthiness. We challenge this conflation on both ontological and methodological grounds, and we offer alternatives for how to (and how not to) think about trustworthiness in qualitative research. Management journals need to tackle the core issues raised by this tumult over transparency by identifying solutions for enhanced trustworthiness that recognize the unique strengths and considerations of different methodological approaches in our field.
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“We followed the principles of reflexivity throughout data collection and analysis and were attentive to the trustworthiness of our interpretations (Pratt et al., 2019).”
From The AI of the Beholder: Intra‐Professional Sensemaking of an Epistemic Technology (2025) · cites this paper as Pratt et al., 2019
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Metadata
- Authors
- Pratt, M. G., Kaplan, S., & Whittington, R.
- Affiliations
- Boston College (US)
- University of Toronto (CA)
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Pratt, Michael G.
- Venue
- Administrative Science Quarterly
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2019-11-06
- Volume
- 65
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 1-19
- ISSN
- 0001-8392 (ISSN-L)
- 1930-3815
- OpenAlex
- W2984711778
- Cited by
- 458
- References
- 59
- Citations by year
- 2026: 90 · 2025: 54 · 2024: 80 · 2023: 69 · 2022: 56 · 2021: 74 · 2020: 34
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Administrative Science Quarterly (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Qualitative Research Methods and Applications
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Data Analysis and Archiving
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics
- Keywords
- transparency, replication, trustworthiness, qualitative research, management research, replication crisis, research credibility, management journals, qualitative versus quantitative research
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