Applying unfettered but disciplined imagination to last night's Academy of Management 1995 session on the jazz metaphor, I asked: How would I design an organization as if it were a medium for improvisational jazz? I know that the design metaphor grates on some sensibilities. Bear with me. I am a tinkerer and bricoleur at heart. I write as thought emerged subject to minor editing.
This paper presents Dialectical Inquiry (DI) as a structured qualitative research method for studying participant models of organizational processes. The method is applied to rich secondary anecdotal data on technology transfer, gathered by subject-matter experts in a large firm. DI assumes that the imposition of a dialectical structure will produce emergent theories in tacit use by organizational actors. As such, it serves as a meta-structure for grounded rese arch. Three competing models were discovered in the data. Each model was analyzed in the context of other models to reveal governing assumptions and counter assumptions. It is demonstrated that each model grasps essential truths, but is necessarily incomplete, and would fail due to internal contradictions. The internal and external validity of the results were tested in a manner consistent with qualitative research.
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