This paper addresses some strategies for conducting elite interviews. It draws upon material from a significant number of interviews that the author has conducted with this group in a variety of economic sectors and countries, as well as from the social sciences literature on elites. The aim of the paper is to provide insights into the particularities of interviewing elites for those new to researching this group. In particular, it focuses on gaining trust and gauging the tone of the interview, how to present oneself during the interview, asking open---and closed---questions, the appropriate length of an interview, whether to record the conversation, coping with difficult scenarios, asking awkward questions, managing respondents who do not answer the question, keeping respondents interested in the interview and finally gaining feedback from respondents.

This paper explores some of the methodological strategies for interviewing elites.

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This paper argues that despite a sizeable literature on return migration, it is still not well understood whether highly skilled migrants are remaining in their host countries or returning to their home countries. I argue that most British and Indian scientists working in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector around Boston are likely to remain in the US. This provides a different perspective to many recent studies which have highlighted the temporary nature of highly skilled migration. I argue that permanent types of migration need to be placed in the context of other temporary forms of migration. Similarly to microeconomic theories of migration, I argue that professional opportunities are the principal reason why highly skilled migrants would return to their home countries. However, culture and lifestyle, family considerations, and to a lesser extent governments, are also significant in shaping migration decisions. This paper shows that there are important differences in the intentions of highly skilled migrants from developed and developing countries to return to their home countries. I argue that migrants often face conflicting loyalties in different countries, and their individual social networks with actors in their host and home countries will help them make migration decisions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Based on a case study of a large consulting firm, this paper makes two contributions to the literature on reputation and identity by examining how an organization responds when its identity is substantially misaligned with the experience and perceptions of external stakeholders that form the basis of reputational judgments. First, rather than triggering some form of identity adaptation, it outlines how other forms of identity can come into play to remediate this gap, buffering the organization's identity from change. This shift to other individual identities is facilitated by a low organizational identity context even when the identity of the firm is coherent and strong. The second contribution concerns the conceptualization of consulting and other professional service firms. We explain how reputation and identity interact in the context of the distinctive organizational features of these firms. Notably, their loosely coupled structure and the central importance of expert knowledge claims enable individual consultants both to reinforce and supplement corporate reputation via individual identity work.