Doing critical management research interviews after reading Derrida

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The paper invites us to reconsider the processes at work in the conduct of qualitative interviews, especially in the context of management studies; it emphasises, in particular, the paradoxes that arise from the inescapable interdependency between interviewer and interviewee. Design/methodology/approach -The author reflects upon his own experiences of conducting interviews with managers whilst studying for a PhD, and suggests alternative ways of thinking about what goes on during such exchanges. Findings -Interview techniques are not necessarily the neutral tools they might seem to be. Originality/value -The deconstructive insights about interview processes provide a way of thinking about qualitative interview research that might be more consistent with the insights of certain "critical" management studies.

Dialogic listening: toward an embodied understanding of how to “go on” during fieldwork

“…Emphasizing relationality in research practices implies that knowledge is co-created in between people in the dialogic moment. It thereby refutes the assumption that information flows only one way when the respondents share their beliefs or experiences with the researcher (Learmonth, 2006). Instead, intersubjective research opens up a joint exploration (Cunliffe, 2011).…”

“…In organization studies, the illusion of the researcher and the research participants as being individually separated is still prevalent, and there is thus a strong need to overcome methodological individualism in our research practices (Learmonth, 2006). Bakhtin (1986) argues that one shortcoming of studies that concentrate on speech, separate words, or sentences, instead of how utterances are intertwined with each other, is that all the relational and situational dynamics inherent in conversations are lost.…”

“…I am not suggesting that we should throw away everything we have learnt in methods classes about preparing for an interview or creating scripts before entering a meeting session. However, since these practices are mainly focussed on technique (Learmonth, 2006), and have not been developed with any acknowledgment of listening in a bodily experienced moment, they have to be used with care and consideration for what they do to the conversational processes at work. Hence, one implication of emphasizing dialogic listening is to not plan exactly what to say and do beforehand, but rather to prepare oneself for an embodied being in the living moment, and openly let the ways of engaging in the field emerge from within that.…”

From re‐presentation to re‐creation

“…Qualitative researchers within social sciences have since demonstrated awareness of the local and interactional character of various kinds of interviews, e.g. focus group interviews (Myers, 1998), job interviews (Silverman, 1973; Jessup and Jessup, 1975), counselling interviews (Erickson and Shultz, 1982), and – of most importance for this text – research interviews (Kahn and Cannell, 1957; Cicourel, 1964; Denzin, 1970; de Santis, 1980; Eglin, 1980; Gubrium and Holstein, 2002; Learmonth, 2006). As pointed out by Eglin, interview talk can (and should) be conceived of as “a form of sociolinguistic interaction closely akin to conversation” (Eglin, 1980, p. 68).…”

Reading the past to imagine the future

“…A critical and reflexive perspective on interviewing recurs during the ten years of the journal. Another example is provided by Mark Learmonth's (2006) article that drew on Derrida to discuss the paradoxes that arise from the inescapable interdependency between interviewer and interviewee. The insider account of the author's experience leads to a reflection on alternative ways of thinking about what goes on during such interview exchanges.…”