essential-guide-to-qualitative-in-organizational-research

–––––––––––––– CRITICAL RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS IN ORGANIZATIONS –––––––––– 183work. Christine Griffin (1985) in Typical Girls? follows Willis’s analysis of class by focusing ongender and race through examining adolescent girls’ recognition of patriarchy. This reflects themove away from the classic Marxist view to a broader approach to critical theory.Recent approaches have taken a combination of methods and have focused on languageand symbolic aspects of organizations. While many of these are influenced by poststructuralism,they reject theoretical relativism and take a realist approach to power. Philipsand Brown (1993) look at different patterns of power and reflection of interests in anadvertising campaign. They use the symbolic aspects of the organization as a way of examininghow all organizational actors struggle, ‘to reframe understandings in ways that enhance theirpositions and increase their power and influence’ (Philips and Brown, 1993: 1572). Markham(1996) reveals the way vague instructions, for example, ‘be creative’, can be used to controland often to undermine, confuse and humiliate the less powerful. Ambiguity can be exploitedby managers to reject work, for example, as not creative enough, without a clear explanation.Approaches may be more or less specific about the methodology. On the one hand, Witmar(1997) gives an exemplary, detailed account of the method in her structuration based approachto Alcoholics Anonymous examining the exercise of discipline and marginalizing of women.Others tend to use a broader brush approach. Parker (2000), for example, is cavalier in hisdismissal of the need for details of method in his study of organizational identity.Mumby and Stohl (1996) use deconstruction to undermine the monolithic managerialvoice most often presented as legitimate in organizations by challenging the tradition of theinvisible author and by offering different readings by others who may not have a voice. In thiscritical approach, rather than a single clear, apparently objective account, we have a series ofpartial and interested groups including managers but also employees lower down the hierarchyand researchers themselves. Such a deconstruction exposes the interests and power structuresthat underlie the right to be heard in organizations.Alvesson (1996) examines different views by analysing a single meeting from three differenttheoretical approaches. He analyses the occasion as a culture constitutive event, as anexpression of power (Foucault inspired) and following classic critical theory, as communicativedistortion (Habermas, 1984). He goes on to examine what each of these interpretationscontributes to our understanding of the meeting and how, as researchers, we cope withmultiple interpretations. As he shows, good theories are extremely powerful: ‘The theoriesinfluence what is perceived, what will be emphasized as the focal situation, and how it willbe interpreted’ (1984: 205). While he argues that few researchers can move successfullybetween theories rooted in different paradigms he demonstrates the ways that theoreticalorientations and ideological background will change the focus of research.ASSUMPTIONS AND PRACTICALITIES OF OUR METHOD ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––Our research examines bullying in organizations (Liefooghe, 2001; Liefooghe and MackenzieDavey, 2001; Mackenzie Davey and Liefooghe, 2003). Our research questions concerned howbullying was defined and described within organizations and what the implications of thesedescriptions were in terms of power relations. Our ideological position was based in criticaldiscursive psychology and so suspicious of any attempt to create a totalizing meta-narrative,but particularly concerned with the power of labelling and the use of individualizing discourseto depoliticize structural difference. We were also concerned that the use of the term bullying