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

302 –––––––––– QUALITATIVE METHODS IN ORGANIZATION STUDIES ––––––––––––––––––is for interviews and observation, which I refer to as organizational ethnography (for example,Ott, 1989; Van Maanen, 1988, see Brewer, Chapter 25 this volume), as opposed to thehistorical analysis of documents. Organizational researchers obviously prefer what they knowand do best. However, for organizational researchers considering a historical perspective Iwould like to address what I see as a series of misconceptions in organization studiesconcerning archival research. These misconceptions can be summarized as follows (distilledfrom Strati, 2000: 158–9; see also Martin, 2002: 348, 352): (1) history consists of a repositoryof facts that can be used to confirm or refute organizational theories; (2) historical analysis ofcompany documentation does not interfere in the dynamics of an organization; (3) companydocuments have already been collected and organized by companies before a researcher cananalyse them; (4) archival research is not a proper method of empirical organizational researchbecause instead of being directly generated in the course of organizational research, historicaldata is merely collected; (5) the validity and reliability of company documentation must bequestioned more than other sources, since it has been collected and processed for the purposeof legitimating a company; (6) history is synonymous with the organizational memory sharedby members of an organization.History as a repository of factsOrganizational researchers tend to regard history as a repository of facts, or else they castigatehistorians for holding such a naïve view of history. However, philosophers of history have longrecognized the ambiguity of history. As Hegel wrote:the term History unites the objective with the subjective side . . . it comprehends not lesswhat has happened, than the narration of what has happened. (quoted in White, 1987:11–12)As a result of this inherent ambiguity, history has always had to tackle epistemological questionssuch as: ‘How can we know about the past? What does it mean to explain historical events?Is objective knowledge possible? (Fay, 1998: 2). However, historians often evade suchquestions by practising asleight of hand . . . hiding the fact that all history is the study, not of past events that aregone forever from perception, but rather of the ‘traces’ of those events distilled intodocuments and monuments on one side, and the praxis of present social formationson the other. These ‘traces’ are the raw materials of the historian’s discourse, rather thanthe events themselves. (White, 1987: 102)Historians seek to ‘reconstruct the past’ mainly by studying its documentary ‘traces’(Callinicos, 1995: 65), whereas for organizational ethnographers, ‘The history that countsis . . . embedded in the daily practices and symbolic life of the group studied’ (Van Maanen,1988: 72). What passes for history in organization studies usually consists of interpretationsof studies that have already been carried out by historians rather than original historicalresearch. This reinforces an impression that historical ‘facts’ come ready-made, and detractsfrom appreciating ‘the historian’s almost alchemical gift of transmuting old records in archivesinto the struggles and passions of the once-living human beings of whom these documentsare the traces’ (Callinicos, 1989: viii).