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

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– CO-RESEARCH –––––––––– 369organizations). In case study research, contextual influences on organizational processes cannotalways be fully specified in advance. Practitioners working alongside academics means thatcontextual influences can be identified during the fieldwork.Third, the ‘surprise and sense-making’ (Louis, 1980) which occurs as newcomers enterunfamiliar organizational settings can be harnessed for clues, information and meanings notonly about the organization currently being researched, but also about the organization thatthe co-interviewer comes from (where it is also a case study site in the research). As theacademics and the co-interviewers work together to analyse and reflect on the data they havegathered, some of the similarities and differences between two organizations that the hostofficer and the co-interviewer come from can be shared, sorted and used to build thecase study.Fourth, the surprise and sense-making, which continues from fieldwork into the analysisand writing up, is also helpful in teasing out the degree to which the findings are generalizableto other processes and settings and in identifying particular contextual or organizationalcontingencies. The co-researchers use their organizational experience to raise questions aboutanalytical generalizability (Yin, 1994), though they might not use this term.Like all methodologies, co-research is relevant to some research questions and contexts butnot others. In particular, it is a methodology suited to addressing process rather than variancetheories of organizations (Langley, 1999; Weick, 1999), because practitioners’ insights comefrom their experiences in working within organizations rather than from their experience ofvariance-based (largely quantitative) methodologies.This can be effective in research which requires case studies, because they are most suitedto the examination of processes in organizational context (Hartley, Chapter 26, this volume;Yin, 1994). Other types of data collection (such as questionnaire analysis) are more suitable foracademics trained in detail in these techniques. Co-researchers, in any case, are less concernedwith learning about ‘pure’ academic methodologies than in using their participation in researchto extend their conceptual and practical understanding of organizations.Co-research also requires commitment from the academics to managing a research teamwhich is not entirely under their control and where they need to exercise research leadershipthrough influence not hierarchy. The other members of the research team are seniororganizational members in their own right, with sources of expertise and experience whichare different from those of the academics. Co-research seems to work best where there is aclose, productive and constructive dialogue between the academics and the practitioners, builton a foundation of common interest in wanting to find out more about the subject understudy. In co-research, academics cannot be the experts directing research ‘assistants’. Theacademics have a solid basis of expertise in academic theories and frameworks, and in researchdesign and methods, but this has to be harnessed to the curiosity, practical wisdom andmanagerial and organizational experience and insights of the co-researchers. On the otherhand, it takes confidence to direct a research team with members who may have their owninterests, to manage tensions dialectically not oppositionally, and to steer a course which isboth academically rigorous and engages with the research team in a collaborative way (see alsoRobson, 2002, on participatory research). While it may be argued that the overall power andinfluence lies with the academics, who are on the home ground of university research, wesuggest that the power relations are more explicit than in traditional, Mode 1, research. Inaddition, power has to be exercised for collaboration as well as research direction (in a processof leadership and the management of influence).