Accessing fieldwork

Abstract

This chapter uses narrative semi-fiction to guide scholars using qualitative research methods to negotiate access to organizations to collect data for organizational research. We use narrative semi-fiction to reflect on how researchers in training move from access challenges to research insights. Researchers negotiating access to fieldwork must reflexively account for themselves, their commitments, the events studied, as well as research interlocutors. The latter can include multiple embodied natures (e.g., overworked and poorly trained attendants, professional colleagues, companion species, endangered turtles) as well as socio-material realities (e.g., protocols, organizational strategies, inscriptions, meaningful spaces) with which their investigations become entangled. Linking to narrative semi-fiction to elaborate fieldwork stories illustrates how different access problems can lead to research insights and socio-material data. Statements of purpose: Using narrative semi-fiction as a guide for scholars seeking to negotiate access to collect qualitative data for research. Methodology: We link up with narrative semi-fiction to reflect on how researchers in training move from access challenges to research insights. Findings: To negotiate access to research sites, researchers must reflexively account for themselves, their commitments, the events studied as well as the heterogeneous research interlocutors, including multiple embodied natures (e.g., overworked and poorly trained attendants, professional colleagues, companion species, endangered turtles) and socio-material realities (e.g., protocols, organizational strategies, inscriptions, meaningful spaces) entangled with their investigations. Originality and value: We link up with narrative semi-fiction to illustrate access stumbles as data that can lead to research insights and socio-material data.