Applying duoethnography to position researcher identity in management research

Lisa C Kinnear,Shaun Ruggunan

doi:10.4102/sajhrm.v17i0.1056

Abstract

Orientation: South African management studies do not have a strong tradition of qualitative, critical and reflexive research. We explore how this may occur through a reflection on researcher identity.Research purpose: To critically reflect on the focussed dialogue and reflection between the authors and to demonstrate how duoethnography can challenge management scholars to become more reflective of their scholarship.Motivation for the study: To show how duoethnography can be applied in management studies scholarship as a methodological approach.Research approach/design and method: A duoethnographic approach is used. This is a collaborative form of autoethnography between two researchers. The researchers themselves become the participants of the study. The dialogue between the researchers is reflective of shared, sometimes conflictual experiences on a focussed topic or research question. We reflect on the ways our dialogues influence Lisa’s reflection of her own identity when conducting qualitative doctoral research with a feminist lens. Her identity is also influenced through some of the narrative texts of the women she interviewed during her fieldwork.Main findings: The account concludes that duoethnography challenges the positivist position that researcher identity is objective from the participants we research. We show that gender, race and epistemic assumptions are not simply quantitative variables.Practical/managerial implications: The practical implication of the study is to encourage management scholars to engage in duoethnographic collaborations as a means to facilitate critical reflection on current and past work.Contribution/value-add: The study provides an original duoethnographic account that is an uncommon reflective practice in a management research context.

Highlights

In this article, the authors seek to show how duoethnography, as a form of reflective conversation and collaboration between researchers about the social phenomena they research, can generate new insights for management scholars
We use our personal narratives about our researcher identity as a lens to reflect on larger themes in management scholarship (Lisa’s [postdoctoral candidate, white female] work on women as leaders and Shaun [Associate Professor, Indian male] work on critical management studies [Critical management studies (CMS)])
We found ourselves in the thick of profound and complex change at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and higher education in South Africa generally

Summary

Introduction

The authors seek to show how duoethnography, as a form of reflective conversation and collaboration between researchers about the social phenomena they research, can generate new insights for management scholars These new meanings can be about researcher identity as well as the empirical work in which they engage. Norris and Sawyer (2012) show how co-reflectivity through dialogical methods such as duoethnography can influence research identity and change their perceptions of the research they engage in This form of inquiry means that researchers (in this case, Lisa and Shaun) become the participants in the study. The duoethnographic approach is a form of self-narrative that is critically reflective and dialogic between the participants It is an approach situated within the larger qualitative category of inquiry-based research that ‘poses questions and challenges dominant discourses’ during its exploration of the lived experiences of its participants What would such an engagement mean for scholarly identity? Our dialogic experience is a reflection on how mainstream management studies could intersect with critical theory

Participants and the study site

Dialogues and discussion