Introduction: The Context of Qualitative Organizational Research

Abstract

This is the fourth collection we have put together on qualitative methods in organizational research. There have been some changes since our first book in 1994. Certainly, qualitative methods are now far more widespread within organizational research than they were at that time. Additionally it would seem that there is now less of a need to document the wide variety of methods available to the qualitative researcher as this has been done by ourselves and others elsewhere during recent years (Cassell and Symon, 1994; Symon and Cassell, 1998; Cassell and Symon, 2004; Thorpe and Holt, 2008; Eriksson and Kovalainen, 2008). In the introduction to our last book, Essential Guide to Qualitative Methods in Organizational Research, published in 2004, we suggested that this was ‘our last venture into this particular genre’ (Symon and Cassell, 2004: 1), so why another text now? Three things have influenced the development of this collection. Firstly, together with our colleagues Phil Johnson, Vicky Bishop and Anna Buehring, an ESRC project entitled Benchmarking Good Practice in Qualitative Management Research (grant number H333250006) enabled us to discuss with a range of different stakeholder groups the 1