Learning to listen: an organizational researcher's reflections on ‘doing oral history’

Abstract

In this paper, I reflect on my initial experience of gathering empirical data using the oral history method: a fieldwork trip during which, together with my oral historian co-author, I collected 10 life histories of individuals living in southeast Poland. The reflexive analysis was inspired by Kim's and other authors' calls for critically scrutinizing the challenges, limitations and ethical issues surrounding oral history research. Through a discussion of themes emerging from the research diary I conducted during the fieldwork trip, I interrogate some of my own assumptions and values that influenced me throughout the process of data collection, as well as the impacts they had on my approach to the research and on the research participants. In the concluding remarks, I highlight those elements of my experience of using oral history that might be useful to other organizational scholars wishing to apply qualitative methods in studying management and organizational history.