Researching “Back Home”

Abstract

The challenges facing international management researchers conducting research in foreign contexts are increasingly well understood. However, for a growing group of researchers, the problem is very different: Rather than being foreign researchers researching in an unfamiliar context, they are insiders conducting research in their own cultural context for publication in international journals. In this article, the authors draw on their own experiences and on the literature on autoethnography to illustrate the strengths and challenges of researching “back home.” In particular, they argue that autoethnographic approaches have four important strengths— ease of access, reduced resource requirements, ease of establishing trust and rapport, and reduced problems with translation—but at the same time pose three important challenges— lack of critical distance, role conflict, and the limits of serendipity.