Using a ‘lens’ to re-search business markets, relationships and networks: Tensions, challenges and possibilities

Ilkka Ojansivu,Christopher John Medlin,Poul Houman Andersen,Woonho Kim

doi:10.1016/j.indmarman.2021.10.008

Ilkka Ojansivu, Christopher John Medlin + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2021.10.008

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Abstract

In this research, we wish to address the tension tucked away in scholarly work: the simultaneous need to break in and break out of academic communities and their ways of thinking. More precisely, we are interested in social re-search (i.e., searching again) processes and how scholars authenticate their research within an established cultural convention. For that purpose, we focus on the use of the term ‘lens’, which is omnipresent in research texts but rarely defined. Upon completing an integrative literature review and considering the embeddedness of a lens in culture, language, research communities and our ontological assumptions, we define a ‘research lens’ as a sociocultural representation and tool that helps to negotiate our scientific interpretation of the world. Our contribution to industrial marketing stems from surfacing and discussing four uses of a lens evident in the industrial marketing literature, introducing a metaphorical lens as a way to reform knowledge, and finally exemplifying how our lens tends to either mirror, reflect, symbolize or mirage the contours of our world without our full awareness of it.

Highlights

As researchers, we walk a thin line between complying with socially accepted norms of research, ‘epistemes’ as Foucault (1980) refers to them, and our own thinking
We focused our search on articles published in the leading business-tobusiness marketing journals: Industrial Marketing Management jour nal (IMM), the Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing (JBIM), the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing (JBBM) and the IMP Journal (IMP)
We focused our search on the IMM journal as the premier outlet for industrial marketing and business-to-business research

Summary

Introduction

We walk a thin line between complying with socially accepted norms of research, ‘epistemes’ as Foucault (1980) refers to them, and our own thinking. We consider a lens in its broadest sense as a researcher’s tool for viewing, framing, and authenticating a research problem This working definition allows us to bypass the issues of incommensurability (Czarniawska, 1998) and to seek new research ideas. We are interested in the social re-search processes of academic communities and how scholars authenticate their research within an established cultural convention. We are critical to this type of ‘Cartesian’ ideal (Adam, 1995) that (over) structures our way of thinking into either/or categories and segregated academic debates (Gergen, 2015) In a sense, these frameworks defy the richness of the marketing theory landscape and curtail the lived expe riences of co-creating researchers who jointly seek to reconstruct mar keting theory. As Alexander (2011, p. 3) explicates, “It is up to the actors to play the scene, to convince those watching that they truly are the characters they say they are, that the pretend life on stage is truthful, that, being a simulation, it is the real thing all right.” Whether the research community interprets the re searchers’ view or framing of the research problem as intended largely depends on the researcher’s ability to define his or her lens

Literature search strategy

Instrumental use

Meta-theoretical use

Using metaphors as a lens to reform knowledge

Conclusions

Implications for research practice