Where Is Time in Longitudinal Qualitative Research?

Abstract

Time plays an integral part in the day-to-day running of organizations, and recently there were several calls for more theorizing based on qualitative longitudinal research. Despite these calls, what constitutes ‘longitudinal’ qualitative research can be interpreted in different ways, e.g. from a process perspective or a variance perspective. As such, while the academic community is under pressure to produce longitudinal research, the plurality of approaches often leaves us at a loss as to what to report and how to report it. Rather than curtailing this plurality by providing guidelines or templates, we focus on how time itself is used by analyzing all qualitative longitudinal papers published in Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, and Journal of Business Ethics between 2016 and 2020. To provide analytical clarity we distinguish between two uses of time, either in the research design and/or the research process. This distinction allows us to reveal a taxonomy of existing practices including three levels of engagement with time, with only a minority of the papers effectively using time for theory-building, and some resorting to what we call longitudinal-washing. To rectify this, we use insights from the best practices in our sample to enhance the theoretical heft and mutual intelligibility of longitudinal research by reporting transparently on the usage of time.