"Writing Up Qualitative Inductive Inquiry: Principal Malaises, and Some Remedies"

Abstract

The merits of qualitative, inductive research in contributing to the understanding of management and organizational realities are increasingly vaunted, but such studies are still essentially reviewed by dominant positivist standards. This perturbs the manner in which qualitative scholars write up their theory-building process and, by that, the quality of their research. We present a reflection based on a broad review of ontological and epistemological issues in terms of writing up (and reviewing) qualitative research. We then share an empirical analysis of researchers’ writing tactics from a theoretical sample of 18 inductive studies, published in leading academic management journals. On these theoretical and empirical grounds, we distill malaises encountered in writing up qualitative research. We synthesize these according to ontological and epistemological differences in inductive and deductive inquiry. Based on this, we propose a set of novel writing heuristics that may help scholars in their research and publishing endeavors of qualitative studies.