As someone trained exclusively as a quantitative researcher, who recently became a semi-autodidactic qualitative researcher (see Rothausen, Henderson, Arnold, & Malshe, in press; “semi” in part because I am still learning and in part because my coauthors have taught me), I would like to extend the argument made by Pratt and Bonaccio (2016) for increasing qualitative research in the domains of industrial–organizational psychology (IOP), organizational behavior (OB), and human resources (HR), and I would also add industrial relations (IR), which was my doctoral field of study and “where workers went” within business and management studies as HR became more aligned with organizational interests (see Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz2016, from this journal). I extend their argument by deepening one of their reasons, understanding the “why” of work, and adding another potential use, understanding the “what could be” of work.
Growing dissatisfaction with the limits of quantitative methods and frustration with what appears to be increasing fascination with quantitative esoterica in the literatures led me to learning qualitative methods as part of a larger quest for methods to better understand employees, managers, and leaders in organizations as whole people. As the authors of the focal article point out, quantitative methods explore “Big B”—behavior as if it were context free and, I would add, as if it were primarily transactional—an exchange of work for rewards. Yet from my personal and field experience, I learned that often the meaning of work is much more nuanced and that motivation in organizations is embedded in social networks in and outside organizations, along the lines of the following: Given the constraints set up for me by my organization, and given what work means to me in my larger life, this is my behavior.
I would add also that quantitative methods reduce people to parts, such as scores on IQ or personality tests, and variables, such as the number of children they have, and thus miss patterns of the whole as well as context (see Weiss & Rupp, Reference Weiss and Rupp2011, from this journal). This tends to frame motivation as independent and individual. Qualitative methods allow a more comprehensive understanding of motivation for behavior related to work by allowing informants to tell their whole stories unencumbered by what researchers expect to find or what is in the literature (Creswell, Reference Creswell2007). This tends to make visible the constraints on behavior set by the social milieu in which workers are embedded, including those set by organizations. Individuals are never wholly independent but are interdependent with others and the larger world (Rothausen, Reference Rothausen, Allen and Eby2016).
An example is the phenomenon of women leaving the workforce during prime productive and creative years. This was framed by some researchers and journalists as a choice and was given catchy titles such as “opting out” and “off-ramping” that also imply agency over coercion (Gregory & Miller, Reference Gregory and Miller2009). But this “choice” was clearly constrained for many to organizationally determined options of working 50–60 hours per week or none at all. When the occasional employee is “allowed” to work “part-time” (often up to 40 hours per week), this is framed as being “granted” by “generous” organizations. One worker in our study went through multiple rounds of negotiating with her employer for dignified part-time work only to have it be granted then pushed back toward 50–60 hours each time before she “chose” to give up paid employment (Rothausen et al., in press). Qualitative research has made visible that a central cause of this phenomenon was—and is—in fact a lack of choice over hours worked, together with pay rates for part-time work, and that this disproportionately impacts mothers (Williams, Reference Williams2000).
With this and countless other phenomenon, even where the literature is “mature,” as was the turnover literature into which my colleagues and I waded with our qualitative research study, workers’ motivations are embedded not only in specific organizational constraints and relationships but also in their larger lives and social identities. Thus, deeper motivations at work engage identities as workers, spouses, parents, and community members as well as underlying global identities (Ladge, Clair, & Greenberg, Reference Ladge, Clair and Greenberg2012; Rothausen et al., in press) and meanings of work in larger lives (Budd, Reference Budd2011). Qualitative methods are well suited to better understanding these elements, which are often overlooked in quantitative work. Qualitative research thus helps us expand our theories while also surfacing the compelling stories that can have more impact, as the authors of the focal article point out.
In addition, qualitative methods are a good bridge to research on aspirational visions of what work could or should be. Many disciplines with which we could be in dialogue have different and valuable perspectives on work and organizations (Budd, Reference Budd2011). Interdisciplinary work would allow us to generate important research questions and guide our research choices more intentionally, perhaps away from “Big B” research toward new, progressive forms of working, leading, and organizing that are so badly needed now.
Academics and other writers inside and outside IOP/OB/HR/IR call for a change in how business functions and focuses, away from economics-primary, transactional values and objectives and toward prosocial, balanced values and objectives that encompass sustainability as well as dignity, meaning, and purpose in work and leadership (e.g., Avolio, Reference Avolio, Nohria and Khurana2010; Goodpaster, Reference Goodpaster2011; Khurana, Reference Khurana2007; Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz2016; Metcalf & Benn, Reference Metcalf and Benn2012). Several causal factors for the urgency of this need are invoked, including increasing global connection, interdependent local and global financial crises, growth in marginalized secondary labor markets, and profound environmental crisis. I argue that an interdisciplinary approach, combining evidence from social sciences research about “what is” in organizations with evidence from other fields such as arts and humanities disciplines about “what should be,” is more likely to bear fruit for these purposes.
For example, a criticism of our field is making invisible, but taking as foundational, a preference for “economic and business values of an idealized free-market capitalism” over “a humanistic, moral vision” (Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz2016, pp. 141–142). An alternative model comes from business ethics, which has philosophy, theology, and other disciplinary foundations. Stakeholder theory explicates employees, consumers and customers, suppliers, and communities, along with shareholders and owners, as having a stake in employment policies and practices, with some interests being mutual and others divergent, although perhaps only divergent in the short term (Goodpaster, Reference Goodpaster2011). Taking this perspective seriously, alone, could open up countless research questions for IOP in new areas that could then be refined through the theory-building capabilities inherent in qualitative research.
This dialogue could occur with numerous disciplines. Examples of dialogue with philosophy and theology through business ethics include work involving the first author of the focal article (Michaelson, Pratt, Grant, & Dunn, Reference Michaelson, Pratt, Grant and Dunn2014) and myself (Rothausen, in press). The arts also offer rich opportunities for exploring other perspectives on work in organizations (e.g., Adler, Reference Adler2015; Lindsey, Reference Lindsey2011; Taylor & Ladkin, Reference Taylor and Ladkin2009). If we as a field are not in dialogue with these related fields, we risk increasing irrelevance to the big questions of our era. This interdisciplinary work often needs further empirical exploration (mine does) yet is not conducive to the reduction to variables that is necessary for quantitative methods.
In addition to reasons outlined by the authors of the focal article, then, qualitative methods are especially well suited for inquiries into the deep, complex, and socially embedded human motivations related to work and for inquiries into deep exploration of what could or should be in the world of work, in part through inter- and cross-disciplinary inquiry. Along with others, I argue that it is just such inquiries that are most needed now in IOP and related fields.
As someone trained exclusively as a quantitative researcher, who recently became a semi-autodidactic qualitative researcher (see Rothausen, Henderson, Arnold, & Malshe, in press; “semi” in part because I am still learning and in part because my coauthors have taught me), I would like to extend the argument made by Pratt and Bonaccio (2016) for increasing qualitative research in the domains of industrial–organizational psychology (IOP), organizational behavior (OB), and human resources (HR), and I would also add industrial relations (IR), which was my doctoral field of study and “where workers went” within business and management studies as HR became more aligned with organizational interests (see Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz2016, from this journal). I extend their argument by deepening one of their reasons, understanding the “why” of work, and adding another potential use, understanding the “what could be” of work.
Growing dissatisfaction with the limits of quantitative methods and frustration with what appears to be increasing fascination with quantitative esoterica in the literatures led me to learning qualitative methods as part of a larger quest for methods to better understand employees, managers, and leaders in organizations as whole people. As the authors of the focal article point out, quantitative methods explore “Big B”—behavior as if it were context free and, I would add, as if it were primarily transactional—an exchange of work for rewards. Yet from my personal and field experience, I learned that often the meaning of work is much more nuanced and that motivation in organizations is embedded in social networks in and outside organizations, along the lines of the following: Given the constraints set up for me by my organization, and given what work means to me in my larger life, this is my behavior.
I would add also that quantitative methods reduce people to parts, such as scores on IQ or personality tests, and variables, such as the number of children they have, and thus miss patterns of the whole as well as context (see Weiss & Rupp, Reference Weiss and Rupp2011, from this journal). This tends to frame motivation as independent and individual. Qualitative methods allow a more comprehensive understanding of motivation for behavior related to work by allowing informants to tell their whole stories unencumbered by what researchers expect to find or what is in the literature (Creswell, Reference Creswell2007). This tends to make visible the constraints on behavior set by the social milieu in which workers are embedded, including those set by organizations. Individuals are never wholly independent but are interdependent with others and the larger world (Rothausen, Reference Rothausen, Allen and Eby2016).
An example is the phenomenon of women leaving the workforce during prime productive and creative years. This was framed by some researchers and journalists as a choice and was given catchy titles such as “opting out” and “off-ramping” that also imply agency over coercion (Gregory & Miller, Reference Gregory and Miller2009). But this “choice” was clearly constrained for many to organizationally determined options of working 50–60 hours per week or none at all. When the occasional employee is “allowed” to work “part-time” (often up to 40 hours per week), this is framed as being “granted” by “generous” organizations. One worker in our study went through multiple rounds of negotiating with her employer for dignified part-time work only to have it be granted then pushed back toward 50–60 hours each time before she “chose” to give up paid employment (Rothausen et al., in press). Qualitative research has made visible that a central cause of this phenomenon was—and is—in fact a lack of choice over hours worked, together with pay rates for part-time work, and that this disproportionately impacts mothers (Williams, Reference Williams2000).
With this and countless other phenomenon, even where the literature is “mature,” as was the turnover literature into which my colleagues and I waded with our qualitative research study, workers’ motivations are embedded not only in specific organizational constraints and relationships but also in their larger lives and social identities. Thus, deeper motivations at work engage identities as workers, spouses, parents, and community members as well as underlying global identities (Ladge, Clair, & Greenberg, Reference Ladge, Clair and Greenberg2012; Rothausen et al., in press) and meanings of work in larger lives (Budd, Reference Budd2011). Qualitative methods are well suited to better understanding these elements, which are often overlooked in quantitative work. Qualitative research thus helps us expand our theories while also surfacing the compelling stories that can have more impact, as the authors of the focal article point out.
In addition, qualitative methods are a good bridge to research on aspirational visions of what work could or should be. Many disciplines with which we could be in dialogue have different and valuable perspectives on work and organizations (Budd, Reference Budd2011). Interdisciplinary work would allow us to generate important research questions and guide our research choices more intentionally, perhaps away from “Big B” research toward new, progressive forms of working, leading, and organizing that are so badly needed now.
Academics and other writers inside and outside IOP/OB/HR/IR call for a change in how business functions and focuses, away from economics-primary, transactional values and objectives and toward prosocial, balanced values and objectives that encompass sustainability as well as dignity, meaning, and purpose in work and leadership (e.g., Avolio, Reference Avolio, Nohria and Khurana2010; Goodpaster, Reference Goodpaster2011; Khurana, Reference Khurana2007; Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz2016; Metcalf & Benn, Reference Metcalf and Benn2012). Several causal factors for the urgency of this need are invoked, including increasing global connection, interdependent local and global financial crises, growth in marginalized secondary labor markets, and profound environmental crisis. I argue that an interdisciplinary approach, combining evidence from social sciences research about “what is” in organizations with evidence from other fields such as arts and humanities disciplines about “what should be,” is more likely to bear fruit for these purposes.
For example, a criticism of our field is making invisible, but taking as foundational, a preference for “economic and business values of an idealized free-market capitalism” over “a humanistic, moral vision” (Lefkowitz, Reference Lefkowitz2016, pp. 141–142). An alternative model comes from business ethics, which has philosophy, theology, and other disciplinary foundations. Stakeholder theory explicates employees, consumers and customers, suppliers, and communities, along with shareholders and owners, as having a stake in employment policies and practices, with some interests being mutual and others divergent, although perhaps only divergent in the short term (Goodpaster, Reference Goodpaster2011). Taking this perspective seriously, alone, could open up countless research questions for IOP in new areas that could then be refined through the theory-building capabilities inherent in qualitative research.
This dialogue could occur with numerous disciplines. Examples of dialogue with philosophy and theology through business ethics include work involving the first author of the focal article (Michaelson, Pratt, Grant, & Dunn, Reference Michaelson, Pratt, Grant and Dunn2014) and myself (Rothausen, in press). The arts also offer rich opportunities for exploring other perspectives on work in organizations (e.g., Adler, Reference Adler2015; Lindsey, Reference Lindsey2011; Taylor & Ladkin, Reference Taylor and Ladkin2009). If we as a field are not in dialogue with these related fields, we risk increasing irrelevance to the big questions of our era. This interdisciplinary work often needs further empirical exploration (mine does) yet is not conducive to the reduction to variables that is necessary for quantitative methods.
In addition to reasons outlined by the authors of the focal article, then, qualitative methods are especially well suited for inquiries into the deep, complex, and socially embedded human motivations related to work and for inquiries into deep exploration of what could or should be in the world of work, in part through inter- and cross-disciplinary inquiry. Along with others, I argue that it is just such inquiries that are most needed now in IOP and related fields.