Re imagining the Research Process

Speaker: Professor Mats Alvesson (Lund University)
This talk offers a unique solution to the shortage of more imaginative and engaging research by re-imagining the core elements of the research process, through contrasting conventional and alternative metaphors. In contrast to existing methods, which mainly focus on standard ingredients in the research process, from researcher identity to design to data and writing, etc. the metaphorical approach taken in the presentation offers a more varied and comprehensive platform for producing novel, influential and relevant research. Research design may for example be seen as a blueprint or a journey. Data can be understood as building blocks, thought triggers or material for storytelling. The set of guiding principles suggested in the presentation provides researchers with the resources to break away from existing conventions and templates for conducting and writing research and become more imaginative and creative.
Recommended readings:
• Alvesson, M. & Sandberg, J. (2021) Re-imagining the Research Process: Conventional and Alternative Metaphors. SAGE

[@jamespepitone5887]

Many valuable insights throughout, of course from Matt but also from those posing questions to him.
Let's be reminded that the feigned exactness of physical science methods applied to top-of-the-iceberg observable human behavior has stalled the evolution of management principles, methods, and systems for 60 years, while leading to immeasurable waste in time, money, and human potential. Indeed, it is clearest now that the over-the-top self-promotion of these methods to desperate executives, managers, and HR professionals -- a practice taught by these applied disciplines and expected of its practitioners -- have done nothing to advance management practice from its Industrial Era roots, and in many ways have contributed to gross misperceptions of today's organization members, their intentions and capabilities, and what constitutes acceptable workplace treatment of other human beings, leaving society far worse off, not better, for the experience.
Just as troubling, there are now tens of thousands of masters- and doctoral-level practitioners who have been taught these methods as the one-right-way, without critique and to the exclusion of alternatives, who will be challenged to unlearn these harmful methods and now learn humanistic and regenerative alternatives that can fulfill their original intention of making a positive contribution to society. Indeed, this journey for so many is a new challenge for executives and their organizations that social scientists are especially able to inform.

[@ravindrarm]

Good