If I Had a Magic Wand: Reflections on Developing a Systematic Approach to Qualitative Research^☆

In the main, I will focus this chapter on my continuing attempts to develop a systematic, qualitative methodology to investigate the kinds of research questions that are of most interest to organizational scholars – especially those studying strategy and its manifestations in practice. To understand the methodology I have been developing, which has been adopted and/or adapted by many organizational scholars, and is now collectively referred to as the “Gioia methodology,”¹ we need to go back to the assumptions, the hows, the whys, the barriers encountered, etc. That requires a bit of knowledge about the baggage I brought to the academic party, because that baggage is germane to understanding how I see the world of organizing, organization, and organizations. Mine is a tale littered with war stories – stories I otherwise might not tell unless I thought they could be relevant to your own research. But I simply can’t help myself. I’m a storyteller, so I’ll tell you a few stories with an amiable goodwill and hope you can connect those stories to your own experience.