The paper invites us to reconsider the processes at work in the conduct of qualitative interviews, especially in the context of management studies; it emphasises, in particular, the paradoxes that arise from the inescapable interdependency between interviewer and interviewee.
The author reflects upon his own experiences of conducting interviews with managers whilst studying for a PhD, and suggests alternative ways of thinking about what goes on during such exchanges.
Interview techniques are not necessarily the neutral tools they might seem to be.
The deconstructive insights about interview processes provide a way of thinking about qualitative interview research that might be more consistent with the insights of certain “critical” management studies.
