Empowering Methodologies in Organisational and Social Research

“This is a welcome and much-needed volume in Organization Studies, where the drive towards conformity seems relentless. Three major issues stand out: the focus on the importance of situated and plural forms of knowing in a global context; the need for empowering research by challenging mainstream epistemological commitments and values; and the need for researchers to recognise that we and those we research are human, with feelings and senses.

In a beautiful range of chapters that take us out of conventional organisational settings, the authors explore indigenous and participatory forms of knowing and researching that foreground the lived experience of participants. The chapters address important social problems from a range of methodological perspectives. For example, Devi Vijay studies the experience of palliative care through Butler’s notion of vulnerability, Premilla D’Cruz, Ernesto Noronha, Saikat Chakraborty and Muneeb Ul Lateef Banday give voice to children employed as child labour through visual methods, and Srinath Jagannathan and Premalatha Packirisamy use autoethnography to reflect on their experience of becoming parents while being academics. Each chapter offers a rich narrative that stimulates you to reconsider conventional methodological values and practices.”

– Ann Cunliffe, Fundacao Getulio Vargas-EAESP, Brazil

“From the title onwards you know that this is going to be an important read. This is a book that not only informs the reader of the ‘how to’ aspects of research methods but their emancipatory potential.”

– Albert J. Mills, University of Eastern Finland

“Turning current efforts to repoliticize critical management and organisation research into an opportunity for reinvigorating the field, this brilliantly clever and thought-provoking volume is exactly what our community needs. Bell and Sengupta adeptly guide the reader through a beautiful collection of chapters, which in each their unique way speak to the kinds of researchers we want to be(come) and who we are writing for. Through honest, reflexive, and responsible accounts the volume centers voices of people who are all too often othered, oppressed or exploited, bringing to the fore their lived concerns, fears or aspirations while also problematising the very concepts of ’center’ and ‘voice’, so as not to naturalise or romanticise the speaking subject. The contributing authors not only write about the sensory, affective, embodied practice of empowering research, it is felt through the text. Individually, and in combination, these contributions offer poignant invitations to critical scholars to become more response-able, to paraphrase Emmanuel Levinas, in seeking to diversify research practices and decolonise social scientific knowledge production.”

– Sarah Louise Muhr, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark