A Call to Practice Context in Management and Organization Studies

Abstract

We put forth a call to management and organization studies (MOS) researchers to practice context in their research. Context is not, as it is so commonly treated, a stable object to be invoked as a background for our work. Contexts are inherently plural and fluid, and they shift depending on our phenomenon of interest and philosophical framing. We need to engage with context respective to our paradigm of choice, embed context into our research, explain how and why the relevant context was formulated, and acknowledge that the relevant context we have formulated influences both the questions we ask and the answers we find. In this article, we review the use of context in MOS, discuss the current understandings of context across paradigms and offer reasons for why MOS does not practice context, and draw on work done in other social science disciplines to help us practice context.

Keywords

qualitative research philosophy of science organization theory

To be involved in a practice is to be immersed in a context.

—(Sandberg & Tsoukas, 2011, p. 341).

Management and organization studies (MOS) researchers are increasingly being urged to contextualize research to develop stronger and more useful theory, publish work that is more interesting and relevant to practitioners, and grasp the complexity of living and working in the world. As Bamberger (2008) puts it, “context counts” (p. 839). Despite the recognized value of contextualizing research, few systematic and explicit efforts have been made to engage with the notion of context in MOS. Overall, a lack of engagement with context across research paradigms has led context to become an “amorphous concept capturing theory-relevant surrounding phenomena or temporal conditions” (Bamberger, 2008, p. 839). MOS scholars use the notion of context as an unexplained catchall to understand a phenomenon in its broader environment. To make context an integral part of our research, we need to take a step back from our assumptions of its meaning and clarify the concept. How can we engage with and practice context so that it supports capturing complexity and developing strong MOS theory that is relevant and rigorous?

In this article, we call on researchers to practice context, and we purposefully use the word “practice” rather than theorize. Context is “that which environs the object of our interest and helps by its relevance to explain it” (Scharfstein, 1989, p. 1). Attempting to grasp a theoretical understanding of context can lead us to ascribe fixity and concreteness to social processes or, worse, lead us toward total relativity, where context has no bounds and everything becomes completely unique. As Scharfstein (1989) warns, this can be discouraging for researchers who may feel that “the problem of context is too difficult for philosophers or anyone else to solve” (p. 4). Yet, this cannot be not an excuse for continuing with noncontextualized research or invoking context as a reified object. As “our intellectual constructions never prove adequate to all that we experience” (Scharfstein, 1989, p. xiii), situating our research in the unstable middle ground between noncontextual and total relativity (unbounded context) and accepting that sometimes it’s going to be messy brings us closer to life. Our encouragement to practice context involves integrating consideration of context into the research process. Practicing context requires acknowledging that context is not a preexisting fixed container in which to place our phenomenon of study. Rather, it is a set of relevant connections that we construct as part of the research process to help achieve a research goal. When we speak of practicing context, rather than theorizing it, we capture the full involvement of context in our research—both the process of constructing and generating context and the context that results.

Organizations are complex. We need to accept the challenge to acknowledge the complexity in our field and embrace it in our research. If we fail to do so, our ability to develop strong management theory is hampered (Suddaby, Hardy, & Huy, 2011). If we can begin to work with context as an integral component of our research, as messy as it is, we can use it to question dominant assumptions, explore organizations from new perspectives (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2012; Delbridge & Fiss, 2013), and begin to fix our irrelevance to, and separation from, management practice (Adler & Harzing, 2009; Alvesson & Sandberg, 2012; Bartunek & Rynes, 2010; Ghoshal, 2005; Pfeffer, 2007; Rynes, 2007; Van de Van, 2007). We encourage MOS researchers to engage with context not as a universal theory but in a way that is consistent with the paradigm in, and the data with, which they work and the problems that they are trying to solve. Our article proceeds in four sections. First, we offer a review of extant research on context in MOS. Second, we discuss the current understandings of context across positivist and postpositivist paradigms and offer reasons why current engagements with context are insufficient. Third, we draw on work done in other social science disciplines to help us practice context. In the fourth section, we offer conclusions and avenues for future reflection.

Context in MOS

All researchers use context, whether we explicitly acknowledge it or not. We constantly interpret our phenomena of study, both before and after we conduct research, and it is context that gives form to our interpretation (Dilley, 1999). Everything we study is connected to its surroundings, and context can be seen as the set of connections that is relevant to a particular problem or person. Contextualizing, then, gives us an explanation or interpretation of what we are studying and the set of connections we identify as relevant (Dilley, 1999). As researchers we are also connected to our surroundings, and the questions we ask and the answers we find are influenced by those surroundings (Mannheim, 1960). Context generates the work we do and also emerges from it (Dilley, 1999). This means that along with contextualizing our phenomenon of study, we also need to contextualize ourselves to be aware of the influences on the knowledge we are producing.

To understand how organizations work, we need to be more aware of “the different ways in which we are woven into the world and into one another” (Scharfstein, 1989, p. 4). When we approach our research from a perspective of scientific rationality and purposely isolate it, as is traditional in MOS, we “disconnect knowledge from its social context,” which leads to three problems:

(1) it underestimates the meaningful totality into which practitioners are immersed, (2) it ignores the situational uniqueness that is characteristic of the tasks practitioners do, and (3) it abstracts away from time as experienced by practitioners. By doing so theories developed within the framework of scientific rationality fail to do justice to the logic underlying practice. (Sandberg & Tsoukas, 2011, p. 341)

Acontextual research is one of the reasons for our field’s irrelevance (Johns, 2006) as managers look for support for their own unique and dynamic situations (Brief & Dukerich, 1991) but MOS scholars search for universal theory. Context helps us understand organizations in the way that people actually experience them.

Corley and Gioia (2011) believe that a shortcoming in the MOS field is that we do not attempt to anticipate the problems organizations will face in the future. Instead, we focus on problems being experienced now, with any resulting practical advice arising far too late. Including context in our work opens the door to prescience. A contextualized understanding of organizations helps us to comprehend why specific behaviors, structures, reactions, or results happen at a specific point in time. Understanding a current context helps us better anticipate the future.

As we encourage researchers to both practice context and to be clear about how they are practicing it, we also acknowledge that context is a commonly used word and will continue to be used in our work based on its commonsense meaning. Our concern is with the use of context as an integral component of a research study without a clear understanding of what context means for the specific study.

Relevant Context

One of the key tasks of a researcher is to choose the relevant context for a particular study. The context deemed relevant has significant implications for the findings, and we, as researchers, are strongly influenced by our own context when selecting the context of the study. In our reading of MOS papers that draw on context, a myriad of levels of analysis are selected as relevant contexts—such as national, local, regional, organizational, etc.—but that they represent different levels of analysis, why that particular level was selected as relevant, and the impact that the level of analysis has on the research is rarely explained. Studying a phenomenon as part of its organizational context will lead to a different analysis than studying it as part of its national context. Consider the various levels at which work–life balance (WLB) can be studied, and the difference the chosen level of analysis might make to the research. An example is Whittle (2008), who considers WLB at the legislative level in the United Kingdom and within the profession of management consulting. Within the United Kingdom, WLB is understood in the context of new legislation that focuses on the right to flexibility in work hours for working parents. For the management consultants under study, WLB is seen as a potential hook for attracting new customers and an opportunity to capitalize on new opportunities presented by the legislation. Studying WLB in those two distinct contexts results in completely different understandings of the phenomenon, which needs to be acknowledged and explained.

Context is also regularly modified or categorized with explanatory descriptors. Authors refer to a variety of different contexts, including social, temporal, historic/historical, organizational, professional, political, economic, market, institutional, local, global, and geographic (Down & Reveley, 2004; Duffy, Scott, Shaw, Tepper, & Aquino, 2012; Engwall, 2003; Miner, 1980; Pfeffer & Salancik, 1977; Tell, 2004; Tinker & Carter, 2003; Tjosvold & Field, 1983; Weber & Glynn, 2006). Yet these descriptors are never explained, the differences between the types of contexts are not delineated, and the researchers do not explain why the particular types were chosen as relevant. A common phrase used in the discussion of context is “social and historic context” (Adorisio, 2014; Phillips & Brown, 1993; Tinker & Carter, 2003). The question is, how do these differ? If we analyze a phenomenon in its historic context is there no sociological element involved? Does social context refer only to the present? Furthermore, how do temporal and historic context differ? For example, Engwall (2003) refers to a project’s “historical and organizational context” (p. 790). Because the context of an organization might be assumed to include its history, and the project has taken place within the organization, is not “historical” as a descriptor redundant? While each of these types of contexts has its own unique aspects and can be studied independently, they exist in a dialectical relationship to the structured whole. As researchers ascribe relevance to a particular context, they should be explicit as to the boundaries of the context and the relationships to others.

Another example is offered by Weber and Glynn (2006) who present an argument for bringing institutional context and contextual mechanisms into our understanding of the processes of sensemaking. The fundamental premise of their paper is that institutions affect sensemaking through three contextual mechanisms—priming, editing, and triggering. The notion of context features as a key aspect of the research. Not only is it embedded throughout the discussion, but also a strong case is made for the importance of understanding context to understand sensemaking. Yet, none of the terms context, institutional context, contextualization, or contextual mechanisms are defined or explained. We find an oblique reference to a definition of context when the authors state that the theoretical distance between sensemaking and institutional theory

may be related to criticisms of sensemaking that claim the theory overlooks the role of larger social, historical or institutional contexts in explaining cognition. As a theory of seemingly local practice, sensemaking appears to neglect, or at least lack an explicit account of, the embeddedness of sensemaking in social space and time. (Weber & Glynn, 2006, p. 1639)

In stating that through overlooking context, sensemaking neglects “the embeddedness of sensemaking in social space and time” the authors describe the problem in a way that hints at the notion of context. They fail, however, to present an explanation of context and there is no description of social, historical, and institutional contexts and how they differ from each other.

Current Engagement With Context

A motivation fueling our call to practice context is that while some researchers use the idea of context in their work—which is an important first step—they do so without sufficient explanation of the context in use, why it was deemed relevant, and how it was formulated or constructed. Context is invoked as “something ‘out there,’ residual, too complex and too big to be modeled, just something taken as given” (Proeller, 2013, p. 223). Furthermore, there is an endemic failure to define the various types of context to which researchers refer. Including context in research requires that the relevant context be identified and interpreted (Dilley, 1999), but how is that interpretation done? These questions have different answers depending on the paradigm in which we work, but they are rarely asked or answered in the work that we have studied.

In one of the few papers we found that defines context, Shenhav and Weitz (2000) use the term “enabling context,” defining it as “the network which ratifies and upholds claims to reality” (p. 386). In Shenhav and Weitz’s work, people, finances, methodologies, machines, practices, ideas, and organizations constitute the enabling context. In the case of their particular research project, it plays a role in the pervasiveness of professional positions. The authors present two distinct enabling contexts: (a) management–labor relations in the United States between 1880 and 1931, and (b) the ideological context of the Progressive Era (1900-1917). The role of the profession of mechanical engineering, as embedded in the identified enabling contexts, in the development of the discourse of organizational uncertainty is studied.

As noted, small-scale efforts have been made to define context and the term is frequently in use. Despite this, comprehensive explanations of context are rare. Also rare are the ontological, epistemological, and methodological considerations that should accompany a rigorous consideration of context. How we treat context is implicated by our assumptions on how we treat social reality (ontology), construct theories of knowledge (epistemology) to explain that social reality, and develop tools or methods to gather information (methodology) on the social world. Multiple ontologies and epistemologies to theorize social phenomena exist (Berger & Luckmann, 1967; Burrell & Morgan, 1979), and we surface two here to outline their implication for context. Namely, these are the positions of realism/positivism and nominalism/postpositivism. Interestingly, our review of the MOS literature indicates that the most rigorous explanations of context reside in research of a positivist orientation. This is surprising given that the rise of critical management studies in the early 1990s was premised in part on a critique of positivism and its prevalence of acontextual research.

Positivist Paradigm

Positivism, as a distinct theory of knowledge (epistemology), postulates that it is possible to stand outside of social reality and create objective knowledge of it. Positivists see value in isolating phenomena to map out linear and causal relationships. They search for regularities in social occurrences, which they then seek to generalize from a sample to a larger population. Positivists believe that, like the natural sciences, it is possible for the social sciences to generate objective knowledge (Crotty, 2005). The epistemological position of positivism is associated with the ontological position of realism. Realism is the theory of social reality that suggests that the social world exists in hard tangible form, independent of our mental appreciation of it. As Burrell and Morgan (1979, p. 4) explain, realists believe the social world is composed of “relatively immutable structures” that are “as hard and concrete as the natural world.”

What are the consequences of adopting this position for the treatment of context? If we agree that context is an integral component of social reality, it follows that from a realist ontology, it exists in hard tangible form outside of our mental appreciation of it. Adopting a realist ontology leads to a view of context as a relatively stable and immutable background. When context is treated as a stable background, researchers either draw on one of many variables that can influence a causal relationship of interest or control for its potential confounding impact by isolating phenomena of interest from it. In the latter instance, phenomena of interest are isolated from the environment in which they occur to allow for the study of cause and effect free from bias. In controlling for, or ignoring, specific contexts, researchers believe the results of their studies are generalizable across many settings and temporal periods. Thus, results are not limited to any specific context; they are plausible despite or across contexts. Results that are generalizable assume legitimacy in the natural sciences and also in the social sciences. Indeed, one of the key criteria assessed in quantitative and positivist research is generalizability.

Despite the quest for research that is generalizable and objective, positivist researchers have recognized the need to bring context into their work. A problem they face is the lack of “a refined, systematic language for expressing context” (Johns, 2006, p. 403). For example, in their 1991 analysis of the exclusion of the external environment from organizational behavior (OB) research, Cappelli and Sherer (1991) define context as “the surroundings associated with phenomena which help to illuminate that phenomena, typically factors associated with units of analysis above those expressly under investigation” (p. 56). Understanding the context within which an employee works helps us to understand the phenomenon under study. Beyond this definition, though, nothing else is offered and context seems to be equated to external environment.

In his 2006 article, Johns recognizes that context is studied in OB, but argues “its influence is often unrecognized or underappreciated” (p. 389). Johns (2006) defines context as

situational opportunities and constraints that affect the occurrence and meaning of organizational behaviour as well as functional relationships between variables. Context can serve as a main effect or interact with a personal variable such as disposition to affect organizational behaviour. (p. 386)

Johns’s definition differs from Cappelli and Sherer’s in that Johns sees context as a determinant of behavior, rather than simply an explanatory tool. In both cases, though, context belongs outside of the actual research itself. Phenomena are still researched in isolation, internal validity and scientific legitimacy are maintained, and then when the research is complete, it is put into its context in a “largely speculative exercise” (Bamberger, 2008, p. 840) using top-down processes. Context becomes those variables that we acknowledge have an influence on our phenomenon of study, but that we have chosen not to privilege (Bovaird, 2013).

In Bamberger’s (2008) call for the theoretical consideration of context in quantitative research, he states that statistical analysis methods and the software supporting them have advanced to the point where context can be given consideration in quantitative work. Bamberger traces the shift in the conceptualization of context over time and proposes context theorizing as a full-blown research approach. He defines context theories as “those theories that specify how surrounding phenomena or temporal conditions directly influence lower-level phenomena, condition relations between one or more variables at different levels of analysis, or are influenced by the phenomena nested within them” (Bamberger, 2008, p. 841). Context theories of management would take us beyond the ambiguous “contextualization of research findings” to a more considered and structured understanding of the role context plays in shaping what we study. Context is built directly into theory and the linkages between the context and the phenomenon under study are clearly explicated.

Qualitative research provides an opportunity for researchers to contextualize their work without the constraints imposed by numbers and statistical analysis. Yet, qualitative studies in the positivist paradigm have long been held to the same requirements as quantitative in terms of being objective, reproducible, and generalizable. Positivism and realism privilege stability over movement and fragmentation over complexity and holism. This presents a limited view of context as just another variable which is isolatable and thus stripped of its complexity and fluidity. In his call for context theories, Bamberger highlights the value of qualitative research, particularly in interpretative and postmodern studies.

Postpositivist Paradigm

Postpositivism encompasses a multitude of research traditions. Many fall under the umbrella term critical management studies, but the group is neither cohesive nor homogeneous (Grey & Willmott, 2005). Although theoretical, epistemological, and ontological differences exist between and among the constitutive traditions of postpositivism, it is possible to describe the research tradition according to the dominant philosophical strands within it. For example, the epistemological position of this research tradition is called antipositivism, postpositivism (P. Prasad, 2005), or social constructionism (Berger & Luckmann, 1967). Although there are differences among these theories of knowledge, embedded in each is a belief that only subjective knowledge of the social world is possible. Rejecting the idea of objective observer, postpositivists argue that knowledge of the social world is constructed through understanding. This entails occupying the frame of reference and perspective of the phenomena of interest to describe their experiences (Burrell & Morgan, 1979). These theories of ontology and epistemology have consequences for the treatment of context. If we agree that context forms a part of social reality, and social reality is constructed through our efforts to define it, then so is context. This view tends toward a greater appreciation of the fluidity of context and creates knowledge of it that is sympathetic to its mutability. Using a postpositivist perspective to understand context entails studying it in its naturally occurring setting (as opposed to isolating/fragmenting the variable) to attempt reintegrating the parts of the whole toward totalization. A postpositivist epistemology is associated with a nominalist ontology. From a position of ontological nominalism, society and social structures do not exist outside of our mental appreciation of it. Instead, the social world exists only as names, ideas, and labels (Berger & Luckmann, 1967). Nominalists believe that people use these to structure reality and in doing so, participate in its construction. It is through our actions to describe social reality that we contribute to building it (Chia, 2000). Thus, reality is assumed to be unfixed, changing, complex, and mutable as we participate in its cocreation daily.

The assumption that phenomena are socially constructed is one that is shared across many traditions that constitute postpositivism, the extent of which varies along a continuum depending on the tradition. For example, critical realists define an entity as real if it “has causal efficacy; has an effect on behaviour; makes a difference” (Fleetwood, 2005, p. 199). They differentiate between modes of reality, in which materially real entities exist independent of the social, ideally real entities are discursive entities that have causal efficacy, socially real entities are practices and social structures, and artefactually real entities are the synthesis of the materially, ideally, and socially real entities (Fleetwood, 2005). Although the social world is dependent on human action for existence, there are aspects of which humans have no, limited, or mistaken knowledge (Fairclough, 2005). Both critical realists and many postmodern scholars acknowledge the generative capacity of research. This is the idea that researchers and their research meddle in the realities they describe. Simply put, our research has the capacity to strengthen or generate certain realities. This, we offer, could be understood as a common foundation as we begin to practice context. Although postpositivist researchers regularly acknowledge context as a critical aspect of their research, they are rarely explicit in how they engage with it. In some cases, context is assumed to preexist the socially constructed phenomena that is studied. It is likened to a fixed “container” into which researchers place phenomena. In doing so, context itself is not questioned nor is the process through which it is constituted.

When we use context as a container, we tend to work with a “relatively fixed, uncontested and objectively determinable starting point for understanding” a situation (de Vos, 2001, p. 9). Starting from the agreed-upon “facts” about a particular context allows us to use context without having to do the work of constructing it ourselves. However, assuming that we can situate our work within an uncontested and universally accepted context is problematic. de Vos (2001) provides an apt example of the interpretive nature of context and the act of contextualization in his study of the South African judiciary interpretation of their 1996 constitution. The judiciary has been encouraged to interpret the constitution in its context, which acknowledges the interpretative nature of constitutional jurisprudence. At the same time, however, they are asked to contextualize the constitution within the context set by the constitutional texts themselves. The version of South Africa’s past to which the judiciary is bound is not one to which all South Africans subscribe, including, potentially, the individual judges themselves. By “allowing” contextualization of a vague document, but enforcing that contextualization within a fixed context, the possible interpretations of the constitution are extremely limited and even hegemonic.

One reason that we contextualize our research is to allow certain interpretations to flourish by both the researcher and the reader. We suggest that the context in which we situate our work strongly influences our interpretation. When we unquestioningly accept the grand narrative as the fixed and only context, we bind our interpretation to the context constructed by the dominant social group. Contexts, such as histories, are multiple and should be developed as a body of knowledge that represents the complexity of the lived world. As a result, there is a need to recognize and work with a variety of contexts, not simply the one that has come to stand in as taken-for-granted.

Two postpositivist methodologies that embed context in the research method itself are critical discourse analysis and critical hermeneutic analysis. The fundamental goal of each methodology is to understand a text within its context. In hermeneutic analysis, the text is a written text, whereas in discourse analysis the text can be written, spoken, or enacted. What is important for our purposes is that, in both cases, the context is more than a backdrop to the text or a distinct phenomenon existing at a higher level. The text is embedded in the context. It forms part of the context and vice versa (Keenoy & Oswick, 2004). As a result, the context becomes part of what is studied, rather than a tool for interpreting the results of the study.

We found, however, that even in the methodologies in which context plays a central role, context is assumed. An example is the Phillips & Brown’s (1993) article on the critical hermeneutic analysis approach to the study of culture and power. In this early MOS critical hermeneutic analysis, the authors explain the method as one of trying to understand the ambiguous meanings of texts given a particular social–historical context. Context is a key component of the research analysis, as context is used to construct a meaning for the texts under study. Yet, in a methodology in which texts are seen to be embedded in context, and the final phase involves interpreting the text and the role it plays in influencing, creating, and/or maintaining the context, context itself is explained at a superficial level. The explanation involves specifying that context can be analytically divided along physical and social dimensions.

If a text’s meaning is ambiguous until understood in its context, then it is clearly the context that sets the meaning of particular text. Indeed, Phillips and Brown state that they “are not interested in showing that a text can be interpreted in a particular way but in showing that it should be understood in a particular way based on its nature and context” (Phillips & Brown, 1993, p. 1555; emphasis added). But who builds the context? How do we know that two sets of researchers would embed the text, in this case advertising images, in the same context? If the meaning of the text is dependent on the context, is not at least some element of the context going to be dependent on the researcher? Would it not be impossible for two researchers to use the same context given that contexts are socially constructed—and from a constructivist view, constructed cognitively? Is it not impossible to reproduce the same context? These questions point to the idea that our current implicit assumptions of context have limitations. This leads us to problematize context, which we feel could then fuel researchers to practice including a more thoughtful invocation of context in their research.

Problematizing Current Treatment of Context

Despite the vast philosophical differences of the research traditions described above, the treatment of context is similar. Regardless of whether research is written from a position of realism/positivism or a nominalism/postpositivism, we find examples from both traditions that either ignore context or treat context in a way that assigns it fixity and immutability. Context is treated as stable, permanent, and with identifiable properties and is stripped of its complexity. It seems that while some MOS researchers work with social phenomena as complex and dynamic, they treat context as fixed. We offer three reasons to explain this.

The first pertains to the historic way in which academic knowledge production institutionalized. The emergence of the classification system of knowledge and its subsequent institutionalization in academia has led to its manufacture in separate, distinct, and isolated spheres (Burke, 2000; Durkheim & Mauss, 1966; Foucault, 1966/2007). The resultant topography of academic disciplines has arguably led to a specialized pursuit of knowledge production and dissemination. The constitution of knowledge and its study as separate, isolated, and specialized fields has had consequences for how we view social reality and context. One consequence is the emergence of a persuasive fragmented view of social reality. Another consequence is that the study of phenomena in isolated fields means that it is removed and thus cut off from its naturally occurring “context” (Chia, 2003; Latour, 1993). For example, economics is one of the contexts of business, but in an academic setting each are studied separately. Producing knowledge outside of its naturally occurring context leads to acontextual research.

A second reason why MOS researchers either ignore or assign fixity to context is due to the dominance of the natural science epistemology of positivism. As academic disciplines grew and developed to assume their normative and contemporary composition, many modeled the methodologies, ontology, and epistemology of the natural sciences because of the wide-spanning legitimacy it had achieved due to its proven capacity for social, industrial, economic, military, medical, and academic betterment (Burke, 2000; Foucault, 1966/2007). The rise of legitimacy and societal trust in the natural science model enhanced academic faith in epistemological positivism. As a result, epistemological positivism and ontological realism emerged as the dominant (mainstream) philosophy of the natural sciences, and it also become prominent in the social sciences. MOS is no exception. In MOS, positivism is the mainstream (P. Prasad, 2005). As we have explained above, this research tradition either ignores context or reduces it to a variable that is assumed to be controllable.

A third reason lies in the inherent difficulty (and paradox) of “capturing” movement, fluidity, and holistic phenomena (Chia, 2003). Although most social science (and MOS) researchers agree that a social phenomenon is dynamic, mutable, and unstable, their study of it in practice temporarily stabilizes it for observation and study, as if it were occurring in a laboratory. This forces researchers to work in a cause and effect model, when in reality there is no cause that is logically prior to and independent of that which we define as the effect. It is difficult to study phenomena in its naturally occurring practices, capture the insights (with immutable text), and disseminate the knowledge in a way that plausibly represents its movement. The rise of the dominance of the natural science model and its associated positivist epistemology has placed limits on our imagination to study complexity and movement.

Why are these limitations worthy of redressing? Because the natural and social sciences, if only due to their different subject matter focus, should draw on different theories of reality (ontology), knowledge (epistemology), and methods. Thus, a realist ontological view of context in any research tradition (natural science/social science) will limit our understanding of the phenomena because it will seek to ascribe fixity to phenomena that is in constant movement in its naturally occurring environment (i.e., where the researcher finds it to study it). In a realist paradigm that features unilateral determinism, the context and the phenomenon must be independent, but context is dialectical in that it exists in and through interaction with the phenomenon.

Toward the Practice of Context

Scholars in philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, and cultural studies have all struggled with the concept of context. Although the importance of placing phenomena under study in context to acquire a deeper understanding is acknowledged, the practice of treating context as self-evident, “stable, clear and sufficient, and not requiring any qualification of its own” is common (Dilley, 1999, p. 2). Context is not a tangible object that we can grasp and insert into our research, but bringing context into research as anything other than a fixed container raises issues of interpretation, relativism, relevance, and individuality.

Our solution is to practice context. Our emphasis on “practice” specifically is motivated by Simpson (2009) who calls for a turn toward practice in MOS. Practice shifts our focus to “what people actually do” (Simpson, 2009, p. 1329) and, in our case, we wish to emphasize what researchers and their phenomena of study actually do. Organizational scholars are increasingly focusing on practice because it offers a way to bridge the gap between “theorising” and “practical experiences” and recognizes that “the dynamics of human practices” are just as important “as the outcomes they produce” (Simpson, 2009, p. 1329), whether those outcomes are learning, strategizing, or contextualizing.

A call to practice context entails researchers recognizing the enactive, “agentic,” and “creative” capacity (Simpson, 2009, p. 1330) of their research. It is a call for scholars to appreciate that their research plays a large role in creating the realities it describes. Research helps to bring into being what it discovers. Our research efforts “help to make realities” (Law & Urry, 2004, p. 404). This is to stress that our research has enactive and generative capacities. As Law and Urry (2004) note, any social enquiry is productive. This is an ontological claim: in doing research, we meddle with reality. Thus, we agree with Simpson (2009) who outlines the “inevitability of our agentic influence at the sites of our research” (p. 1343). In the same vein, the context invoked in a particular study is an effect of the research process, made by an agentic, creative, and situated researcher (Law & Mol, 2001). Beyond being produced in research practice, context is enactive and generative in that it too helps to strengthen the realities it describes.

One of the struggles with working with context is that, if taken to the extreme, we can end up in a situation of total relativity, in which everything becomes the context of everything else, and extreme individualism, in which everything is utterly unique and nothing can be compared nor generalized (Dilley, 1999; Scharfstein, 1989). When contextualizing, it is also possible to reach a point at which “that which provided the ‘shell’ or context collapses, so that now the context becomes the new problem and the old problem or contents become the new ‘shell’ or context” (Dilley, 1999, p. 8). Context can be boundless. To work with it in a way that is useful for us and our research, we must apply boundaries by determining those connections that are relevant to our particular study, and, just as importantly, those connections that are not relevant. When we formulate the context to be used in our work, we decide what is significant and what is trivial. We decide the level of generality at which we will work (e.g., local, regional, national, etc.), the type(s) of context which we will include (e.g., historical, economic, social, etc.), and where we will place the boundaries. These decisions affect both the questions that we ask and the answers that we find, and we make these decisions throughout our research practice.

It is not simply our phenomenon of study that has a context. Researchers are situated in a particular time and space, which acts as our context, despite claims of objectivism (Dilley, 1999). Our own context informs what we consider relevant in selecting our phenomenon of study and formulating its context (Hervey, 1999)—preinterpretation—and analyzing our findings—postinterpretation (Holy, 1999). Holy noted that over the history of anthropology, as well as in everyday use, there are three common features as to how context has been invoked: (a) The relevant context that we select depends not only on the phenomenon we are studying, but also what we want to know about it. Our own analytic interest as researchers determines the context in which we place our work. (b) The relevant context we select, and how we conceptualize it, determines both the questions that we ask and the explanations that we accept. (c) We treat context as reliable, something that we invoke rather than analyze. When a phenomenon under study is contextualized, we need to understand that the phenomenon is an inextricable component of the context in which it exists or occurs. Context is not passive, and it is not merely the background setting to the study (Clarke, 2013). We cannot place a phenomenon in its context because the context does not exist without the phenomenon. There is no distinct context in which we can place the isolated phenomenon, there is only the entwined phenomenon and context. Stillman (2013) suggests that context may not be visible at all, but is found in the gaps in our stories—context lies in what is unsaid, rather than what is said. One way to avoid this easy and convenient use of context is to recognize that contexts are plural, and to refer always to contexts rather than context. This serves to emphasize that we study a myriad of intersecting contexts (Clarke, 2013).

Practicing context requires researchers to acknowledge the complexity and messiness in our work and to question taken-for-granted assumptions. This can be difficult to do as “one person’s context is another’s taken-for-granted assumption” (Rousseau & Fried, 2001, p. 3). Contextualization is a research practice in which we are arguably each engaged. However, it is a practice that should be exercised with caution. Researchers should acknowledge the messiness and plurality of context and avoid simplifying it. How do we practice it? Our suggestion is to draw a connection between the practical context of our research/phenomenon, the extant research, theory about context, and finally, the research paradigm.

Context and Paradigms

Researchers work in varying paradigms and context should be practiced within the theoretical scope of a particular study (Holy, 1999). Our goal is to encourage researchers to question the commonsense use of the concept of context in MOS. Researchers should engage with context respective to the paradigm of choice, embed context into the research, and explain how and why the relevant context was formulated. A conscious practice of context has the potential to strengthen the theory development process.

We understand that at times the scope of a study is such that the use of context as a container or a grand narrative is sufficient. However, researchers should acknowledge that this is how they are using context in the particular study and explain why. At other times, a deeper engagement with context is needed, and how the engagement occurs will depend on the paradigm in which one works. In considering this, we focus on our two earlier research paradigms: positivist and postpositivist. We propose ways in which context can be practiced in each. We present these as starting points rather than formal processes, and encourage researchers to further develop practices of context that are synergistic with their theoretical affiliation.

Positivist

Bamberger makes a strong case for using context theories in MOS research. We repeat his definition of context theory here: “those theories that specify how surrounding phenomena or temporal conditions directly influence lower-level phenomena, condition relations between one or more variables at different levels of analysis, or are influenced by the phenomena nested within them” (Bamberger, 2008, p. 841). His work with Bacharach (Bacharach & Bamberger, 2007) on the impact of involvement in work-related critical incidents is an example of generating a context theory within the positivist paradigm. Bacharach and Bamberger look at the current (postincident) supervisory support and employee influence (control) climates of New York City firefighters and their influence on depression, anxiety, and stress post-9/11. Occupational stress models traditionally study individual difference moderators. By introducing the contextual factors of support and control climates, which are theorized as temporal conditions that directly influence lower-level phenomena, context has been made an integral component of the study. Bacharach and Bamberger study the influence of selected relevant contextual factors on a phenomenon, rather than studying the phenomenon and then doing post hoc and speculative contextualization. By developing a context theory around the “consequences of involvement in traumatic work-related events” (Bacharach & Bamberger, 2007, p. 849), the authors have broadened our understanding of occupational stress and recognized the strong influence that our broader environment has on our reactions.

Our example of a positivist context theory is a purely quantitative piece. Support and climate controls are measured using existing instruments, and statistical analysis is used to test the model (Bacharach & Bamberger, 2007). Using and theorizing context within the positivist paradigm does not require a move to qualitative research, and work can still be held to scientific validity measures.

Postpositivist

To illustrate postpositivist research, we draw on research that is social constructionist in nature. When we work in a research paradigm that assumes the social construction of the particular phenomenon under study, context can be practiced in multiple ways and along a spectrum of the degree to which the research requires that the context be constructed as part of the study itself. At a minimum, we must acknowledge that as our phenomenon of study is socially constructed, so is the context into which the phenomenon is woven. We may, depending on our research goals, scope, time, space, and so on, adopt a commonly held grand narrative for our context. We may do this to avoid increased complexity, or the grand narrative may be the relevant context to use for the goal of the particular study. Regardless of the reason, we must acknowledge our awareness of the social construction and the fact that we are, to a point, using context as a container. We use the work of McLaren and Mills (2015) as an illustrative example. McLaren and Mills analyzed the presence (or lack thereof) of a distinctly Canadian management theory, with their analysis based on the premise of understanding the context in which management theory developed. That the context was constructed was not acknowledged, and the context that was used for analysis was the commonly told histories of the growth of the business school in the United States and Canada in conjunction with the development of Canada as a country. Because context is not acknowledged as a social construction, the article’s premise that management theory is a social construction loses credibility. The scope of the article, which is to begin exploratory discussions into the belief that management theory is a social construction that needs to be developed for a regional context, allows for the use of a grand narrative as the context. The authors make the argument that context influenced the development of management theory, but do not argue that context gives interpretative meaning to theory. Further research into Canadian management theory itself would require a more engaged practice with, and nuanced understanding of, what is constructed as the context.

At the far end of the spectrum, we reach a point where the phenomenon and its context are inseparable; they are constructed through our efforts to describe them. From this point of view, context is far from a container in which we place a phenomenon. A phenomenon is woven into its surrounding environment and is an integral component of the environment itself. Without the phenomenon, the environment as we know it would no longer exist. We cannot “know” either the phenomenon or the context nor present them as fact, but we can develop an interpretation of a particular situation, and be explicit about it in our representation. For example, McLaren and Mills (2015) would have to make two changes in their study to effectively contextualize the development of management theory. First, as we propose to view context as socially constructed, the context used in the article would need to be presented as one possible context among many. The work done to develop the context in use, and the assumptions that are made in doing so would need to be explicitly presented to the reader. Second, we would suggest that the authors present the context, in this case the history of the business school, and the phenomenon, management theory, as interwoven elements that cannot exist independently. As the history of the business school has influenced the development of management theory, so has the development of management theory influenced the business school. We see this weaving together of the context and the phenomenon as similar to the work done in critical hermeneutic analysis to close the hermeneutic circle (Phillips & Brown, 1993;P. Prasad, 2005; A. Prasad & Mir, 2002).

Conclusion

We call on MOS scholars to practice context in their research. We have illustrated and analyzed the current lack of engagement with context across paradigms in MOS, introduced the discussion of context in other social science disciplines, and offered suggestions for how to conceptualize practicing context. Rather than being invoked as a fixed container, broad environment, or macrolevel feature, context is formulated or constructed by us and our phenomenon of study. In all studies, regardless of whether or not we are explicitly contextualizing our work, we formulate the context that we have preinterpreted to help us meet our research goals. Understanding this helps us be aware of the influence we and our research subjects have on our work. It also gives us the opportunity to select different relevant contexts, to ask different questions and/or to see different findings, which can lead to a fuller understanding. We bring some elements of the messiness of life into our work, making it more relevant and useful for both researchers and practitioners.

Contexts are inherently plural and fluid and they shift depending on our phenomenon of interest and philosophical framing. The context that we use in our research is an active choice made by us, the researchers. As we make those choices, we are engaging in the research practice of generating context. To practice context, we need to acknowledge its messiness, fluidity, and plurality and engage with it respective to our paradigm of choice. We must embed context into our research and explain how and why the relevant context was formulated. This means we have to determine and place the contextual boundaries to the study by identifying the relevant and irrelevant connections and level of generality. We can then weave together the practical context of our research/phenomenon, the phenomenon of study, the extant research, and finally, the research paradigm.

In light of this, we conclude by offering avenues for future work and suggestions for the field of MOS. We propose the need for full-length manuscripts across paradigms dedicated to developing sophisticated ways to practice context. We encourage empirical work that explicitly forefronts the practice of context as we struggle with learning how to incorporate it into our research. We call on journal editors and reviewers to be sympathetic to researchers as we struggle with contextualizing our work and to understand that research that captures the complexity of the world will not fit neatly into the preexisting knowledge classifications, rigid disciplines, and accepted research methodologies that have developed in MOS.

If theorizing context has led philosophers and sociologists into a quagmire of relativism, individualism, and limitless scope, why are we encouraging you to practice it? Because without context, we have either empirical observations of isolated variables or universal theories that we attempt to apply to everything, but often can be applied to nothing. We call on MOS scholars to bring context into their research even though it can be messy. By understanding the contexts of both the phenomenon under study and ourselves as researchers, we can build a body of management theory that is useful, relevant, and is sympathetic to our complex world.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Patricia Genoe McLaren

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