Abstract
Long interviews represent a powerful method for generating rich qualitative data, yet they are rarely used in organizational research. To address their untapped potential, our paper provides methodological clarity on long interviews and illustrates how they can help researchers do and see more. We reflect in depth on our own experiences using long interviews to produce a theme analysis that illuminates the nature, role, and benefits of long interviews in organizational research. Our key insight is that long interviews are more than simply “speech events”; they offer a unique opportunity to unleash the power of “show and tell,” both by integrating material objects and spaces into the conversation and by making them the locus of interaction. Importantly, such interactions can elicit rich narrative details that inspire conceptual leaps, which, in turn, can lead to the development of impactful theories. We conclude with detailed recommendations for conducting long interviews and engaging in show-and-tell.
Keywords
More than any other method, interviews dominate data collection and generation in qualitative research (Bluhm et al., 2011; Hollway & Jefferson, 2013). Among the assorted interview types (Fontana & Frey, 1994; Gephart, 2004; Taylor & Bogdan, 1984), researchers single out long interviews as “one of the most powerful methods in the qualitative armory,” with “endless” possible applications (McCracken, 1988, p. 9; also see Berg, 1998). Long interviews have been described as highly adaptable and creative long-form explorations (Douglas, 1985). They offer a clear departure from what Mintzberg (2005, pp. 358, 361) calls “bureaucratic research” by foregrounding the human dimensions of “imagination, insight, and discovery,” letting us see “profoundly, imaginatively, unconventionally into phenomena we thought we understood.” Despite their adaptive and creative nature, humanistic qualities, and generative potential, however, long interviews remain rare in organizational research, and we know little about them. What are long interviews? What is unique about them? How might they help researchers do and see more? Drawing on a reflective analysis of our own experiences using long interviews, we seek to answer these questions and start a conversation about the untapped potential of long interviews for the field of organization studies.
What is known about long interviews is surprisingly limited. Even McCracken’s (1988) highly cited book, The Long Interview, offers little insight into the uniqueness of long interviews beyond declarations of their importance. Other sources that comment explicitly on interview length typically stop at suggestions such as interviews should continue as long as the interactions are productive (e.g., Weiss, 1994). Two types of long interviews—life history and ethnographic interviews—have long been used in the social sciences, although rarely if ever in their long forms in the field of organization studies. Life history interviews, used most notably in the Chicago School of Sociology from the 1920s through the 1940s (Taylor & Bogdan, 1984), are lengthy interviews that typically span multiple sessions over days, weeks, or months (Douglas, 1985; Fontana & Frey, 1994). While superior to other social science approaches in their ability to illuminate participants’ intimate, subjective experiences (Atkinson, 1998; Shaw, 1931), life history interviews have gained almost no traction in organization studies. Ethnographic interviews, on the other hand, are more prevalent in organization studies (e.g., O’Mahony & Bechky, 2006; Pratt, 2000). Yet, although Spradley (1979) suggests that ethnographic interviews should last many hours over multiple sessions, in practice they are often much shorter in organizational research, thus limiting our understanding of their unique value in longer forms. Hence, organizational researchers seldom tap the established potential of long interviews.
In this paper, we explore the untapped potential of long interviews and make three contributions to the interview literature. First, we provide methodological clarity on long interviews in organizational research, including what they are, how they are uniquely positioned to integrate material objects and spaces (i.e., show-and-tell processes) into conversations, and how the rich data with greater degrees of nuance, deeper and broader coverage of topics, and more evocative stories generated from show-and-tell aids in making what Klag and Langley (2013) termed “conceptual leaps.” Together, these advantages serve as necessary ingredients for researchers to engage in more theoretically generative discussions. We present our own experiences, consisting of three distinct approaches to long interviews. We spotlight differences across our three approaches to illustrate the adaptability of long interviews, which can be shaped by particular material objects and spaces, diverse approaches to qualitative inquiry, varied philosophical assumptions and worldviews, different types of reasoning, and so forth. As we reflect on our use of long interviews, we point out occasions when our experiences inspired conceptual leaping. We intend this article to serve as a resource that helps organizational researchers add long interviews to their qualitative toolbox. In doing so, we respond to calls for unpacking specific research methods as “appropriate tool[s]” for specific types of inquiry (Buchanan & Bryman, 2007, p. 483; Gehman et al., 2018), an especially important issue in qualitative research due to its craftlike nature (Cunliffe, 2011).
Second, we emphasize the particular suitability of long interviews for integrating material objects (e.g., kaleidoscopes and cabinet doors) and spaces (e.g., alleyways and remote rivers) into interview designs as the locus of productive interaction, which we dub “show and tell.” This shifts interviews from passive question-and-answer sessions to more active show-and-tell processes and renders long interviews much more experiential, for both researchers and participants, and expands possibilities for generating data through all the human senses. We argue that long interviews embody more than the “speech events” described by McCracken (1988) and Spradley (1979). Instead, they reinforce what Cunliffe (2018) refers to as “embodied feelings and experiences,” helping researchers to remain open to fundamentally different ways of exploring what is happening around them, including how people say, do, hear, and feel things. Text and words are no longer the dominant mode for generating data: the integration of material objects and spaces into long interviews can stimulate data generation through seeing, touching, and smelling, in addition to listening to the words of participants and sounds of places and objects.
Third, we contribute to the “how” of long interviews, providing researchers with clear guidance for unleashing the power of show-and-tell in their own work. This includes recommendations for how to (a) leverage show-and-tell to pursue ambitious research projects that target complexity, (b) make long interviews experiential by integrating material objects in meaningful ways, (c) use long interviews to explore intriguing material spaces alongside participants, (d) slow down so that researchers and participants can do and see more together, using show-and-tell as a pathway for discovering hidden stories, (e) break with traditional roles to embrace vulnerability, even empowering participants to show researchers what they perceive as important, (f) prepare for the exhaustion of long interviews as mental and physical marathons, and (g) conduct fewer, but richer interviews that rely on show-and-tell to generate vivid story-based descriptions necessary for conceptual leaping.
The Generative Potential of Length
The notion that extending the length of time in the field can be incredibly generative is a central theme of the organizational research methods literature. Indeed, spending more time on-site can lead to more impactful research (measured by other-author citations) (Rynes et al., 1999; Van de Ven & Johnson, 2006) by emphasizing richness and nuance in qualitative data over speed of publication (Douglas, 1985; Langley, 1999; Mintzberg, 2005). For instance, Langley (2007, p. 278) argues that richer accounts of processual phenomena “often [require] primary data and the investment of time.” Extended time in the field can also help to widen researchers’ “descriptive reach,” working to expand the breadth and depth of data generated (Locke, 2011, p. 626). Organizational communications researchers highlight the interplay between time and engagement, arguing that spending more time with people while immersed in a particular context can help fashion how researchers think and talk about the world they are studying, rather than simply representing the world through abstractions (Deetz, 2008). Such “enriched ways of talking and better forms of knowledge,” which Deetz (p. 295) calls “co-generative theorizing,” stem from lengthy engagement emphasizing “understanding, reflection, and invention.” By shifting from shorter, more structured interviews to unstructured conversations lasting “almost three hours,” Thompson (2005, p. 155) found that his longer interviews became “much more productive.” In a similar spirit, the importance of long interviews is especially evident in Dundon and Ryan’s (2010) model for building rapport with reluctant respondents, which relies on a four-hour interview to move through its five developmental stages, for which shorter interviews provide insufficient scope.
Furthermore, the literature is sprinkled with counterarguments that caution against using “quick dip” (Cunliffe, 2010, p. 227) or “hit-and-run” (Grandia, 2015, p. 312) qualitative approaches, such as shorter interviews, which limit researchers’ time in exploring. The tendency to use “quick and dirty” methods, which often rely on “rigid designs” and “mechanic interviewing” (Schaefer & Alvesson, 2020, p. 43), seem to prioritize mounting pressures to be productive (cf. “fast academic work,” Jones, 2018; “fast food research,” Marinetto, 2018) over slower and possibly more generative approaches. When done thoughtfully, however, interviewing is “especially labor intensive” and “takes a great deal of time” (Seidman, 2013, p. 11). As Cunliffe (2018, p. 1436, emphasis added) eloquently concludes, “Constraints of comprehension occur when we are too quick to make connections, conjectures and solidify meaning, and when we are transported along a pre-determined research path to a predictable destination.” We can improve our research, in other words, by slowing down and embracing our instincts and imagination.
Taken together, arguments for patient explorations and against fleeting interactions all point to a need for spending more time in order to cultivate richer ideas and insights, and, consequently, improve theorizing. Indeed, investing more time can help researchers generate new insights and imaginative theories (Rynes et al., 1999), which often result from weaving together conceptual leaps—which, in turn, require rich stories, nuanced exposure and illustrative anecdotes (Mintzberg, 2005). Such imaginative work helps “bridge the gap between empirical data and theory” (Klag & Langley, 2013, p. 150) and supports theorizing by bolstering inspiration, inventiveness, and discovery sparked by anomalies and surprises (Locke et al., 2008). The nexus between method and theory is complex, and researchers have long struggled addressing it (Van Maanen et al., 2007). For our purposes, length is not simply about spending more clock time, but instead recognizing how spending more time better positions the researcher to generate the kinds of conceptual leaps, both big and small, that drive theory development. Given that interviews are by far the most widely used method in qualitative research (Bluhm et al., 2011; Hollway & Jefferson, 2013), we turn to long interviews as one method that uses length as a powerful and generative lens for enriching understanding. The expanded length of long interviews invites us to reimagine what researchers and participants might do, see, and discuss as part of an interview.
Different Approaches to Long Interviews
Long interviews have evaded straightforward definitions. Researchers have characterized them in various ways, particularly regarding length. First, McCracken (1988) is surprisingly agnostic about interview length throughout The Long Interview. He does, however, reveal—albeit briefly—what the title of his book might mean, mentioning “interview periods of two or three hours” as common in exploratory research, noting his involvement in “six-hour interviews (divided into two three-hour or three two-hour segments),” and acknowledging that “the literature reports interviews as long as eight hours” (McCracken, 1988, p. 37). That said, researchers who have used McCracken’s “long interview” label in case studies, however, have conducted interviews averaging just 90 minutes (Woodside, 2010). Others, adopting the “long interview” label but without reference to McCracken (1988), have likewise described interviews lasting an average of 90 minutes (e.g., Markman et al., 2005). Second, life history interviews “usually need about two hours,” requiring the researcher and participant to “meet every week or so” to “preserve the flow of interviews” and to sustain the effort over many weeks or months (Taylor & Bogdan, 1984, p. 88). In describing his experiences conducting life history interviews, Douglas (1985), a sociologist, describes spending “the first few hours warming up to each other” (pp. 67–68), engaging in “endless hours of soul communication” (p. 64), and conducting “an extremely detailed life study with [a participant] over some weeks” (pp. 118–120). Third, and building on life history interviews, Seidman (2013) proposes in-depth phenomenological interviewing, using a three-interview series (focused life history, details of experience, reflection on meaning), with each interview lasting 90 minutes, spaced from three days to a week. Akin to life histories, historians’ oral history interviews normally include many sessions lasting one to two hours each (Thompson, 1978). Fourth, Spradley (1979), an anthropologist, describes ethnographic interviews as “lengthy interviews” (p. 9) occurring across multiple sessions (pp. 51, 59, 67) over many “weeks of interviewing” (p. 59) and requiring at least “six to seven one-hour interviews” with each participant (p. 51).
A handful of organizational researchers have described long interviews in articles published in top-tier journals: Courpasson and colleagues (2012, p. 804) dubbed their three-hour interviews “long interviews,” Schultz and Hernes (2013, p. 7) characterized their full-day interview with a CEO as “long,” and Thompson (2005, p. 155) described his unstructured interviews, some lasting almost three hours, as “considerably longer” than his initial semi-structured interviews. Other organizational researchers who have used long interviews have not labeled them as such (e.g., Creed et al., 2010).
Show-and-Tell in Long Interviews
The literature also reveals ways in which long interviews are especially well positioned to unleash the power of show-and-tell. First, the length and typically more flexible structure of long interviews can position the interviewer, rather than the protocol, as the “research tool” (Taylor & Bogdan, 1984, p. 77). Thus, long interviews represent one tool that gives the researcher permission to become ever more human and “deviate from the ideal of a cool, distant, and rational interviewer” in order to explore more deeply (Fontana & Frey, 1994, p. 366; Hansen & Trank, 2016). This includes picking up and being open to exploring material objects and allowing participants to guide the researcher through material spaces as part of show-and-tell. Cunliffe (2018, p. 1433) echoes this sentiment through what she calls “wayfaring,” which “humanifies” researchers by reminding them that they “are alive, embedded in a landscape (physical, organizational, etc.) and always becoming and learning.” By slowing down, researchers can “wait and be open to what may unfold.” Douglas (1985, pp. 67–68), for example, characterized long interviews as an intimate process of discovery: He described one evening interview, over a “lovely candlelight and wine dinner,” that lasted “into the early morning hours,” in which he and the participant “spent the first few hours warming up to each other” and trying to “acclimate” themselves to a research context that, for Douglas, was “still largely a new world waiting to be discovered.” The literature, however, offers little insight into when to surrender the reins of the interview to participants to reinvigorate the discovery process through participant-led show-and-tell. We wonder how deferring to participants might shift the types of topics discussed or material objects and spaces explored, and what participants might show researchers if they had many hours to do so (e.g., participants demonstrating fishing techniques on the Amazon River, see de Rond et al., 2019).
Second, long interviews are described as “speech events” that are “highly unusual” (McCracken, 1988, p. 12) or of “a particular kind” (Spradley, 1979, p. 55). Speech, however, is not the only channel through which data can be generated during long interviews. While sitting in chairs to exchange questions and answers might be the norm for shorter interviews lasting an hour or so (Schaefer & Alvesson, 2020), sitting in those same chairs for many hours presents a new set of challenges and might call for a different approach. As we argue further, long interviews seem uniquely positioned to seize the opportunity to move beyond speech events, perhaps by leaving the chair behind in favor of “get[ting] outside” (Whiteman, 2010; also see Cunliffe, 2018). One clear advantage of getting outside is that rich story-based descriptions generated while moving about can “connect what people say with where they say it” (Jones et al., 2008, p. 2; Moles, 2019). It remains unclear, however, exactly how researchers might integrate the specific elements of particular social worlds—namely, material objects (Ray & Smith, 2012; Stowell & Warren, 2018) and material spaces (Becker & Burke, 2012; Cunliffe, 2018)—to elicit more nuanced data, especially during substantially longer interviews (Allen, 2012). This silence is puzzling, given that their integration might render long interviews more than simply speech events by also embracing acts of show-and-tell. Thus, because long interviews allow researchers to experience “being there” in the setting under study, they provide a potential response to the criticisms that traditional interview locations commonly separate participants from their social worlds (Tope et al., 2005) and, consequently, that their analysis often entails “rapid coding” of what interviewees say, with little regard for how those “sayings” relate to their respective “doings” (Silverman, 2017).
For our purposes, we adopt Kvale and Brinkmann’s (2009, p. 2) definition of an interview as “an inter-change of views between [at least] two persons conversing about a theme of mutual interest.” We define long interviews as interviews lasting approximately three or more hours, either in a single session or over multiple sessions with the same participant; they allow researchers and participants to co-experience material objects and spaces and, thus, to co-generate ideas, insights, and knowledge. In the next section, we examine our own experiences using long interviews to generate a discussion around how researchers can enhance long interviews by introducing material objects and material spaces, shifting away from speech events alone and toward show-and-tell processes.
Our Research Approach
Research Context: Our Experiences Using Long Interviews
We begin by briefly describing our own experiences using long interviews in three studies in order to provide context for the subsequent sections on our data generation and results (Table 1). Brett’s study inductively developed types of policing efforts as institutional work, including the use of violence, that fly fishing guides performed to enforce environmental regulations and support their vigilante roles (see Crawford & Dacin, 2020). His study included 21 long interviews lasting eight to twelve hours each, using a “wayfaring” approach (Cunliffe, 2018) to foreground embodied experience by “moving in the landscape” alongside the guides as they policed remote rivers and enforced regulations. Brett conducted his long interviews while exploring remote river corridors, as a type of extreme material space, with the guides.
Some Fundamentals of the Three Studies.
Todd’s two-part case study explored the role of imagination in entrepreneurship (see Chiles et al., 2013). (“Todd” is shorthand for a team of interviewers led by Todd.) In the first part, he inductively developed the theoretical concepts embodied in the radical Austrian school’s kaleidic metaphor and condensed them into an interview handout participants could more readily grasp. (This metaphor calls to mind the disequilibrium dynamics of a kaleidoscope, featuring nonlinear, continuous, and unpredictable change.) In the second part, he deductively grounded these concepts in the venture experiences of 12 entrepreneurs using a two-phase interview process lasting three to five hours. In the first phase, Todd conducted open-ended interviews to elicit in-depth descriptions of the entrepreneurs’ lived experiences. In the second phase, he took a more active role, using an approach Kvale and Brinkmann (2009, see earlier definition) term “inter-views” supported by the use of kaleidoscopes as material objects that helped in explaining abstract concepts.
Sara adopted an abductive approach to investigate how arts entrepreneurs collaborated with their customers to create unique artworks (see Elias et al., 2018). Sara used “spect-acting” (Gill, 2011), an approach where the researcher actively participates in fieldwork action, while conducting in-depth long interviews lasting from four hours to several days, spanning 11 months, with 4 arts entrepreneurs and 8 existing (and numerous imagined) customers, along with ethnographic fieldwork and secondary sources. Although not part of the original research design, material objects (e.g., artworks-in-progress) gained prominence during long interviews when Sara realized how critical they were in sparking and fueling an iterative process of co-creation in which both artists and customers interacted with the evolving artworks. Long interviews were fundamental for exploring, in depth and across organizational settings, the tacit, complex, and ineffable processes that underlie the co-creation of aesthetic value.
Data Generation and Analysis: A Reflective Process to Develop Long Interview Themes
Following Yanow and Schwartz-Shea (2014), we adopted an interpretivist approach to “generating” (rather than “collecting”) data. Consequently, we completed a reflective process aimed at (a) addressing the value of long interviews for theorizing in the field of organization studies and (b) providing guidance for how to conduct long interviews. Reflective processes are useful for fashioning detailed stories across multiple studies to synthesize common themes (Peticca-Harris et al., 2016). Our reflections, which took place after we all exited the field in our individual studies, were intended to develop what Van Maanen (1979, p. 526) described as a “penetrating and reflective approach” to qualitative research by moving iteratively among three distinct long interview designs to make sense of commonalities and differences.
First, our reflective process began with multiple lengthy, relatively unstructured discussions regarding our respective approaches to long interviews, focusing on connections between emergent themes stemming from our reading of the literature and our own experiences. Our discussions represented an important initial step in reflecting on common experiences (Clandinin & Connelly, 1994). Second, and building on our initial discussions, we each wrote a reflection responding to the following prompts: (a) “Describe the role of interview length in research project X,” and (b) “Did anything about interview length strike you as surprising or important (e.g., how long interview length shaped other aspects of the research process)?” The prompts were intentionally open-ended to encourage us to capture the most interesting components of our studies, but also to “figuratively put brackets” that “define[d] the territory” within which to craft our reflections (Van Maanen, 1979, p. 520). This phase of the reflective process produced three reflections averaging 1,800 words each. Third, we continued by reading each reflection and using the comments function to pose questions or ask for clarification where additional commentary was needed. We addressed each question and requested clarification via Skype, until we were unable to further unravel meaningful memories or feelings. We spent many hours in multiple Skype sessions probing one another’s reflections for show-and-tell processes in this way. Fourth, we reread each of the reflections, including our own, and coded them individually to identify passages detailing the importance of interview length. This step resulted in nine coded reflections, including more than 450 examples of coded text. Fifth, we discussed each code and the corresponding text via Skype, collectively conducting a detailed theme analysis based on repetition, recurrence, and forcefulness (Owen, 1984). We moved iteratively between the codes, the corresponding text from the reflections, and the theme analysis document in a meticulous sensemaking process that took 37 hours to complete. Sixth, we reviewed the completed list of themes together, line by line, to confirm that each inclusion addressed interview length as related to show-and-tell, cutting those that did not. Finally, we returned to the literature to compare our themes with prior work on long interviews. While there was value in each theme, we chose to focus on show-and-tell as the one area the extant literature is silent on and we believed to represent the richest area of our analysis. Table 2 summarizes key issues, show-and-tell processes, and conceptual leaping relative to each study.
Some Key Long Interview Issues, Show-and-Tell Processes, and Conceptual Leaping Examples Across the Three Studies.
Our Reflections on Long Interviews as Show-and-Tell Processes
Show-and-tell processes were central to all three of our studies, rendering our interviews more hands-on than traditional question-and-answer speech events by embracing an aesthetic (body-mind-context) experience relying on real-time interactions. We were active and constantly engaged, not only conversing with participants, but also touching, smelling, and hearing contexts. This process inherently took time, especially to set the stage for practical experiences and related discussion and reflection. Examples from our studies included Brett’s catching and releasing trout under the direction and expertise of the fly fishing guides, Todd’s interacting with entrepreneurs using a kaleidoscope and other artifacts, and Sara’s interacting with artists, their customers, and their works-in-progress. Show-and-tell processes included long exchanges between researchers and participants who were genuinely interested in exploring together, leading to richer, more detailed participant explanations. Two types of material elements emerged as especially important in such processes: material objects and material spaces.
Material Objects in Show-and-Tell
We found material objects to be an integral component of show-and-tell. Sara described “interaction with artifacts during long interviews” as central to her study. Todd cited “important benefits” of the show-and-tell process that resulted when participants brought objects such as photos, brochures, correspondence, and products to longer interviews, with one informant even creating drawings in situ. In our experiences, many objects became part of show-and-tell through serendipity, chance, or surprise. Objects embodying a serendipitous element were distinct from deliberate and intentional objects, which are known in advance to both researcher and participant, and which commonly include items required to navigate the interview. Participants often sent Brett lists of gear he would need for their day-long river trips, such as fishing gear, clothing, and safety items (including bear spray), all of which were necessary for partaking in show-and-tell. Brett found that the absence of intentional objects could hurt show-and-tell. During the pilot interview, the guide expressed disappointment that Brett had neglected to bring polarized sunglasses as requested. This motivated Brett to be more mindful of the items needed for subsequent interviews, not just for data generation, but also for supporting his acceptance as “one of them,” which included dressing the part.
Our analysis revealed three types of serendipitous material objects: (a) objects brought or shown by the researcher, carrying an element of surprise for the participant and sometimes, through unexpected interactions, for the researcher; (b) objects brought, shown, or created in situ by the participant, carrying an element of surprise for the researcher; and (c) objects encountered by chance, carrying an element of surprise for both the researcher and the participant.
Material Objects Brought or Shown by the Researcher
The first type of material object includes those brought or shown by the researcher as a means to enhance the interview, while paying careful attention to their possible impact on participant responses. For example, in the second phase of Todd’s interviews, he brought a physical object (a kaleidoscope) and a handout explaining its use as a metaphor. The purpose of bringing the kaleidoscope was to help participants more easily understand and apply complex theoretical ideas during the interviews. As Todd observes: [T]he complex and abstract nature of the theoretical ideas being explored [placed] a heavy cognitive load. . .on our informants to quickly understand and immediately apply these ideas to their stories, and these objects helped us explain and make sense of these ideas for our informants and aided them in retelling. . .their stories applying these ideas.
Objects researchers brought or showed included thank-you gifts in Sara’s study (e.g., freshly roasted espresso beans for the luthier, specialty cookies from the mixed media artist’s favorite Italian bakery, the sculptor/painter’s favorite charcuterie), which were unexpected from the participant’s perspective. Following Douglas’ guidance (1985), these objects helped to build trust and rapport with participants and set the stage for deep conversation. Although gifts were originally intended as a simple thank you, Sara eventually noticed that they fostered conversation about deeply personal reactions and stories, which inherently affected the outcome of the study by providing Sara with rich understandings.
I’d frequently bring [gifts]. They often shared these items with me as we sat discussing a number of topics related to the study. Ultimately, such interactions with artists resulted in my becoming friends with them – how could I not, spending more time with them in the field than with my own blood/legal family?—and this level of friendship, evidenced by their invitations for dinner at their homes, as well as a variety of other social gatherings, was crucial in generating the in-depth understanding of how artists and their customers co-create aesthetic value through the intertwined processes of imagining, contemplating, and consensus building.
Some participants’ interactions with researcher-supplied objects were unexpected, ultimately sparking conceptual leaps. For example, Todd was surprised to see one participant play with the kaleidoscope, unexpectedly turning it clockwise at times (rather than consistently counterclockwise, as Todd demonstrated), and describing the difference between gradual transitions that permit a return to previous patterns and moments of precipitous change from which there is no turning back. For Todd, the participant seemed to be describing the reversibility of time for and the predictability of events in slow-moving equilibrium systems (consistent with neoclassical economics), and the irreversibility of time for and the unpredictability of events in fast-moving disequilibrium processes (consistent with complexity theory). Not only did the kaleidoscope appear to have greater theoretical scope than Todd had realized, but it also offered a unique complexity-theoretic view of entrepreneurship appropriate for the fast-paced, unpredictable, disequilibrium contexts many entrepreneurs face—a view Todd did not fully appreciate until the surprise of his participant’s creative point led him to reflexively ponder these issues. Bringing in the kaleidoscope itself to explore the kaleidic metaphor helped Todd see radical Austrian economics as a unique and virtually unexplored strand of complexity theory—one driven by imaginative agents and rooted in contextualism, as opposed to the search/discovery-driven perspectives and mechanistic/organic worldviews that dominate complexity-theoretic approaches to entrepreneurship.
Todd also found that researcher-supplied material objects, such as the kaleidoscope, could generate feelings of angst that had to be managed. Some of Todd’s participants, initially wary of the kaleidoscopes (“What is this? Is this economics for kindergarteners or what?”) later became comfortable using them to help them engage with abstract theoretical ideas and concretize those ideas through rich personal stories. One initially reluctant participant in particular came to appreciate the generative potential of the kaleidoscopes so much that he said he planned to adopt them in his own consulting work.
Material Objects Brought, Shown, or Created In Situ by Participants
The second type of material objects included those brought, shown, or created in situ by participants, which often became focal points for interaction as researchers and participants explored those items together. Examples included (a) a Polynesian jade hook, which one fishing guide described to Brett as possessing luck intended to protect him as he waded, arms interlocked with the guide’s, across a violent stretch of river; (b) a photograph showing a plane crash in which the entrepreneur (en route to a job site) trudged through deep snow in the mountains at night to summon help, a map illustrating hazards and security issues in an entrepreneur’s environment, a sketch connecting elements of an entrepreneur’s career, and a prototype demonstrating an entrepreneur’s concept, all used by participants to support their discussions with Todd; and (c) dead insects, animal bones, and dried flowers an artist in Sara’s study had collected to use in the narrative boxes she creates. Incorporating such objects helped participants communicate ineffable, complex, or abstract ideas through show-and-tell, using visual, tactile, and auditory mediums to support their narratives, rather than simply talking. Exploring show-and-tell objects required more time, but it seemed to enhance participants’ stories by rendering them clearer, fuller, and more concrete. For Brett, the guide’s reference to the Polynesian jade hook not only drew his attention to elements of luck in traversing the violent river, but also led to the guide’s sharing stories of how the river had claimed the lives of others and also deterred poachers from targeting such sections of the river. This helped Brett to better understand how the guides can use specific river conditions to determine where to spend their time policing, an important facet of theorizing on boundary conditions (e.g., critical geographical considerations) that reinforce policing work.
Sara’s questions about tacit knowledge in the creation process highlighted the interplay between material objects and ineffable ideas. Sara’s participants expressed difficulty verbalizing how the “feel” artworks-in-progress evoked in their bodies helped them develop, for instance, a perfectly tuned high-end guitar with the type of sound a customer had requested. In an attempt to better explain it, Sara’s luthier held and guided her hand so she could experience this “feel” in her own body. Although it took months for participants to trust her to touch artworks, the wait was well worth it, as it was only then that Sara started understanding the role of the body and of tacit and ineffable processes in the creation of aesthetic value. Although material objects were not originally part of her research focus, this experience led Sara to revise subsequent interview protocols to continue exploring their importance; they turned out to be central to the processes Sara was exploring.
Generating data from participant-driven objects allows researchers to capture the richness of the show-and-tell experience even when they are unsure of what they need to capture. For Sara, this meant using multiple types of recording devices (audio and video recorders) to capture abstract ideas or tacit knowledge. This required advance preparation of specialized equipment, but it helped generate data through alternative senses (including touching different woods as part of guitar construction). The video footage she gathered was particularly useful after she left the field, when a co-author with a strong background in embodiment and relational perspectives joined the project. The co-author’s help in digging deeper through footage and long interview transcripts was fundamental for re-analyzing micro-interactions between individuals and artworks-in-progress through an alternative lens. This process eventually led the co-researchers to notice the importance of nonverbal communication between entrepreneurs and customers as they collaborated in the creation of unique artworks and, in the process, aesthetic value. Although 11 months of video recordings entailed an overwhelming amount of data, without it, Sara would not have been able to re-analyze interactions and retrospectively make sense of unresolved “hunches” experienced in the field (see Locke et al., 2008). Similarly, Brett used two audio recorders, one fastened onto his shoulder to record his “reflections” inconspicuously “during lulls in the conversation or brief moments where the guide might walk ahead on the trail.” Such snippets provided important cookie crumbs for Brett to retrace in his mind after an interview ended, preserving important reflections about objects participants brought or small conceptual leaps he would otherwise likely forget after many intervening hours of conversation.
We also found that using long interviews to explore material objects meant adapting to changing circumstances and embracing uncertainty about the exact length of interviews. Sara’s reflection describing her interviews as “of no particular length” underscores this point: The creative nature of the processes Sara was studying “dictated” the length, “rather than the other way around.” That is, although some artworks (e.g., custom paintings) could take about a month to finish, others (e.g., high-end guitars) took several; thus, in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the creative processes involved, she had to spend close to one year in the field to see several artworks to completion. Additionally, some creative processes entailed wait times (e.g., while glue, paint, or varnish to dry; as an entrepreneur slept on how to address a particular customer request), requiring breaks of unspecified length during the long interview. Sara was forced to be patient in her interactions with objects, including waiting for opportunities to explore them with participants. Often, Sara felt like a “researcher-on-call,” literally waiting for phone calls from artists (sometimes receiving only a 30-minute notice) letting her know that both artist and artwork-in-progress were ready to proceed to the next stage. Although this required Sara to have a very flexible schedule, it also allowed her to explore and understand more thoroughly the central role of material objects in the creative process.
Material Objects Encountered by Chance
The third type of material objects included those encountered by chance, such as found objects. For example, in Sara’s study, one artist found cabinet doors in a dumpster, which were significant in his overall creative process: [S]urprisingly to me, one’s discarded object was commonly an artist’s canvas waiting to be painted, or a part of an artwork, embedded with deep symbolic and aesthetic meaning. It couldn’t get more creative or entrepreneurial than this, and were I to “force” the traditional 1-hour-long interview format in a formal setting while holding a (semi-) structured interview protocol, I would have lost so much rich data!
Witnessing—and inquiring about—these serendipitous moments and resource-accumulating behaviors as they happened was fundamental to getting a fuller picture of the entrepreneurial process of bricolage: artists not only collected these serendipitous objects intentionally for a potential use in future entrepreneurial activities (as is typical of bricoleurs), but also engaged their imaginations to consider future customers’ aesthetic reactions as justification for collecting each object (an idea less explored in the entrepreneurship literature and thus a source of creative theoretical insight for Sara). Artists discovering cabinet doors in dumpsters as part of the creative process called Sara to embrace mystery, doubt, and serendipity as fundamental aspects of data generation that required patience.
Material Spaces in Show-and-Tell
Exploring material spaces as part of the show-and-tell process helped set the stage for serendipitous encounters, including unanticipated or chance interactions with surprise people (for example, the other anglers Brett and his guide encountered when hiking to remote rivers). When such encounters occurred, they deeply improved our understanding of a particular material space and aided in theorizing. For instance, during one interview, while hiking a narrow trail along a steep cliff, Brett’s guide stopped and questioned a group of anglers who were heading down to the river to fish. This incident led to “a lengthy discussion about actions that guides had taken previously with anglers in violation of fishing regulations, including heated arguments where the guide had broken other anglers’ fishing rods or physically fought with [them] at river access points.” The chance encounter helped Brett recognize his own feelings of discomfort and solitude. Brett and the guides were largely alone in remote wilderness, hiking along steep cliffs without access to emergency services. Feelings of solitude gave way to recognizing that the trout were, in some ways, equally vulnerable, as the guides policing the rivers served as the only practical line of defense between the trout and poachers. There were no conservation officers patrolling these remote rivers. Being there, feeling discomfort, seeing the guides in action, and conversing with them led to theorizing various types of policing as defensive institutional work. Brett believes that this conceptual leap, which led him to see the guides as police instead of outdoor docents, occurred only because he explored places that elevated his discomfort and required many hours to reach. One clear advantage of show-and-tell included seeing the guides as enforcers of regulations, causing Brett to rethink the state’s monopoly on violence within a given territory, as classically theorized by Max Weber (see Costas & Grey, 2018).
When designing long interviews that included show-and-tell, we tried to anticipate the implications of three types of material spaces: (a) extreme and dangerous material spaces; (b) hidden material spaces and places; and (c) traditional material workspaces.
Extreme and Dangerous Material Spaces
The first type of material space included extreme and dangerous locations. For Brett, this included anticipated dangers (such as weather reports detailing dangerously low temperatures) as well as unanticipated dangers (such as a rattlesnake biting the participant in the wilderness, where common medical resources were unavailable). Anticipated dangers included physiological needs, such as safety issues: having enough “wood for a fire to stay warm on days where the temperature failed to reach zero degrees.” This was important to consider ex ante, because having such resources on hand was one way to limit the risks associated with extreme research contexts. Such items were simply unavailable once interviews commenced. In some ways, warmth helped to set the stage for show-and-tell by simultaneously embracing extreme conditions and accounting for fundamental human comforts. Moreover, planning for such safety issues spotlighted the extreme conditions commonly experienced in these places, helping Brett theorize on the interplay between duty and violence in remote wilderness locations. Brett found unanticipated dangers more difficult to deal with. One example included “sitting in a boat. . .floating in river water during a large number of lightning strikes.” Brett learned to embrace his vulnerability because of the constant danger. It “made us feel vulnerable and I think that vulnerability serves as an excellent foundation to connect with another person.” By embracing it, he was able to reflect on how the vulnerability of the guides and the trout helped shape how the guides perceived their work and their roles in “fighting for the fish.”
Exploring extreme and dangerous locations also included giving participants more control over direction and timing, not only for traversing rugged landscapes, but also regarding the conversation flow. We found that ceding control in this way required us to remember to return at some point to the prepared interview topics, keeping a mental list of what had been covered and what had not. For Brett, ceding control meant that the guides dictated the places they visited and when they visited them. The longer they hiked along the rivers, the more likely they would encounter other anglers and possibly the need to enforce regulations. It was at those points that Brett would reclaim the reins of the conversation to explore policing work through probing questions. Sometimes this occurred early in the interview, if Brett and the guide encountered wrongdoers soon after setting out, while at other times the topic came up much later, depending on who or what they did or did not encounter.
Hidden Material Spaces and Places
The second type of material space included hidden spaces and places, where participants functioned as gatekeepers who might choose to grant access. We use the term hidden to capture their inaccessibility without access granted by the participants; they must welcome the researcher in to unveil what is otherwise concealed. These spaces (e.g., participants’ homes) were often deeply personal to participants, and we recognized the importance of treating them with respect and care. Sara, for example, attempted to avoid imposing her presence on her artists’ homes by playing the “researcher-on-call” role (as explained earlier), and also stopped using recording devices mid-study with one artist who expressed discomfort with them and shut down when they were turned on (despite having accepted their use when consenting to the study). Furthermore, Sara’s “work” spaces included not only participants’ homes or studios, but also off-site locations, such as vehicles, supply stores, art galleries, and even the alleyways where artists foraged for discarded objects. Brett also reflected on occasions when participants chose to show him hidden spaces containing “amazing, secluded and incredibly vulnerable” landlocked populations of wild and native trout. Brett believed they shared these hidden places with him because they believed he would not return. Accessing hidden places helped Brett understand how some of the guides considered their vigilantism morally justified because they worked to protect vulnerable trout populations—for instance, at the base of a waterfall, where the river’s topography locked the trout in location. Listening to their evocative stories in those places gave Brett a sense of their perception of moral righteousness in illegal acts of vigilantism that most audiences would not condone.
Traditional Material Workspaces
The third type of material space included more traditional workspaces. In Todd’s study, these included offices and conference rooms at the researcher’s and participants’ places of work, and facility tours, which occurred only at participants’ workplaces. Notably, in contrast to Brett’s and Sara’s studies, which relied on inherently unpredictable material spaces traversed by surprise customers and wrongdoers, Todd’s study combined deliberate and intentional material objects with material space to “set the stage” for long interviews in more traditional offices and facilitate the show-and-tell process. These included both Todd’s workplace (conference rooms) and participants’ workplaces (conference rooms, offices, laboratories, restaurants, site tours). Setting the stage meant creating a material space void of interruption, which supported an interactive dialogue as Todd and the participants co-interpreted and co-constructed an intersubjective understanding. The interview handout developed in the first part of the case study was fundamental to achieving such understanding, with participants asked to retell those parts of their stories that resonated with the ideas in the handout. Together with the interview handout, actual kaleidoscopes served as visual aids and physical props that participants were invited to play with and leverage for expressing their experiences in terms of abstract theoretical concepts. A controlled material space, combined with material objects, facilitated researcher-practitioner collaboration and helped frame the conversation in terms of radical Austrian economic theory. The complexity of Todd’s theoretical perspective required intense focus and extensive lengths of time, both of which could be managed in traditional workspaces.
Discussion
The purpose of this paper was to detail how long interviews are uniquely positioned to integrate material objects and spaces into interview designs and how the rich data generated from show-and-tell can aid in making conceptual leaps, which constitute the fundamental building blocks of theorizing (Klag & Langley, 2013; Mintzberg, 2005). Accordingly, ours is a relatively modest attempt to explore the complex relationship between method and theory–a fundamental interaction that has long vexed organizational scholars (Van Maanen et al., 2007). The insights educed from our experiences conducting long interviews encourage us to rethink the field’s dominant interviewing practices that prioritize doing many brief interviews focused on the spoken word at the expense of taking time, going deep and addressing not only language but all the senses. At a fundamental level, our findings urge slowing down. By this we mean adopting “a slower way of scholarly being,” which includes, among other things, privileging “the role of local places, natural environmental surroundings, and material landscapes” (Ulmer, 2017, pp. 202–203). Our approach to long interviews and using show-and-tell processes encourages lingering, pausing, and probing deeply into questions of how and why in ways that a “hurried, mechanical, assembly-line” approach simply does not allow (Ulmer, 2017, p. 201).
We continue by reflecting on a number of major inroads and key benefits of long interviews and articulate seven recommendations for conducting such interviews, with an eye toward helping organizational researchers unleash the power of show-and-tell.
Major Inroads and Key Benefits of Long Interviews
First, we extend prior claims regarding the value of long interviews (McCracken, 1988) by clarifying what long interviews are and what they can provide to the field of organization studies. Long interviews are conversations between two or more people about a common theme that generally last three or more hours and can be completed in one or more sessions with the same participant; they allow researchers and participants to co-experience material objects and spaces and, thus, to co-generate ideas, insights, and knowledge. While researchers have pointed to the benefits of spending more time (e.g., Deetz, 2008; Rynes et al., 1999), they have said far less about the importance of spending that time specifically on interview research. The value of long interviews lies in their potential to tap into the power of show-and-tell, helping researchers see and experience the participants’ social worlds, generate richer stories, and make the conceptual leaps necessary to develop theory. Long interviews afford these benefits because they are open and flexible, helping researchers in trading static lists of interview questions for the freedom to explore material objects and spaces and co-generate ideas with the participants. Long interviews thus allow researchers to deviate from the rigid rules of “rigorous scientific conduct” in order to engage in embodied and reflexive research processes—such as questioning preconceived assumptions and reflecting continually and dialogically on their research—that inherently require time (Czarniawska, 2016, p. 617). More time spent interacting with participants can thus produce more holistic explorations of “the unanticipated and unexpected” (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2007, p. 1266), and of organizational phenomena that might be taken for granted or simply left unsaid (see Cunliffe, 2016). By clarifying what long interviews are and opening researchers’ imaginations to what they can do through show-and-tell, we present them as a tool that can aid the discovery process.
Second, we call for researchers to integrate material objects and material spaces intentionally into long interview designs. They can enrich data generation by shifting the dynamic from the traditional question-and-answer to co-experienced show-and-tell, which can produce rich and insightful data that is both told through stories and experienced through an inherently hands-on approach. Show-and-tell is about bringing material objects and material spaces into long interviews as what Locke and colleagues (2004) termed “inspirational resources,” which aid data generation by embracing experiences that spark imagination and discovery. Both Brett’s and Sara’s studies demonstrate how show-and-tell can occur when researchers enter the social worlds of participants, while Todd’s study teaches us that show-and-tell can also be enacted by setting the stage for a participant to experience a social world constructed by the researcher. Show-and-tell can include material spaces, where the participant is “spatially conscious” (Bloch, 2018) and each part of the experience is contextualized. This can help generate especially insightful data because the show-and-tell process is embedded in places with vivid histories and meaning for participants (Becker & Burke, 2012). Additionally, careful integration of material objects, such as meaningful photographs (Ray & Smith, 2012) or drawings produced in situ by participants (Allen, 2012), can set the stage for generating evocative stories that can help researchers understand otherwise ineffable, overly abstract, or complex phenomena. Creating or using material objects as part of show-and-tell builds on the position that objects represent fundamental aspects of organizational life and carry embedded meanings constructed by participants (Hatch & Yanow, 2008).
Thus, we argue that long interviews embody more than the “speech events” described by McCracken (1988) and Spradley (1979) and typically practiced by organizational researchers, which overplays the role of language. Instead, they help researchers remain open to feelings and experiences by exploring particular social worlds alongside participants. Consequently, we see show-and-tell as being especially well suited to address the wave of innovative qualitative research demanding such direct, time-intensive approaches that is currently afoot in organization studies: for example, (a) the nascent multimodal turn in organization studies (Boxenbaum et al., 2018), which encourages researchers to generate data by “seeing it, moving in it, touching it, feeling it” (Zilber, 2017, p. 76); (b) the explosion of paradox studies in which researchers find novel ways to introduce “narratives, photographs, organizational artifacts, and non-verbal interactions” to generate rich insights for multifaceted and ambitious research projects (Andriopoulos & Gotsi, 2017, p. 524); and (c) the burgeoning practice turn in organization studies, especially work exploring bundles of aesthetic and ambiguous practices that require “zooming in” through field immersion and “zooming out” to make sense of how these practices unfold across sites (Nicolini, 2012, 2009). We posit that each of these approaches, along with others (e.g., organizational stigma research, process research, “grand challenges” research), exposes an underlying need: the need to spend more time. This includes more time for exploring, more time for conversing, more time for doing, more time for reflecting, and more time for theorizing.
Third, we illustrate how the adaptability of long interviews can help researchers integrate show-and-tell processes into different qualitative approaches. Indeed, our own approaches ranged from interview research akin to “wayfaring” (Cunliffe, 2018), to case study research using both open-ended interviews and “inter-views” (Kvale & Brinkman, 2009), to a multi-sited micro-ethnography using in-depth interviews and “spect-acting” (Gill, 2011). Additionally, our types of reasoning ran the gamut of possibilities, including inductive, deductive, and abductive. Table 1 summarizes other key differences across our experiences. By drawing attention to these differences, we begin to highlight the range of possible uses of long interviews and point out their potential as a highly customizable tool with the capacity to serve ambitious studies. Long interviews are especially appropriate for exploring the burgeoning interest in ineffable, abstract, and complex organizational phenomena and ambitious research questions that continue to gain more ink in top journals. Consequently, long interviews that unleash the power of show-and-tell not only echo the adaptable spirit of qualitative methods in organization studies, but also can be used to respond to broader calls for innovative and diverse qualitative approaches that promote new ways of seeing organizations (Bansal et al., 2018).
Finally, we explicate how long interviews can aid theory development. The interplay between method and theory has long evaded organizational researchers (Sutton & Staw, 1995; Weick, 1995), even inspiring special issues that describe the relationship as “complicated” and a source of “befuddlement” (e.g., Van Maanen et al., 2007, p. 1146). While we do not claim to fully bridge this chasm, we do make progress on this front. Building from our own experiences, we identify how various aspects of long interviews helped inspire what Klag and Langley (2013; also see Mintzberg, 2005) described as conceptual leaps: that is, “seeing” and “articulating” empirical data in imaginative ways that help generate abstract theoretical ideas. Interviewing guides for many hours in the wilderness helped Brett understand and explain their policing of remote rivers. Todd, spending hours with participants and using a kaleidoscope as the locus of interaction, was surprised to see a participant turn the kaleidoscope clockwise while unexpectedly describing the reversibility of time—a view that was not part of the interview handout but that turned out to be fundamental to his study. After spending many months interviewing participants, Sara was granted permission to touch the wood of a custom guitar-in-progress, leading her to better understand the role of imagined customers and artworks in the co-creation of aesthetic value. Indeed, long interviews can help researchers see phenomena in unpredictable ways by giving them time to recognize, nurture, and reflect upon hunches and puzzling encounters, and thus develop richer stories (see Locke et al., 2008). These conceptual leaps are then woven together throughout the research process and are precursors to theory development (Klag & Langley, 2013; Mintzberg, 2005). They embody the essential ingredients researchers need to combine and let simmer to develop insightful theory. Because conceptual leaps are helpful (and perhaps necessary) for understanding complex phenomena and long interviews provide ample time for conceptual leaps to develop, we argue that long interviews represent one especially powerful method for theory development.
Seven Recommendations for Conducting Long Interviews and Unleashing the Power of Show-and-Tell
Drawing on the insights that emerged from our reflective analysis of our experiences using long interviews, we offer a number of strategies for “doing” long interviews, with a particular focus on unleashing the power of show-and-tell processes:
Pursue ambitious research projects. Incorporate show-and-tell into long interviews to explore organizational phenomena that are simply inaccessible or far too complex to reasonably explore without spending extraordinary amounts of time talking and doing things with participants. Tap into the power of show-and-tell to investigate research questions that target complexity: for example, the bundles of practices that constitute organizations, including aesthetic, ambiguous, and multifaceted activities (for example, perfume-making) that are built on particular emotions and embodied experiences (Islam et al., 2016). Take time to feel the emotions and become part of the experience. Challenge what you know, as well as the assumptions you bring into the research process, by embracing curiosity, surprise, and hunches (see Locke et al., 2008) that arise during long interviews, using these to explore and understand phenomena in unexpected—yet richer—ways.
Make interviews experiential by bringing in objects. Use long interviews to shift interaction with participants from passive question-and-answer sessions to an active show-and-tell process that engages all the senses. Integrate material objects, such as photographs (Ray & Smith, 2012), into the interview process. Look at objects, pick them up, and explore them with participants. Invite participants to bring a meaningful object to the interview, or bring relevant objects yourself to facilitate inquiry. Material objects take time to explore, but their presence often results in highly generative discussions. For example, long interviews can be used to explore material objects such as stench and blisters within the workplace (Stowell & Warren, 2018) by going there, smelling the stench, touching the tools that create the blisters, and interviewing participants while reflecting with them at length.
Go exploring. Use show-and-tell to explore a variety of spaces, such as extreme research sites (Hӓllgren et al., 2017), that would be inaccessible within the time constraints of shorter interviews (see also Cunliffe, 2018; Whiteman, 2010). Remember to be open to unexpected encounters—and to carefully gather resources beforehand to obviate the risks associated with extreme research contexts. Long interviews that incorporate show-and-tell are one way researchers can become embedded, moving within a landscape alongside participants throughout the interviewing process. This blurring of lines between interviewing and fieldwork also helps researchers embrace methodological pluralism in qualitative approaches (Cunliffe, 2018), especially as show-and-tell processes help long interview data become more than just spoken words. Recognize that places can be generative and help to guide your understanding by shaping your activities with interview participants.
Take time to discover hidden stories. Use long interviews to do things with participants, in the hopes of accessing hidden narratives, which often include the provocative and insightful data needed to generate conceptual leaps and later theory development. Descriptions of taboo or illegal behaviors related to organizational stigma, for example, require participants’ trust to unlock them (Hollway & Jefferson, 2013) and time to develop; thus, they might fail to emerge during shorter interviews. People develop bonds by spending time and doing things together—indeed, benefits that show-and-tell can provide. Choose research topics that are difficult to access—for instance, the identities of LGBT ministers (Creed et al., 2010)—and use longer interview lengths to generate discussions that take surprising and vivid turns. The uncertainty of how and when such turns might occur means that researchers should structure show-and-tell processes to be open and flexible, increasing the chances of uncovering what is otherwise hidden or left unsaid (see Cunliffe, 2016).
Break with traditional roles. Use show-and-tell to break with traditional researcher and participant roles. This can extend as far as a wholesale role reversal, where—at least intermittently throughout the interview—the participant asks questions and the researcher responds to them, leading to more balanced and fluid conversations (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). Let participants lead the way as you explore material objects and spaces together; after all, it is their social worlds that we as researchers aim to understand. Why not empower them to show us what they perceive as important, rather than overlay our preconceived explanations onto interviews? Instead of avoiding feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness, allow such heightened emotional states to inspire your imagination and curiosity. Treat participants as collaborators and co-generate ideas together, and hand them the reins when necessary to navigate extreme, dangerous, or unfamiliar research contexts.
Be prepared to feel fatigued. Anticipate a mental and physical marathon because “showing and telling” for hours can be downright exhausting. Have access to food, water, and restroom facilities, and be open to taking breaks. If exhaustion escalates to the point that the interview is no longer productive, call it, and reconvene another day. Echoing Weiss (1994), spending more time for the sake of meeting some premeditated time limit is not likely to be productive. Also, consider scheduling a series of shorter interviews with the same participant, perhaps arranged in one- to two-hour segments, to help manage fatigue and access. Convincing participants to give up five hours of their day is no easy task. But we found that being honest with them about their time, even revealing that interviews had been running long, was generally met with little resistance. Also, share ideas on how they might benefit from participating. When it comes to an exhausted participant, do not hesitate to grab a broom (or the equivalent, based on your research context) to help clean up their workspace after a long day of activity. A little elbow grease goes a long way in helping an exhausted participant offset the time commitment they generously provided to you.
Conduct fewer interviews. Finally, use long interviews that include show-and-tell processes as a license to reduce the number of interviews needed to publish an article from a particular study. Instead of quantity of the interviews, emphasize the quality of experiences and depth of story-based descriptions generated. Consider, for example, including 8 to 12 long interviews that tap into rich show-and-tell processes instead of the typical 50 to 60 limited-to-speech events. We suspect researchers may have avoided long interview designs in part because they break the institutional norm of conducting 50 to 60 interviews per study and thus “violate. . .dogma about rigorous methodology” (Meyer et al., 2005, p. 470). However, rigorous research does not require a large number of interviews. Just as ten years’ experience doing a job is not the same as one year’s experience repeated ten times, one five-hour interview is not the same as ten thirty-minute interviews. The depth, the range of issues, and the degrees of nuance, complexity, and “realness” of show-and-tell in long interviews can be powerful. Try eliciting fewer, highly evocative story-based descriptions.
Conclusion
This paper takes a first step toward exploring the value long interviews can provide to our field. Long interviews are an important but little-used door to generating rich story-laden data by unleashing the power of show-and-tell. We recognize that there is ample room to develop additional strategies for conducting long interviews, some of which might combine what we have presented here, while others might shed new light on how to best leverage long interviews. Long interviews that tap into the potential of show-and-tell can fundamentally change the interview process, including how qualitative researchers generate data and the richness of the data they generate—and, consequently, the conceptual leaps they make and the theories they build. We encourage researchers to consider show-and-tell-based long interviews in their work and, since there is no “boilerplate” (Pratt, 2008, p. 856), embrace the freedom to explore the complex, nuanced, and messy social worlds of participants in categorically different ways. Doing so, we believe, will help researchers make important theoretical progress on a variety of fronts, from multimodal research to paradox studies to practice approaches to “grand challenges” research—and beyond.
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.
