Abstract
We are currently witnessing two concurrent trajectories in the field of research ethics, namely the increasingly explicit and formalised requirements of research governance and the ongoing debate around the implicit nature of ethics, which cannot be assured by these methods, and related—for some—the role that reflexivity can play in research ethics. This article seeks to address two questions. First, given the focus of these discussions is often theoretical rather than on practice, how do our colleagues engage with research ethics and what is their ethical position? Second, given reflexivity is typically focused on knowledge construction, to what extent does it influence (if at all) their ethics throughout the research process? Interviews were undertaken with senior colleagues who have established modes of research practice and ethical approaches. Drawing on understandings of reflexivity and ethics, this article explores an ethical subjectivity that was typically reflective and sometimes reflexive and was usually related to personal rather than procedural ethics. It demonstrates contrasting ethical concerns of society, participant and researcher community, and how some researchers saw their ethical obligation as focused on producing meaningful research at the expense of more traditional concerns for the research participant.
Much of the literature on research ethics focuses on the principles of ethical research and the means by which this can be accomplished. Those who point to the limitations of formal ethics stress the importance of individual and situational ethics, especially when facing ethical dilemmas ‘in the moment’ that require an immediate and personal response and cannot be codified. Alongside these debates, there has been a growing interest in the notion of reflexivity as a means to improve the trustworthiness (Finlay, 2002) and, some argue, the validity of research (Guillemin and Gillam, 2004; see also Pillow, 2003) and recognise the partial nature of knowledge produced. Curiously, despite reflexivity having become claimed by some as the marker of the ‘good’ researcher (Alvesson et al., 2008), it is not often drawn into discussions of research ethics or is usually limited to knowledge construction rather than the researchers’ construction of ethical judgement in the field. Indeed, a review of the literature suggests that its employment in research practice may be limited apart from some notable exceptions (e.g. Cunliffe, 2002b, Finlay, 2005). Furthermore, the literature rarely goes beyond abstract debate to look at our ethical practice or community. The article therefore seeks to answer the following questions: What do we understand by the term ‘research ethics’? How do we practice research ethics and what informs it (to what extent is it influenced by formal ethics, personal ethics, the academic community for examples)? And, to what extent are we reflexive in our ethics? To achieve this, the article examines accounts of research practice in order to understand the nature of ethical practice and how researchers constitute themselves as ethical subjects.
Rather than relying on the author’s personal experiences, as much of the literature addressing ethics does, this article draws on in-depth interviews with established and successful academics within the field of organisation and management studies who have undertaken empirical research. Importantly, interviewees were allowed to interpret what ‘counted’ as research ethics and to frame their responses according to their own position on the subject matter (cf. Crow et al., 2006; Wiles et al., 2006).
The article is structured as follows: it summarises the literature exploring research ethics (in management research particularly), drawing on literature critiquing and defending the formal ethical governing mechanisms and how they relate to personal ethics, and then it addresses reflection and reflexivity and their relationship to research ethics. The empirical section of the article reveals how management researchers frame notions of research ethics and the dilemmas they encounter and negotiate in their relationships with organisations, research participants, their colleagues and institutions. The article reveals insights into the role of formal ethics, personal ethics and reflexivity, hitherto under-examined in scholarship on research ethics. The discussion explores the different approaches to ethics, reflexivity and the challenges faced by the community in addressing these concerns.
What do we say about research ethics?
Discussions of research ethics typically orientate around practices such as seeking informed consent, the avoidance of harm, ensuring privacy and confidentiality, the avoidance of deception and the contrast between dutifully following process and procedure and the reality of ethics, which often calls upon different ethical perspectives. Much of the literature focuses on the problems associated with increasing formalisation and bureaucratisation via codes and committees (‘ethics’ or ‘mission’ creep (Carr, 2015; Haggerty, 2004; Hammersley and Traianou, 2014)). Concerns include the implied universality of ethical judgement through the use of generic benchmarks to assess the ethical standards (Cannella and Lincoln, 2007), their sectional and thus exclusionary nature (Brewis and Wray-Bliss, 2008), the ways in which ethical committees limit academic freedom (Carr, 2015; Graffigna et al., 2009; Lewis, 2008) and are perceived as focused on institutional liability (Guillemin et al., 2012; Hunter, 2008; Koro-Ljungberg et al., 2007; Munro, 2008).
Criticisms often direct blame on review boards having evolved from a medical framework, which are considered to lack understanding of ethical problems in social research (Perlman, 2006). It is also argued that boards are disproportionately comprised of quantitative researchers who do not fully grasp the nature of qualitative research (Goode, 1999; Johnson, 2014; Schrag, 2011), lack appropriate training (Boden et al., 2009; Schrag, 2011) and a critical reflexivity in their approach (Cannella, 2004). Indeed, qualitative submissions to review boards, particularly ethnographic research (Boden et al., 2009), are more liable to be rejected for failing to provide sufficient detail in terms of the intended process of data collection and protection (Bell and Thorpe, 2013; Hedgecoe, 2008; Schrag, 2011). Broadly, this body of work concludes that ethical committees are potentially irrelevant and/or dangerous to researchers and research quality (Hammersley, 2006; Schrag, 2011) because they rely on an inflexible Kantian ethics that requires us to follow rationalised universal rules that fail to grasp the nuances of research encounters.
The consequence of these prescriptions are reflected in the nature, quality and innovation of research (Wiles et al., 2006), the framing of its design, the type of questions that can be asked, who is included/excluded and what methods of research are deemed valid (Cannella and Lincoln, 2007; Graffigna et al., 2009; Ramcharan and Cutcliffe, 2001; Schrag, 2011). The outcomes may also be political, such as which individuals or groups are deemed as ‘vulnerable’ (Boden et al., 2009; Schrag, 2011) and where committees may be overprotective (Guillemin et al., 2012), which may have the effect of silencing certain voices (Ferdinand et al., 2007) and masking these exclusions (Brewis and Wray-Bliss, 2008). The framing of what constitutes ethics is thus a regulative effect of the discourse of ethics governing research practice (Halse and Honey, 2007; Koro-Ljungberg et al., 2007). It also implies agreement on what constitutes ethical behaviour, where in fact there is often still much debate, for example, in whether, when and to what extent deception may be permissible (see Christians, 2000). In essence, these arguments challenge the value of normative ethics that prescribe universal ethical behaviours.
Some writers suggest that boards are in fact well-equipped to judge qualitative projects (Hedgecoe, 2008) comprised as they are of our colleagues (Guta et al., 2013) and that the formal process provides a framework for researchers (Perlman, 2006), which is grounded in the realities of research (Guillemin and Gillam, 2004). The governing structures may educate and sensitise researchers to the potential implications and consequences of their research (Bell and Thorpe, 2013; Crow et al., 2006; Wester, 2007). Evidence suggests, for example, that ethics is somewhat taken for granted or neglected by researchers, including both those—particularly in the case of more established researchers—who have little formal training (Bell and Bryman, 2007) and early career researchers (ECRs) who have received formal training (Robertson, 2014), and that our reasons for resisting ‘oppressive’ review procedures may be ‘less noble’ (Guta et al., 2013: 8). Furthermore, not all committees are deemed to be as draconian as some of the critics imply, and often the process is characterised by discussion (Robertson, 2014).
The extent to which codes actually direct research is also questioned (Marzano, 2007) since they are also accused of being ambiguous and indeterminate (Goodwin et al., 2003; Wiles et al., 2006) and treated as a ‘tick-box’ exercise disconnected from the realities of everyday ethics (Bell and Thorpe, 2013; Halse and Honey, 2007; Rossman and Rallis, 2010). Such prescriptions can create the false impression of ethical research by absolving the researcher of further responsibilities (Boden et al., 2009; Hardy et al., 2001) such as the long-term effects on participants (Gatrell, 2009; Haynes, 2006), encouraging unreflective applications of rules (Cannella and Lincoln, 2007; Rossman and Rallis, 2010) where researchers unlearn the fundamental processes of everyday listening and observing in favour of selective approaches which avoid ‘forbidden territory’ (Coupal, 2005) and can damage rapport (Crow et al., 2006).
Formal processes are argued to be ‘abstracted from the actual doing’ (Calvey, 2008: 905) and can operate at the expense of personal and situational ethics in which judgement in the moment is required and may be contrary to or beyond guidance, particularly in cases where the topics of research or the nature of the researched–researcher relationship is sensitive, such as interviewing friends about sexual relationships (Brewis, 2014), discussing motherhood and work–life balance (Haynes, 2006) and exploring death (Young and Lee, 1996) where harm may be unavoidable. 1 These are skills that may not be directly teachable but crafted over a lifetime, being inherently ambiguous and indeterminate, requiring flexibility and accommodation (De Laine, 2000). Indeed, while much of the debate around ethics centres on the formal-versus-practice dimensions, there is a growing interest in exploring the interpersonal experiences and everyday practice of ethics.
The literature reflects a shift in interest away from a Kantian (or what Ferdinand et al. (2007) might term ‘traditionalist’) approach, which relies upon a universal code that remains abstract, depersonalised and is considered to mask sectional interests as ‘duty’ and suppress our faculties for reflection (Brewis and Wray-Bliss, 2008). In its place is an emphasis on the situational and critical realities of ethics that operate outside of pre-defined codes and require freedom to act. This is underpinned by a Foucaultian stance on ethics in which we exercise freedom in how we respond to the demands placed upon us and how we become ethical subjects. For others, these relate to an interpersonal ethics (Cunliffe and Karunanayake, 2013): an ethics-of-care (Gilligan, 1982) in which the ‘safeguarding’ required is a fluid, co-constructed notion (Gatrell, 2009) that reflects the embodied and emotional experience of research (Sergi and Hallin, 2011). The ‘radical’ position of the latter relies upon self-reflexivity (Ferdinand et al., 2007), and the former requires as a minimum processes of reflection. Interestingly, alternative notions of ethics such as virtue ethics (the embodiment of desirable or moral characteristics (see MacIntyre, 2007)) and consequentialist ethics (where intended consequences of actions are considered as the basis for judging ethics) are not explicit in this literature, although they are sometimes implied in practice-based situational ethics (judging how best to behave based on perceived consequences) and in terms of the moral being to which we aspire.
Reflection, reflexivity and ethics
Habitual self-reflection is, for Foucault, the means through which we create the ethical subject. Foucault (2000) argues that there are four aspects to this: the ethical substance to be worked on (e.g. feelings, intentions), the mode of subjectivation (how we are ‘incited’ to recognise moral obligations), the means by which we change ourselves to become ethical subjects and the kind of being to which we aspire (p. 265). Ethical subjectivity sets out how we define our ethical positions and how we constitute ourselves as ethical subjects (McMurray et al., 2011), which draws on but is not limited by the discourse of formal ethics. The specific techniques or technologies used to achieve this vary, but self-examination and reflection are key (Foucault, 2000). Reflection is an important aspect of the research process, such as considering how oneself, one’s dispositions, position in the scholarly community and approach to a field of study impact scholarship (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992) and provide the basis for ethical action that may resist codified ethics.
Going beyond reflection, there is the so-called ‘reflexive turn’ (Willmott, 1998), which has been claimed as an expectation (Hassard, 1993; Maton, 2003) or seen as ‘good (presentational) manners’ (Lee and Hassard, 1999: 397), particularly within Critical Management Studies (Fournier and Grey, 2000). It is primarily, though not exclusively, seen as a concern for qualitative researchers (Macbeth, 2001; Ryan and Golden, 2006, see Alvesson, 2003; Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2000). Reflexivity requires us to situate ourselves within discourse of knowledge/power (Caldwell, 2007; Hardy and Clegg, 1997) and to avoid certain discourse or methods becoming ossified (O’Doherty, 2007). Reflexivity—as far as the literature informs us—is typically employed to understand the process of research ex post (Rhodes, 2009; Rhodes and Brown, 2005; Weick, 2002) and focuses on inquiry into knowledge production (Hardy et al., 2001; Holland, 1999; Tsoukas and Knudsen, 2003), ethics and reflexivity of critical writing (Wray-Bliss, 2002) and textual practice (Alvesson et al., 2008). While ethical in its ambitions, reflexivity is less frequently drawn into discussions of research ethics 2 and the role it might play, and yet it is arguably crucial if we are to partially engage with, go beyond, or eschew formal guidelines, as the literature suggests many of us wish or claim to do. Indeed, the use of reflexivity itself warrants attention as it has been accused of being ‘corrupted … a ritualistic, procedural aspect of the critical methodological “toolkit”’ which authors hide behind (Grey and Sinclair, 2006: 447; see also Letiche, 2009; Mahadevan, 2011) to legitimate their research (Alvesson et al., 2008), a similar critique to that of procedural ethics.
There are, as Maton (2003) notes, a number of species of reflexivity such that we should speak not of reflexivity but of reflexivities (see Ashmore, 1989; Lynch, 2000; Woolgar, 1988). Reflexivity goes beyond reflection in that it asks us to question our taken-for-granted assumptions, and that which we already know (Cunliffe, 2009). It is therefore more fundamentally disruptive (Pässilä et al., 2015). Hibbert et al. (2010) distinguish between types or degrees of reflexivity on the basis of whether reflections are open (o) or closed (c) to others and whether the recursion is passive (p) or active (a): repetition (cp), extension (ca), disruption (oa) and participation (op). The closed reflections result in the repetition of accepted practices that create the conditions of verification (see also Pels (2000) and Archer’s (2003) ‘communicative reflexivity’) or involve some extension to one’s understandings based on self-questioning, akin to Archer’s (2003) ‘autonomous reflexivity’. In contrast, open reflections are guided by others and either resemble Archer’s (2003) disruptive, critical ‘fractured reflexivities’ or her ‘meta-reflexivity’ in which participation leads to co-construction of knowledge (see also Davies et al., 2004). Claims to be reflexive can therefore invoke very different meanings.
Different epistemological and ontological assumptions lead us to different approaches to reflexivity (Tomkins and Eatough, 2010), which make different knowledge claims (Johnson and Duberley, 2003; Pillow, 2003), some of which seek to enhance objectivity, while others seek to undermine it (Lynch, 2000). Bourdieu (1988, 2000, 2004) calls for a collective reflexivity on three levels: (1) self-reflexivity, (2) structural reflexivity, reflecting the institutional context and one’s position in it, and (3) the scholarly gaze, or theoreticist bias, which, it is argued, will provide rigour to the research process by ‘neutralizing the bias’ (Golsorkhi et al., 2009: 786). Cunliffe (2003: 990), however, argues for a radical reflexivity with ‘a more critical and ethical basis’ (see also Pollner, 1991), which seeks to be critical in its understanding of organisational practices (studying the constructions of realities of other people) and the research process itself (including the researchers’ constructions), exposing doubts and dilemmas as well as other possibilities and questioning the authority of our accounts (Cunliffe, 2004, 2009; Cunliffe and Karunanayake, 2013). This in turn unsettles claims of neutrality in the de/construction of research data (see also Brewis and Wray-Bliss, 2008; Calás and Smircich, 1999; Hardy et al., 2001; Tomkins and Eatough, 2010) and recognises the limits to our self-knowledge (Johnson and Duberley, 2003; Linstead, 1994; Pillow, 2003).
Reflexivity has often been treated only as a theoretical rather than an embodied (Turner and Norwood, 2013; Wray-Bliss, 2002, 2003) or emotional concern (Burkitt, 2012; Koning and Ooi, 2013; Sergi and Hallin, 2011): an intellectual critique rather than a practice (Cunliffe, 2002a). Even studies that emphasise the relationality of reflexive practice tend to focus on the account and its theorisation (Cunliffe, 2011; Hibbert et al., 2014). But as Mauthner and Doucet (2003) argue, the division between reflexive theory and practice is a false divide of which one consequence is a lack of engagement and few accounts of its adoption in practice (Bell and Thorpe, 2013) beyond autoethnographic accounts (Alpaslan et al., 2006; Ellis and Bochner, 2000; Haynes, 2011; Humphreys, 2005) or reflections separated from the research itself (Thomas et al., 2009). Exceptions can be found in the work of Cunliffe (2002b), Finlay (2005), Riach (2009) and Riach and Wilson (2014). Similarly, Burns et al. (2014) challenge the positions of researcher and researched by taking a reflexive approach to knowledge production (see also Wray-Bliss, 2003). Yet, despite the call for a ‘disciplined’ reflexivity in knowledge production (Weick, 1999), its take-up has been limited and no such equivalence is found in ethical guidelines. 3 Its practicality (Abraham, 2008; Maton, 2003), as well as the emotional cost for the researcher (Sampson et al., 2008), is little explored with reflexivity still remaining a ‘potential tool for ethical research practice’ (Guillemin and Gillam, 2004: 262; see also Hahn, 2006).
Ultimately, many of these arguments remain abstracted from practice. It is claimed that formal ethics are increasingly sidelined in the name of an ethical subjectivity that lays claim to an acute perception of and responsiveness towards the other and which is a fundamentally situated ethics that cannot be prescribed in advance. For critical researchers, there is also the implied claim of reflexivity, following Fournier and Grey (2000). What is not so well understood is how this is put into practice, considering what ethics means to researchers, how it is negotiated and practised, and how it is informed. To explore this, the study examined the reflections of experienced, well-published academics in the field of management and organisation studies to understand more about their own sense of ethics.
Fieldwork
To explore these issues, I draw on the research experiences of those with a recognised track record in research and an established career. The reason for this focus was fivefold. First, successful and established researchers would have more experience of ethics in research by dint of time and number of projects in which they had been involved. Second, their relative success suggests that their research and practice are to some degree accepted by the community as scholarly practice (through refereeing processes, for example—recognising that this doesn’t necessarily mean ethical practice). Third, and perhaps more critically, we might have particular interest in the practices of the ‘top publishers’ and what kind of ethical practice(s) they adopt to achieve their success since they may be role models for others and thus central to the reproduction of research practice. Fourth, it enables us to examine the embedded practices—or habitus—of researchers that has developed over time. Fifth, it allows for the fact that reflexivity in research may take time to develop. The sample, therefore, is specifically focused on those who have established ways of working and who in many cases, as critical researchers, by implication make claims to be both ethical and reflexive in their research and in some cases also explicitly write about ethics and/or reflexivity, rather than aiming to speak for the community as a whole.
A review of high-ranked journals in the field of management and organisation studies was used to identify those with extensive publication records (specifically, the top 10 most published in each of the journals), which provided the sample group. The search was done using Web of Science or Scopus and was based on the Association of Business School’s journal rankings (including three to four rated journals). The date limiter was from 1992 onwards (the earliest limiter available). In selecting the participants, a precise ranking of the ‘top publishers’ (e.g. the ‘top 15’) was avoided as this would enable someone to determine the identity of the interviewees. Further factors considered were length of career and seniority (a minimum of 15 years as an academic was required as a proxy for experience), geographical location (ensuring the sample included representation from Europe, America and Australasia) and gender (desiring a mix, although the sample was biased towards men) alongside the practical considerations of access (reflecting a preference for face-to-face interviews and thus influenced by factors such as attendance at conferences) in selecting the subsample. The focus was on researchers who used, primarily or exclusively, qualitative methods in their work (recognising that multiple paradigms are represented under the qualitative inquiry umbrella Malone (2003)) and who, therefore, were more likely to articulate nuanced understandings of the complexities of ethics in research practice (Halse and Honey, 2007). However, many used mixed methods or had experience in quantitative methods. All researchers were aware of ethical guidelines and there was little difference in attitude towards guidelines between those who had been formally trained at the start and those who had been exposed to procedural ethics during their careers.
In total, 16 interviews (6 women, 10 men) were conducted, mainly face-to-face (3 interviews were conducted via video conferencing software), drawing on the experiences of researchers from the United Kingdom 4 (8), the rest of Europe (4), the United States (3) and Australia (1). The bias in the data collection reflects the prevalence of highly ranked qualitative journal articles being written by this community and means the analysis is focused on countries with (typically) more developed formal review processes (with the United States the most regulated, followed by Australia and then the United Kingdom). However, the European perspective is also reflected in the experiences of two of the US and two of the UK-based respondents who had experience of European institutions. All the interviews were transcribed. The interviews were conducted over a period of 12 months, partly as a result of practical constraints and a preference, where possible, to conduct interviews face-to-face.
There were no refusals to a request for an interview, which were around 1 hour in duration. The sample included a number of academics with current or previous journal editing roles as well as substantial experience in supervising postgraduate research students. Their experience of the research process thus extended beyond their own research projects and, consistent with the project’s objectives, included a broad range of ethical concerns. Unlike Wiles et al. (2006), there was no sense that the respondents were seeking to provide procedurally acceptable or politically correct responses. Indeed, some researchers professed not to be ethical and many were apparently comfortable relaying practices that could be considered questionable by those advocating a procedural approach. This was perhaps a consequence of their seniority and established place in the field allowing confident assertion of, as Brewis and Wray-Bliss (2008) suggest, an ethico-political stance evoked by a developed ambivalence towards formal ethics, a challenge to norms which some may have felt was expected of them (see also Platt, 1981 for a similar experience). 5
Semi-structured interviews were utilised, which sought responses to three broad areas of concern, namely, the researcher’s understanding of research ethics (e.g. what do you understand by the term ‘research ethics’?), their approach to research ethics and experience of ethical dilemmas (e.g. can you give me some examples of challenges or dilemmas you have faced? If so, can you talk me through what happened and why?) and reflections on formal mechanisms for ethical guidance (e.g. what mechanisms are in place to guide your research? To what extent do they guide your research?). These questions may have produced a ‘cultivated reflexivity’ (Bryman and Cassells, 2006) through the explication of their research practice.
Preliminary analysis of the interviews was undertaken throughout the year, affording the opportunity to consider refinements to the interview process (see Strauss and Corbin, 1990) and supporting a process of purposive sampling (Mason, 2002). As the interviewing process progressed, similar themes were identified across the individual accounts (Guest et al., 2006; Morse, 1994). When it became apparent that no new categories or substantively new properties with established categories were being identified, no further interviews were arranged as I felt that a point of ‘saturation’ 6 had been reached. Interviews were utilised because the focus was on the interviewees’ reflections on practice, drawing on their entire career. Furthermore, there were ethical, practical and validity-based concerns with observational or diary methods (e.g. the impact on their research subjects when observing practice, the likelihood of diary-completion and the observer effect on research practice).
Analysis of the interviews initially involved a process of reading and rereading of the transcripts to inductively draw out themes within and then between transcripts. Themes were iteratively discussed and refined in conversation with a colleague. 7 The semi-structured nature of the interviews meant that categories resulted from a mixture of inductive and deductive methods, the latter limited to the broad areas drawn from the literature review (Fereday and Muir-Cochran, 2006) around procedural and personal ethics, and reflexivity. Key themes identified were taken from each transcript and compared. The consistency of the themes led me to conclude that the findings were robust. The quotations representing the various themes were collated and each transcript reread to ensure that the process had not resulted in disembodied accounts that no longer reflected the voices of the participants (Ribbens and Edwards, 1998).
The sample is not claimed to be representative of the population of organisation/management researchers worldwide, or sub-communities such as the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) community, and the study was not designed to compare responses from researchers located in different countries or make generalised claims about communities. Yet, it was interesting to note that despite the diversity of national and institutional settings, many of the approaches to ethics were remarkably similar. Regrettably, some of the richness of the narratives is sacrificed in order to protect the identity of researchers whose work and related stories may be familiar to colleagues in the community (see Wiles et al., 2006). The inclusion of the selected quotes has been agreed with the appropriate participants.
Interviewees are identified in the text by sex, interview number and country of their primary employer (e.g. M/Int4/UK). The data are discussed in two sections, broadly following the debates in the research ethics literature, namely, the engagement with procedural ethics and personal ethics.
Engagement with procedural ethics
In this section, I explore their engagement with procedural ethics, including a critical stance towards formal ethics, views that they are irrelevant to research ethics, limiting to research and compromised in practice, before concluding with the recognition of the guidance they provide.
A critical stance
Echoing critiques in the extant literature around formal ethics (e.g. Boden et al., 2009; Graffigna et al., 2009; Wiles et al., 2006), interviewees were predominantly critical of the effectiveness of formal ethical procedures. One interviewee outlined a ‘radical’ position (Ferdinand et al., 2007): ‘Ethics is ethos; ethos is not about rules, not even perhaps about principles, but about ways of being … You can’t legislate human judgement’ (M/Int6/UK), reflecting the idea that the self becomes ethical in exercising freedom (Foucault, 2000).
Irrelevant
Ethics committees, which were believed to have ‘increasingly high transaction costs’ (M/Int4/UK), were seen as a hindrance or a nuisance, or ignored altogether as irrelevant with only ‘lip service’ (F/Int1/Europe) being paid to them. Responses reflected the different institutional and national distinctions, with the United States, followed closely by Australia, experiencing more extensive regulation, although it was considered to have ‘proliferated’ elsewhere. These formal aspects were viewed as something to ‘get out of the way’ (M/Int4/UK) and typically resulted in ‘no change in behaviour’ (M/Int13/UK). As one respondent noted, the attitude was to ‘satisfy [them] and not lie’ (F/Int14/US). The interviewees consistently argued that the formal procedures within universities were motivated by the ‘prevention of litigation’ and ‘fear of being sued’ (F/Int10/US; see also Furedi, 2002)—a focus on consequences rather than duty—that diluted ‘genuine concern’ (M/Int16/UK) for research participants, although only US-based respondents consistently provided evidence for this likelihood, reflecting the institutional environment and experience of ethical committees.
Some researchers had developed strategies to circumvent formal processes such as delegating the completion of ethics paperwork to junior researchers or avoiding the process altogether. Interestingly, many of the procedural critics seemed to have little experience of or direct engagement with formal processes, hinting at a ‘reflex’ response, which reflects ambivalence towards formal ethics (Brewis and Wray-Bliss, 2008).
Limiting
The respondents discussed how the processes of ethical governance, perceived (perhaps assumed) as dominated by ‘the intellectual hegemony of biomedicine’ (M/Int4/UK), could prevent research associated with certain epistemological traditions (e.g. ethnography), methods (e.g. covert observation) or research topics (e.g. death and dying) from being undertaken, although little evidence was given of their own experiences in this regard. Interviewees gave examples of how sensitive research topics had been reshaped, hidden or carried out ‘surreptitiously’ for the purpose of ‘getting through’ institutional review (F/Int10/US) in a context where increasingly many felt research was expected to be primarily concerned with enhancing corporate effectiveness (Syed et al., 2009). This stressed the importance of the consequences of being able to undertake the research. The following quotation illustrates how the conduct of potentially enlightening forms of research may be foreclosed, limiting researchers to ‘predictable research’ (M/Int15/Europe):
People like Huw Beynon, you know Working for Ford: nobody knew who he was … Has it done harm? No, not really. I think it has been a very classic, good case study that would have breached the ethical codes of that time, but it has helped us immensely to understand the lot of the ordinary worker. So in all it is controversial but then if we in academia don’t do controversial, what’s the point? (M/Int6/UK)
Compromised
Often cited as problematic was the requirement to ask participants to sign informed consent forms. One participant described how she turned it into a ‘plaything’, ‘making people laugh at consent forms even as they sign it’ (F/Int14/US). While acknowledging the importance of participants being ‘aware of what they were doing and why they were doing it’ (M/Int16/UK), they differed in their assumptions and approaches to this. One researcher, for example, argued that if the respondent had agreed to the interview, ‘how can it not be full consent … they’ve agreed to it, what the hell, why would I have some form filled in?’ (M/Int3/UK), clearly rejecting its formalisation. In contrast, another interviewee critiqued the false impression of voluntariness, pointing out that ‘some of them can tell you to go to hell, but many of them cannot or may not, or prefer not to’ (F/Int1/Europe), suggesting—more reflexively—personal ethics may be more sensitive to the position of respondents than formal procedures (see Fine et al., 2000). Others also considered formalised consent as ‘just words on paper’ (F/Int7/Europe), with possible downsides such as ‘placing boundaries or strictures on what they’re actually going to tell me’ (M/Int16/UK) and ‘worrying about potential breaches rather than trying to get at the authenticity of the experience’ (M/Int6/UK), which suggest that the Kantian maxim of not treating people solely as a means to an end could be ignored for so-called authentic data.
As the following quote demonstrates, many respondents pointed out that ‘informed’ consent was often subverted by the lack of complete openness of the researcher regarding their own views (recognising the politicised nature of research) or their undisclosed intentions for doing the research:
[I]t’s kind of an ethical compromise because you’re not revealing your own ethics. I don’t believe that workers are lazy and greedy, so I should really challenge that [managerial assumption], but you can’t afford to do that. Otherwise you won’t get access. (M/Int3/UK)
Predominantly, concerns focused on the dangers of the ‘impression of governability when in reality no such governability exists’ (M/Int4/UK) and the false sense of security that was assumed to arise from having ‘ticked the box’ of ethical approval (M/Int8/UK). The failure to ‘touch … the operationalisation’ of research (M/Int8/UK) appeared to justify the disengagement from formal ethics. One respondent questioned the lack of evidence for the efficacy of regulation, arguing there was a need for ‘some justification of what all the infrastructure is saving us from’ (M/Int11/Australia). Another pointed to the lack of ‘policing’ of many of the codes (M/Int13/UK), which curiously suggests their failure may result from not being sufficiently monitored.
Guidance
However, while all respondents to some extent criticised ethical governance mechanisms, responses were not uniformly negative. Some researchers pointed to their role in providing guidance, a reminder to avoid ‘taking things for granted’ (F/Int12/US), a ‘way of achieving legitimacy in our society’ (F/Int1/Europe) and for some, a tacit ‘security or backup from the institution’ (M/Int16/UK). Few, especially those working outside of the United States, recognised the impact codes may have had in shaping their personal ethics, although one respondent described many practices (such as keeping data in secure locations and destroying it after the project) that are recommended.
Respondents were typically unsupportive of the idea of a bespoke code for management and organisation studies researchers as it meant the replication of the problems found with any code. However, the process of writing was seen by many as potentially beneficial in creating an ethical ‘sensibility’ (F/Int7/Europe). Only one respondent referred to issues of collegial relationships being covered by codes that incorporated ‘your obligation as a researcher … the ways in which you’re supposed to uphold certain ways of dealing with one another professionally’ (F/Int12/US). However, overall most respondents saw little value in procedural ethics (indifferent attitudes towards training were also expressed) and relied upon the ‘ethics within’.
Personal ethics
In this section, I explore how they account for their personal ethics, including their ethical stance and sense of responsibility, the importance of giving voice, protecting participants, sensitivity to self and others and community-level ethical concerns.
Ethical stance
Despite their disengagement with formal ethics, respondents were not neglectful in their approach towards ethical practice and were articulate in explaining their ethics. Indeed, while one respondent expressed the view that he was ‘not only atypical but unethical’ (M/Int5/UK), reflexivity was evidenced in negotiating the challenges of capturing complex, emergent social experiences (Chia, 1996; Cunliffe, 2003). Personal ethics led to different approaches to their research, such as their tendency to either place an emphasis on the value/outcome of their research (indicating a consequentialist stance) and/or an orientation towards and responsibility for research participants (suggesting a duty-based, or ethics-of-care), reflecting on the question, ‘To whom do we owe responsibility?’ (Ferdinand et al., 2007). For example, one participant referred to his approach as ‘ethically satisficing’ while focusing on conducting interesting research (M/Int15/Europe), demonstrating an openness towards flexible interpretations of, or challenges to, ethical protocol, which at best would suggest a ‘closed’ form of reflexivity. For others, care for respondents was the primary concern, focusing on the ‘relationship’ and a ‘sense of empathy’ (M/Int6/UK), ‘an appreciation … for the other person’s views’ (M/Int6/UK), ‘integrity’ (M/Int11/Australia), ‘honouring … the voices they bring to the project’ (F/Int14/US), ‘the obligation to protect informants and not expose or hurt them in any way’ (F/Int10/US), and to challenge motivations, especially about whether the engagement is to ‘get insights into the human condition’ or to ‘further your own interests’ (M/Int6/UK), which hints at methodological reflexivity (Johnson and Duberley, 2003). Indeed, many of the principles that guided fieldwork, such as confidentiality, anonymity, informed consent, avoiding risk and harm to participants, and for some, reciprocity, reflect those found in codes but were claimed to be driven by their personal ethics, often informed by ‘gossip’ (F/Int1/Europe) or conversations ‘that led to the common code [that] circulates in the community and becomes a code’ (F/Int7/Europe), highlighting the roles others play in shaping our reflexive stance (Burkitt, 2012) and ethical subjectivity.
These concerns were complicated when cooperative relationships with organisations were crucial to accessing research participants, or where compromises between the needs of the organisation and individual research participants were required—a tension over which there is a lack of clarity in codes (Bell and Bryman, 2007) and thus is by necessity informed by one’s own ethics. In respect of whether to anonymise organisations, one respondent claimed, ‘I don’t think we should be protecting organisations’ (F/Int1/Europe) and another argued that ‘in some cases the companies deserve the stick’ (M/Int15/Europe). However, others were of the view that organisations were entitled to anonymity, or—more instrumentally—this was a necessary strategy to ensure continued access. There were also moments where the ethical guidelines were seen to be expendable and should be transcended if the circumstances warranted it (see Ferdinand et al., 2007), such as when ‘2,000 people’s jobs are going to disappear and they are not being told’ (M/Int8/UK). Such a consequentialist approach transcends guidelines and requires reflexive consideration of possible impact but can also be ideologically motivated and reflexively ‘repetitious’ (Hibbert et al., 2010).
Ethics was often implicitly or explicitly linked with power (and, for Critical Management researchers, a commitment to identifying subordination in organisations (Fournier and Grey, 2000)), concern for which was almost entirely associated with a personal ethics. One interviewee spoke of research being ‘a way of giving voice to the people who have less power because you actually speak for them and in an anonymized way’ (M/Int11/Australia; see also Kvale (2006) and Essers (2009)). But there was also a fear that the process of research replicated these power relations whereby giving advice in a workplace contributed to ‘the control of employees’ and hence ‘the reproduction of the inequalities within work’ (M/Int2/UK; see also Wray-Bliss, 2003), indicating that potential consequences were often uppermost in researchers’ minds. Respondents were particularly sensitive to the needs of, and effect on, respondents at the lower end of the hierarchy, and some viewed senior managers as being less in need of protection than junior employees. These concerns are suggestive of a closed reflexivity which may be based on self-questioning, although may equally be influenced by conforming to accepted practices in the community (Hibbert et al., 2010). Furthermore, many noted that they tended not to go back to their research site and thus didn’t see the impact of the research process and outputs (see also Wray-Bliss, 2002).
Giving voice
Respondents spoke at length about the dilemmas associated with gathering and reporting data from organisations, which entailed avoiding ‘disembodied accounts of people’ (M/Int2/UK) and ‘setting people up to give the responses your heart wishes they would give’ (F/Int10/US), balancing the desire to be ‘convincing and compelling’ (M/Int16/UK) and honouring the voices of participants while retaining control of how the story is told—a negotiation that exceeds the scope of ethical guidance and that often reflected an ethics-of-care. One respondent described the challenge of negotiating the authorial voice (Bell and Thorpe, 2013; Cunliffe, 2004; Kara, 2013) in the context of one of her studies:
The project could be read as reproducing a certain kind of privilege, and voice … the idea is … to dismantle that voice a little bit … what does it mean to do justice and honour to what they say and not take it at face value? (F/Int14/US)
The desire for authentic data and perceived importance of the study had led one interviewee to undertake covert interviews by securing a tape-recorder under a clipboard, in order to avoid ‘a spooked thing where they tell me the company line’ (M/Int5/UK) which can be interpreted as motivated by the ethical responsibility to ‘expose’ while perhaps underplaying the extent to which data are constructed rather than collected.
Ethical concerns were also raised by ‘the mania for dissemination’ (M/Int8/UK) by funding bodies:
[W]hat are we going to do, disseminate information which shows that supermarkets are just giant bullies and that the managing directors of companies hate them with a passion? … There are ethical issues around power and transparency that the people who insist on your disseminating have not even thought about. (M/Int8/UK)
Protection
The interviewees expressed almost unequivocal support for anonymising the identity of research participants, which while reflecting procedural ethics was predicated on a concern for the consequences. One expressed the view that ‘good researchers … depend on a perception of integrity and … that normally means you don’t blab’ (M/Int8/UK). Other interviewees argued that protecting individuals was paramount ‘because it’s people’s jobs that are on the line … their careers and future security’ (M/Int2/UK). The following interviewee identified a strong commitment towards the protection of participants but went on to express the view that we might be over-sensitive to this concern:
We are sometimes so arrogant in ethical discussions about our power and influence … I can sit here and stew over that. And then realise … maybe 20 people will ever read it and it’s over. (F/Int14/US)
One interviewee took this further noting that in some circumstances it may be appropriate to identify research participants—that some actually wished to ‘share their experiences’ openly (M/Int6/UK), which suggests the possibility of an open reflexivity in which participants were involved in ethical decisions (Hibbert et al., 2010). In contrast, another respondent viewed the desire to be named with suspicion, while another took the decision to observe anonymity irrespective of whether research participants were happy to be named. Journal reviewers were also implicated in the pressures placed on authors to reveal more information about their research site, which could, in turn, risk identification of the organisation (see also Lincoln and Cannella, 2009). 8
Sensitivity
Sensitivity towards participants was a key area of concern and demonstrated the limitations of codes, even leading to contrasting versions of good practice motivated by personal ethics. The consequences of seeing oneself on paper where, as one interviewee noted, ‘people look like idiots’, further noting, ‘you don’t hurt them, their dignity’ (F/Int1/Europe), also persuaded some that returning transcripts to participants should be avoided, reflexively challenging ‘good practice’ in favour of considering the consequences. Another interviewee noted a reflexively disruptive (Hibbert et al., 2010) formative experience early in his career regarding the impact of reporting data in which his feedback on a leader’s style ‘devastated’ the subject (M/Int13/UK; see also Gatrell, 2009; Haynes, 2006).
Demonstrating a responsibility to participants also required judgements as to what data to exclude from written outputs. This was described by one interviewee as the need to recognise that ethics was perhaps of most concern when participants were not ‘present, physically, in the project’ (F/Int14/US). Sensitivity was also raised as a concern for the researcher: the need to ensure there was no personal harm and to balance care-for-self (Koro-Ljungberg, et al., 2007) with care-for-others, particularly as research participants were not considered entirely powerless and often had their own agenda, requiring a reflexivity which goes beyond considering one’s own impact on the field.
Community-level concerns
Interestingly, the ‘critical’ community was identified as often lacking the very reflexivity it claims, damaging relationships with organisations and dishonouring voices in favour of promoting a particular (political) perspective: a comment made by several scholars who would be identified, and self-identified, with this community (see also Wray-Bliss, 2002, 2003). The tendency for some scholars to treat organisations as ‘stupid’ and the researcher as ‘all-knowing’ (F/Int7/Europe) was seen as problematic, along with circumstances where researchers did not demonstrate any interest in the results:
A bit of a bugbear of mine is what I call the ‘scorched earth policy’ of some researchers … You find this particularly with leftist researchers who are so anti-capitalist that they regard the companies they get answers from as kind of dispensable … where do you get that in an ethics form? What are you going to do, have a box saying ‘am I going to be a complete bastard?’ (M/Int8/UK) I feel also often like, I don’t know your participants but I am pissed on their behalf … because even as an outsider reading this project … there [are] 9 times more things … going on in that single quote than you’re allowing, but you’ve picked up on your Lacanian insight and now you’re going to dust off the rest and move on. … I think as a qualitative researcher one of your ethical obligations is … a genuine curiosity and openness. (F/Int14/US)
Hence, the use of different research perspectives led not only to different questions, approaches (such as doing research ‘with’ or ‘on’ the researched—see Pillow, 2003) and analyses but also to different orientations to ethical questions (Ferdinand et al., 2007). This suggests Pels’ (2000) notion of the ‘silent sovereignty of politicized theory’ (p. 14) that he argues leads to a ‘vicious reflexivity’ in which reflexivity is grounded in (and limited to) one’s own analytical framework that can explain and thus liberate the previously unknowing subject. Rather than being non-exploitative, such research fails to reflexively address its mode of production and the interests it serves (Pillow, 2003), reflects personal feelings towards participants (Haynes, 2006) and violates the Kantian maxim of never treating people merely as a means to achieving one’s aims. Criticisms were also levelled at researchers who apparently lacked reflexivity and who were narcissists (Gabriel, 2009) or had a careerist focus (Alvesson, 2013; Wray-Bliss, 2002):
What are we actually doing … are we doing interesting linguistic work where I can boost my career or confirming our own research community … rather than develop[ing] knowledge which has some broader sociological or political meaning? (M/Int15/Europe)
Challenges in the practice of research ethics extended to concerns associated with fellow researchers. Indeed, interviewees believed matters arising within research teams, such as protocols, power relationships, emotional management and interpersonal dynamics (Rogers-Dillon, 2005), were critical when considering the scope and nature of ethics and the environment into which researchers are socialised (Bell and Thorpe, 2013). One interviewee felt there were ‘far more ethical dilemmas between people doing research than there are between researchers and the researched subjects’ (M/Int3/UK) and another felt there was ‘more awareness of ethical problems concerning the relationship with the field than the internal relationships’ (F/Int1/Europe), going on to highlight favouritism of one’s own students and certain colleagues and putting down people you dislike as being seen as ‘natural’ as ‘everybody does it’.
Interviewees stressed their ethical approach to working with PhD students, indicating that they either put their student’s name first on joint publications or, in two cases, didn’t publish with them on principle (a somewhat procedural stance), indicating a ‘sense of responsibility you have to younger colleagues’ (F/Int7/Europe) and echoing the idea of a structural reflexivity. A number of respondents cited cases from their early career where supervisors or project leads had published their work without acknowledgment or treated them as ‘little slaves’ (M/Int5/UK), insisting on having their name attached to work to which they hadn’t contributed (see Wester, 2007). As one interviewee stated, ‘Ultimately, who supervises you is critical’ (M/Int6/UK). More worryingly, when these concerns were raised they were often dismissed or those raising the concerns were ‘intimidated’ (F/Int7/Europe) into dropping their accusations.
Interestingly, these reflections on the community that emerged, unsolicited, in the interviews suggest an inward gaze in which our ethical concerns lie as much with our experiences of the academic community as the field of research. The community-level concerns reflect relationally reflexive practice (Hibbert et al., 2014) that acknowledges it’s not just what we do but also what others do to us that is at stake. But its focus is on the self in the context of the academic community rather than those outside (participants, site of study and so on).
Reflections on reflections
The findings contribute to understandings of what constitutes research ethics, how the ethical subjectivity of management and organisation scholars is constructed, how ethics is enacted and what role reflexivity may play. It argues that while interpersonal ethics and reflexivity are evident, claims for a ‘reflexive turn’ in ethical subjectivity would be overstated.
The different approaches discussed suggest an ethical subjectivity that is at least reflective and sometimes reflexive but that some of these positions are no longer questioned, acting in much the same way as procedural ethics (see also Wray-Bliss, 2003), which suggests reflexivity may only play a limited role in these cases. This is perhaps influenced by the fact that they have become established in the field and have not been challenged or unsettled in their approaches, embedding their ‘conceptual assumptions’ (Letiche, 2009: 293). Indeed, if one has built a successful career based on particular practices, there will be less motivation or understanding for a need to change. This highlights the significance of studying those who are established in their career and the ‘distance’ between training (formal, through supervisory guidance or learning on the job) and establishing a mode of practice which becomes taken-for-granted. The effect of these embedded assumptions that inform their ethical subjectivity can be seen in the distinction between a procedural and interpersonal ethics, differing emphasis on the research outcome or research participant and the frequent emphasis on ethics within the community. Broadly, the ethical subjectivities can be seen to distance themselves from a duty-based ethics in favour of consequentialism and an ethics-of-care.
The literature suggests a distinction between a dutiful or Kantian-informed ethics and an interpersonal ethics and this was reflected in the data as interviewees were keen to distance themselves from formal ethics, despite engaging with many of their principles (see also Brewis and Wray-Bliss, 2008). Given they were all familiar with ethical guidelines, it seems probable (although only partially demonstrated here) that these played a significant role in creating the ethical subject and informing their interpersonal ethics, although interviewees were keen to construct themselves as acting on personal ethics. The choice of research subject, the framing of the question(s) and theoretical bias weren’t explicitly discussed as ethical concerns for the participants themselves (even if they were found in colleagues’ work). Furthermore, reflections on the self and the immediate structural context (Bourdieu, 2000) were also limited, unless reflecting on the ethics within the community. This suggests some limits to the extent of reflexive consideration, but those with heightened sensitivities to participants articulated an ethics-of-care that demonstrated a higher degree of reflexivity. The emphasis on an interpersonal ethics suggests that reflexivity should be central to their ethical position, particularly if it is to be relied upon instead of procedural ethics.
The way in which protocols were considered, and when, illustrates different reflexive strategies whereby researchers place variable weight on the importance of the research, and the need to explore interesting, important and meaningful issues and get to the ‘reality’ of the situation first and foremost, in contrast to a more dutiful, Kantian form of ethics in adhering to ethical principles, or an ethics-of-care, and giving voice to participants on their own terms, or at least making those needs paramount. This led to variation in approaches, some of which would be considered unethical, such as lying to gain access and covert recording, and yet were framed as justified by a higher ethical purpose—a form of moral ideal. Those who routinely placed ‘society’ ahead of ‘participant’ sought ethical justification in the research outcome or consequences of the research.
However, a consequentialist approach cannot be entirely sustained here as it presumes consideration of the relative harms and benefits from this course of action, which is challenging and may not always be undertaken. There is a risk that a utilitarian rule that considers the principle of more good than harm could be presumed, perhaps on the basis that society exceeds the participant(s) or organisation(s). This ethical subjectivity is constituted by emphasising the consequences of research, but how one recognises moral obligations and reaches these conclusions is crucial particularly in the context of academia where research may have limited societal impact and given the limited evidence of researchers returning to their site of study to witness the impact of their research. Here, the mode of subjectivation by which ethics is recognised could become heavily influenced by critical narratives of emancipatory intent that could be corrupted by failing to engage with these critical ambitions reflexively, with significant effects on the moral framing of some critical research. Furthermore, participatory and collaborative approaches were not evident in this study, indicating a distance that would reduce moral intensity, suggesting a need for open forms of reflexivity (although also recognising that such participatory approaches may not always be possible in critical research).
The consistent emergence of community-level ethical concerns was also notable (see also Jeanes et al., 2014). While a rule-based approach was largely rejected for research ethics, it often appeared to be favoured in the context of the community, where some operated by principles that they felt led to moral practice, recognising a duty to their junior colleagues, and claimed to work on being ethical senior colleagues. Indeed, it was in the context of their own community that they were in broad agreement in presenting an ethical ‘ideal’. One could suggest that consequences of behaviour here have the most resonance, visibility and repercussions, leading to greater moral intensity as well as self-interest, although it was clear that many had genuine concerns.
The development of reflexivity as a means to engage with ethics requires an examination of our learned ways of thinking, feeling and acting in shaping ethical custom and practice (Bourdieu, 2004) by taking a collective approach (see Hardy et al., 2001; Knight et al., 2004; Mauthner and Doucet, 2003) to explore the naturalisation of reflexive predispositions within the academic communities (Golsorkhi et al., 2009) and provide the opportunity for discussion, critique and development not only of what reflexivity entails as a practice but also its use in practice. This may, for example, challenge the tendency for closed rather than open, disruptive or participative approaches to ethics in the field and question the critically informed focus on consequences over duty. This study demonstrates an emphasis on ‘closed’ forms which do not go outside of the academic community and thus may do more to confirm than challenge preconceptions, retain the position of the authoritative researcher and create virtues out of practices that place the end result ahead of the participants involved to achieve it. On a more procedural level, community-level reflexivity would also enable a more rigorous and theoretically grounded account of the ethical process (Guillemin and Gillam, 2004). Crucially, this also needs to go beyond the community and engage with participants in the field to ensure we don’t remain unaccountable to our subjects (Wray-Bliss, 2003) and end up repeating certain (un)reflexive practices—taking a reflexive approach to consequentialism, for example. Without this, the reflexive turn appears to be more rhetorical than evidential and certainly more challenging to engage with in practice than has previously been suggested (Guillemin and Gillam, 2004).
There are a number of challenges facing this process, such as reshaping habitual forms of practice—particularly those sustained by certain critical narratives, the risks of reducing diversity in reflexivities and challenging interpersonal ethics through a procedural approach to embedding reflexivity in ethics, and finding effective ways to reach beyond the community. The aim, therefore, should not be to prescribe how this is approached but to open up the discussion which forces us to reflexively question our taken-for-granted assumptions and approaches to ethics.
The study has a number of limitations that warrants further research. Those who have tackled more ethically problematic research, such as covert research, were not targeted although these challenges were reflected in the accounts given. The fact that such research is not frequently seen in top journals may be an interesting point of future study (the data presented suggest that research is typically avoided that is, at best, ethically ambiguous when evaluated against ethical guidelines (Cannella and Lincoln, 2007)). Furthermore, the study focuses on senior researchers, many of whom have not experienced the more extensive ethical training required for some ECRs, although most have worked under comparable career-based pressures.
A follow-up study with ECRs or mid-career academics might render interesting, and possibly contrasting, perspectives. Alternatively, it may reveal the extent to which the ‘correct’ ethico-political stance relative to the community is adopted, such that formal training is experienced through this critical lens. This idea links to the importance of the role of the community in shaping reflexive practice. Further explorations of the role of the community in shaping ethical-reflexive practice may also be considered, and site-specific studies would enable more engagement with the national and institutional context (see Hayes and Wynward, 2002), such as whether training includes reflexivity.
Reflexive practice may also usefully be explored over a longer time period, reflecting not only career development and the role of the community but also the effects of experiences in shaping the researcher (Mahadevan, 2011), emotion work (Dickson-Swift et al., 2009), shifting relations of power and reflexive awareness that is (co)created over time. Reflexivity isn’t something that one can just read up on and enact and it may result in a change in the researcher, not just the research (Hibbert et al., 2010). Capturing reflexivity and its relationship with ethics in a longitudinal study could reveal more about the processes and its potentially disruptive effects.
Future research could further explore how management scholars and those in other disciplines explicitly engage with ethics as a way of better understanding (ethical) reflexivity in tangible rather than abstract ways such as a sustained exploration of how reflexivity could be utilised in real-time (Riach, 2009; Weick, 2002). Furthermore, practical considerations could address the problems in accounting for the claims of reflexivity in the constraints of standard journal word limits (Finlay, 2002) and the demands of publishing (Kara, 2013; Koning and Ooi, 2013), whereby giving account of reflexivity is forcibly left out or limited by our collective habit of favouring dispassionate research (Adler and Hansen, 2012).
Conclusion
This article has explored the ethics of research practices of well-established organisational and management researchers. It has identified that they are typically ambivalent to or resist formal notions of ethics in favour of an interpersonal ethics and consideration of consequences. In exploring their accounts, reflexivity was found to be partial and often closed in nature, suggesting that reflexivity will not lead to modified theoretical positions (cf. Guillemin and Gillam, 2004) but may sustain the ethical stances adopted, which is potentially problematic where interpersonal ethics is relied upon. While in the main the practices articulated would be considered ethical when compared to formal ethical guidelines, and all practices were supported by an ethical stance, many raised ethical questions that warrant a more open and sustained engagement with reflexivity.
The article also explores the difficulties in addressing the role of reflexivity in ethical practice at a community level, particularly when successful careers are often built on sustaining certain theoretical positions and practices which may be seen as integral to one’s academic identity. Given the pressures on publication, and the limited scope for reflexive practice in the context of word limits and reviewer preferences, it is likely that reflexive practice will remain peripheral in the community, although this raises questions about critical researchers who, by implication, make claims otherwise. Nonetheless, embedding reflection and reflexivity in training (which should exist alongside and supplement, question and inform codes) at an early stage, and sustaining this throughout researchers’ careers, and seeking changes at the community level—for example, by engaging with journal editors—may enable these practices to become accommodated and ‘mainstreamed’. Crucially, it is about changing and sustaining critical reflection on and reflexivity in practice. Writing about reflexivity (certainly in abstract terms) is important but insufficient. This study demonstrates that writing about reflexivity does not necessarily equate to its practice and that changing practice is probably more challenging when faced with established careers, which tend to confirm rather than unsettle research practice, with no requirement for further training.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Thanks go to Mats Alvesson, Karen Lee Ashcraft, Dan Kärreman and Sverre Spoelstra for their constructive comments, and Christian De Cock and Will Harvey for commenting on later drafts. Particular thanks go to Paula McDonald who contributed to the data collection and played a formative role in an earlier version of this paper.