Purpose This article aims to explore what it means to engage in beautiful and good research within organizational and managerial contexts. It reflects on how research can respond to the complexity of lived experience, the ethical responsibility of knowledge and the tensions between methodological appropriateness and practical relevance. Design/methodology/approach Through three vignettes drawn from action research projects in Italian welfare organizations (the ATS project, VimodrHOME and Milan District 3 East), the paper adopts a situated and dialogic research perspective. These experiences involve the co-construction of research paths through demand renegotiation and a strong connection with organizational actors and their contexts and challenges. Findings The three vignettes illustrate concrete attempts to interpret and practice an idea of beautiful and good research within real-life welfare contexts. In each case, the research takes shape through a renegotiation of the initial demand made by organizational actors, which thus becomes a negotiated demand. The findings demonstrate how care, proximity and ethical responsibility foster a shared sense, value and transformation. Originality/value The paper contributes to the debate on alternative research paradigms by proposing a perspective that values situatedness, reciprocity and the co-generation of knowledge. It redefines rigor and relevance through an epistemology rooted in proximity, dialogue and transformation.
Gambirasio et al. (Sat,) studied this question.