Qualitative data: Cooking without a recipe

As researchers who often work with qualitative data, we are frequently asked to review qualitative papers and to speak about how to conduct qualitative research. Through these experiences, we have come to believe that there are prevalent misconceptions about the range of roles that qualitative data can play in research on strategic organization. Most frequently, an assumption is made that qualitative data should only be used in areas of nascent theory. Less frequently but equally problematically, an assumption is made that qualitative data should only be used when researchers are employing an interpretive perspective. We argue that these assumptions about the roles of qualitative data are excessively narrow and have led to several unfortunate consequences. For example, many authors justify their use of qualitative data by arguing that there is a lack of prior theory in their domain of interest – even when this is not the case and when they may be using qualitative data for other, entirely legitimate reasons. In our view, strategic organization is an eclectic domain that encompasses multiple theoretical approaches and levels of analysis, and that diversity can and should be reflected in the ways in which qualitative data are used. It is often observed that no cookbook or recipe exists for qualitative research (Bansal and Corley, 2011; Coffey and Atkinson, 1996; Maxwell, 2005; Pratt, 2009). To take the analogy further, we view qualitative data as an ingredient, like flour, that can be used in a creative and wide-ranging variety of ways. Our intended contribution in this essay is to explicate the multiple functions that qualitative research can play in studies of strategic organization, and in particular, to debunk what we view as myths regarding the circumstances in which qualitative data are valuable, and by extension, the criteria by which qualitative studies should be judged. Our goal is to offer a framework that is useful to authors when deciding whether and how to use qualitative data and to reviewers when evaluating qualitative work. We hope to move the field beyond its current state, which reminds us of a restaurant critic who disparages a perfectly good chocolate eclair because he was expecting a baguette. 452821 SOQ10310.1177/1476127012452821Graebner et al.Strategic Organization 2012