Methodology Matters; Even More

• Author: Bill Lee
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12398
• Published date: 01 March 2020
• Date: 01 March 2020

Methodology Matters; Even More

BILL LEE

This editorialessay reflects on the importanceof a section like Methodology Matters and its first two years.It also

introduces the six articles in this issue of the European Management Review (EMR) that follow this essayand have

progressed successfullythrough the reviewprocess for publicationand it suggests waysin which the debates that each

of those articles have started may be extended. This introduction also justifies other additions to the agenda that

appeared in the original call for papers for submissions to this section of EMR.

Introduction

It is less than two years since I (Lee, 2018) had the

pleasure of introducing the first article to be published in

the Methodology Matters section of the European

Management Review (EMR); namely Reissner’s (2018)

idea of a conversational space map to aid reflexivity for

researchers whose capacity for visual perception was

greater than their capability for textual recognition. Since

then, there has been the publication of papers by:

Schumacher (2018) who proposed a practitioner-

practitioner-researcher inquiry group as a means of

promoting academics and managers’collaboration in

industry; Cassell and Bishop (2019) who discussed the

different types of understanding of the same qualitative

database that may be obtained by applying metaphoric,

story-telling and thematic forms of analysis; and Li

et al. (2019) who reflected on the merits of some of the

assumptions that are made in statistical analysis.

These publications vindicate the decision to introduce

the MethodologyMatters section. As explainedat the time

of its inception, provision of such a section in an

established journal like EMR helped overcome the

problem that is faced by new journals discussing research

issues, namelytheir low ratings in ranking indicesbecause

of their limited history. Although there is an odd

established methodological journal in the management

area and there has been the occasional special themed

issue on methodological concerns in other general

management journals, restricted publication opportunities

may have contributed to limitations in our knowledge of

the strengths and dra wbacks of different methodological

approaches and the factors that e ither facilitate or obstruct

their application. As Pritchard (2020) notes, space

constraints in m ost journal articles prev ent detailed outline

of the methodological framework used when reporting an

empirical study that forms the substantive part of

many articles. Having full-length articles simply about

methodological issues in Methodology Matters provides

an important space for such discussions to take place.

The original call for papers for Methodology Matters

expressed a desirefor plurality and for articles thatlooked

beyond the simple technical issues of applying a method

to look at the influence of the context on the actual

practice of research. Methodology Matters has certainly

realized its objective of pluralism, already including

papers on quantitative (Li et al., 2019) and qualitative

methods (Cassell and Bishop, 2019). It has also realized

the objective of looking beyond the technicalities of

methods to the environment in which people conduct

research as illustrated by Reissner’s (2018) discussion on

the capacities of different researchers and

Schumacher’s (2018) consideration of academics’

collaboration with practitioners. This plurality and

contextualized understanding is also evident in the range

of papers that appear in the extended Methodology

Matters section below.

Before proceeding to review the articles that are

publishedbelow, it is of value to comment on a key reason

for desk-rejection of many articles submitted to

Methodology Matters and why I have discouraged formal

submission of numerous others that have been sent to me

informally with the authors asking my opinion of their

suitabilityfor the section. Overwhelmingly,such rejection

and discouragement is for one particular reason.

Methodology Matters was established to provide a

peer-reviewed outlet for articles that make a

methodological contribution. The majority of articles that

I receive either after or before formal submission, do not

do that. They provide an empirical study where the

authors state they have conducted their research in a

slightly different way to how other authors have reported

on their methods. That does not make a methodological

contribution per se. The substantive content of those

papers remain the empirical study and the authors only

provide mention of a methodological contribution at best

European Management Review, Vol. 17, 279–284, (2020)

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12398

©2020 The Author

European Management Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Academy of Management

(EURAM)

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