This editorial, authored by Pratima (Tima) Bansal and Kevin Corley (2012), serves as the seventh and final installment in the “Publishing in AMJ” series. Titled “Publishing in AMJ—Part 7: What’s Different About Qualitative Research?”, it provides crucial insights and advice for researchers aiming to publish high-quality qualitative work in the Academy of Management Journal (AMJ). The series aims to offer “bumper-to-bumper” coverage on improving submission quality, and while much of the previous advice applies to both quantitative and qualitative papers, this particular editorial focuses on the key differences unique to qualitative research.
The authors address a provocative question posed to top qualitative authors and reviewers: “If a colleague who has only ever published quantitative papers before asked you to identify the main differences between qualitative and quantitative papers (besides the type of data presented), how would you respond?”. By synthesizing these diverse responses and drawing on their own extensive experience, Bansal and Corley offer a holistic view of the distinct attributes of a qualitative paper for AMJ, illustrating their points with examples from award-winning qualitative AMJ articles.
The editorial highlights several fundamental differences that define qualitative research in AMJ:
- Inductive Theory Building: Unlike many quantitative papers that test existing theory, most qualitative papers advance theory by building it inductively, although qualitative data can also be used for theory testing. This difference in purpose is a significant driver of other distinctions.
- Manuscript Structure:
- A Short, Multipurpose Front End: Qualitative papers require a front end that not only hooks the reader, exposes a significant theoretical gap, and situates research questions, but also provides a framework for the textual data and a springboard for emergent theory. Qualitative researchers often need to work harder to build a case for their research question and motivate their work.
- A Long, Robust Back End: While quantitative papers build theory in the front end, qualitative works reserve their “biggest punch for the back end.” The Discussion section is extensive, explicitly conveying the connections between analyzed data, emergent theory, and relevant literature, and often involving a complex, dynamic integration of data and theory.
- Comprehensive, Personal, and Transparent Methods: Qualitative research demands detailed accounts of data sources and analysis, as researchers have considerable latitude in their methods and cannot simply reference well-known data sets or statistical tests like quantitative studies. The unique and nonlinear “journey” of the researcher is often featured prominently, in the first person and reflexively, to signal the quality of the research and the trustworthiness of the data.
- Creative Data Displays: Qualitative data cannot be easily reduced to tables, necessitating creative approaches to displaying data. Data must be “shown, not merely described,” to allow readers to connect raw data with analyzed data and emergent theorizing, transporting them into the context.
- Telling a Compelling Story: Storytelling is deemed the “very essence of qualitative research,” with over half of the consulted panelists emphasizing its criticality. Qualitative articles weave together a “theory narrative” and a “data narrative” to create a compelling, unique, and inspiring overarching story, unlike the more episodic presentation in quantitative articles.
- Embracing the Process, Not the Plan: Qualitative research is characterized by exploration and an iterative process, rather than strict adherence to an initial detailed plan. Ideas and findings are reconceptualized continually, with writing and research often occurring concurrently. Theoretical discovery frequently emerges during the writing process, and this iterative nature extends through the review process, where reviewers often become “cocreators”.
The editorial acknowledges similarities between good quantitative and qualitative papers but ultimately aims to help researchers understand and navigate the unique attributes of writing qualitative papers that are often learned through experience. The authors express hope that the insights provided will encourage more scholars to publish strong qualitative research in AMJ, thereby exposing theoretical boundaries and pushing theoretical insights.
