982715

research-article2020
JABXXX10.1177/0021886320982715The Journal of Applied Behavioral ScienceGioia

Methodology Corner
The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

A Systematic Methodology
2021, Vol. 57(1) 20­–29
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0021886320982715
https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886320982715
Research journals.sagepub.com/home/jabs

Denny Gioia1

Abstract
The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science is in the enviable position of being a go-to
journal for many readers seeking useable insights for solving practical problems in
managing modern organizations. A perennial source of such knowledge has been
case studies, but case studies have been treated as questionable sources of widely
applicable knowledge because they have been assumed to be idiosyncratic and to
lack adequate “scientific” rigor. In this brief article, I argue for using a methodological
approach to studying single cases that addresses both these thorny problems.

Keywords
social construction, case method, grounded theory, qualitative research

Introduction
For as long as I can remember, the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science (JABS) has
been a journal that emphasizes the applied aspect of its title. Consequently, research
relevant to real organizations has long been a hallmark of the articles appearing in its
pages. JABS has occupied a unique place in the academic universe, in that it sits
squarely on the boundary between academia and practice. That means that it has had
to do a delicate balancing act in talking to two audiences who sometimes have had a
difficult time talking to each other: off-in-the-clouds academics and reflective on-the-
ground practitioners. That interesting boundary-spanning position has meant that arti-
cles in JABS need to be written in English, rather than Academese. It also has meant

1
Penn State University, University Park, PA, USA

Corresponding Author:
Denny Gioia, Smeal College of Business, Penn State University, 428 Business, University Park, PA 16802,
USA.
Email: dag4@psu.edu
Gioia 21

that JABS articles need to be insightful and tell both audiences something they do not
already know.
That is a tough balancing act. It means that as a matter of course, writers for JABS
have had to reconcile two disparate and daunting criteria: to present work that is useful
for both theory and practice, thus meeting Thomas and Tymon’s (1982) exhortation
from many years ago, while also helping to address Corley and Gioia’s (2011) lament
that modern research in management has gotten a little too far removed from what real
organizations are actually doing because they have prioritized a “usefulness for the-
ory” criterion over the “usefulness for practice” criterion (see also Hambrick, 2007).
One of the reasons why articles in JABS come across as credible is because they
tend to arise from case studies of ongoing organizations—and that means that case
study research is more common than is the norm in many other approaches to organi-
zation study. Why? Because case study research tends to be insightful and because it
tends to couch those insights within the context of telling a good story. And who does
not love a good story? The simple fact is that we all do, so we are often more inclined
to read qualitative, case study research because it combines these two attractive
qualities.
Yet case study research has historically suffered from a couple of perennial prob-
lems, both of which contribute to questions about its legitimacy and credibility. First,
individual cases have been viewed as idiosyncratic and, therefore, as having few
implications generalizable beyond the specific case studied (a “problem” sometimes
supposedly captured in the old saying from physical science research, that “You can-
not generalize from a sample of one!”). Second, the findings from case studies have
been viewed as less rigorous and more “impressionistic” (perhaps because the early
history on management thought came from the anecdotal observations of practicing
executives like Alfred P. Sloan and Chester Barnard reporting on their experiences as
CEOs).
Let us look at those damning accusations a little more closely. Do case studies
amount to samples of one? Yes, of course they do, if you are looking at an industry and
considering the actions of individual firms within that industry. No, of course they do
not, if you are considering each case as an interactive set people, structures, and pro-
cesses that need to be explained. To me, the issue here is not often one of generaliz-
ability, per se; rather, it is a question of transferability (see Lincoln & Guba, 1985).
The difference is important. Generalizability implies that you have gathered broad
enough evidence for an observed phenomenon to apply widely; transferability implies
that even a single observation can represent a principle that applies to many different
contexts. I call those “portable principles.”
I use the same principle in picking good teaching cases. I try to choose a specific
case that exemplifies a memorable principle that is transferable (portable) to a wider
range of situations. I apply this same principle to research, as well, in that I am seeking
an insightful explanation (a grounded theory that has applicability to a much wider
domain). So, can you learn something broadly applicable from studying small sam-
ples? Of course, you can, if that principle is portable to other contexts. And while I am
22 The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 57(1)

at it, let me also make the point that the primary purpose of research is to inform theory
(see Bansal & Corley, 2011). The key question is, whose theory?

OK. Let’s Go . . . 1
To answer that question, let us first consider a couple of fundamentally important
assumptions that undergird everything else. To begin, let us acknowledge that the
social world is a world of meaning. Meaning does not exist independent of people
interacting with each other and that straightforward observation leads directly to the
observation that most of the important stuff in the human experience is socially con-
structed by people interacting with each other. Now, that’s a nontrivial and profound
recognition and once you take it seriously, it changes not only how you see the organi-
zational world, but how you study it, as well. A second assumption might be even
more important than the first, and that is that people at work are knowledgeable. They
know not only what they are doing, how they are doing it and why they are doing it,
but they can tell us researchers all these things in clear terms. When you talk to them
and treat them as knowledgeable, you find that they can render an informative account
of their experience in terms that are meaningful to them (not necessarily in theoretical
terms we researchers and theorists would prefer to use).2
This latter recognition has huge implications for the design of research. We usually
begin with existing theory because we approach the organizational world as if we
know what to expect. Schwarz and Stensaker (2014) term this typical approach as
“theory-driven research.” But that stance leads to what I might term “theoretical arro-
gance.” We theorists seem to presume that our prior theoretical understandings should
have precedence. That is academic nonsense if we are studying the construction of
meaning. It is always, always, always important to grasp that when we do grounded
theory, the intent should be to ground the emergent theory in the informant’s under-
standing of their (constructed) world. That is why we call it “grounded theory” in first
place—not because it is grounded in data (which obviously is important), but more
importantly, because it is grounded in the informants’ experience and their under-
standing of that experience.
So what? Here’s what. It means that if we are going to have any hope of modeling
the informants’ experience, we first need to foreground the informants’ sensemaking
about their experience. We should not presumptively impose our understanding on
their understanding (and we do that every time we invoke prior theory as a starting-
point for understanding informant experience. And that means that you as theorist/
researcher need to make a conscious effort to adequately give voice to informants’
understandings in the research and also to adequately represent informant voices
prominently in the reporting of the research (by directly quoting your informants
throughout your reporting of findings).3
Maybe the best lesson I ever learned to drive this point home occurred early in my
own research career (my first interpretive case study, actually—the project that even-
tually resulted in the Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991, sensemaking/sensegiving paper). The
backstory is this: We wanted to study strategic management in academia. It was around
Gioia 23

this time that Jane Dutton and Susan Jackson (1987) had made a major contribution to
the strategic management literature by revealing that practicing business executives
consistently used the terms “threat” and “opportunity” to categorize issues facing a
firm, so we easily could have included those terms in our interview protocols. But,
universities are different from businesses in some notable ways, so we made a late
decision not to allude to those labels in our interviews. What happened? Not once did
those terms ever come out of the mouths of the academic executives. Not once. They
categorized issues according to whether they deemed them to be “strategic” (i.e.,
related to the long-term health of the institution) or “political” (related to accounting
for some unit’s interests). Well, that research experience taught us about trying to use
our concepts to understand others’ ways of understanding.

Developing a Systematic Approach to Qualitative Research

Truth is, we are all trying to convince editors, reviewers, and other readers that we
know what we are talking about and that we have something important to say. On the
other side, most reviewers of qualitative research have an abiding concern with getting
a convincing answer to the question, “Have you provided adequate evidence for your
claims?” More pointedly, reviewers often throw up their hands and ask in exaspera-
tion, “How do you know what you say you know?” It is this concern that motivated me
to figure out a way to demonstrate to readers (not just reviewers) the basis for my
claims and conclusions. How might I accomplish that while adhering to the fundamen-
tal assumptions articulated above and when studying single cases from which we hope
to be able to derive some concepts and principles that are portable?
Let us start here. This kind of research should be adequate at the level of meaning
of the informants. What does that mean anyway? It means that the findings ought to
make sense to the informants as knowledgeable actors. The findings also should be
adequate at the level of theoretical insight, however, which means that it needs to make
sense to scholars looking for deeper explanations, as well. That is a tall order, to be
revelatory to two such different audiences. To fulfill that order, I would argue that the
research needs to report first-order (informant-centered) and second-order (theory-
centered) data and findings. In its most compelling form, this kind of interpretive
research should then generate a grounded theory that articulates concepts and their
interrelationships that describe or explain phenomena (which is something all theory
should do—see Corley & Gioia, 2011). If the research also intends to serve as the basis
for changing some organizational structures and/or processes, then it should target
some organizational features and/or practices for action that will facilitate the desired
change. In Burrell and Morgan’s (1979), evocative terms, this kind of research would
be labeled as “radical humanist” research.
Employing both perspectives (informant and researcher) gives a multifaceted view.
However—and this is key—all findings and conceptualization must be predicated on
the informant’s experience, not on prior theoretical work. Of course, we should expect
to identify existing concepts in grounded work. Prior theory is not based on invention
24 The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 57(1)

or fantasy (although it might have a good dose of creative theoretical imagination

associated with it that can sometimes misrepresent informant experience). In the end,
we would only be surprised if prior depictions did not capture some key aspects of
informant experience; it would not be very credible research if it did not. Still giving
precedence to informant interpretations is a way to avoid the theoretical arrogance that
leads scholars to go overboard in imposing their ways of understanding on the infor-
mants’ ways of understanding.
That is also one reason this style of research is called “interpretive research”—
because the research is grounded in informant interpretations (not mainly researcher
interpretations) of the structures and processes the informants themselves are using to
socially construct the meaning of their experience. One form of interpretive research
is also sometimes called “Hermeneutic” research, a term derived from Hermes, the
messenger of the gods. It was Hermes’ role to faithfully report to people what the
mysterious gods were saying. So, Hermes had better get it right, without mispresent-
ing his reporting. That is why, I have occasionally characterized my role in the research
as that of “glorified reporter” (Gioia et al., 2013). I do not feel diminished by that label,
however, because it is my job to be a credible messenger—to report my findings so
readers can understand the experience of my informants as the informants see it.
Yet, I am not done when I report the first-order findings. The more abstract second-
order level allows some license to be creative, so long as I execute that license on the
basis of first-order experience. It is at this level that the theorist/researcher looks for
explanatory concepts and themes that might provide deeper insight into the infor-
mants’ experience.
The reporting of both informant and researcher voices enables a more “qualita-
tively rigorous” demonstration of data-to-theory connections and gives some confi-
dence that any creative insights are rooted in the informants’ experience. This
systematic approach helps editors, reviewers and readers understand what’s revelatory
in a credible fashion. Yet, both levels of findings are based on conducting a thorough
analysis of the data. So . . . .

Analyzing the Data. When beginning the analysis of the data, it is not at all uncommon
for an overwhelming number of informant terms, codes, and categories to emerge
early in the research (via a process similar to what Strauss and Corbin, 1998, called
open coding). In the first-order analysis, there is little attempt to distill categories, so
the sheer number of categories can be almost paralyzing. It is not unusual for there to
be 50 to 100 first-order categories that emerge from the first ten interviews, and the
number of categories initially becomes daunting. At this stage, I often plaintively con-
clude that, “I’m lost,” with no obvious way out of the morass of making sense of all
these confusing data that do not seem to hang together in any obvious fashion. But I
am also fond of saying that, “You gotta get lost before you can get found” (Gioia,
2004), so getting lost is an expected part of the process.
To extricate myself from such paralysis-by-analysis, I start looking for similarities
and differences among the myriad categories (via a process similar to Strauss and
Gioia 25

Corbin’s [1998] idea of axial coding), This procedure leads to a reduction in the num-
ber of key categories to perhaps 20. I am a “labels guy” (in the memorable words of
one of my early informants), so I try to give the most germane categories memorable
labels or descriptors (while trying hard to retain informant terms, if at all possible,
even at the theoretical level). Is there some deep structure or deep process in this con-
stellation of labels? Now, and only now, do I treat myself as knowledgeable, too—as
someone who can think creatively and at multiple levels of analysis simultaneously
(i.e., at the first-order level of the informant and at the second-order level of theoreti-
cal themes, as well as at the level of the larger narrative I am working to articulate to
myself). A key question-to-self is, “Can I see something the informants themselves do
not see, as I look from different points of view?”
It is at this metalevel that I try to answer the key question, “What’s happening
here?” Can I describe it in theoretical terms? As a person with a business and govern-
ment organizational background, I try to develop plausible answers to this overarching
question by invoking what I call “gestalt analysis.” That’s a fancy term suggesting that
as a consequence of deep engagement in the research setting, as well as experience
with, interest in and awareness of how organizations work, I might have developed an
informative way of understanding organizational phenomena. It is also an acknowl-
edgement that there is latitude for insight and creativity in this approach. Am I “tabula
rasa?” Nope. Such a thing is not even remotely possible because of my experience,
which has led to my own set of personal schemas, implicit biases, and so on. But, can
I see in insightful ways? Yep, I have confidence that I can. A good example is the
notion of “sensegiving” (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991), which leads to a different way of
understanding what we think we might already know about sensemaking. As Proust
(1923) so presciently put it, “The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new
landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Notions like sensegiving confer new eyes.
Generating a new way of seeing or understanding facilitates the formulation of yet
more questions, to be pursued in later interviews. These interviews are designed to
pursue an increasing focus on key concepts and tentative relationships emerging from
the interviews to date (via a process, Glaser and Strauss [1967] termed “theoretical
sampling”).
While still at the second-order (theoretical) level of analysis, I focus particular
attention on nascent concepts that have not been adequately covered in the literature
(e.g., notions like “identity ambiguity” from Corley and Gioia [2004] and “transi-
tional identity” from Clark et al. [2010]) or existing concepts that stand out because
of their relevance to a new domain (e.g., “optimal distinctiveness” from Gioia et al.
[2010]). Once a workable set of themes and concepts are available, I look to see if I
can distill the emergent second-order themes even further into second-order “aggre-
gate dimensions.” (Some writers have labeled this as a third-order level of analysis,
but to me a third-order level would connote omniscience and only God has that kind
of understanding. Given that this is simply an attempt to collapse second-order
themes into more aggregate dimensions, I consider the process to still be operating
at a second-order level).
26 The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 57(1)

Now comes what to me is the most pivotal step in the process. When I have a com-
prehensive set of first-order terms and second-order themes (and perhaps aggregate
dimensions), then I have a basis for putting together a data structure. The data struc-
ture provides a way of understanding how all the terms, themes, and dimensions relate
to each other. It amounts to a graphic representation of how the analysis progressed
from raw data terms to themes and to dimensions when conducting the analyses. I
consider some form of data structure to be a critical necessity. Actually, I force myself
to think in data structure terms by repeating a little colloquial mantra to myself: “You
got no data structure, you got nothin’.” To me a data structure is key to assuring to the
researcher (and demonstrating to the reader) that there can be rigor in qualitative
research (Pratt, 2008; Tracy, 2010). Sometimes editors seem to think that the data
structure amounts to overkill and ask me to get rid of it in the reporting, but I just do
not know how to do that. To me, it’s amounts to dishonest handwaving if I do not
report a data structure. I feel lost without one.

From Data Structure to Grounded Theory

As important as I consider the data structure to be, it nonetheless portrays only a static
picture of very dynamic phenomena. Process research cannot really investigate pro-
cesses, however, unless this static picture—a photograph, if you like—can be con-
verted into a movie. Although the data structure should suggest relationships among
the second-order themes, the actual dynamism comes only when the data structure is
“set in motion,” which is what the grounded model does (Nag et al., 2007). The
grounded theory model should show the relationships among the emergent concepts
that describe or explain the phenomena of interest. The model should further clarify
data-to-theory connections. In boxes-and-arrows terms, the process of constructing the
model constitutes one of assembling the boxes with an emphasis on the arrows.

Reporting the Findings

I try to do a careful and faithful presentation of evidence. That is why the findings sec-
tion is dominated by informant quotes—quotes that align with the data structure and
the grounded model. By reporting direct quotes, I am not only giving voice to infor-
mants, I am also sending a strong message to readers: I am not making stuff up; I am
reporting what informants told us, in their own words. I want the reader to see explicit
data-to-theory connections. I hide nothing. I even go out of my way to coordinate the
presentations of the data structure, the grounded model, the narrative and any supple-
mentary tables and appendices created along the way.
These days I even show the grounded model before the findings, even though I
recognize that presenting the model first violates the tenets of interpretive research
(i.e., because the theory is grounded in the data, it reasonably should come after the
presentation of the data/findings). Why present the model first, given that it was con-
structed after the data that is yet to be presented? Because in my alter ego life, I am a
Gioia 27

cognitive theorist, so I understand that people usually grasp things better if they have
an advance framework for organizing difficult-to-grasp information. Like everybody
else, I might like a good story (often characterized by some sort of surprise ending),
but that is not the way people usually best remember things. So, to help interested
readers better understand, I now present the organizing framework (the grounded
model) first.
Why jump through all these hoops? To develop and hone an approach that enables
discovery, but also shows convincing evidence for my claims, that’s why. My long-ago
concern was that qualitative research was too often guilty of too often making grandi-
ose assertions on the basis of rather thin evidence. Actually, qualitative researchers
still are sometimes guilty of this same mistake. That is why nowadays we get review-
ers and editors demanding that we do a better job of showing the evidence in support
of our assertions and asking that we better demonstrate data-to-theory connections.
More power to them. It is a reasonable request that we do a better job of showing,
rather than telling and selling.

Conclusion
Any good interpretive case study should generate a plausible, defensible explanation
of some phenomenon of interest. Interpretive work is not chasing some version of a
“right-answer” explanation. We interpretivists are seeking defensible explanations
with an awareness that there are likely to be a number of plausible answers, but each
of those explanations should be revelatory in some fashion. Over quite a number of
years now, I have been working to develop this systematic approach to enable the
infusion of more credibility into the execution and presentation of qualitative research.
I advocate the reporting of both first-order (informant-centric) and a second-order
(theory-centric) analyses and that those analyses serve as the basis for both a static
data structure and a dynamic grounded model. My abiding hope is that it will help
readers see that a more systematic approach can characterize qualitative research,
which can lead to the discovery or creation of some new, revelatory concepts and
grounded theories.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.

ORCID iD
Denny Gioia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8865-699X
28 The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 57(1)

Notes
1. “OK. Let’s go” is a tip-of-the-hat to my Chinese colleague, Chong Ma, who so often used
the phrase to convey his enthusiasm for whatever it was we were doing.
2. See Gioia et al. (2013) for a more comprehensive discussion of the philosophy-of-science
assumptions and techniques behind this approach to research. See Corley and Gioia (2011)
for a deeper discussion of theory and theory building
3. By the way, they are findings, not “results.” Results literally result from tests of hypoth-
eses; this work is theory-discovery work, not theory-testing work.

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