No need to hide
Acknowledging the researcher’s intuition in empirical organizational research
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9887828 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Barbara Kump (0000-0002-7513-8659, Vienna University of Economics and Business, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 75 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 635-654 |
| Publication date | 2022-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Human Relations (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-7267 • E-ISSN: 1741-282X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0018726720984837 |
| OpenAlex | W3111747773 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 14 |
| References cited | 78 |
Experts on organizational research methods have begun to highlight the importance of researchers’ intuition (i.e. ‘direct knowing’) and have called for more genuine method sections that acknowledge its use. However, using intuition contradicts established research standards of traceability. Hence, when intuition was involved in the research process, researchers must choose between reporting its role, thereby risking the impression of lacking scholarly rigor, and downplaying its role, thereby writing less-than-honest research reports. This article aims to provide a solution to this dilemma by conceptually exploring how intuition can be integrated in research such that scholarly rigor is maintained. Building on Weick’s distinction of creative imagination and validation, it argues that intuition can be legitimately seized if its functioning principles are taken into account and its outcomes are later validated through analytical procedures. The article synthesizes theoretical assumptions and empirical findings on characteristics of intuition with discussions of organizational research methods to derive implications on (1) points in the research process where researchers’ intuitions may be legitimately included and (2) possible types of intuitive outcomes that may be reported. This may contribute to both more genuine method sections and more rigorous research that systematically validates intuition, instead of hiding it
Dilemma · Empirical research · Epistemology · Intuition · Management science · Sociology · Complex Systems and Decision Making · Management and Organizational Studies · Management Theory and Practice · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology
Inoculating Against Bias
What I Wish I'd Known
Ethical Sensibilities for Practicing Care in Management and Organization Research
Rethinking “counterintuitive” results and analogical reasoning
Two Decades of Reflection and Critique. The Continuous Fear of Replacement—The Renaissance of Feeling and Intuition in the Age of Artificial Intelligence in Qualitative Sociology Review (2005–2025)
Responses to occupational identity threats in sustainability transitions
The elements of intuition in decision-making
Work-family interface during Covid-19
(Too) high hopes? How Austrian energy community actors construct their roles in the energy transition
Inconvenient academic workers? Collective (Re)humanisation through the dialogue of a Freirean Reading Circle
A colleague named Max
The human side of self-managing organizations
Mainstreaming storylines of a social innovation
Methodologies of Informed Intuition
Theory Construction as Disciplined Imagination
Reinsurance Trading in Lloyd’s of London
Beyond dual-process models
Intuition, reason, and metacognition
How Do We Justify Knowledge Produced Within Interpretive Approaches?
Intuition and Reasoning
New Ways of Seeing through Qualitative Research
Perspective—Making Doubt Generative
Reflexivity in Management Research
Beyond Neopositivists, Romantics, and Localists
Finding Theory–Method Fit
Exploring Intuition and its Role in Managerial Decision Making
A Theory of Unconscious Thought
Intuition in the context of discovery
Peripheral Vision
Seeking Qualitative Rigor in Inductive Research
The Discovery of Grounded Theory
Methodological emotional reflexivity
Work-worlds colliding
From hero to villain to hero
Making the absent subject present in organizational research
Ethics, politics and embodied imagination in crafting scientific knowledge
What happens when you intuit?’
Sensations, Bodies, and the ‘Spirit of a Place’
Smell organization
The making and unmaking of teams
On the dynamics of failure in organizational change
Reflexive Inquiry in Organizational Research
Reflexivity in Organization and Management Theory
Intuition
Intuition
Qualitative Quality
| Unique citing works | 14 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 14 |