Managing, Crafting and Researching: Words, Skill and Imagination in Shaping Management Research

Abstract

SUMMARY A playful approach to words like management and managing is a valuable way of loosening the imagination of the management research craft worker. The researcher should work within a concept of craft which involves producing useful and aesthetically pleasing work which is identifiable as coming from the hand of the individual craft worker. The research should be crafted in a reflexive style which reveals the researcher's own hand in ‘shaping’ the reality which it presents. A‘what, why and how?’ model of research design can be used to prompt researchers, in shaping their project, continually to ask questions of what the key issues are that are being tackled, why the work can be justified as a contribution knowledge and how it will be carried out in terms, first, of the concepts to be used and, second, of the investigative methods to be deployed. The model is illustrated with the case of a participant observation piece of management research which was carried out in a company using observation and informal dialogues as well as formal interviews. The project examines how management can be seen as a craft in which managers simultaneously shape their work organizations and their own lives and identities.

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