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The use of interpretive approaches within management and organizational sciences has increased substantially. However, appropriate criteria for justifying research results from interpretive approaches have not developed so rapidly alongside their adaptation. This article examines the potential of common criteria for justifying knowledge produced within interpretive approaches. Based on this investigation, appropriate criteria are identified and a strategy for achieving them is proposed. Finally, an interpretive study of competence in organizations is used to demonstrate how the proposed criteria and strategy can be applied to justify knowledge produced within interpretive approaches.
Keywords: validity; reliability; truth; interpretive approach; qualitative research
A central focus for researchers within management and organizational sciences is producing knowledge about human action and activities in organizations. Traditionally, knowledge has been produced from quantitative or qualitative approaches within the positivistic research tradition. However, during the past three decades, interest in qualitative approaches based on the interpretive research tradition has steadily increased in management and organizational sciences (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 1999; Prasad & Prasad, 2002; ZaId, 1996), as well as within social sciences more generally (Atkinson, Coffey, & Delamont, 2003; Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; 2000; Flick, 2002; Lincoln & Denzin, 2003; Schwandt, 1994). The strong growth of interpretive approaches mainly stems from a dissatisfaction with the methods and procedures for producing scientific knowledge within positivistic research. Advocates of interpretive approaches claim that those methodological procedures and claims for objective knowledge have significant theoretical limitations for advancing our understanding of human and organizational phenomena (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 1999; Denzin & Lincoln, 1994, 2000; Lincoln & Denzin, 2003; Prasad & Prasad, 2002; Sandberg, 2001a).
To overcome the shortcomings of positivism, advocates of interpretive approaches have followed ideas from philosophical phenomenology,' most notably, its emphasis on lived experience as the basis of human action and activities. In an overview, Hoistein and Gubrium (1994) found that the analytic paths of qualitative approaches within the interpretive research tradition have been varied and "diverge into a rich variety of constructionist, ethnomethodological, conversation-analytic, and interpretive strains" (p. 262). Prasad and Prasad (2002) identified a similar pattern in management and organizational research. Interpretive approaches have provided new means of investigating previously unexplored questions, thus enabling management researchers to conduct research that has led to new forms of knowledge about management and organization....