TY - JOUR
T1 - To text or context? Endotextual, exotextual, and multi-textual approaches to narrative and discursive organizational studies
AU - Barry, Daved
AU - Carroll, Brigid
AU - Hansen, Hans
PY - 2006/8
Y1 - 2006/8
N2 - Organizational researchers doing narrative and discursive research have three choices in how they approach a text: an 'endotextual' approach where the researcher works within a text, an 'exotextual' approach where the researcher works outward from a text to its context(s), or a combined exo/endotextual approach which embeds a textual analysis within contextual inquiry. Although all three methods are now widely used in mainstream organizational research, the merits of combining, sequencing, or separating them have never been systematically considered. After reviewing the advantages and limitations of each perspective, we discuss an experiment in which endo and exo methods were applied to a skit co-written by management and a communications company specializing in organizational theater. The finding that using one approach creates multiple, subtle blind spots towards the other, and even more significantly affects a researcher's capacity to effectively adopt a combined method, is used to construct an alternative 'diatextual' framework. This is used to frame a discussion of how multi-method textual studies of organizations might be conducted in the future.
AB - Organizational researchers doing narrative and discursive research have three choices in how they approach a text: an 'endotextual' approach where the researcher works within a text, an 'exotextual' approach where the researcher works outward from a text to its context(s), or a combined exo/endotextual approach which embeds a textual analysis within contextual inquiry. Although all three methods are now widely used in mainstream organizational research, the merits of combining, sequencing, or separating them have never been systematically considered. After reviewing the advantages and limitations of each perspective, we discuss an experiment in which endo and exo methods were applied to a skit co-written by management and a communications company specializing in organizational theater. The finding that using one approach creates multiple, subtle blind spots towards the other, and even more significantly affects a researcher's capacity to effectively adopt a combined method, is used to construct an alternative 'diatextual' framework. This is used to frame a discussion of how multi-method textual studies of organizations might be conducted in the future.
KW - Discourse
KW - Narrative
KW - Organizational theater
KW - Research methods
KW - Textual methods
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=33747056341&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0170840606064568
DO - 10.1177/0170840606064568
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:33747056341
VL - 27
SP - 1091
EP - 1110
JO - Organization Studies
JF - Organization Studies
SN - 0170-8406
IS - 8
ER -