Relational methods in organization studies: A review of the field

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13 Relational methods in organization
studies: a review of the field
Mustafa F. Özbilgin
Introduction
Organizational studies host a diverse range of disciplinary influences and
in any discipline of science, research is underpinned by assumptions regard-
ing the nature of reality (ontology) and of scientific practice (epistemology
and methodology). In all areas of social science, and particularly in man-
agement and organization studies, the general tendency is towards leaving
those assumptions unattended in research publications. However it is
the ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions, whether
stated explicitly or remain implicit, that shape the actual process of
research and analysis (Özbilgin & Tatlı, 2005). Social reality, despite its
layered, complex and interwoven fabric, and its irreducibly intersubjective
meanings, relational properties and interdependent patterns and processes,
is often treated in organization and management studies in a way which
reduces its complexities to a set of definitions, patterns and linkages that
are often acontextual, ahistorical or of homologous morphologies. This
chapter seeks to review relational methods which, I argue, reflect social
reality in a way that is true to its situated, interdependent, intersubjective
and layered nature and form.
Historical review of social research methods reveals various turning
points in approaches to social research methods and scientific practice.
Denzin and Lincoln (2003) identify seven critical turns in the evolution of
social research methods. The traditional period (1900s–1940) is character-
ized with attempts by social scientists to emulate ‘objectivity’ claims of the
natural sciences. The research tradition of the period advocated an objec-
tive separation between the researcher, the research and the researched,
which meant that the relationality between the three had to be eliminated
or minimized if ‘objectivity’ was to be achieved. This tradition was under-
pinned by an assumption that organizational phenomena can be explored
in terms of its own tenets in isolation from its situational context and rela-
tional properties.
The second phase in social research, according to Denzin and Lincoln
(2003), is termed as the ‘modernist phase’ and it took place between 1940
and 1970, when the barriers between the researcher, the research and the
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researched had been corroded, in a way which prescribed greater involve-
ment to the researcher with the research subjects and the object of research.
However this did not mean that the barriers have been eliminated. Indeed
the legacy of the modernist era has been the glorification of the researcher
as a source of emancipatory knowledge, and capabilities and powers of
social intervention. The authors note that the period between 1970 and
1986, the third phase, has witnessed blurred genres of method as traditional
and modernist approaches were both evident.
With the influence of humanist, feminist and critical traditions in social
research, research on social inequalities based on social group characteris-
tics, such as gender, ethnicity and class, peaked in the 1980s, as the pre-
dominant research traditions proposed emancipatory roles to researchers
to do research with, for and on communities that they are personally asso-
ciated with. However the heterogeneity within these social groups has
also brought about a challenge to these earlier claims of representation,
between the researcher, the researched and the readers of research. The
authors have therefore termed the period from 1986 to 1990 as the ‘crisis of
representation’. The period of postmodern, experimental and new ethno-
graphic influences ensued between 1990 and 1995. The postexperimental
inquiry of 1995 to 2000 has prepared the groundwork for the future of
social research inquiry, which is today.
At the backdrop of these historical turns, relationality has emerged as a
challenge to individualism and individualistic methodologies (for example
Wheeler, 2000) of the traditional and modernist eras that are founded on the
principles of separation of the researcher from the researched, and individ-
uals from the organizational analysis. Relational methods, although studied
often under different captions, have achieved mainstream recognition in
organizational studies. It is possible to see relational methods being imple-
mented in a wide spectrum of social science traditions in variable degrees.
Relationity in organization studies (the ontological position)
Tracing the trajectory that relational methods have taken in social sciences
is difficult. It is possible to identify relationality in the philosophical works
of Marx, Weber and Heidegger (see Weberman, 2001, for a discussion of
Heidegger’s relationalism). However it is well established that relational
methods owe much to a scholar, Ferdinand de Saussure, a semiologist
whose original work (1966) did not directly coin the term ‘relational
method’ but nevertheless was recognized as a key contribution on the way:
Saussure suggested that words and sounds do not have essential properties
which give them their meanings, rather the meanings of sounds and words
are relationally structured and constructed. In social sciences, Saussure’s
approach has paved the way for structuralism, which is underpinned by an
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idea that social life and meanings are constructed and shaped by human
thoughts, practices and relationships and that they do not have predeter-
mined absolute meanings in themselves (Tyson, 1996). Bradbury and
Lichtenstein (2000) provide another historical account of the relational
ontology in social research. They trace the routes of their relational phil-
osophy to Martin Buber (1970) and his work on dialogue and adopt the
term ‘the space between’ from Buber to denote relationality as the space
between, in which resides the interdependence between the self and the
other. They argue that the self and the other in organizational studies
should not be analysed in isolation from one another, as they co-evolve in
a process of continuous interplay through which they give meaning to one
another and the relationship in between.
Engaging with the structuralist tradition, with its foundations in
Saussarean semiotics, Pierre Bourdiue, a late French sociologist and philo-
sopher, has developed his relational method of social inquiry. Swartz (1997),
in his book Culture and Power: the Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, explains
the significance of Bourdieu’s relational method: ‘The relational method is a
cardinal principal of structural linguistics that locates meanings of signs not
in themselves but in their contrastive relations’(p. 61). Criticizing the dualis-
tic tradition of subjectivism and objectivism, which manifests itself as polar-
ization of interpretivist and positivist approaches to the study of social
phenomenon, in his book Outline of Theory of Practice (1977) Bourdieu
offers an alternative methodological account of society and the individual
that promises to bridge this superficial divide through an understanding of
the relational properties of social phenomenon. In Practical Reason: On the
Theoryof Action.Bourdieuidentifies a formulafora relationalmethod which
is conducive to the study of social reality relationally:
At every moment of each society, one has to deal with a set of social positions
which is bound by a relation of homology to a set of activities (the practice of
golf or piano) or of goods (second home or an old master painting) that are
themselves characterised relationally . . . (Bourdieu 1998: 5)
Then he explains how this formula is operationalised:
This formula, which might seem abstract or obscure, states the first conditions
for an adequate reading of the analysis of the relation between social positions
(a relational concept), dispositions (or habitus), and position-takings (prises de
position), that is, the ‘choices’ made by the social agents in the most diverse
domains of practice . . . It is a reminder that comparison is possible only from
system to system,and that the search for direct equivalences between features
grasped in isolation, whether, appearing at first sight different, they provide to
be ‘functionally’ or technically equivalent (like pernod and shochu or sake) or
nominally identical (the practice of golf in France and Japan, for instance), risks
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unduly identifying structurally different properties or wrongly distinguishing
structurally identical properties . . . what is commonly called distinction, that is,
a certain quality of bearing and manners, often considered innate . . . is nothing
other than difference, a gap, a distinctive feature, in short, a relational property
existing only in and through its relation with other properties. (1998: 6)
The relational method as envisaged by Bourdieu promises more com-
prehensive insights for the study of social phenomenon than other methods
that attempt to explore ‘difference’ or ‘diversity’ in social settings, for
example the comparative methods which merely expose the contrastive
positions of two individual, cultural or structural phenomena against one
another, failing to capture their rich relational interplay (see Everett, 2002,
for a full discussion of how Bourdieu’s contribution on relationality can
relate to organization studies). In comparison to other earlier method-
ological perspectives, relational perspective promises three ontological
benefits. Firstly, it allows for the socially and historically situated nature of
social phenomena to be revealed, as social phenomena is examined in its
situated context. Secondly, the relational perspective allows for a focus
on ‘the space between’, where agency, action and structures have causal
interdependence (Archer et al., 1998) and where they intertwine and co-
generate social interdependencies and intersubjectivities. Finally, the
layered nature of social reality can be revealed through relational methods
as it permits objective structures, situated activity and subjective experience
to be considered as relevant to understanding social reality.
Relational perspective, as envisaged by Bourdieu, is located in the middle
of the ontological spectrum that ranges from essentialism to postmodern
relativism, which were the isomorphic orthodoxies of the time. Mohr
(2000) explains Bourdieu’s relational approach in the context of main-
stream developments such as the emergence of post-structuralism in social
sciences of his time:
While post-structuralism as an intellectual movement swept across Europe and
eventually, across the humanities in the United States as well, Bourdieu refused
to make that that turn. And indeed, it was here, probably more than anyplace
else that Bourdieu has made what I think is probably his most important con-
tribution to an empirical sociology of culture. It is through the development of
practice theory that Bourdieu accomplishes this and provides something of a
barrier against the infinite textuality of the world. He does by asserting that
meanings are always and invariably embedded within domains of practical
activity. Thus to know something is to know it from the perspective of its locat-
edness within a material and sensual world. Meanings live in the world because
they derive from the material experience of the world. (p. 3)
Potter (2000), in his assessment of Bourdieu’s works and critiques,
explains that through his relational and layered method of analysis
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Bourdieu has demonstrated that cultural and material spheres of reality do
exist and they cannot be reduced to either, although they are interrelated and
operate in simultaneity. The relational analysis that Bourdieu uses, as out-
lined above, situates individuals in their respective social positions in terms
of volume and composition of their capital. Mohr (2000) is critical of the
way Bourdieu operationalizes his relational method on two accounts: the
model ignores divergent dispositions that individuals may possess in choos-
ing their respective social positions; the social field in which positions are
taken is largely structured by macro-influences. This approach ignores other
formsofcompetitions and contestations at micro and meso levels. In her
very elaborate style, Somers (1998) proposes relational realism as a way
forward for social science. She elaborates the ontological perspective of her
proposal:
A relational realist and pragmatist ontology is for those of us who accept,
however unwillingly, the brutal fact that we and our social world are not angelic,
existing out of time and space, but living breathing, changing, dying creatures
and entities, embedded in time and constituted – not merely engaged – in rela-
tionships . . . A relational pragmatist ontology takes the basic units of social
analysis to be neither individual entities (agent, actor, person, firm) nor struc-
tural wholes (society, order, social structure) but relational processes of interac-
tion between and among identities. (pp. 766–7)
Besides the realist and relational ontology of Bourdieu in sociology, other
disciplines such as anthropology (for example Storrie, 2003), psychology
(for example Kwon, 2001), human geography (for example McDowell,
2004), and theology (for example Shultz, 2001), have also contributed to the
development of the field. In the field of organizational studies, Bouwen
(1998) explains the contribution of social constructionist perspective to the
development of relational ontology by making a distinction between the two
traditions in the field:
The difference between a so-called entative concept of the organization and its
associated entative concept of the person on one side, and a relational perspec-
tive on organising processes on the other side, is . . . [that] an entative perspec-
tive reflects the fundamental assumption that person and organization can be
theorized as independent of each other. The organization is reified when it is
conceived as a context that exists independently of the actions and sense-making
activities of the actors . . . A lot of the literature in organizational behaviour
and human resource management has this entative perspective as an implicit
paradigm. Relational processes are considered to be instrumental to connect
inputs to achieve outcomes. In contrast, when the relationship between
person and context is seen as one of mutual creation, the concept of process is
very different. This is because outputs cannot be reduced to the inputs of either
actor or context, but rather are seen as the emergent product of their interrela-
tion. (p. 302)
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In organizational settings, Bouwen (1998: 305) summarizes the elements
that make up the relational ontology of social reality: (1) he argues that there
is a relationship of interdependence between the individual and the organ-
ization, through which they sustain their mutual existence;(2) through
coordination of organizational activities, individuals and organizations
constitute each other; (3) the language is a key component of this co-
generative process; (4) communication makes it possible for language to
gain meaning; (5) knowing from within has an influence on the self-
determination of the individuals; (6) communities of practice negotiate and
shape shared meanings; (7) interaction at the individual and group levels in
organizational settings brings forth both innovation and continuity; and
(8) interactions serve to generate and shape shared meanings.
These ontological developments, which clearly highlighted the relevance
of relational thinking in organizational settings, have prepared the ground-
work for methodological innovations that can record, assess, observe and
analyse the reality of relationality in social settings.
Relational methods in organization studies (the epistemological position)
Owing to the above-mentioned critical turns in social research methods,
four distinct traditions of method have remained in evidence in the organ-
izational studies literature: The universalist tradition examines the organ-
izational phenomenon in terms of its main tenets and often in isolation
from its context or relationality, seeking to generate universal and general-
izable explanations in its forms, patterns and processes. The methodologi-
cal approaches in this tradition typically draw their inspiration from
Humean positivism (Layder, 1990), which seeks to account for causation
solely in terms of sequential occurrences in isolation from external context
and other concerns of relationality. The second methodological approach
includes research that examines organizational entities in their contextual
settings at micro, meso and macro levels of analysis. This tradition is also
termed the ‘contextual’ approach to organizational studies in that it does
not prescribe one best way of organization, and allows for situated analy-
sis. This tradition is characterized with methods that generate cultural
descriptions, which are generated through a wide range of research tech-
niques. The third tradition of method in organizational studies entails com-
parative evaluations of organizational phenomena, again at different levels
of analysis and across different sites, such as sectors, industries or countries.
The final tradition of method, which this chapter focuses on, sets out to
examine the relational properties of organizational phenomena, using tools
and techniques that are conducive to reveal such relationality between
various constituencies of organizations including individuals, groups,
structural conditions and the firm (see Table 13.1).
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250 Relational perspectives in organizational studies
The relational method addresses some of the weaknesses of other trad-
itions of method by combining their key strength. It involves contextual,
contingent and comparative elements, setting two or more individual,
structural and/or organizational phenomena against one another, whilst
allowing for the phenomena to be situated in its social and historical
context and the analysis of variance, that is, differences and similarities
between various properties of phenomena. In addition, and more import-
antly, relationality of the individual, structural and organizational phe-
nomena is revealed through relational methods.
There are many formulations and typologies of relational method in the
literature. This diversity brings with it a richness of methodological choices,
rather than constraints or closures to tools that are available for relational
inquiry. In this chapter, I will review a number of these different method-
ological routes that are identified in the literature. It is possible to categorize
relational methods in terms of their focus and emphasis on relationality and
methods. Studies that incorporate relational issues can be examined under
three headings in terms of their emphasis on relationality. Firstly, there are
studies which emphasize ‘relational’in ‘relational method’ and focus on rela-
tionality in their methodological approaches, incorporating methods that
generate relational engagement, possibilities of observation and assessment
Table 13.1 Typologies of organizational method
Typologies of organizational method
Universalist Contextual Comparative Relational
Main Examines Situates Compares Compares,
properties individual or individual or individual or situates and
organizational organizational organizational examines
phenomena phenomena phenomena individual and
organizational
phenomena in
a state of
interplay
Main Individual and Individual and Individuals and Assumes
assumptions organizational organizational organizations interdependence,
phenomena can phenomena are can be compared intersubjectivity
be examined in contingent upon as independent and relationality
isolation from situational phenomena of individual
their context variation and
and relational organizational
properties phenomena
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of relational processes. For example Brewer’s (2003) research on the civic
attitudes and behaviour of public servants and their social capital does not
userelational methods. Howeverit uses multivariateanalysis todemonstrate
that public servants develop stronger social capital through relational prac-
tice, that is, civic activities. Although the study does not emphasize relational
methods, it nevertheless tackles issues of relationality and chooses a method
that can speak to the issue at hand.
Secondly, there are methodological approaches that are termed here as
‘relationship method’, which integrate human relationships rather than
relationality between phenomena in their methodological considerations,
emphasizing human relationships and interaction between individuals in
dyadic and groupsettings ina wayto inform theirmethods.Several concepts,
including relational marketing (for example Schumacher, 1999), relational
contract theory (for example Feinman, 2000), relational counselling (for
example Garcia et al., 2003), relational trust (Politis, 2003) and relational
assets (Mitchell, 2003) have been developed in recent years and these can be
examined under this banner due to their explicit thematic focus on the issue
of human relationships. For example Peetz (2000) refers to relational
methods as methods that employers use as part of a three-pronged spectrum
of decollectivist strategies. The other two strategies reside in employment
practices and informational activities. In Peetz’s study, ‘relational’ is about
the relationships between workers and managers. Another example would
be Cowan and Katchadourian’s (2003) definition of relationality as a set
of constructs: ‘Relationality, implying sensitivity and responsiveness to
the needs of others, can be expressed in terms of feelings (empathy), cogni-
tions (connected knowing) and self-construals (relational self-construal)’
(p. 301). The authors locate relationality at the level of relationships rather
than using relationality in its broader sense or in order to inform their
methodological design.
The final group of studies emphasize ‘method’ in ‘relational method’ and
use the concept in its broader sense to capture the interrelatedness, inter-
subjectivity and interdependence of individual and organizational phe-
nomena, adopting methods that are designed to capture relational aspects
of the subject of their study. Tietel (2000) defines interview as a relational
space, and engages with relationality in a way which informs the method-
ological choices. This presents an example of this perspective.
The relational method studies may consider individual relationships and
relationality as significant in their methodological approaches in variable
degrees, ranging from integrating relationality as a mere contingency factor
impacting on various processes and outcomes of work (relational method),
to exploring dyadic and group relationships amongst individuals in organ-
izational settings (relationship method) and to considering relationity as a
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primary and orienting phenomenon which shapes the choice of methods
that in turn would reveal relationality amongst individuals and organiza-
tions (relational method). The difference of the latter relational method is
their use of relationality as the primary orienting tool for their research
design, rather than a mere construct that serve as a factor of contingency
as is the case in relationship and relational methods.
Relational perspectives to social research in organizational settings do
not propose closure to the spectrum of methods that can be used in order
to investigate relationality amongst individuals and organizational phe-
nomena. Rather, they suggest that the way in which these methodologi-
cal approaches are used should be informed by a relational orientation,
which reflects an awareness of the interdependencies between individual,
organizational and contextual phenomena. Bouwen (1998) for example
attempts to explain how relational methods may be used in a field study.
Although Bouwen (1998) does not propose specific techniques for a rela-
tional inquiry, he nevertheless argues that the choice of techniques should
reflect a concern for relationality in organizational settings. The key con-
siderations for the relational methods are that the data should not be
disembodied but situated in its context, and that the relational method does
not only seek data on organizational phenomena but also on processes and
relationships between and amongst individuals and organizations.
Relational methods research has taken a spectrum of routes at the level
of empirical study, ranging from studies on the individual researcher and
their reflexive practice to studies that explore the relationality between
contextual or organizational phenomena. This chapter identifies seven
strands within this spectrum of relational research in terms of focus of
analysis: (1) relationality of the self: reflexivity in research and inner dia-
logue; (2) relationality between the self and the circumstances; (3) rela-
tionality between the self and the others; (4) relationality between the self,
the others and the circumstances; (5) relationality between the other
persons; (5) relationality between the other persons and circumstances;
(7) relationality between organizational phenomena (that is, structures,
conditions or circumstances). Figure 13.1 illustrates the possible permuta-
tions of these forms of relational methods in context.
1. The self – reflexivity
Bradbury and Lichtenstein (2000) state that using relational methods
entails the researcher in pursuing personal development on reflexive prac-
tice (see also Mauthner & Doucet, 2003, for a full description of reflexive
methods in social sciences), engagement with the research context, and an
ability to engage participants in the process of analysis and sense-making
activities. Hall and Callery (2001) also advocate a similar approach which
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Relational methods 253
combines reflexivity and relationality in order to improve the rigour in
grounded research. In the same vein, Luttrell (2000) describes her method-
ological approach in her ethnographic study, advocating a sensitizing
process which involves recognition of the significance of reflexivity, and
engagement with the research process and the subject of research. Her
paper tackles some of the tensions in the process of research that emanate
from such a reflexive practice. Luttrell elaborates further how a researcher
can achieve such a relational reflexivity:
It is possible to be a ‘good enough’ researcher – that is, a person who is aware
that she or he has personal stakes and investments in research relationships; who
dares not to shy away from frustrations, anxieties, and disappointments that are
part of any relationship; and who seeks to understand (and is able to appreciate)
the difference between one’s self and another. The good enough researcher tries
not to get mixed up between one’s fantasies, projections, and theories of who the
‘others’ are and who they are in their own right. Good enough researchers accept
rather than defend against healthy tensions in fieldwork. And they accept
the mistakes they make – errors often made because of their blind spots and the
intensity of their social, emotional, and intellectual involvement in and with the
subject(s) of their research. The many times that they will do it right can com-
pensate for these mistakes. (p. 515)
Self
Others
(participants
&
subjects)
1
2
4
53
7
6
Circumstances
(phenomena)
Note: key to forms of relational methods:
1Relational methods: the self – reflexivity
2Relational methods: the self and the circumstances
3Relational methods: the self and the others
4Relational methods: the self, the others and the circumstances
5Relational methods: the other persons
6Relational methods: the other persons and circumstances
7Relational methods: the organizational phenomena (i.e. structures, conditions or
circumstances)
Figure 13.1 Relational methods in context
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At the level of relational technique, Bourdieu (2003) introduces another
elaborate tool, ‘participant objectivation’, and gave the following definition
of the concept in his address to the Royal Anthropological Society:
...one does not have to choose between participant observation, a necessarily
fictitious immersion in a foreign milieu, and the objectivism of the ‘gaze from
afar’ of an observer who remains as remote from himself as from his object.
Participant objectivation undertakes to explore not the ‘lived experience’ of the
knowing subject but the social conditions of possibility – and therefore the
effects and limits – of that experience and, more precisely, of the act of objectiv-
ation itself. It aims at objectivizing the subjective relation to the object which, far
from leading to a relativistic and more-or-less antiscientific subjectivism, is one
of the conditions of genuine scientific objectivity. (p. 282)
He explains how this would work:
What needs to be objectivized, then, is not the anthropologist performing the
anthropological analysis of a foreign world but the social world that has made
both the anthropologist and the conscious or unconscious anthropology that she
(or he) engages in her anthropological practice – not only her social origins, her
position and trajectory in social space, her social and religious memberships and
beliefs, gender, age, nationality, etc., but also, and most importantly, her partic-
ular position within the microcosm of anthropologists. It is indeed scientifically
attested that her most decisive scientific choices (of topic, method, theory, etc.)
depend very closely on the location she (or he) occupies within her professional
universe, what I call the ‘anthropological field’, with its national traditions and
peculiarities, its habits of thought, its mandatory problematics, its shared beliefs
and commonplaces, its rituals, values, and consecrations, its constraints in
matters of publication of findings, its specific censorships, and, by the same
token, the biases embedded in the organizational structure of the discipline, that
is, in the collective history of the specialism, and all the unconscious presuppo-
sitions built into the (national) categories of scholarly understanding. (p. 283)
2. The self and the circumstances
The relationality of the agency and structure, or the self and the circum-
stances, as termed here, has been one of the key concerns of contemporary
social sciences, owing largely to its feminist and radical critiques. Weskott
(1990) explains that the feminist approach to the dialectic relationship
between self and circumstances is ‘to approach social knowledge as
open, contingent, and humanly compelling, as opposed to that which is
closed, categorical and human controlling’ (p. 65). Similarly Brewer et al.
(2002) explore intersectionality in gender-, caste-, race- and class-based
theorizing. They argue that the intersection of these categories as well as
their relationality warrant adoption of different methods that allow for
solidarity through recognition. Solidarity through recognition for social
researchers is about understanding difference and heterogeneity in society
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with a view to seek the transformation and betterment of social life through
solidarity. Their formulation highlights not only social divisions but also
the issue of relationality or lack of it as pertinent considerations for social
researchers. Furthermore by drawing on Crenshaw (1991) they explain
that feminist attention to gender should avoid essentializing gendered
difference, through revealing its interconnectedness and interdependence
with race, class and sexuality. Hence the contribution of the feminist
methods to the study of self and the circumstances seeks to reveal, bridge
and connect social divisions, whilst allowing recognition of the construc-
tion of self in the context of structural circumstances.
Studying the lives of two Filipinas in situated context and in their
network of relationships, Tyner (2002) conclude that individual identity is
always in a process of becoming through encounters in different situations,
space, geographies and relationships. Willmott (1999), in his study of struc-
ture and agency in a ‘failing’ school, provides a highly critical account of
the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) in the UK, in which he
locates the approach of the OFSTED in the positivist framework and
demonstrates its failure to capture the diverse range of structural condi-
tions that underpin the effectiveness of a school. His choice of participant
observation as a technique to reveal the interplay of agency and structure
makes possible for him to evaluate the school effectiveness as is, from an
open systems understanding with multiple stakeholders, interactions and
influences at different levels. The research method also permits for dyadic
and multiple forms of relationality between these different constituents to
emerge, be recognized and be evaluated.
3. The self and the other
Relational methods between the self and the other have predominantly
been considered in the context of the researcher and research participant or
respondent relationship. Using a grounded theory framework, Bouty
(2000) examines informal resource exchanges between research and devel-
opment scientists at the interorganizational level. She concludes that ‘there
is no universal rule, no uniform line between individual and organizational
interests. The economic interests of a firm and employees’social capital are
intertwined’ (p. 62). In a similar vein, she argues that organizations, through
informal exchanges, make use of each other’s resources, and the interde-
pendency that this creates should lead to new understandings of organiza-
tional resources in the context of the research and development sector. In a
different attempt at revealing relationality of the self and the other, with
their aptly subtitled review paper ‘Ties that split pies’, Blyler and Coff(2003)
examine how social capital and individual ties may lead to rent generation
and appropriation in organizational settings. The article provides a set of
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proposals to set a research agenda, highlighting where the researchers may
focus in order to locate hidden rent as an outcome of social capital.
Gergen and Gergen (2003) broaden the scope of relational method of the
self and the others to the relationship between the researcher and the
readers of research output, arguing that this relationship has historically
served a wide range of purposes, including representation of the other. The
authors argue that there are recent trends which seek to challenge the trad-
itional modes of representation in writing, where the author assumed an
authority of knowledge, in favour of writing and representation modes that
are more egalitarian. They argue that this can happen if the metaphor of
‘research’ is replaced with the metaphor of ‘representation’, which is true
to the nature of developments in social sciences. The authors explain what
can be achieved in this way:
Those formerly serving as the subjects of research and the readers of research
outcomes become relational participants. And if we abandon the traditional
goal of research as the accumulation of products – static or frozen findings – and
replace it with the generation of communicative process, then a chief aim of
research becomes that of establishing productive forms of relationship. [In this
way] the researcher . . . becomes an active participant in forging generative, com-
municative relationships, in building ongoing dialogues and expanding the
domain of civic deliberation. (p. 598)
4. The self, the other and the circumstances
Bradbury and Lichtenstein (2000) explored relational methods in organ-
izational research in their seminal paper, ‘Relationality in organizational
research: exploring the space between’. Exploring the intersubjective, inter-
related and contextualised nature of relational methods in organization
research, they surveyed a wide spectrum of methodological approaches
that are informed by relational thinking. Bradbury and Lichtenstein (2000)
note that although organizational research has engaged with the inter- and
intra-play between individuals and organizational phenomena in a way
which deem both to be inextricably intertwined, they set out to bring
forward the relational qualities in these studies with a view to contribute to
the development of relational methods. In social science research, a similar
evolution happened even earlier, where social scientists particularly in the
realist tradition have argued for a perspective of reality which captures the
interdependence between the self and his or her structural circumstances
(Bourdieu, 1977) and in the relational systems thinking. One of the most
accessible methodological contributions in the realist tradition would be
Layder’s (1993) ‘resource map’. The map is his attempt at understanding
the interplay between layers of social reality at micro, meso and macro
levels, as embedded in their social and historical contexts. The map
256 Relational perspectives in organizational studies
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Relational methods 257
contains four distinct layers: the self (includes identity and subjective
individual experience), the situated activity (the dynamics of individual
interaction), the setting (intermediate forms of social organization and
immediate environment of social activity, for example work place or organ-
ization) and the context (wider macro forms of social and economic orga-
nization and structures). The interrelationships between these layers of
activity are then located in their respective historical context. Macro, meso
and micro layers are not independent of one another. Rather, they exist in
state of relational interdependence (see Figure 13.2).
Using a ‘voice-centred relational method’, Mauthner and Doucet (2000:
125) explored motherhood and domestic work, which they studied as part
of their doctoral projects. Locating their relational method in the qualita-
tive tradition of research, they used a specific relational method developed
by the Harvard Project on Women’s Psychology and Girl’s Development at
the Harvard Graduate School of Education. They allude to the kinship of
their relational ontology to Giddens’s sociological inquiries into the duality
of structure and agency. Mauthner and Doucet explain the relational
ontology that they adopted:
The ontological image which has predominated in liberal political thought and
the Western philosophical tradition is that of a separate, self-sufficient, inde-
pendent and rational ‘self’ or ‘individual’. In contrast, the ‘relational’ ontology
posits the notion of ‘selves-in-relation’ . . . or ‘relational-being’ . . . a view of
human beings as embedded in a complex web of intimate and larger social rela-
tions . . . and a different understanding of human nature and interaction so that
people are viewed as interdependent rather than dependent. (2000: 125)
The authors achieve this in their study by ‘exploring individual’s narra-
tive accounts in terms of their relationships to the people around them and
LAYERS
CONTEXT
SETTING
SITUATED ACTIVITY
SELF
H
I
S
T
O
R
Y
Source: adapted from Layder (1993).
Figure 13.2 Resource map
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their relationships to the broader social, structural and cultural contexts
within which they live’ (p. 126). They operationalize their version of the
relational method through four different readings of their interview tran-
scriptions. The first reading searches for the plot and the story of the nar-
rative and also includes a reflexive account which explores the thoughts of
the researcher in response to the unfolding story. The second reading entails
an attempt to embody the experiences, feelings and narrative of the study
participant with a view to bring forth the first person in the transcribed
interviews. The third reading seeks to uncover the relationality in the nar-
rative of the transcriptions, searching for relationships between the self and
others in their situated context. The final reading aims to contextualize the
accounts of the individuals, situating them in their respective social and
cultural environments.
Following these purposeful readings, which examine, relate and situate
the self, the second stage of the data analysis resumes a relatively conven-
tional path where the rich descriptions that are generated through case
studies and summaries in the earlier readings are thematically divided. The
authors pay special homage to the issue of individual voice in narrative, the
myth of shared female experience, and the imbalances of power between
the researcher and the research, particularly in the process of translating
and relating individual accounts to theoretical explanations. The authors
conclude that feminist researchers should take note of the process in which
individual ‘voices’ are transformed into theory and the outcomes. Their
relational method engages with three different forms of voice, that of the
participants, the researcher and the research community as reflected in the
literature and theorization in a negotiated process in which these voices are
reconciled. They also explain that their relational approach requires an
understanding of social life with variable degrees, rather than as absolutes
or linear and pure processes, outcomes or causal relationships. A parallel
can be drawn with Zietlow’s (2000) study of women and law, in which she
argues that relational engagement and contextual reasoning are keys to
what she terms the anti-subordinating method of process.
Bradbury and Lichtenstein (2000) argue that relationality is about exam-
ining rich interrelationships between organizations and their members as
essentially interdependent and intersubjective. The authors portray rela-
tionality as a set of values and meanings that refer to organizations as richly
interconnected relationships rather than as a discrete methodological tool.
The value system that the relational methods proposes involves bridging the
divide between subject and object of research, for example the superficial
distinction between and separation of the researcher, the research and the
researched (for example Özbilgin 1998), between knowledge and power, and
between knowledge and action, revealing their interconnectedness. Seeking
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to operationalize some feminist theorizations through interviews with 38
nurses, focusing on their work lives in Canada, Keddy et al. (1999) demon-
strate the strength of the interrelationship and interconnectedness between
the nurses’ work lives and conditions, their other life constituencies such as
children, partners, friends and leisure, as well as the structural conditions
pertaining to health-care reform.
Bradbury and Lichtenstein (2000) provide a framework for relational
methods in organizational research. Their model includes two dimensions:
(1) visibility of interactions: relational methods contains both tacit (inte-
rior) and explicit (exterior) forms of interaction; (2) position of relational-
ity: the three layers of this dimension are multipersonal, research involving
study of relationships between a group of participants; interpersonal,
research which involves a researcher and research subjects; and intraper-
sonal, research involving research by oneself and on oneself. Juxtaposing
these two dimensions along their two and three layers, respectively, against
one another, the authors have generated six cells that characterize the
matrix of relational methods: multipersonal exterior, multipersonal inte-
rior, intrapersonal exterior, intrapersonal interior, interpersonal exterior
and interpersonal interior. They argue that most organizational studies
research can be located in the multipersonal-exterior cell including network
analysis and complex adaptive systems research. The multipersonal-interior
cell is characterized by research that uses correspondence analysis linking
tacit phenomenon with structural conditions. Richly ethnographic research
with in-depth interviews has been common in this category of relational
research. The interpersonal-exterior cell hosts a range of participative,
involved research designs, which emphasize notions of insider–outsider and
cooperative inquiry. Most feminist research would reside in and draw on this
tradition of relational method. The interpersonal-interior cell involves case
study research which situates the researcher in the context of research and
makes the researcher and their understanding a significant part of the
research inquiry. The intrapersonal-exterior cell expressly resides in the psy-
chological domain. Studies of ego development would be an example. The
intrapersonal-interior cell includes autobiographical writing which allows
forarelational engagement between tacit and explicit selves. Table 13.2
below outlines the matrix with its associated methods and tools.
5. The other persons
A strand of relational method examines relationality between a group of
study subjects. Studies of social capital can be studied under this banner.
For example in his study of social capital, Burt (1997) examines the value
of managers’ networks and reveals that the value of social capital is con-
tingent upon the number of people doing the same job. The relational
Relational methods 259
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260 Relational perspectives in organizational studies
method of the study is in its use of network analysis to explore the social
capital that managers accumulate through their networks.
In their theoretical paper which seeks to locate difference along class,
race and gender dimensions in social relations, Bottero and Irwin (2003)
argue that relationality in the context of locating difference along social
cleavages should be informed by an understanding of the intertwined
nature of the cultural and material bases of social relations. The authors
argue that separating these two spheres of cultural and material social rela-
tions, as has been the case in earlier works, bodes ill to revealing the con-
struction of symbolic and value-based as well as the material bases of
social relations.
Pullman and Gross (2003) survey a hospitality organization and consider
two different contextual elements, physical and relational, which moderate
loyalty. The change in industrial composition, with the growth of the service
sector in industrialized countries, has meant that the relational context,
became a primary concern in the service sector. Pullman and Gross’s (2003)
work reveals the impact of relational context on loyalty and emotional out-
comes. Although their theoretical framework takes relational context as
central, their methodological approach treats it only as a variable.
6. The other persons and the social/organizational phenomena
Mohr (2000) argues that the relational method that Pierre Bourdieu pro-
poses has many merits including its capacity to reveal the duality of culture
and practice and its strong proposition that institutional life can be exam-
ined through relational methods. However Mohr (2000) also suggests that
Bourdieu was more skilled in refining his version of relational methods
Table 13.2 Relational methods based on the locus and visibility
Locus
Multipersonal Interpersonal Intrapersonal
Exterior Network analysis Participatory Investigation of
view Coevolutionary research self as research
and complexity Insider/outsider instrument
Visibility models research
Interior Correspondence Case study Journalizing
view analysis methods Action inquiry
Structurational Learning history
models Action science
Source: adapted from Bradbury and Lichtenstein (2000: 560).
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than operationalizing it. Bourdieu uses a two-dimensional mapping tech-
nique (correspondence analysis) with total volume and overall composi-
tion of capital in each dimension of the axis. The measure developed by
Bourdieu and presented through correspondence analysis interrelates
social phenomena with forms of capital possessed by different groups in
society, and provides an example of this ideal type of research. Mohr (2000)
explains how this works:
This latter dimension runs from a measure (on the left) of a high proportion of
cultural capital and a low proportion of economic capital to (on the right) the
inverse measure reflecting a low proportion of cultural capital and a high pro-
portion of economic capital. This space is then used to identify the social location
of different groups (or what Bourdieu describes as class factions). Private sector
executives are located toward the right side of the graph (because their capital is
largely economic) and towards the top (because they possess a lot of capital).
Artistic producers are located at about the same point on the vertical dimension
(because they too have a lot of capital) but they are offto the far left because their
capital is largely composed of cultural (rather than economic) resources.
In another exemplary study, Mahon et al. (2004: 171) use a network ana-
lytical method in order to explore the relationship between organizational
phenomena that ‘could have a negative impact on organization’s ability to
reach its objectives if left unattended’ and stakeholders simultaneously.
Through this study, they identify that ‘there is much insight to be gained
from a structural analysis of the ties that bind social actors in the non-
market context’(p. 185). The network analysis techniques at the group level
also cross the group and context divide, revealing the relationality in
between. In a similar piece of research, Buris (2004) employs network
analysis to examine ‘the academic caste system’, and the interplay between
postdoctorate job opportunities and the academic prestige of departments.
The analysis reveals the material outcomes of academic hierarchies of
group members and demonstrates that the higher the departmental pres-
tige, the higher the graduate’s employment chances.
7. Organizational phenomena (structures or circumstances)
In this methodological domain reside studies, which explore the relational-
ity between structural circumstances, that is, the macro constructs of
organizational studies. In her investigation of relationality at the firm level,
Nelson (2004) introduces two approaches to relationality. These are ideal
types of ‘separative’ versus ‘soluble’ relationship types. She describes sep-
arative relationality at the firm level as rejection of relationality with visible
borders and divides between functional or strategic units of the firm. The
soluble firm model is based on the recognition that firms are made up of
interconnections at individual and group levels within and outside the firm.
Relational methods 261
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262 Relational perspectives in organizational studies
Nelson explains that this distinction is reflected between neoliberal versus
critical depictions of the firm.
Ericson (1996) also studied two structural phenomena – social networks
and class structure – with a view to understanding their interdependence.
The study was conducted in Toronto, Canada and drew comparative
insights from Bourdieu, using a social network variety measure developed
by the author. The paper suggests that social network variety is a better
indicator of cultural variety than class, as proposed in Bourdieu’s method-
ological approach in Distinction (1984). Massey’s study allowed for two
structural constructs to be explored in terms of their interplay. In human
geography, Massey (2004) and McDowell (2004) argue that such interplay
exists between space, time and structures.
Conclusions
Relational method is the new holy grail of social research. Much attention
has been devoted to it in terms of its ontological, epistemological and
methodological classification from a diverse range of disciplinary perspec-
tives. The gold rush in search of relationality has engendered new method-
ological perspectives ranging from techniques which sought to situate the
researcher in the research process through reflexivity, to methods which
aimed to reveal the interplay between and amongst the self, the others
and the circumstances in organizational settings. In this chapter, I have
attempted to review this extensive body of literature with a view to explain-
ing the ontological and epistemic position of relational methods and pre-
senting a typology of relational methods that reflects its multidirectional
and interdisciplinary development. Despite the possibilities of identifying
further typologies of relational method in social sciences, I would like to
conclude that what appears at first sight or otherwise to be autonomous,
true to the nature of social reality, is imbued with relationalities that cross
borders and build proverbial bridges.
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