Exploiting the potential of intuition in interpretative organizational research (EURAM Most Inspirational Conference Paper Award)

Abstract

Quality criteria in qualitative interpretative research foresee traceable, analytical research procedures. While intuitive thinking is usually not an explicit part of the research process, recent findings from cognitive psychology suggest that intuition is better suited than analytical thinking for identifying coherent patterns in the data – one of the main goals of interpretative qualitative research. This article discusses the potential of integrating intuitive processing in qualitative research, and seizing its strengths while balancing its weaknesses by combining it with more analytical approaches. It makes two contributions: (1) it discusses general principles for the application of intuition in interpretative (organizational) research and (2) presents a method that combines intuitive and analytical processing to identify ‘the essence’ of a phenomenon at hand. The method is illustrated with an example from a small Austrian service firm. When embedded into a comprehensive research framework, intuition may be a valid instrument in qualitative data analysis.