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The purpose of this study is to improve our understanding of bracketing, one of the most central philosophical and theoretical constructs of phenomenology, as a theory of mind. Furthermore, we wanted to showcase how this theoretical construct can be implemented as a methodological tool.

In this study we have adopted an approach similar to a qualitative meta-synthesis, comparing the emergent patterns of two empirical projects, seeking synergies and contradictions and looking for additional insights from new emerging patterns.

On a philosophical level, we have found that bracketing, as a theoretical construct, is not about the achievement of objectivity; quite to the contrary, it embraces subjectivity and puts it centre-stage. On a theoretical level, we have achieved a better understanding of Husserl's phenomenology, as a theory of mind. On a methodological level, we have achieved a powerful way of supplementing and/or clarifying research findings, by using a theoretical construct as a methodological tool.

Our paper contributes to the phenomenology literature at a philosophical, theoretical and methodological level, by offering a better understanding and a novel implementation of one of the central theoretical constructs of phenomenology.

The purpose of this paper is to examine meetings as a form of meta-practice and investigate their role related to management control of innovation development.

This research draws on case studies of two biotechnology firms operating in pharmaceuticals and medicine, which represent different contexts regarding the uncertainty and complexity of innovation development.

The study suggests two distinct roles of meetings in the context of innovation development: meetings as regulating and ordering; and meetings as a resource. In the first role, meetings serve as a regulative mechanism that brings together multiple elements of control into a system. Meetings as a meta-practice regulate and order by bracketing elements of innovation in time and space, rendering the innovation process more manageable and allowing actors to handle the complexity of knowledge. In the second role, meetings are used as a resource, sporadically intervening in the ongoing activities of innovation projects. The study explains how these two roles relate to the uncertainty and complexity of innovation development and have different implications for management control.

The study challenges the instrumental view of meetings by taking a closer look at their structuring potential in the organization. Understanding the roles of meetings provides another perspective on the functioning of management control and opens new avenues for studying the practices of control and decision-making.

Agars, Kaufman, and Locke's (this volume) review of social influence within the creativity and innovation literature provides an introduction to multi-level issues within creativity research. Their chapter reveals that relevant social influences may differ by level, relevant domain characteristics may not hold across other domains, and creativity may be influenced differently than innovation. Building on Agars et al.'s work, this commentary offers several suggestions pertaining to multi-level research as a means of advancing creativity research, specifically as it relates to social influence. Suggestions for future research include consideration of levels-based boundaries within theoretical construct development, employment of a bracketing technique to review construct implications at levels above and below the construct of interest, and improvement in multi-level modeling of particular social influence and/or creative processes that are non-linear in nature.

Drawing from the extant literature on sensemaking theory, the purpose of this paper is to understand how physicians view health information exchange (HIE) implementation and how their stories frame the situation.

This paper utilizes content analysis with sensemaking theory as a theoretical lens to analyze physicians’ interviews.

The stories within this study draw attention to how sensemaking might impact the HIE implementation process. The findings demonstrated four well-defined manifest themes specific to sensemaking: bracketing, enactment, social and identity construction. There were sub-themes that cut across major themes: financial implications, practice changes and impact on professional reputation. The data demonstrated that each participant singled out items or events specific to the HIE change process in order to make sense of the change as an entirety.

No other study has applied sensemaking in an effort to gain insight into the ways physicians view the HIE process. Therefore, this study offers a unique perspective which might provide a framework through which to understand the possible barriers to successful implementation of HIE from a physician.

Due to the limitations to the purpose and practice of both phenomenological and duoethnographic research methodologies, the purpose of this paper is to propose phenomenological polyethnography as a hybrid qualitative methodology, which would guide skilled researchers in conducting phenomenological exploration of an emergent experience as insiders.

This study is an applied a hybridization approach to phenomenology and duoethnography as two distinct qualitative research traditions.

Employing a poststructuralist perspective, researcher-participants with relevant difference co-investigate a phenomenological question together. Borrowing elements from both hermeneutic phenomenology and duoethnography, this methodology involves the consideration of a phenomenon, the use of authors with relevant difference who have both special insight into that phenomenon as participants and skill as qualitative researchers, the intentional collection of prereflective data while all researcher-participants are experiencing the phenomenon or immediately after, the subsequent reflection upon and interpretation of the phenomenon as it was similarly and differently experienced by the researcher-participants, and the description of both the essence and meaning of the phenomenon.

This new, hybrid qualitative methodology will enable researchers to more efficiently analyze and disseminate the research of insider knowledge on emergent phenomena in higher education and other settings.

As a new methodology, it may be used to investigate events and provide rich, thick description in a way not before seen.

Phenomena are what we as researchers begin with, and to study phenomena is to appreciate how any determination of things and events always relates back to the context in which they appeared. Phenomenology is the study of such relations of appearance and the conditions of such relations. Appearance is an active rather than superficial condition, a constant bringing together of experiencing beings and experienced things (including sentient beings), in what the modern “father” of phenomenology Edmund Husserl called conditions of intentionality, and what his errant, one-time student Martin Heidegger called conditions of thrownness and projection. This chapter delves into the philosophical background of this mode of study, before opening up into consideration of, first, where phenomenology has been influential in organization studies, and, second, the potential of the approach. In so doing, we suggest much can be made of reorienting research in organization studies away from an entitative epistemology in which things are seen in increasingly causally linked, detailed isolation, and toward a relational epistemology in which what exists is understood in terms of its being experienced within everyday lives.

The purpose of this paper is to undertake a phenomenological study of the working conditions and living standards of private security guards (private police) in New Delhi. The focus here is to bring forth their lived experiences as security guards.

The paper touches briefly upon the theoretical formulations on phenomenological sociology. The principal emphasis here is on the field application of phenomenology as a methodology of social inquiry – how phenomenology was put to use, the research problems encountered and how these research conundrums were navigated. The research makes use of interview as the technique of data collection. The study uses purposive and convenience sampling.

The research has tried to bring forth the lived experiences of the private security guards as regards to their job and living conditions, by “bracketing off” the author’s biases to the best of the author’s capacity. From the interview responses, some higher level concepts have been formulated, called the “essence” of lived experiences.

As the sample size is small, the research cannot be considered a peremptory account of the “lived experiences” applicable to all the private security guards in Delhi. Such sweeping generalizations need to be avoided.

Besides highlighting the lived experiences of the private security guards, the larger purpose of this paper to solicit critical comments from the readers so that the field application of phenomenology could be better understood and refined further.

This is an original research work carried out by the author. During the fieldwork, “reflexivity” has been the author’s constant companion, where the author has tried best to keep the author’s prejudices at bay. Its value is twofold: first, as phenomenological research works on private security guards are few in India, this study can stimulate further research works in this field and second, the research can carry forward the debate on how to improve further phenomenological research works.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how sustainability is integrated into a new venture’s business network initiation. This study unpacks sustainability in business network initiation using temporal bracketing and identifying its main processes. Temporal bracketing supports the understanding of the evolution of sustainability in network initiation. The processes help explore the sustainability patterns that emerge from the new venture’s attempt to integrate sustainability into network initiation.

The exploratory case study of an Italian pasta maker draws on industrial network theory to focus on the business network initiation of new ventures. The novelty is the integration of sustainability into the business network initiation literature. This paper adopts a single case study methodology and an abductive approach to analysis.

This study finds that sustainability in network initiation is achieved through three periods of initiation and through five processes that are overlapping, intertwined and reciprocal. This study suggests that sustainability can have a positive or negative impact when integrated into the initiation process.

This paper provides a conceptual framework for understanding how a new venture integrates sustainability in its network initiation. The framework comprises periods and processes of network initiation which show how a new venture can integrate sustainability in its business activities and resources through interaction with network actors.

The purpose of this paper is to provide practitioners of management and interested research a sense of how the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament is affecting worker productivity in the workplace. There are several positive and negative issues concerning how some employees are willing to spend work time following the NCAA tournament and related office gambling activities.

A review of the applied literature on sports‐related gambling and bracketing that is quite widespread in the USA and other countries was provided. The sample consisted of relatively well‐paid professionals, who may routinely engage in office pools and most universally are involved in bracketing March Madness plays. This resulted in 145 useable questionnaires recording responses to 28 variables from an initial sampling frame of slightly over 200 potential respondents associated with a major Pittsburgh‐based financial service provider. Factor analysis and multivariate statistical analysis were used to test several hypotheses.

Management appears to be successfully delivering the message that office gambling activities harm productivity if management activity discourages office gambling, but there appears to be a trade‐off as labor productivity may be slightly reduced on the short term, and employee cohesiveness may increase on the long term. It was also found that the degree of personal involvement is important; the more an employee is involved, the more negative the impact that March Madness activities will have on his/her productivity.

March Madness is a time‐honored tradition that many employees take for granted and will engage in regardless of the extrinsic controls that management may care to implement, making the extrinsic controls too expensive for a questionable return in enhanced labor productivity during March Madness.

It is an interesting academic research question concerning the balance of productivity losses and gains in employee cohesiveness that warrants additional research in the intrinsic motivations of both management and their employees.