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To analyse the use of hermeneutics in library and information science (LIS).

Presents a literature‐based conceptual analysis of: the definition of hermeneutics in LIS; and the practical use of hermeneutics within recent LIS studies.

The use of hermeneutics in LIS has increased during the last decade, as has the number of authors discussing its scientific value for LIS. In many studies the interpretative character of the objects of study seen as hermeneutic in itself. This is a misconception which draws the attention away from hermeneutics as a scientific point of departure and methodology used in the study of these processes. The problem is specifically present in studies making explicit or implicit reference to a modern view of science, while studies referring to LIS as a postmodern field of study seem to be more at ease with hermeneutics.

Questions are raised on the fundamental use of hermeneutics in LIS. This may give rise to a deeper discussion on the scientific value and character of hermeneutics in LIS.

The paper questions the use of hermeneutics as a point of departure in LIS research by looking at the research made within the field. This perspective may increase understanding of the function of hermeneutics within LIS, something which is of value both for the research community and for students within LIS.

The study seeks to address the research question: “How can Gadamerian and Ricoeurian hermeneutics be operationalized in an interpretive accounting research project”? The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to review the key hermeneutic concepts of philosophers Gadamer and Ricoeur; and second, to share insights from the researcher’s experience of applying Gadamerian and Ricoeurian hermeneutics to an interpretive accounting research project.

The paper draws on the extant literature and the researcher’s own experience using hermeneutics theory in an interpretive accounting research project involving in-depth interviews with organisational managers.

The process of interpretation is described using the core concept of the hermeneutic circle where the reader and the text engage in dialogue. The readers’ pre-understandings play a key role in this dialogue and assist in drawing meaning from the text. However, it is necessary for the reader to adopt a critically reflexive approach remaining alert for both unproductive pre-understandings and hidden power structures and ideologies in the text being interpreted. Each reading of a text involves the completion of one cycle of the hermeneutic circle in which the reader transitions from pre-configuration to configuration and ultimately re-configuration concluding with the reader acquiring new horizons of understanding. The researcher’s experience of applying hermeneutic theory to an interpretive accounting research project are reflected on and nine lessons are offered.

These insights will prove valuable to interpretive researchers within the social sciences, including accounting and management studies, as well as those working in the natural sciences.

Revisiting the critical hermeneutics analysis of Wu Zetian’s case in Peng et al.’s (2015) paper, the purpose of this paper is to explore the complexity and paradox of Wu Zetian as a historical figure, and to demonstrate the potential of critical hermeneutics as an innovative methodology to study gender, diversity and history. Moreover, the authors attempt to examine some of the potential challenges and limitations of this methodology and to provide an in-depth account of the socio-politics involved in the research process.

This is a reflexive critique based on a framework of four central concepts of critical hermeneutics (Prasad, 2005): questions of author intentionality, layers of texts, hermeneutic circle and relating to texts.

Critical hermeneutics has great potential as well as considerable challenges and limitations in the research areas of gender, diversity and history.

This paper offers a lucid exposition of what critical hermeneutics is about, how it might be applied to a particular case and potential challenges and limitations of this methodology. The study is intensely reflexive and context oriented, illustrating how a deepened understanding of critical hermeneutics leads to a more informed discussion of the possibilities and limitations of the methodology, and how researchers, editors and reviewers can be influenced by the context in which the study is conducted.

It has recently become more acknowledged that there is a quality of “messiness” to the qualitative research process. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the fieldpath approach—a hermeneutically inspired framework—to account for the non-linearity, uncertainty and ambiguity of the research process.

This conceptual paper reviews how the scope of hermeneutics has been partly misunderstood. The paper discusses how the scope of hermeneutics has lately been expanded by works such as Günter Figal’s (2010) Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and Philosophy.

The fieldpath approach proposes that a heightened relation to materiality enables the messiness of the process to be preserved, while at the same time offering a way to find one’s footing in the midst of ontologically incomplete phenomena that are still—in a processual fashion—forming and becoming.

This is a conceptual paper. In addition to the research mentioned here, more studies would be needed to legitimise, test and refine the approach.

Objectivity provides an additional criterion for researchers to lean on when facing the non-linearity and unexpected turns inherent in the qualitative research process.

The stress on materiality involves an ethical dimension. Post-human ethics are concerned with the future environmental consequences and sustainability of the material world. The way that matter matters in our methodologies is of primary importance.

First, the paper emphasises that hermeneutics, contrary to the common perception, does offer criteria for evaluating between interpretations. Second, it introduces the notion of hermeneutic objectivity, which stresses the importance of materiality for interpretations. Third, it introduces the fieldpath approach, which, based on the previous criterion of hermeneutic objectivity, allows for the messiness of the research process, while also preserving a tight grip on the hermeneutic imperative of “understanding in a new way”.

Inspired by objective hermeneutics (Oevermann, 1984, 1996, 1999; Oevermann et al., 1979; Weller, 2010; Wohrab-Sahr, 2003) and qualitative validation (Adcock and Collier, 2001; Martis, 2006; Maxwell, 1992), the authors present this essay with the aim of proposing an objective hermeneutic approach to qualitative validation.

In order to develop this approach, the authors consider the contributions of Martis (2006) and Maxwell (1992) about theoretical–empirical validity, Adcock and Collier's propositions (2001) regarding the conceptualization and evaluation of phenomena through specific levels, tasks and stages of validation and the principles of objective hermeneutic interpretation proposed by Wohlrab-Sahr (2003).

Three main contributions are considered: theoretical–empirical validity (Martis, 2006; Maxwell, 1992); levels of validation – theoretical framework, systematized concept, indicators and results (Adcock and Collier, 2001); stages of validation – content validity, convergent validity and nomological validity (Adcock and Collier, 2001); and principles of objective hermeneutic interpretation – sequential interpretation, mental–experimental explanation of possible interpretations, preservation rule, literal character of interpretation, totality, reflection about knowledge used in the analysis and group of interpreters (Wohrab-Sahr, 2003). These contributions were related to establishing a framework that illustrates the proposed objective hermeneutic approach to qualitative validation.

The authors intend to offer to the scope of organization studies an alternative for validation, so that the voices of the researched can be heard. Furthermore, the authors seek to guide researchers as to how to respect and protect what is heard, in order to avoid any invasion of others' discourse.

With the demise of the empiricist theory of knowledge and the increased prominence of postempiricist and hermeneutical perspectives, it is clear that various aspects of our social lives – including educational leadership – should no longer be thought of in terms of technological or instrumental rationality and technical expertise. Although the current philosophical ferment allows for different ways to rethink leadership, this article examines the implications of one school of thought – philosophical hermeneutics – for the research on, and especially the practice of, educational leadership. The central point is that this perspective, when interpreted in terms of how we think of ourselves as persons, results in a conceptualisation of leadership as a predominantly practical and moral activity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how senior leaders in the hospitality industry use storytelling to disseminate their vision to employees and to illustrate how hermeneutics can be used as a method for the interpretation of qualitative data in hospitality management research.

A purposeful criterion‐based sample design was constructed and after a period of sensitisation to their organisations, 20 phenomenological interviews with high‐level international hospitality industry leaders were conducted. These interviews are analysed using a hermeneutical framework.

Storytelling is being used as a strategic method of communication and is fundamental to leadership in the contemporary commercial hospitality industry; stories are used to strengthen and revitalise current norms and values. Stories penetrate organisations and tap into the emotions of employees in order to inspire action and understanding.

Hermeneutics is applied clearly and concisely and the paper demonstrates how hermeneutics could easily be adapted for other projects. Clear direction for further research is suggested, exploring the efficaciousness of stories from the listeners' rather than narrator's perspective.

This paper does not teach managers how to tell stories, or even make them better storytellers; however, it highlights how storytelling is used by leaders at the apex of the commercial hospitality industry to develop and enhance organisational culture.

Within hospitality management research, storytelling has mostly been ignored both as a management tool and as a form of data collection; similarly hermeneutics as a means of data analysis does not feature in the hospitality management literature.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the application of a hermeneutic-based approach as innovative way to study the Cultural Heritage management in a mesoeconomic space.

The paper builds a theoretical framework based on the analysis of relevant literature in the field of cultural economics, heritage economics and conservation and restoration techniques. Then, after having defined the conceptual hypothesis, a hermeneutical interpretative model is designed for the analysis of the processes of Cultural Heritage management with particular regard to the strategies of stakeholder engagement.

The research shows how the mesoeconomic space is that border area where it is possible to solve more easily the conflicts that arise as a result of the different expectations of stakeholders. Hermeneutical analysis, applied in iterative form, allows us to find common connections, points of contact and convergences between the interpretative horizons of the various stakeholders.

The application of the interpretative model allows the identification of the expectations of stakeholders, improving the knowledge of the tangible and intangible attributes of works of art, in order to design appropriate interventions of restoration, conservation and valorization.

The new model of analysis, based on hermeneutic methodology, is designed to understand and describe the social and economic relations between the different stakeholders involved in the management of Cultural Heritage.

This paper examines for the first time the Cultural Heritage sector within the mesoeconomic area between the micro and the macroeconomy. In addition to this mesoeconomic analysis and conceptual approach, the authors introduce as methodology the economic hermeneutics that represents an innovative tool in the field of economic and business disciplines.

This study aims to consider how research methodologies and methods can afford holistic inquiry into gendered embodied consumption. Noting the salience of gender in past and present discourse surrounding the body and building on poststructuralist feminist hermeneutic philosophy and practice, the authors introduce a novel methodological framework situated within three considerations borne of the current socio-cultural landscape: the politics of embodiment, embodied identity and intersectionality.

To assist scholars and practitioners in interpreting themes of gendered embodiment in textual data surrounding consumption topics, the authors orient the framework around three principles of listening, questioning and hospitality. This framework fosters embodied empathy by linking the researcher’s body to those of research participants. To illustrate the method, the authors interpret consumption narratives extracted from semi-structured interviews with 26 women-identified recreational runners on the topics of embodiment, sport and media.

The interpretations of gendered consumption narratives show that using the principles of listening, questioning and hospitality invites an understanding of consumers as multifaceted, contradictory and agentic. The authors argue that consumers’ everyday experiences are often simple and quiet but embedded in history wherein bodies are both biological and inescapably social.

The methodological framework allows both the researcher’s and research participants’ embodiment to play a role in the research process. It also illuminates the entanglement of embodiment and consumption in a fraught, politicized context. The authors show that by listening to consumers, questioning their narratives and traditional interpretations thereof and inviting consumers to feel comfortable and heard, researchers can see what other approaches may overlook.

Reflexivity involves critical reflection by the qualitative researcher as to the influence of the researcher's culture, history and belief on the conduct and outcome of the research. It is often seen as a practice exercised in the analysis of results in order to attempt to objectify the research. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the value of reflexivity is located in its practice in the field encounter as a means of recognising and embracing subjectivity. In order to widen reflexivity as hermeneutics, the paper draws on Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics as developed in “Truth and Method”.

This is a conceptual paper which distils critical themes from Gadamer's truth and method and applies them to the concept of reflexivity as applied in the field.

The paper suggests that reflexivity is an important component in the field encounter. Immersion in the language and terms of the field is critical to understanding meaning; who I am, my past, my lived experience are essential inputs to my research; the researcher's opinions, ideas and outspoken statements are part of the fabric of qualitative research; qualitative interpretation as a creative exercise; qualitative research should bring insight and understanding that can be applied to catalyse change.

Understanding and applying reflexivity in the field will provide innovative insights which can be carried through to the data analysis.

This study uniquely applies Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics to reflexivity and the field encounter.