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Behind the simple connotation “business exchange” a complex empirical phenomenon can be observed, including using, producing and developing activities, taking place in different contexts, influenced by ideas stemming from both practice and mainstream economic thinking. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the methodological challenges of research on business exchange in general and of IMP research in particular. Furthermore, to discuss how the authors can avoid the contemporary “methodomania” trend, where the researchers’ focus is directed toward accounting for which rules were followed.

The paper is based on a methodological distinction made by Peter Galison (1997) in his investigation of the interdependence among research approach, methodology, and research object in microphysics. Studies based on: “image,” allows data in its original form, and “logic,” requires the translation of original data and therefore relies “fundamentally on statistical demonstrations.” This distinction is utilized to investigate what is specific with business exchange as a research object, and how IMP researchers have dealt with the methodological challenges it presents. Furthermore, the paper considers these different methodological approaches in relation to theory and understanding of the research object.

The main conclusion is the huge importance the image-based methodology has had for the development of the IMP network approach. From the very start the IMP project has been focused on the production of a large set of, in Galison’s terminology, “hard facts” about the existence, substance and importance of interaction and the relationships it is creating. This image-based methodology has been utilized in the development of a set of imaging instruments, each with an ability to picture the content and consequences of business exchange.

Two methodological challenges which are specific for business research are identified. One is that “images” in terms of personal accounts on the organizing of production and use of economic resources are marbled with ideas, stemming from a mix of theories, textbooks and practice on how to do this. The second is that established theories create a “logic” in terms of the combination of “assumptions” and established “accounting principles” that produce a number of outputs interpreted as primary data and objective accounts of the characteristics of the production and use of economic resources.

IMP’s image-based methodology and the development of specific imaging instruments can increase the exactness in the pictures of the content and consequences of business interaction, and also, catch the range of its substance. Considering this circumstance could be a way to avoid “methodomania” and to breed awareness of the relationship among research object, methodology, and research approach.

IMP’s image-based methodology can increase the awareness that the logic-based model of business exchange has been ascribed an advisory role in terms of how companies should act in order to survive and prosper: as sellers and buyers in relation to each other, and also in relation to others.

First, the paper underlines that image-based methodologies can be used to produce “hard facts” about the existence, substance, and importance of business interaction. Second, the paper shows how the methodology of mainstream economics tends to be “the elephant in the room,” both in approaches resting on “image” and “logic.” It addresses the importance of making the elephant visible and investigates what is happening in its shadow.

This paper aims to assist researchers considering the benefits and constraints of re‐using previously collected data (sourced from media in the public domain) as the sample for a grounded theory qualitative research inquiry.

The paper identifies what were perceived by the researchers as methodological challenges, encountered in the context of a study using grounded theory methodology. The seven areas included: the re‐use of qualitative data, forming the research question, developing the research approach, refining the methodology, ensuring data quality, maintaining methodological integrity, and developing ethical boundaries. It outlines the process of working through these challenges and explains the solutions adopted throughout the course of the research project.

The findings from this study indicate that while re‐using data can be perceived as a constraint in qualitative research, what is not adequately taken into consideration is the actual quality of the archival material that forms the body of collected data. The researchers also illustrate the benefits of using rich archival material in the context of a single research project and caution that the re‐use of previously collected data is not a soft option, nor does it offer a fast track to completion.

Solutions to challenges described in the article may not be immediately applicable to other research contexts or archives of data.

Researchers can adopt approaches similar to those outlined in the paper to assess the applicability of archives of previously‐collected qualitative data as the sample for complementary or supplementary research.

The paper presents solutions to seven commonly perceived challenges to the re‐use of previously collected data as the sample for qualitative research.

In this chapter, the authors focus on three challenges related to the attributes of the interactive business world and on the related implications for methodology. The first challenge is how to capture the continuity of business relationships, which implies: (1) Taking a two-sided (bilateral) view when researching business relationships, (2) collecting data on content and consequences of business relationships and (3) developing a research design to capture development over time. The second challenge is how to set boundaries and trace network-like structures, which implies: (1) identifying the relevant relationships that appear to affect each other in a network-like manner, (2) capturing interdependences among relationships (how they affect each other) and (3) researching forces generating network dynamics (how these interdependencies are established and change over time). The third challenge is how to observe and research interaction processes in business relationships, which leave little traces and are difficult to record. This requires the attention on (1) the choice of point(s) of observation, (2) the handling of the subjective understanding of interaction and (3) researching how interaction unfolds. The authors conclude with a discussion on the complexity of handling these challenges, and related methodological choices, when ‘research objects’ are interconnected.

This chapter derives from the movieDr. Strangelovecues for exploring questions about the quest for methodological insularity and purity in socio-legal research. Steven Lukes’ classic three-dimensional model of power provides an intellectual focus for the core exploration of relations between epistemology and data generation, the two key elements that we usually identify with methodology. The discussion culminates in an affirmative argument for the value of approaching methodology as jazz, the creative popular music that grounds reliable, humane sense in Kubrick's movie and provides an apt analogy for much of the leading scholarship in the LSA tradition.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a critical reflection on the experience and challenges associated with conducting a family ethnography along with methodological guidance that generates insights for future researchers.

This paper uses a family ethnography as a methodological approach to investigate family consumption in context with a view towards capturing detailed consumption experiences.

A family ethnography is a valuable but challenging methodology to follow in its preparation, practice and publishing. Despite these challenges, they are surmountable with some lateral thinking to conduct methodologically and ethically sound ethnographic research.

The method, challenges and guidance offered here can be used to make the most of ethnography as a methodological approach to family research.

The critical reflection of the experience and challenges of conducting a family ethnography along with the practical advice offered here may guide those considering using ethnographic research.

Contributions include a critical reflection on the experience and challenges of conducting a family ethnography, ethical and methodological guidelines to overcome them and operational guidelines for their use.

How should researchers navigate and interpret the moral emotions evoked in them in research on trauma? In this reflective essay, the authors discuss their experience as researchers on moral injury (MI) in veterans and police personnel in the Netherlands. Stories of MI usually do not allow for a clear-cut categorization of the affected person as a victim or perpetrator. This ambivalence, in fact, is explicitly part of the concept of MI. It means however that researchers face complicated psychological, ethical and methodological challenges during research on MI.

The authors contemplate these challenges by describing two empirical cases demonstrating the particular moral challenges that emerge in MI research. Drawing from literature on qualitative research and emotions, the authors distil different perspectives on the role of moral emotions in research.

Reflecting on the ambivalent and difficult emotions the authors experienced as researchers when listening to personal accounts of moral injury, the authors offer insights into the necessity and delicacy of navigating between the methodological potential and the ethical and psychological risks of such emotions.

This study is relevant for all researchers examining trauma, in particular when the research is surrounded by complex ethical questions. While the issue of managing emotions in research on trauma is challenging in itself, it is further complicated when the stories related by respondents challenge the researcher's own moral beliefs and values.

This study aims to explore the complexities of methodological, ethical and emotional challenges of studying sensitive and vulnerable communities online from the perspective of simultaneously being a researcher and a research subject. The point of departure for these explorations consists of the author’s past and ongoing studies of the role and use of a closed grief support group on Facebook for bereaved parents – a community of which the author is a member. The aim is not to provide ready solutions for “how to do ethics,” but rather to contribute to the collective and ongoing work initiated by the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), among others, and to recognize the necessity of ethical pluralism, cross-cultural awareness and an interdisciplinary approach.

This is an explorative study, drawing on an (auto)ethnographic case study. The case serves as a point of departure for discussing the complexities of methodological, ethical and emotional challenges of studying sensitive and vulnerable communities online from the perspective of simultaneously being a researcher and a research subject.

Being a researcher and a research subject rolled into one, as it were, presents both opportunities and challenges. To conduct responsible research from both these perspectives pose high demands on the researchers’ ethical as well as emotional capacities and responsibilities. Hopes and expectancies of the community under study might put the researcher into a dilemma, ethical aspects of anonymity and informed consent might have to be reconsidered as well as emotional challenges of engaging in and with sensitive research, all of which makes for a complex balancing act. Ethics and methods are inextricably intertwined, so are the emotional challenges of conducting sensitive research intermingled. Studying vulnerable individuals and closed communities online highlights the necessity for case and context sensitive research and for flexibility, adaptivity and mindfulness of the researcher. It also highlights the importance of discussing and questioning theoretical, methodological and ethical developments for studying everyday life practices online.

The challenges encountered in this case study contribute to the experientially grounded approach to research ethics emphasized in AoIR’s ethics guidelines. This case offers an opportunity to explore and discuss complex issues arising from the researcher’s insider position in a closed group devoted to the sensitive topic of supporting bereaved parents. Further, it highlights the necessity for research to be case and context sensitive as well as for the researcher and the research design to be flexible and adaptive. Research on vulnerable communities also heightens the demands of ethical responsibility of the researcher and the research process.

Doing qualitative research with vulnerable urban populations such as street traders present significant methodological challenges, which many researchers may not be prepared to handle. This paper aims to provide a reflective account of the authors' fieldwork experiences while conducting a study with street traders in Harare, Zimbabwe.

This paper draws data from a qualitative case study conducted with street traders in Harare's Central Business District (CBD). In this study, mixed qualitative methods were used including focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews and photovoice.

The study’s findings suggest that researching street traders is a complex process that requires flexibility, adaptability and creativity of researchers across the following aspects: gaining access in unfamiliar research contexts, building rapport and trust with participants, managing ethical dilemmas and addressing power imbalances between researchers and participants.

While there is a growing body of empirical research on street trading in the global south, there are limited studies that discusses the practical fieldwork experiences associated with conducting primary research with such vulnerable and dynamic urban populations. The authors highlight strategies and practical steps that can be taken to address these challenges. This paper emphasizes the need for flexibility and adaptability in researching street traders, as it is akin to exploring uncharted territories where conventional methodological templates may not be effective.

The purpose of this paper is to describe an experiment in a non-credit bearing series of social philosophy workshops offered to social science and humanities disciplines in an Australian university.

The paper outlines the design rationale and learning objectives for the workshop series. The data set includes qualitative student responses to 501 post-workshop questionnaires and 14 in-depth qualitative responses to a follow-up online questionnaire.

The data suggest that social philosophy methodology curriculum offered within a multi-discipline peer context can facilitate an appreciation among students of the centrality of theory and the value of diverse discipline approaches in research. The last part of the paper explores what underpins this – a kind of un-learning or uncertainty regarding the veracity of different philosophical approaches to research, tied to a de-centring of research subjectivity that allows for the co-existence of multiple voices. Language learning, the inclusion of post-modern perspectives and an unbiased presentation of a wide range of thinkers within a challenging intellectual context are central to this.

The emerging trend towards university-wide doctoral training offers opportunities for useful innovations in research education. University-wide social philosophy curriculum can play a role in facilitating constructive negotiation of theoretical complexity both within and across social science and humanities disciplines.

The contemporary social science and humanities research context is a challenging space, characterised by intra-discipline methodological plurality, and the risk of marginalisation by more dominant instrumentalist, end-user and science-driven perspectives. The trend towards bringing different methodological perspectives together within inter-disciplinary research and team supervision of doctoral students can lead to conceptual misunderstanding and research delays. The capacity to negotiate and translate conceptual perspectives, often within complex research relationships, has then become an increasingly important academic skill. Within this context, university-wide doctoral training has emerged, but there has been little discussion of doctoral curricula beyond that devised for professional doctorates within the discipline in the non-US higher education literature. This paper contributes to emerging scholarship on research education by describing the sorts of relational, textual and conceptual processes that might be created in the multi-discipline social science and humanities context to produce an appreciation for the different philosophical foundations of research knowledge.

This chapter explores the challenges for the application of the concept of disability to other categories of oppression utilized in the notion of intersectionality.

The concept of intersectionality argues that oppression occurs within the contexts of class, race/ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. We raise questions about the applicability of intersectionality to persons with disabilities. Using a Symbolic Interactionist approach to understand the matrix of domination or subordination, we examine how well disability as a category of disadvantage applies to intersectionality.

We argue that the fluid, heterogeneous, and discordant status characteristics, physicality, and diagnostic ambiguity of disability present a considerable challenge for the application of intersectionality as a useful paradigm for disability studies. While several ascribed statuses may contribute to the oppression of persons with disabilities, disability itself offers many unique challenges to understanding the intersection of these traits in the lives of these same people.

The conceptual uniqueness of disability produces rather complex methodological circumstances for understanding the social identity of persons with disabilities who are simultaneously members of additional categories of oppression. These complex and challenging methodological issues can best be met qualitatively, i.e., by approaching disability as lived experience.

For students of intersectionality, this chapter offers a comprehensive analysis and assessment of the concept of disability as a category of oppression.