Creative Qualitative Research in Behavioral Science: A Pragmatic Epistemology of Experimenting

Abstract

This appraisal evokes the much-debated dysfunctional relationship between organizational research and practice. While research on creativity in the work place has long evidenced that actors must feel confident to be “allowed” to experiment, err, play and take risks so as to exploit all spaces of the possible, in research imprecision or mistake-making is considered taboo. We conjecture that – especially in a fast-paced uncertain research context – hearing,, experimentation and happenstance are indispensable to research striving to generate relevant novel knowledge and theory, and that they are not sufficiently addressed through existing research methods. We sketch out an epistemology of experimenting, grounded in pragmatism, to remedy this gap.