Choose, compose, contemplate: Reflexive grounded theorizing in management research

By (re)constructing participants’ life stories, researchers can comprehend the nuances of key managerial phenomena such as transitions. The experiences, processes, and contradictions displayed in life stories are best analyzed using qualitative approaches. This article presents an approach which bricolages and builds upon the strengths of life story interviews and reflexivity, thereby enhancing Straussian grounded theorizing (SGT) process. While conventional SGT involves coding and categorizing, our ‘reflexive grounded theorizing process’ accounts for the characteristics and nuances of the phenomenon-of-interest simultaneously at the level of the individual participant and across the sample, through three stages - 1) vertical analysis, with two analytic moves: ‘chronological coding’ and ‘phenomenological writing’, 2) horizontal analysis, with ‘axes construction’ and ‘analytic writing’, and 3) researchers’ reflexivity, interlaced throughout the aforementioned stages. By being reflexive and by iteratively situating the findings back in data and its context, SGT’s contributions to real-world managerial theories and practices can be enhanced.