Publishing Qualitative Research in Academy of Management Discoveries

Academy of Management Discoveries (AMD), the Academy of Management’s newest journal, was founded for the purpose of providing a publication outlet for management and organizational scholars who have done empirical research that focuses on interesting and importantphenomena thatarenotadequatelypredicted or explained by existing theories or conceptual frameworks. This is the fourth in a series of editorials from members of the founding editorial team of AMD, each of which has been designed to provide you with a perspective on writing or reviewing empirical research for AMD. In this editorial, we focus on the use of qualitative methods to facilitate the discovery of interesting and potentially important phenomena, concepts, or relationships in the organizational sciences. Our purpose in presenting this editorial is not to replicate the excellent articles or books that have been written elsewhere about how to do qualitative research in the organizational sciences (e.g., Gioia, Carley, & Hamilton, 2012; Miles&Huberman,1994;Pratt,2008,2009;VanMaanen, 1979), but rather to focus specifically on the publication of research based on qualitativemethods inAMD. In thiseditorial,wehave threeprimarygoals.First,we want to convey thatAMD is open topublishing research based on a broad range of qualitative approaches in terms of philosophical stands, methods, and reporting. To do so, we briefly acknowledge the array of available qualitative methods and the different assumptions associated with such methods. Second, we illustrate how AMD’s focus on discoveries and its existence as an online journal make it particularly well suited for the publication of research using various qualitative methods. The online nature of the journal provides authors with an array of interesting opportunities for thinking about how to best present the findings of their qualitative work to readers. We also provide some illustrations of how qualitative methods have already been used in AMD articles to make discoveries. Third, we seek to offer some guidelines to assist researchers in structuring their papers in ways that will be consistent withAMD’s mission.