Book Review: Remodeling GT once again

Alvita Nathaniel, West Virginia University Barry Gibson and Jan Hartman (2014): Rediscovering Grounded Theory London: Sage In their book entitled Rediscovering Grounded Theory, Barry Gibson and Jan Hartman (2014) aim to present grounded theory in a new way with the intention of “forward looking preservation” (p. 237). They claim that Rediscovery is an outcome of many conversations in a London pub over the last eight years. The authors tackle both method and methodology as they meticulously describe the context of The Discovery of Grounded Theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and take an authoritative stand on many of the controversies surrounding remodeling of the method in recent years. Rediscovering also includes substantial how-to sections corresponding to chapters in Glaser’s Theoretical Sensitivity (1978). Rediscovery adds explanatory depth in its discussion of the context of grounded theory, but fails to keep many of its promises. Rediscovery is far reaching. Included in the first part are chapters entitled, What Kind of Theory is Grounded Theory, Constructivism in Grounded Theory, Disentangling Concepts and Categories in Grounded Theory, and Coding in Grounded Theory. These chapters describe the context of the method, discuss the controversies, and present Gibson and Hardman’s positions on contentious issues. The second part of the book consists of chapters that aim to help grounded theorists with procedures such as developing theoretical sensitivity, theoretical sampling, coding, memoing, and writing theory. To their credit, the authors continually acknowledge the originators of the method. From the outset, Gibson and Hartman give credit to Glaser and Strauss. Reinventing acknowledges that grounded theory opened exciting opportunities for a new generation of researchers and perhaps even opened doors into new areas of inquiry (p. 29). As a new method, grounded theory‘s emphasis was on inductively generating theory from data, rather than deductively verifying hypotheses. I agree with Gibson and Hartman that knowledge of the origin of a method and its terminology is imperative to rigorous research. Rediscovering acknowledges that Glaser and Strauss “discovered” grounded theory. Rediscovery also places classic grounded theory firmly within the zeitgeist of discipline of sociology at the time and describes its roots in the Departments of Sociology at Columbia University and the University of Chicago. As Gibson and Hartman meticulously describe the history of the method, they also discuss changes from the original (classic) method that were developed by others in subsequent years. This “evolution” of grounded theory has been embroiled in controversy over what Glaser describes as “remodeling” of the method. Remodeling was begun by Strauss and Corbin and later by Charmaz and many others. Rediscovering clearly focuses on the original method as described in Discovery. Yet in an effort reminiscent of Rodney King’s famous plea, “can’t we all just get along,” Gibson and Hartman suggest that newer versions of the method, particularly Chamaz’s constructivist version, depict a positive evolution. They go so far as to encourage alternative versions of grounded theory, stating that “methodological pluralism in grounded theory is something that should be welcomed” (p. 237). Paradoxically, the authors mention a more recent move toward the blending of grounded theory with other traditions, acknowledging that there is a risk that too many modifications will threaten to make the method “incoherent and contradictory” (p. 98). Gibson and Hartman move beyond the discussion of the professors and universities that inspired Glaser and Strauss to delve into the modern etymology of the terms used in grounded theory. They closely examine common terms in grounded theory such as concept, category, and indicator. Rediscovery looks to Strauss...

About the Authors

Ben Binsardi is a reader in the Business and Management department at Glyndwr University. He completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at Texas Tech and Wichita State Universities. He then obtained a PhD from Loughborough, studying econometrics and undertook a Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford. Ben has published several textbooks and research journals in the areas of research methodology, marketing and finance. He is chairing a track at the Academy of Marketing Conference in July 2014. Ben teaches research methodology in conjunction with Jan Green. As a member of Grounded Theory Institute, Ben has been working with Jan Green and professor Andy Lowe to host a number of classic GT workshops at Glyndwr University which have attracted a pan-European attendance. Email: A.binsardi@glyndwr.ac.uk Berit Støre Brinchmann, PhD, is a professor in nursing at University of Nordland and University of Stavanger in Norway. She is also a member of the clinical ethics committee at Nordland Regional Hospital in Bodø, Norway. Her research interests include health care ethics, medical ethics, research on next of kin and qualitative research methodology. Her PhD, from University of Oslo, Norway was a grounded theory study on proximity ethics in neonatal care. Email: berit.store.brinchmann@uin.no Naomi Elliott was awarded her PhD degree from Queen’s University Belfast and holds professional awards of Registered General Nurse and Registered Nurse Tutor from the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland. Her integrated clinical and research expertise draws from her experience at the different levels of healthcare: from policy–making whilst working in the Irish Nursing and Midwifery Board, and with the Department of Health and Children, to the design of professional education programmes, to clinical practice in Ireland, Scotland and New Zealand, as well as a diverse range of research methods across numerous healthcare related projects. She first met Dr. Glaser in 2002 during her PhD studies and now has several publications and research presentations on grounded theory. Naomi’s current research interest is the development of new models of care delivery and quality in healthcare for major conditions such as epilepsy. Email: naomi.elliott@tcd.ie Barney G. Glaser is the cofounder of grounded theory (1967). He received his PhD from Columbia University in 1961. He then went to University of California San Francisco, where he joined Anselm Strauss in doing the dying in hospitals study and in teaching PhD and DNS students methods and analysis. He published over 20 articles on this research and the dying research. Since then, Glaser has written close to 20 more books using and about grounded theory and countless articles. In 1998 he received an honorary doctorate from Stockholm University. Email: bglaser@speakeasy.net Jan Green: During a successful corporate career involved with mergers and acquisitions, Jan Green acquired extensive change management experience in the capacity as a practitioner and developed a deep insight into the diverse issues arising during change processes which were of value in her Masters study. A career move to academia resulted in Jan undertaking a classic grounded theory study into accomplished business performance. To support her thesis Jan attended two grounded theory troubleshooting seminars and she is a member of the grounded theory institute. More recently Jan has written and presented papers utilising classic grounded theory which conceptualise concerns related to business competitiveness, the projectification of the workplace and manoeuvres which successfully support the impact of sudden change. She is the co-author, with Ben Binsardi, of Research Methods for Management, published in 2012. Email: jan.green@glyndwr.ac.uk Alvita Nathaniel is a nurse, educator, and ethicist. She is...

Editorial

Astrid Gynnild, University of Stavanger Ideas are precious. They may come to mind when you least expect to them to, and many times before you are consciously aware of them. The grounded theory solution to capturing valuable ideas from preconscious thought is writing memos. In this issue of the Grounded Theory Review, we are delighted to publish the first chapter of Barney G. Glaser’s coming book on memoing, which truly opens up new perspectives on the potentially complex but productive process of collecting ideas that is such an important part of doing grounded theory. A memo might be anything from a couple of words to several paragraphs or pages, and there are no rules as for how they should be written. Possibly for that reason, however, memoing is potentially one of the least focused aspects of doing grounded theory; yet anyone who has been struggling with categorization and handsorting, knows that memos are what ties concepts together when generating new theory. The article challenges preconceived thinking of what a memo actually is and prompts autonomous memo productivity. The next focus in this issue is on short format publishing. When the Grounded Theory Review switched to digital open access publishing one and a half years ago, we introduced short format articles as an alternative way of publishing papers. Since grounded theories are conceptual and not descriptive, the presentation of a theory might be scaled up or down as time and place allows. We believe that the shorter format might inspire grounded theorists to present theoretical discussions on aspects of grounded theory even before they have any full-fledged theory that is ready for publishing. Therefore, this format allows authors the opportunity to focus on one issue at a time, and to test ideas at an earlier stage of a study. Authors Olavur Christiansen, Svend Erik Sorensen, and Helen Scott have tested out a partial application of the grounded theory method on a study of poverty in Greenland. Due to strict time frames, the authors did not have the opportunity to generate a full theory, but even in a partial state, they found that grounded theory might be a very helpful research approach. With the partially developed theory, the researchers identified proactively steering behavior as a main concern of public employees in their attempt to resolve poverty problems in the population. The researchers managed to develop a suggested strategy to improve the self-reliance of socially dependent clients, and the study is still in progress. Authors Roland Nino Agoncillo and Roberto Borromeo have developed the theory of becoming selfless, that derived from a study of educational partners in their home country. Educational partners are young volunteers who assist religious organizations in education, and being committed to service through becoming selfless is particularly important after a natural disaster like the super typhoon that hit the Philippines last fall. The article speaks to the broader field of management research on the issues of organizational commitment. In a world of data overflow, there is a growing focus on secondary data analysis. As early as 1962, Barney G. Glaser wrote a short format article entitled ‘Secondary Analysis: A Strategy for the Use of Knowledge from Research.’ The article discusses comparability of existing data material and suggests that secondary analysis of data might help resolve challenges related to economy, client readiness, application testing and application variables. Dr. Glaser’s PhD study on scientists and their organizational careers was generated from secondary data analysis, and the arguments for secondary analysis...

Introduction: Free Style Memoing

Barney G. Glaser, PhD, Hon. PhD This neglect is partly my fault to be corrected in this book, which will deal with the vital aspect of memoing.  Memos are a very important GT procedure that is fundamental to the GT generation analysis of grounded theory.   This book emphasizes the importance of memos from the very start of the GT research to the working paper. It highlights and focuses on memoing in the hopes of aiding researchers, especially novice beginning researchers, with the management of the plethora of ideas that emerge with no loss thereof as GT research progresses. It is normative for no one to read another persons memos.   I have never known someone to ask another person to read his memos or someone to ask another person to read his memos. Thus memos can take any form.  They are normatively and automatically private.  Their style is free.  Memos can take any form, shape or whatever without being critiqued or evaluated.  They have no perfection. They give autonomy freedom to the researcher. They are a precursor to writing a working paper on the emerging theory.  They grow from jots to growth in lengths that capture style and integrative complexity as the GT research progresses. Memos are neglected as a GT procedure. Memos are where the emergent concepts and theoretical ideas are generated and stored when doing GT analysis.  They are a neglected procedure mostly in writing about doing GT, yet they are vital to GT analysis for recording ideas, saving and tracing growth of analysis and integrating GT concepts as they emerge from constant comparative analysis during open coding and selective coding when theoretically sampling.  Memos track the generation of a substantive GT from start to working paper. Memos tie together the concepts This book is redundant to much of my writing in Theoretical Sensitivity, Doing GT and Stop Write.  But it brings it all together in one book ideas on memoing and underscores the importance and use of memos.  The goal and value of this book is to have all four previous chapters in other books in one volume and add to them my many subsequent thoughts on memoing and the thoughts of my colleagues and students about memos as a vital grounded theory method procedure.  Memos are the media which tie together the concepts for a grounded theory for a paper or book. This book clarifies the use of memos which have been lauded for doing GT research, but often distorted in someway by formalization and natural academic tendencies of guidance. And further by relating them to other QDA methods of research which require aspects of doing memoing inimical to doing GT.   This book is ideal for teaching and discussing the use and value of memos. Books on doing GT, especially the books that remodel GT, give only brief discussions of writing memos in a page or two and then return to their main discussion of a GT method procedure.  The vitalness, vitality, and significance of memos is slighted by an implicitly ordinary assumption that they will be done. Memoing to accumulate memos can be described as building an intellectual capital memo bank of ideas and concepts from start of one’s GT research to final sorting.  Memos are the written records of the researcher’s thinking, both conscious and preconscious realizations as the research and the researcher grow.  Memos will vary in subject, coherence, interest, theoretical content, conceptual clarity, and future usefulness to a subsequent working paper or...

A Partial Application of Classic Grounded Theory in a Study of Poverty in Greenland...

Ólavur Christiansen, The University of Faroe Islands and The Economic Council of the Government of Faroe Islands Helen Scott, Grounded Theory Online Svend Erik Sørensen, self-employed international consultant (Ascap Aps) Abstract This paper describes a partial application of the classic grounded method in a research project tasked to surface an understanding of poverty, and offer policy recommendations for change, to the Government of Greenland.  The aim of analysis was to find the core category and related categories though analysis stopped short of conceptual completeness and conceptual integration. The theory explains that from the perspective of social sector administrators, there is a concern as to how to transition clients from a state of damaging dependence to a less dependent state. The administrators process this concern by engaging in proactive steering within a societal structure which is characterised by a lack of capacity and discontinuity, and in a context of overwhelm.  The theory developed was successfully applied to satisfy the objectives of the research project. Introduction In a study of poverty and its possible alleviation in Greenland, classic grounded theory (CGT) was partially applied to produce a new perspective to inform policymakers (Sørensen, 2010). As a self-governing entity within the Danish realm, Greenland is financially subsidised by Denmark, and without this subsidy, Greenland would most likely be in a state of severe poverty equal to the poorest of developing nations. Social-structural issues regarding health, education and employment exacerbate poverty-related problems, which are more pronounced in Greenland than in other parts of the Danish realm, or in Western Europe as a whole. Startling examples of such problems are the high rates of suicide and sexual abuse, and that the number of abortions equals the number of births (Grønlands Statistik 2013; Statistics Greenland 2013). In many respects, the situation of Greenland’s population is closer to that of the indigenous people of North America than to its European neighbours. In relation to poverty, the three primary tasks of Greenland’s government are firstly, to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves due to lack of income; secondly, to take care of those who are unable to take care of themselves, e.g., due to age or handicap; and thirdly, to help people and families to become independent of public assistance. To inform this work, the Government commissioned a wide-ranging study. The research design was complex and included analyses of quantitative data, comparison of poverty definitions, quantitative measurement of poverty, and comparisons of quantitative measurements of poverty. There was also a qualitative study of data collected from interviews with people in the administration and their clients, private entrepreneurs and members of the general public. In particular, the Government requested a discovery of the meaning of poverty in the local Greenlandic context. This discovery was to be based on available quantitative data and on collected qualitative data. As far as possible, this discovery of the meaning of poverty should also include a discovery of clues to resolve some of the problems that were connected to poverty. Thus, part of the task was to give policy recommendations to the Government. The CGT study Given this brief, classic grounded theory became an obvious choice of methodology. The consultant however, was not fully familiar with CGT and while CGT studies can be time-consuming, this part of the study had to be completed over a period of approximately four months. The consultant therefore needed to develop theoretical and practical insights into CGT methodology and its application, swiftly. To facilitate this process...