An Outsider’s Insights from the Inside: Implications of Emic Concepts on Qualitative International Management Research

Abstract

Purpose: Recent calls in international management (IM) research ask scholars to conduct more context-sensitive research, however; little attention has been paid to the methodological particularities that inform such context sensitivity. This paper aims to addresses this shortcoming by exploring how emic concepts implicate IM research processes during qualitative field studies. Design/methodology/approach: We carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Brazilian subsidiaries of three German multinational enterprises. We relied on the researchers’ experiences and data from a larger research project including 63 semi-structured interviews, 7 focus groups, documents and field notes. Adopting a culturally sensitive and self-reflexive lens, we reflect on the researchers’ experiences in the Brazilian sociocultural context from an interpretive paradigm. Findings: Our findings reveal how seven identified emic concepts affect four prototypical phases of the research process: securing access, collecting data, analyzing data and presenting findings. We discuss how these seven emic concepts influenced the research process and impacted research outcomes, as experienced by the researchers. Research limitations/implications: Findings are limited by our self-reflexive capabilities as foreign researchers, the limited explanatory power of emic categories, our paradigmatic positioning and the research context. Practical implications: We contribute to research practice by providing eight suggestions for conducting international fieldwork and proposing avenues for future research. Originality/value: This research contributes to the epistemological and methodological debate on context-sensitive research by arguing that intercultural sensitivity needs to be managed as an integral dimension for any form of international fieldwork. Findings contribute to interpretive approaches showing how emic concepts affect research practices, with implications for critical management perspectives.