“Standing on [Transparent] Shoulders”

Qualitative management research, like most every field of research, faces questions of transparency and reproducibility. In this chapter, I argue that qualitative researchers can learn and benefit from the practices of free and open source software. I thus detail key challenges that qualitative research confronts, as well as ways in which an open source approach can address these challenges. I then turn attention to the barriers to implementing such an approach. Finally, I reflect on how the field might work to overcome these barriers. Ultimately, I argue, free and open source software simultaneously serves as a template, a cautionary tale and a source of inspiration for increasing transparency in qualitative research.