ABSTRACT
I offer a semi-autobiographical depiction of the historical efforts of qualitative organizational research to achieve legitimacy in our field as a viable, insightful and informative approach to understanding how organizations work. I then describe my efforts over time to develop a methodology designed not only to enable the conduct of “rigorous” qualitative research, but also to convey to skeptical readers of qualitative research that the conclusions – and especially the data-to-theory connections – have been achieved via a systematic set of methodological procedures.
