The Design of Member Review

Showing What to Organization

Members and Why

Organizational
Research Methods
Volume 12 Number 3
July 2009 488-509
2009 SAGE Publications
10.1177/1094428108320235
http://orm.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com

Karen Locke
College of William and Mary

S. Ramakrishna Velamuri
China Europe International Business School
Noting various forces prompting qualitative researchers to incorporate some form of member
review into their studies, this article aims to help researchers anticipate and develop their
own considered strategies for designing and executing this process. Drawing on existing discussions of member review in the sociological and anthropological literature, the article
develops a framework that suggests different ways in which member reviews might be
designed and executed, it outlines the types of challenges researchers may anticipate during
execution of the designs and highlights the positive and negative influences that creating the
opportunity for such challenges can have on the research. A dissertation-based case study
illustrates how challenges to the research arising from execution of a particular member
review design unfolded in practice and forms the basis for considering how researchers might
respond when research participants take exception to what we write.
Keywords:

qualitative research; member review; case studies; IRBs; ethics

Para 4 on page 34 states that a former manager was pressurized, after he left the company, to sell his
flat and he refused. This statement ought to have been verified with us (Indian Company Vice President, review comment on case study draft). . . . This is exactly what we are doing now. (Researcher
response)

Showing drafts of writing representing researcher conclusions as well as the depicted

actions and words to the people who were the source for those materials has a long history
within qualitative research traditions. The practice of taking results back to the researched
for review and evaluation perhaps first entered the methodological discourse on qualitative
research as part of a general translation of modern techniques to ensure validity and the
overall quality of qualitative research. Determining whether researcher-produced accounts
were recognizable to those studied was advocated by a number of field researchers (e.g.,
Douglas, 1976; Schatzman & Strauss, 1973; Whyte, 1955). Later, in their influential discussion reframing issues of validity and reliability as a concern with the trustworthiness of
naturalistic research, Lincoln and Guba (Guba, 1981; Guba & Lincoln, 1989; Lincoln
& Guba, 1985) argued that providing those who were the source for research materials the
opportunity to indicate their agreement or disagreement with the representations made
was a crucial technique for enhancing trustworthiness. Accordingly, many qualitative
research texts encourage researchers to include member review (also referred to as
488

Locke, Velamuri / Member Review

489

respondent validation, respondent feedback, or member checking) in the design of qualitative research studies as an epistemological act (e.g., Creswell, 1998).
Showing drafts of writing to those who participated in the research has also been advocated as part of qualitative research practice for ethical reasons. Scholars who may challenge
the epistemic grounds of member review as a validation procedure nevertheless embrace and
support use of the process because it expresses reciprocity in relationships with research subjects (Wax, 1982). From this perspective, it is simply the civil and just thing to do for people
who have given the researcher their time, words, and acts, and it honors their right to know
what is being said about them (Horwitz, 1993; Schwandt, 2001). Furthermore, for those
whose qualitative research practice follows participatory, emancipatory action traditions,
it is not only ethical but also a necessary component in the design of a transformative
research process that allows the researched to become the agents and instruments of their
own change (e.g., Lincoln, 1993; Reason, 1998; Reason & Rowan, 1981).
At the same time, other voices besides those of researchers and methodologists are
increasingly speaking to the design of research projects, and some are insisting they include
some form of member review. For instance, as a matter of practice, within some disciplines
(such as education), researchers have reported that member review is more frequently incorporated into qualitative research projects because advocates for the researched urge study
participants to make it a condition for research access (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Thus,
Thorne (1980) reported in negotiating research access with an elementary school principal
that the principal asked knowledgeable questions about her, her purpose, and the methods
she would be using and insisted that she agree to share her research findings as a condition
for allowing the study to go forward (p. 292).
In addition, notably, during the last decade in the United States, committees for research
on human subjects and institutional review boards have become more actively involved in
overseeing and shaping research projects, due, in part, to increased monitoring and identification of violations on the part of federal agencies. For example, during the late 1990s, the
U.S. Health and Human Services Office for Protection from Research Risks (OPRR) and its
successor, the Office for Human Research Protection (OHRP), shut down research and/or
levied costly and highly publicized sanctions against a number of U.S. research institutions
indicating violations that ranged from record-keeping omissions to failures to review projects that should have been screened. Their surveillance was understandably enhanced when
two human subject fatalities occurred at prominent universities (Greenberg, 2001; Shea,
2000). Although the research projects in question were biomedical, these incidents helped to
create a climate of anxiety in the human subjects enterprise (Sieber, Plattner, & Rubin,
2002, p. 2). Committees and boards charged with overseeing research have taken a more
active role reviewing all research, including qualitative social science research (Lincoln &
Tierney, 2004; Marshall, 2003; Nelson, 2004; Shea, 2000). They now rarely waive the
requirement for some formalized expression of informed consent in social science research
(Sieber et al., 2002), and it is increasingly common for them to require that contracts
between researcher and researched include some form of feedback to the latter to achieve it
(Baxter & Eyles, 1997; Bradshaw, 2001; Gunsalus, 2002, 2003).
Thus, member review is advocated in the design of qualitative research projects for a
number of reasons and by various stakeholders. Yet within organization studies, despite a
strong presence of qualitative traditions, there has been relatively little consideration of

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this research practice in methods discourse. Furthermore, when published research articles
do indicate the use of member review, they have done so cursorily, providing little information about how the process was structured and inviting the impression that it unfolded
as a straightforward and generally tension-free validation exercise. The following
accounts are typical:
The emerging themes or patterns were validated by (1) comparing . . . and (3) checking the
validity of the choice of themes with selected informants. Two additional procedures ensured
that the data analysis was not entirely subjective. (Sackman, 1992, p. 146)
Following ethnographic prescriptions, we took a number of steps to ensure the trustworthiness of our study . . . we performed extensive member checks by sharing interpretations with
participants to ascertain whether they considered how we described their lived experience
appropriate, and we distributed formal reports and interim publications to those expressing
an interest in the ongoing study. (Covaleski, Dirsmith, Hein, & Samuel, 1993, p. 307)
These findings in narrative form were submitted to several of the informants for review and
comment (a process of member checking [Spradley 1980]). A number of presentational
changes were made to the narrative, but the essence of the findings was affirmed. (Gioia,
Thomas, Clark & Chittipeddi, 1994, p. 370)

See also Halme (2002), Kahn (1993), Sandberg (2000), and Whitman and Cooper (2000).
As a result, organizational researchers who choose to or are prompted to incorporate
some form of member review into their research face a number of challenges. First, they
have little guidance as to how to design the processexactly what is shared with whom.
Second, related to this, they have little awareness of the implications of their design
choices for their research and for research participantswhat kinds of responses can they
expect; how should they be addressed? Third, depictions of member review as a tensionfree validation procedure ill prepare researchers for the relational complexities and
epistemological ambiguities inherent in the process.
This article aims to help organization researchers face these challenges; it makes a contribution to the use of member review in organizational research methods in the following
ways. First, it fills a gap by bringing explicit consideration of the use of member review
into organizational studies. Second, by articulating design choices that researchers may
make, the likely challenges that these choices may engender, and their potential impact on
the research, it develops a framework that helps organization researchers to make more
knowledgeable decisions about how to structure this process in their own work. Third, by
describing the challenges raised in a specific instance of member review and exploring
how they were addressed, the article offers suggestions for how researchers might shape
their responses when faced with objections to their research writing. Finally, by adding
one more account to the few existing narratives of member review, it adds to the literature
base from which qualitative researchers may derive expectations for and practical lessons
regarding particular research practices (Seale, Gobo, Gubrium, & Silverman, 2004).
Our project unfolds as follows: In the first part of the article, we begin by reviewing
those existing accounts of member review outside organization studies that highlight how
research participants may respond to what they are shown and consider its implications

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491

for research. Then, drawing on prior studies, we develop a framework that outlines different ways in which the procedure might be designed, the kinds of issues researchers might
anticipate being raised, and their potential impact on the research. Following this, the second part of the article turns to exploring more fully the types of challenges raised. Issues
engendered by member review are illustrated in the implementation of a memberchecking design that provides a high level of access in a dissertation-based case study.
The article concludes by considering how researchers might respond when research participants raise these objections.

Experiences With Member Review

Although researchers using member review indicate that the most common response
from research participants is no response at all (Stake, 1995), those descriptions that do
exist provide some indication of how research participants may respond to what they are
shown. They underscore the problematics of interpreting member responses, and they
attest to the potentially charged character of the process. The accounts highlight that
when they read what we write (Brettell, 1993), organization researchers engage in a
research practice that is of a fundamentally different interactional character from the
everyday routines field researchers typically use to check their evolving understandings
and interpretations of particular events and patterns of behavior (Emerson & Pollner,
1988). Inscribed in writing for an audience, such drafts frame researchers observations
and interpretations in a more authoritative, definitive, and specified way than the everyday
conversational checking routines, and their reading invokes for research participants a
sense of how they might be read by others (Ellis, 1995; Hopkins, 1993).
For example, Stake (1995) showed individual research participants rough drafts of writing in which words and actions only specific to them were featured, asking them to review
the material for its accuracy and palatability. Recounting one occasion when Stake
showed a teacher, Mr. Free, such a draft, Mr. Free read it and then strenuously objected
to the description, asserting that Stakes words embarrassed him and his school (Stake,
1995, p. 115). In response, Stake chose to edit his writing, changing about a dozen paragraphs. Attempts to gain approval in light of the edits were at first met with nonresponsiveness. When, after repeated attempts, Stake did reach him, Mr. Free said he did not
want any descriptions of his classroom included in the study. Interestingly, Stakes own
perspective on Mr. Free was that he was admirable as a teacher, and his reading of the
research account was that it showed Mr. Free in a favorable light.
In other instances, Bloor (1997) discussed what unfolded in two studies in which he fed
research results back to, and monitored, the reactions of the research participants. In the
first study, researching surgeons personal medical decision-making processes, Bloor
wrote up a detailed report or case of what he understood to be each surgeons patient evaluation practices, and he asked each surgeon to respond to their report in a taped interview. In a second set of linked studies in which he was researching therapeutic
communities, he showed all members, via focus groups, drafts of the whole research
report. In response to the first study, Bloor (1997) reported he received expressions of

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praise, as good a summary as I could have given myself (p. 43); disagreements, I
wouldnt agree with that (p. 44); and specific corrections to report detail that necessitated
revisions. The second set of studies also engendered a range of responses, including affirmations; challenges to, and pronouncements of, the report as nave because Bloor did
not frame behavior in terms of a theoretical perspective embraced by some of those
researched; co-optation of the report through elevation of selective details; and simple disinterest as some research participants just glanced through the presented drafts. Bloor
highlights the range of responses received to emphasize the difficulties associated with
taking participant responses at face valueregardless of whether they confirm or dispute
the researchers account. To further underscore the ambiguities of member response, he
notes that with the passage of time, some respondents in both studies altered their stance
toward the research; some who had challenged and criticized it later endorsed it, and
others who had earlier offered endorsements later turned to criticism.
In an account of their experience of member review, Emerson and Pollner (1988)
showed drafts of two papers first to a key informant and then to all members of mobile
Psychiatric Emergency Teams they studied. One focused on the local meaning of shit
work in the teams; the other article described the process by which team members
triaged incoming calls. Occurring at a time when this medical service was facing cutbacks,
not surprisingly, members of the emergency teams would not tolerate anything in the
report that could be interpreted by administrators as critical of the teams functioning for
fear that it might be used to justify cuts.
Finally, Bradshaws (2001) cautionary tale of the checking process that unfolded during
his dissertation in human geography highlights the conflicting interests sometimes at stake
in the process. Bradshaw entered into a contract with his subject organization to provide
members a draft for comment, agreeing to make changes where it would be either inaccurate or in serious conflict with the commercial and corporate imperatives (p. 205) of
the firm. He sent the draft of his dissertation to the firms general manager and the director
of personnel with whom he had formalized his research access. When managers of the
firm responded via an arranged teleconference, they challenged his theoretical perspective
(Marxist), expressed strong concerns about the embarrassing quotations used to elaborate it, and wanted the dissertation rewritten without any quotations from interview transcripts. Feeling that his dissertation was at risk, Bradshaw raised the possibility of an
embargo, and the managers reportedly warmed to this offer. After consultation with his
supervisors, the University Office for Research, and the library, Bradshaw offered the
managers this option, thereby blocking access to his dissertation for a time period of their
choosing. They accepted and chose 15 years! On reflection, Bradshaw wondered whether
he had too easily offered the embargo.
These accounts of how member review worked out in practice underscore the heterogeneous and ambiguous character of potential responses, the interactional complexities
engendered, and they indicate risks to the research. Indeed, taken together, they perhaps
beg the question of why researchers would want to include member review as part of their
research practice. Yet, as we have noted, there are numerous external as well as internal
forces driving organization researchers to incorporate member review into their research.
For those researchers pursuing some form of member review, these accounts fall short in
offering practical guidance in a number of respects. First, questions of how the process

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might be designed and executedwhat exactly does the researcher show for review, to
whomare never directly addressed. Second, although the studies imply a range of possible responses, these are not explicitly articulated to help researchers develop expectations
for the process. Third, although these reviews question the status of member review as a
validating act, they do not systematically elaborate the ways in which the process, with its
attendant ambiguities, might influence research for better or worse. In the next section, we
address these shortcomings. It is followed with our illustration of the challenges arising
from the application of a particular member review design.

Design Options for Member Review

The above accounts suggest some options for the design of member review centering
on what is shown and to whom. For example, in the cases of Stakes teacher and
Bloors surgeons, those researched were shown only selective excerpts of the researchers
draft writing in which they were individually featured. However, in other instances, the
entire subject community was provided access to complete research narratives. The prior
studies suggest several possible design options for the process; they are elaborated in
terms of affording restricted, selective, and comprehensive transparency. Furthermore, the
discussion of member review experiences provides some indication of the responses that
may be engendered by member review and points to their possible influences on the
research. Below, we elaborate these design options explaining the types of issues they
invite, and we outline the ways in which they may potentially influence research. Table 1
summarizes the issues invited by the different member review designs and their possible
positive and negative influences. Moving from restricted to comprehensive transparency,
these options respectively limit research participants to their own generated data, provide
research participants access to individually relevant descriptive accounts, and then grant
full access to the theorized narrative of the research setting. As options provide research
participants increasing entree to the community of the researcher, they also occasion
increasing opportunity to shape the research text. In doing so, as a matter of practice, the
various transparency designs invite readers who are research participants to have a say in
the characterizations and generalizations made about them and their worlds (Behar, 1993;
Marcus & Fischer, 1986; Rosaldo, 1989).

Restricted Transparency: Show Individually

Pertinent Participant Representations
Bradshaws managers concern with the embarrassing quotations (2001) indicates
participant concern with the potential character implicated in their reported words, and
their concern with the reproduction of their comments points to a possible limited access
design that would show and allow research participants to respond to the representations
their participation in the research generated before they appeared in print. A restricted
transparency design involves showing to participants only those excerpts from data
that they were the source for to be used in research documents and inviting them to query

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Table 1
Types of Issues Invited by Transparency Designs
and Their Potential Influence on the Research
Issues Raised and Enabled by
R, S, and C Transparency Designsa

Potential Positive and Negative Influences on Research

Positive Influences

Negative Influences
Risks data by creating an
occasion in which individual
consent to participate in
research may be withdrawn
May attenuate and dilute the
force of emotionally charged
situations described by the
research
May narrow and sanitize the
variety of represented human
action in organizations
Research participants may
reshape research narrative by
emphasizing those events or
actions in which they are
vested

Character implied
in descriptions

R, S, and C

Those researched may protect

their privacy by protecting
against having said more than
intended about themselves
or others and prevent
embarrassment
Allows researched to ensure
they remain anonymous to
organizational insiders

Details of portrayed
events, behaviors,
and understandings

S and C

Whose perspective
best represents the
organization

Surfaces omissions in
researchers data gathering
Increases accuracy and
specification of described
events and behaviors,
and understandings
Strengthens confidence in
conclusions by virtue of their
having been reexamined and
rearticulated in light of
challenges of researched
Confronts researcher with own
sympathies and partialities
vis-a-vis those individuals,
groups, and situations studied
Alerts researchers to the
possible political readings of
the manuscript
Review discussions provide
further significant data to be
interpreted
Honors research participants
right to know how their world
is being reconstructed

Risks research project by

creating an occasion in
which organizational
consent may be withdrawn
More powerful organizational
members may compromise
research commitments made
to less powerful
May moderate critique as
researcher holds back
evaluation

a. R, S, and C refer to restricted, selective, and comprehensive transparency, respectively.

and/or edit those sections with which they are not comfortable or which need further specification. In concrete terms, this might involve sharing excerpts to be used in research
documents from interview transcripts or from field notes.
To the extent that restricted transparency limits access to research participants own
generated depictions, it is likely to invite responses centering on the character implied in
those portrayals. Providing research participants the opportunity to review how they might

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be read by reexamining their words and depicted actions creates the opportunity for the
following positive and negative influences on the research.
Positive influences. By providing them the opportunity to raise issues regarding the
character implicated in their descriptions, restricted transparency provides participants some
control over the interests at stake in the publication of their statements and actions. Specifically, by reviewing where their comments or actions may have revealed something embarrassing about their own character or that of someone they describe, this form of
transparency gives organization members the opportunity to preserve their own and others
privacy against their having perhaps said more than they intended (Richardson, 1992;
Sieber, 1992). In addition, as Tollich (2004) has argued, although researchers typically
follow the practices of using pseudonyms and removing identifying information to ensure
that research participants are anonymous to outsiders, doing so does not ensure that they will
be anonymous to organizational insiders. Thus, even though pseudonyms may be used,
some individuals will be easily recognizable by the social position they occupy (Brettell,
1993). They may also be identifiable by their ways of speaking about events, issues, and
people. Reviewing their representations, research participants can monitor their own local
confidentiality, creating stronger assurances of internal as well as external anonymity for
their portrayed character (Williamson & Prossner, 2002). Organization members can ensure
that their participation in the research does not negatively affect their standing in the organization nor subject them to any potential legal liability for expressed opinions.
Negative influences. Mr. Frees request that Stake exclude representations of him from
his research (1995) and the response of Bradshaws managers to their own statements
(2001) indicates that restricted transparency nevertheless carries some risk to the research.
It might allow concerns about how they might be read to result in individual research participants withdrawing from the study. Thus, it potentially puts data at risk by creating an
occasion in which individual consent to participate in research may be withdrawn. In addition, allowing participants the opportunity to review and edit depictions of them raises the
question of what kinds of representations they might be comfortable with. Research participants read descriptions of their comments and actions through their own eyes and
through the eyes of all the readers they can conceive for them, and they imagine their possible responses. For example, Horwitz (1993) described panic-stricken phone calls he
received from a motel manager who was having second thoughts about publication of the
tactics he used to get the maintenance crew to moderate their hallway behavior. Thus, it is
not difficult to imagine that organization members may wish to pull back from descriptions of behavior they believe others might consider aberrant, contradictory, or that
involve accounts of tension and conflict. Overall, this may lead to flattened, nonspontaneous, and sanitized accounts of human action in organizations.

Selective Transparency: Show Individually Pertinent

Research Descriptions (including participant representations)
The second option that provides partial access to researcher writing is indicated by
Bloors (1997) account of his member review with surgeons in which he provided the

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latter access to his developing narrative about their individual medical decision-making
practices. This selective transparency design involves sharing with participants segments
of research writing in which their data are implicated, including accounts of events involving them, their patterns of action, and the meanings that they, as organization members,
make of their situation. This option, then, provides access to segments of writing that are
generally descriptive of and near to the events, behaviors, vernacular, and meanings
expressed in participants generated data. Accordingly, research participants may not only
raise issues with regard to representations made of them; they may also exercise voice
regarding the descriptive accuracy of the events, action patterns, and interpretations in
which they are implicated. Practically, selective transparency can be achieved by showing
research participants intermediate writing drafts in the analytic process. For example,
researchers might show participants individually centered case write-ups, as did Bloor
(1997) when he asked each surgeon to review a case of their evaluation and decisionmaking practices. Alternatively, researchers may share analytic memos (cf. grounded
theory, Locke, 2001; Strauss, 1987) or other drafts of writing featuring experience near
accounts of the setting (Geertz, 1973).
In addition to creating the opportunity for research participants to review representations made of them (afforded by the restricted option), selective transparency also provides them access to the researchers constructions of their behavior and perspective in
context. In this respect, selective transparency affords participants access to what
researchers believe they have learned about the daily goings-on in their world. Accordingly, members can be expected to respond to the narratives of events, their behavior and
ways of making meaning, and they may take issue with the researchers depictions and
contest the account. Providing research participants the opportunity to review partial
researcher narratives creates the opportunity for the following additional positive and
negative influences over and above those implicated in restricted transparency.
Positive influences. Access to researcher understandings of the settings particular
events, patterns of behavior and ways of making meaning creates an opportunity for
research participants to correct and fill in these narratives. For example, Bloor (1997)
noted that a surgeons detailed challenges to the formers narrative of his patient evaluation practices pointed out gaps in Bloors observations and led to reanalysis and modifications to his research report. In addition, as occurred in this instance, over the course of
member review discussions, participants will likely generate more data to support their
responses. Thus, challenges to the descriptive narratives may provide a check against any
omissions or errors researchers may have made in their accounts and thereby increase
the accuracy and completeness of the events, behaviors, and understandings described in
the research narrative. Furthermore, disagreements over the presented depictions, as may
be expected when researchers describe taken-for-granted and tacit meanings, may yet
cause the researcher to reexamine their analysis of research participants dataas did
Bloorand, as a consequence, seek out more relevant data and modify or affirm
interpretations.
Negative influences. In addition to the possibilities generated by concern with the character implied in descriptions of them, access to events, patterns of behavior, and local

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497

understandings presented through selective transparency give research participants the

opportunity to reshape the account in directions in which they are individually vested. For
example, some members of one of the therapeutic communities Bloor (1997) studied felt
that his research account was defective because it did not reference the psychodynamic
concepts that were a part of their clinical practice. Thus, research participants may focus
on, urge representation of, and provide additional information on aspects of their behavior
and practices that they believe are most significant but that, from vantage of the
researcher, are not relevant to the research project.

Comprehensive Transparency: Show Complete Participant

Representations and Researcher Explanations to All Participants
A final general option for structuring member review involves showing all research participants what all the researchers interviewing, observing, and collecting has resulted in, giving them the opportunity to review what they and others have been saying and doing and, in
particular, the explanations researchers have developed from their involvement with the
whole community of research participants. It thus provides research participants access to
the researchers larger interpretive project and to what (from the latters perspective) social
science concerns their and others behavior represents a case of. Emerson and Pollners
(1988) account of the process they followed in sharing drafts of two research manuscripts to
members of the Psychiatric Emergency Teams represents this option. Practically, comprehensive transparency might be accomplished by sharing drafts of complete case write-ups
or manuscripts with organization members in different ways. It may occur through public
forums such as focus groups, as did Bloor (1997), or in an iterative process in which either
select informants (e.g., Emerson & Pollner, 1988) or senior managers (e.g., Bradshaw,
2001) are shown the narrative before others in the organization have access.
Obviously, comprehensive transparency provides participants access to potential readings of their represented character and to researcher portrayal of events and practices.
Over and above this, however, access to a comparatively complete narrative makes clear
what kind of theoretical story researchers reconstructions of research participants life
worlds will amount to, including what kind of story their characterizations support. To the
extent that participants take issue with and contest the researchers explanations and theoretical abstractions, the question of interpretive privilege, specifically, of whose perspective best represents them and their organization more clearly arises (Richter, 1988). A
case in point, in addition to raising concerns about the characters implied in their statements, Bradshaws (2001) managers took issue with his Marxist framing of their life
world, challenging the particular social science portrayal he had produced.
Furthermore, given that comprehensive transparency provides access not only to
researchers claims but also to the representations of other organization members, the
issue of whose voice best represents their life world is also likely to be raised when
competing perspectives are part of the research narrative. For example, Rochford (1992)
noted that when participants reviewed his account of the Hare Krishna movement, they
declared it to be flawed and partisan because they felt he had given the voice of critical
ex-members the upper hand in his analysis. Providing participants the opportunity to

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question interpretive privilege (whether that of researchers or of other organization members) through comprehensive access to research narratives creates the following additional
positive and negative influences on the research.
Positive influences. As our consideration of experiences with member review indicates,
the use of member review as a means to validate researchers observations and conclusions produces mixed and ambiguous results. Certainly, our prior discussion notes that
member review can enhance the descriptive accuracy of portrayed events and practices.
However, as indicated, even pointing to missing detail cannot be taken at face value. At
the same time, Bloors (1997) account indicates that challenges raised by his surgeons did
constrain him to reexamine and reanalyze his report, improving it in the process. What
epistemological merit is there, then, in providing participants the opportunities to review
and potentially contest researchers interpretations? If we move away from the original
externalist and determinate understanding of the process as attempting to relate researcher
observations and conclusions to an accessible and independently verifiable reality and take
instead an internalist perspective (Putnam, 1981) on member review, we are better positioned to identify its value.
Recognizing the socially and historically contingent nature of our research products and
the notion that the only interpretation we can make is one that represents a complex of perspectives (Putnam, 1981; Smith, 1984), we can understand the practice of member review
as one component in a multilayered strategy to strengthen researcher formulations by following the principle of seeking potentially conflicting understandings (Angen, 2000). Specifically, member review can be one among a set of reflexive practices that compel
researchers to subject their interpretations to challenges from a range of subject perspectives, reexamining them in light of the received responses (Bloor, 1997; Maxwell, 1996;
Seale, 1999; Silverman, 2000; Stewart, 1998). In this way, member review may strengthen
researchers confidence in their interpretations because the latter have been subject to yet
another iteration of reexamination and, through this process, affirmed or reformulated.
Furthermore, researchers challenged with the assertion that their accounts are partisan
(e.g., Rochford, 1992) may be compelled to reexamine their own sympathies and partialities vis-a`-vis the individuals, groups, and situations studied. Although it is certainly possible to trace such concerns to research participants own interests, this does not mean that
their objections should not be treated seriously (Becker, 1967), and challenges arising
from the member review process create a further opportunity for this examination.
In addition, providing research participants the opportunity to respond to researcher
interpretations of their world may exert a positive influence on the research because the
ways in which members interpret, use or abuse a researchers versionreveal a setting
in new depth and dimension (Emerson & Pollner, 1988, p. 190). Participant responses to
research narratives are new and revealing data. Agar (2006) referred to those occasions in
which we directly experience another cultural frame of reference as rich points; in
member reactions to their narratives, researchers directly experience participants frame
of reference, and they have an opportunity to more keenly discern the resources that participants use to make sense of, and take action in, their worlds.
An additional potential benefit of member review is suggested by Emerson and Pollners
(1988) experience of an initial review with a key informant. The latter, Art, pointed to the

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499

potentially threatening character of one of their papers and alerted them to the ways in
which their interpretations might be construed and used. Thus, executing comprehensive
transparency through an iterative process in which key insiders are first shown drafts of the
research narrative will alert researchers to the possible political implications of the account
and allow them to take this into consideration when writing and navigating its presentation.
Finally, providing research participants the opportunity to review the research narrative
honors their right to know how their world is being rendered for public or disciplinary
consumption and to voice their perspective. Thus, it expresses fairness and reciprocity in
the research relationship and restructures it in a way that acknowledges participants rights
and capacity to critically interrogate research writing (Behar, 1993; Kvale, 1995; Rosaldo,
1989; Schwandt, 2001; Wax, 1982).
Negative influences. As Bradshaws (2001) cautionary tale of the member review process
indicates, providing participants, especially those who are gatekeepers for the project, the
opportunity to review and challenge researchers representations of their world potentially
puts the project at risk near its conclusion, when the significant investment in researching
and writing up the community has already been made. Similarly, as was the case with regard
to concerns expressed regarding descriptive details, research participants may press
researchers to reshape their narrative so that it better accords with their perspective on the
organizationwith the viewpoint of more powerful gatekeepers potentially carrying more
weight. Thus, member review may create an opportunity for the more powerful to ensure
their interests. Finally, in anticipation of their narrative being read and challenged by
research participants, it is not difficult to imagine the possibility that researchers may pull
back from evaluation, potentially moderating critique of the research setting.
We turn now to an illustration of member review in practice. In the featured study, the
process was executed via a comprehensive transparency design. This design option, which
offered strong access to research writing, created the opportunity for all the challenges
identified above to potentially be raised, and they were.

A Case of Comprehensive Transparency

Member review was incorporated into a qualitative dissertation-based case study of an
Indian organization, Comfort Housing,1 that had resisted corrupt practices (specifically,
bribery of governmental officials) in an environment where corruption is widespread. The
research focused on understanding why the company founder chose to resist corruption in
such an environment and the dynamics of stakeholder resource commitments to the firm,
including the latters relationship to the firms resistance to corruption. Data were generated via semistructured interviews with current and former employees, external stakeholders such as customers and members of the press, and through documentary evidence.
I2 chose a comprehensive design for several reasons. First, I believed that subjecting my
case narrative to member review would enhance its quality by allowing organization members to challenge my account. Second, given my research concern with business ethics, the
idea that member review provided a means of ensuring that I would not place my research
interests above the interests of the organization or those of its members resonated with me.

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Finally, member review was incorporated to comply with my universitys research committee requirements. By securing consent at the end point as well as the beginning of the
research, participants would understand exactly what they were consenting to. Thus, as part
of the process of negotiating access, I agreed with company managers that the case study
that ended up being published would first be reviewed by them and that they would be able
to veto any section they felt would harm their firm. I believed this was necessary because
among those interviewed were a group of former managers, among whom were leaders of a
breakaway group of more than 20 key personnel who had resigned from the company and
who had set up another venture in the same industry. Company managers were to be provided first access to the case draft to ensure that the account did not compromise the firm to
this and other external stakeholder groups. At the same time, I believed that it was necessary
to provide those interviewed the opportunity to ensure their own anonymity and privacy
before the case narrative was read by senior managers.
For these reasons, member review unfolded through two phases. First, those interviewed reviewed their own representations. Specifically, where interviewee quotes were
used in the case study draft, these quotes were sent to the concerned interviewees for
review and for permission to reproduce them. Following this, the process of comprehensive review of the case narrative began with senior management. Once the organizations
management had cleared the case study draft, my intention was to make it available for
review to all who had participated in the research.

Research Participants Reactions

Interview excerpts from the initial case draft were sent to participants in early 2003.3 A
very few participants suggested some minor adjustments to these comments to safeguard
their anonymity and to ensure clarity. For example, a former manager asked to omit a role
reference to another with whom he worked, believing that it might reveal his identity. The
initial case draft of Comfort Housing was sent to managers on April 5, 2003. On April 7,
2003, I received a phone call from the company vice president indicating that the chairman wished to speak with me. I telephoned the chairman, and the ensuing conversation
lasted more than 2 hours; in addition, the phone call was followed up with a written
response from the company36 single-spaced pageson a case study draft of 42 pages.
Taking account of the issues raised and reviewing my data (and additional data provided
by the company), I made some modifications to the initial case and sent it to the company.
The process continued through two more rounds of drafts, review, written requests for
modifications, and discussion. All in all, Comfort Housing managers sent some 70 pages
of requests and arguments, including additional company documents that they had not previously shared. The fourth draft, sent to the management on June 18, 2003, was incorporated into the dissertation.
Consistent with my own internalist and pragmatic orientation (Putnam, 1981), I
approached the member review process with the assumption that interpretive goodness
and ethically responsible research relations would be practical accomplishments, undertaken within a context of dialogue and persuasion to be worked out as the research process
unfolded (Smith, 1992). Nevertheless, I was surprised by how taxing it would be to navigate the positive and negative influences of the challenges associated with implied

Locke, Velamuri / Member Review

501

character, descriptive details, and interpretive perspective raised as I worked to realize my

research project, balancing my responsibilities to my professional community with those
to the community of research participants.
Implied character. Comfort Housings managers responses to the case narrative indicated that they did not find all the representations of them entirely palatable, and they
raised questions about, or made requests for, changes that made their own textually
implied character or that of other actors they had described sit better with them. For
instance, responding with some discomfort to the grammatical errors typical in transcriptions of verbatim interview speech, senior managers requested that their comments be
put in proper syntax. In other instances, senior managers responded to characterizations
of the founder expressed in the interview comments of other organizational stakeholders.
For example, senior managers asked that the text be rephrased through requests such as,
We would like you to change the second sentence as, he was an introverted person and
unsure of his relationships and his future . . . referring to a brief description of the founder growing up.
Another illustration of the company raising issues stemming from the textually implied
character of organizational actors involved a story the company founder told about how
he dealt with a young employee who had been stealing to support his drug habit during
the early days of the company. It illustrated his understanding of the imperative to
improve society that attended a values-based approach to management. The employee had
been given the opportunity to continue employment subject to his agreeing to be admitted
to a rehabilitation program. It did not work. The founder then took steps of his own to
help the employee break his addiction. When the chairman of Comfort Housing first told
me this story, he described the parents reaction when confronted with the news of their
sons theft offense and drug habit in a particular way. After seeing the first draft of the
case, I was asked to change the wording to portray the parents in a less unfavorable light.
As the excerpt below indicates, I did so:4
He decided that dismissing the employee would run the risk of pushing him even deeper into
his addiction, and called the employees father and brother to the office for a meeting, in the
presence of the employee. The father first refused to believe what had happened, and when
the son admitted to the charges against him, [ ] the family felt totally helpless.

In these, and other similar instances, where managers responses indicated a concern
that their depictions might embarrass themselves or others, I weighed concerns, for example, that perfect syntax might call into question the authenticity of the generated data and
communicated these to the senior managers, against the appreciation that those depicted
had identified (or would be able to identify) themselves in the research account and be
emotionally distressed by it. For example, feeling the embarrassment that the parents
might experience in reading the details of their behavior on this family matter, I accommodated the chairmans desire to protect the familys privacy and replaced vivid details
with the requested more vague depiction.

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Details of portrayed events, behaviors and understandings. Organization members did

point to things that I had not got quite right or had not sufficiently represented in rendering
the case study. For example, in the first draft of the case study, I detailed several innovative ethically oriented practices that Comfort Housing had introduced into residential construction when it entered this industry. Through the review process, company managers
indicated that two of these practices needed to be more accurately specified. For example,
they clarified that I had understated their practice to safeguard flat buyers property titles.
They also explained that with regard to my claims regarding their handling of black
money (i.e., money that has not been declared as income to tax authorities, and on which
no income tax has been paid), it was incorrect to say that the company refused to accept
black money as there is no sure shot method to identify it; they noted that what they did
do was account for all the money they received. I accordingly modified the case narrative
with regard to these behaviors as indicated below.
Indemnified title: Several construction projects proceeded in spite of a lack of clarity over
who owned the land at the time it was transferred to the flat buyers. A typical reason for this
was a dispute over the inheritance of the land. When such confusion arose, the title of the flat
buyers was also mired in confusion. [Comfort Housing] gave a written guarantee to the
buyers of its flats that there would be no confusion over the title to the property they had purchased. The titles for [Comfort Housing] properties were thus indemnified for life, which
meant that during the lifetime of the owner the company took full responsibility for any questions that arose about the title of the property.

No black money: The company refused to accept any discouraged the laundering of black
money towards payment of the flats, insisting that and insisted on every transaction being
completely above board was completely accounted for.

Organization members also indicated areas where they believed additional details
should be added to my account and prompted me to include them through suggestions
such as, The second section starts with Comfort Housings entry into the construction
field. But the reasons for this are not presented. Please see our booklet, A Business House
with a Social Mission.
I readily incorporated the clarifications of company practices into the account. The data
managers pointed to in their booklet suggested that entry into construction had been an
intentional mission-driven decision rather than the accident depicted in my case study
draft. Where requests such as this one were made, I agreed to look into it, and when, as
was the case here, data from various sources indeed supported the depiction presented
in the case draft, I responded that both from [Comfort Housing] transcripts . . . and
of ex-employees, it appears that the entry into construction was not planned. On this
issue, Comfort Housing managers accepted my arguments and the depiction.
Whose perspective best represents the organization. The largest and most strongly raised
set of issues from the Comfort Housing management on the draft case studies was based on
the data and interpretations of past managers regarding a set of internal program initiatives
undertaken by the firm. Given that their viewpoint expressed a critique of the organization

Locke, Velamuri / Member Review

503

and its founder, the presence in the text of their perspective on the company was emphatically contested. In the phone conversation immediately following the submission of the first
draft, the chairman asked me whether the former managers who had been critical of the company were even entitled to an opinion, given that subsequent to their departure, they had not
created institutions with a similar commitment to ethical values. He suggested that their opinions on the pioneering work of his organization could not be taken at face value. And, other
senior managers challenged my interpretive competence, commenting that your stay in (city
name) was in itself rather short and the time devoted in that period to understand this aspect
was we feel, inadequate.
The perspectives of these former senior managers were central to my research project
as I concluded that the withdrawal of their commitments to the firm had contributed to its
difficulty in sustaining itself as a viable enterprise engaging in ethical practices. Senior
managers were clearly uncomfortable with their companys actions being theorized as
resulting in the withdrawal of commitments. The case write-up described the series of
internally controversial psychosocial programs and policy initiatives, including such
initiatives as marital counseling, encouraging the wives of senior managers to give up
their jobs to be full-time homemakers, and a company home schooling program. The perspective of the former managers on these programs, which was scathingly critical of the
chairman for creating unnecessary conflict and turmoil in the organization by pursuing
these initiatives, and which I understood to be related to their decisions to leave the firm,
was included in the first draft of the case study.
For example, regarding the homemaker initiative, the views of a former manager, who
left soon after this policy was announced, were presented:
So there was one stage when my wife was employed elsewhere, . . . and he (the chairman)
said all [the company] spouses should be employed in [the company]. He made them all
come and join [the company]. At that time my wife objected, but then I prevailed upon her
and said, there is some larger-than-life goal here. Then the whole process got reversed. There
was a stage when they said that no [company] wives should even be employed. They should
be at home, and he started flexing rules, saying that I will give a nonworking spouse allowance if the wife stays at home.

This last quote of the former employee presented in the case write-up prompted a ninepage response (6,562 words) by the company conveying to me that the company had introduced the initiative only after very careful consideration of its impact on all concerned
parties, emphasizing that at no stage was the concept of home maker thrust on any of the
working spouses, and arguing that the quote be removed from the case narrative. The
company provided additional documentary data such as internal fliers relating to the intiative to support its position.
Over the course of three further rounds of debate and discussion, I revisited my data as
well as the additional documents provided by the company and reexamined the claims I was
making from my own, current managers, and the former managers perspectives. As current
managers argued against the perspective of the former managers, they more strongly articulated their own construction of the place and meaning of these initaitives in the company.
These interactions brought home to me how Comfort Housing sustained its ethical practice

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in a corrupt environment in part through an understanding of itself as a social experiment;

the psychosocial initiatives then both flowed from and contributed to this understanding.
Although their arguments and additional information clarified their perspective, my review
of the data generated by former managers reinforced my conclusion that they felt constrained
to participate in this initiative, and this and other programs played a role in their decision to
leave the firm. In the end, the fate of this representation of the former employees perspective
was settled via a compromise in which I wrote into the case draft their disagreement, The
Vice President, who had joined the company in 1984 and was still employed in it at the time
of this research, disagreed with the former employees statement that [Comfort Housing] had
put pressure on any woman employee to leave work.
The comprehensive transparency option chosen with respect to Comfort Housing provided organization members the opportunity to raise all the described challenges, and as
they asked for modifications to the represented words and actions and to my theoretical
explanations, to have a say in the characterizations and generalizations made about them
and their worlds. The account provided underscores that challenges that center on interpretive questions are more difficult to contend with and resolve than are those centered on largely behavioral details. They also indicate that all types of challenges, including behavioral
descriptions, may generate interpretive differences. We would expect comprehensive transparency to carry the most interpretive and emotional load when executing member review
because it creates the opportunity for more types of interpretive challenges to arise and, in
particular, sets the stage for contested interpretations by raising the question of who knows
the organization best. However, objections regarding implied character that may arise when
only a restricted transparency option is selected may still prove difficult to negotiate, as
organization members may have a strong stake in the way in which they will be read.

Researcher Responses to the Challenges

How might researchers respond to the challenges and objections that research participants raise? In this final section of the article, we draw on the responses to challenges
raised in the case of Comfort Housing to articulate guidelines followed as a way to help
organization researchers think through the stances they might take in regard to objections
and requests to reshape the research text. They are tended with the understanding that they
are neither complete nor hard rules; multiple contingencies impinge on decision making
about how to respond, making it an inherently messy process.
Implied character. With regard to the exception taken to implied character, two sets of
issues served as a guide to the stance taken in ceding some control to participants over
how they appeared in the research print: Concerns with providing opportunities for maintaining local or internal anonymity and for establishing boundaries with regard to privacy
were balanced against the centrality of those representations to the analytic approach and
research claims of the project.
The former managers request to remove a reference to an associate because of its
potential to compromise his local anonymity relative to other former and current managers
at Comfort Housing was easily accommodated exactly as requested. For the current managers, however, and especially the founder of the company, both internal and external

Locke, Velamuri / Member Review

505

anonymity within that region of India, despite the use of pseudonyms and removal of specific identifying information, was problematic given the firms reputation as a nationally
recognized exception with regard to its business practices. (The option of generating a
fuller disguise by placing the company in an alternative industrycomposing comparative practices, disguising press reports, and identifying relevant regulations and laws
would be a huge undertaking, which in and of itself might compromise the quality of the
study.) Given this reality, it seemed reasonable to trade off the presentation of authentic
everyday speech in the research narrative against the request to clean up the syntax,
thereby polishing up the character implied in the words. It also seemed reasonable to
accommodate the chairmans request to redraw the line of privacy regarding the story told
about the employee with a drug problem.
An accommodative stance toward these requests to modify research representations implicating the implied character of research participants seemed prudent for two reasons. First,
the study did not take an analytic approach, such as ethnomethodology, in which retaining
particular language elements involved in spontaneous interaction such as syntax and word
choice would be critical (e.g., Schegloff, 1996). Second, these particular elements of the
depictions were not central to the research claims. For example, the particular behavior of
the family relative to their childs drug taking was not central to the research claims, whereas
the involvement of the firm in family matters as another expression of the values-based
understanding of its purpose was. For the latter reason, it was important that the story remain
in the case draft, but the point could still be made with the requested accommodation.
Details of portrayed events, behaviors, and understandings. At face value, decision
making for addressing research participants challenges to the details of portrayed events,
behaviors, and understandings proceeds unproblematically by resorting to the quality of
available evidence for them. Clearly when research participants agreed on and wanted
more precise statements of behaviors that were ongoing, such as how they handled monies
received or the guarantees they offered to those who bought their flats, there was essentially no decision to make, and the case draft was edited. However, an interpretive element
is present in descriptions of how and why past events unfolded, and in this instance decision making was guided by the preponderance and closeness of the available evidence to
the situation described.
For example, in the instance of the challenge to the description of Comfort Housings decision to enter construction as an accident, although the senior manager who suggested modifications to the case draft was present at the founding of the company, so were the managers
(both current and former) who had framed this decision as an accidental one. Furthermore,
although a company document was offered as support for the planned decision, it was a
document written several years after the decision was made to enter construction; it was not
a record of the actual events, as for example, the minutes of a meeting on the issue or a copy
of the guarantee given to buyers would be. Given that the preponderant account from those
who were party to this decision was that it was an accident, and that the evidence offered for
an alternative interpretation was generated at some temporal distance from the decision making regarding the event, I decided to hold firm on the accident narrative.

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Whose perspective best represents the organization. As indicated, the issue of whose
voice should represent the organization was the most contentious, and this was more so
the case at Comfort Housing since the perspective offered by the former managers on the
companys social experiments was the basis for a research claim that implied criticism of
the firms actions. Deciding how to respond to the call for removing the former managers
perspective was informed by issues of researcher obligation to research participants, evidence for their interpretation of the initiatives, and the centrality of this perspective to my
research claims. With the knowledge of Comfort Housings chairman, the former managers had agreed to participate in the study, and their doing so created an implicit contract
that their voices would be heard and have some representation in the study. On the issue
of evidence, given that there was a single married female manager in the firm at the time
the research was carried out, the existence of a company circular making the case for married women playing the roles of homemakers, and the movement of several women in the
firm into the homemaker role (including the chairmans wife), I believed that a preponderance of evidence existed supporting the former managers interpretation. This combined
with the centrality of this perspective to my research claims about the dynamics of stakeholder commitments shaped my decision to take a strong stand to retain their interpretation and my theoretical conclusion based on it in the text. In the face of the chairmans
and current managers ongoing objections, I offered, and they accepted, the compromise
of writing their objection into the case draft.

Conclusion
In the face of little explicit consideration of the practice of member review in organization research, this article makes several contributions. In the first part of the article, we provide guidance to researchers for how they might structure the process. Drawing on existing
discussions of member review, we propose three general forms of transparency or access
that researchers can grant to research documents informed by a discussion of the challenges
they may engender and the positive and negative ways in which they may affect the
research. Considering whether they wish to ask participants to review only their own generated words and actions to be used in the research, researcher-generated experience-near
accounts of their behavior, or the theoretical explanations fashioned from the inputs of all
research participants, organization researchers can weigh the ways in which the potential
challenges each form of access invites may influence their research and make better
informed decisions as to how they might design member review in their own studies.
Through the presentation of an instance of comprehensive transparency in member
review, the article provides a detailed illustration of the kinds of exceptions organization
members may take to our research narratives and the ways in which they endeavor to edit
and reshape them. Furthermore, by providing insight into the considerations taken into
account in deciding how to respond to the requests for rewriting, the article points to issues
concerning researcher obligations to ensure anonymity, privacy, and voice and, as well, concerns with evidence quality, and the centrality of requested modifications to the research
project. These elements of the thinking process followed are tended as an initial effort to
help organization researchers shape the stance they might take toward these requests.

Locke, Velamuri / Member Review

507

Finally, given that it is increasingly the case that todays research participants can and
will read what we write (Wolcott, 2001), for those organization researchers who believe
that the potential value associated with member review does not warrant pursuing this
research practice, this article provides an opportunity for considering how our research
participants might respond to what we write as we craft our manuscripts. Through each of
these contributions, it has outlined the ways in which member review might be used to
both improve the quality of research projects and also help us as researchers be responsible and accountable to our research communities.

Notes
1. A pseudonym.
2. We switch to the first person to refer to the researcher who is the protagonist in the illustration.
3. We should also note that in crafting this article, we have also effectively engaged Comfort Housing in
a further project, raising the same questions of informed consent and ethical field relations. We communicated
our desire to pursue this project to the Comfort Housing chairman and sent him a draft of this article for
review. He agreed that the project was worthwhile, and he raised some issues with regard to our draft.
4. In the reproduced quotes from the case narrative, the strikeouts [ ] point to phrases that were removed,
and italicized words are those suggested by organization members that were incorporated into the final text).

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Karen Locke is the W. Brooks George Professor at the College of William and Mary. Her current scholarship
emphasizes her ongoing interest in processes of qualitative research and focuses on explicating their creative
and imaginative dimensions. She has authored Grounded Theory in Management Research (2001) and
coauthored Composing Qualitative Research (1997, 2006), both published by Sage Publications.
S. Ramakrishna Velamuri, PhD, is an associate professor at the China Europe International Business School
where he teaches entrepreneurship and negotiation. His research explores how the ethical behaviors of firm
founders influence their ability to mobilize stakeholder support and examines the relationship between entrepreneurial strategies and firm growth.