RESEARCH IN UNCONVENTIONAL CONTEXTS: REFLECTIONS AND FUTURE AVENUES
Primary Sponsor: Research Methods Division
Organizers: Farooq Ahmad, Farooq Mughal
📅 Date: Sunday, August 2, 2026 | 12:30PM – 2:30PM
📍 Marriott, Salon C - Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Philadelphia
Join us at the AOM 2026 Professional Development Workshop on conducting research in unconventional contexts, sponsored by the Research Methods Division.
As global polycrisis, geopolitical disruption, and cascading organizational fragmentation reshape the conditions of scholarly inquiry, researching in unconventional contexts has become both more urgent and more methodologically demanding. This workshop brings together scholars to collectively reflect on the value, challenges, and lessons learned from fieldwork in settings where conventional approaches routinely break down.
The workshop advances management knowledge across several dimensions. First, it examines what unconventional contexts make visible that stable settings conceal - from hidden power dynamics to fragile organizing processes under pressure. Second, it addresses methodological improvisation: how researchers adapt data collection strategies when classical approaches prove inadequate under conditions of risk, urgency, and uncertainty. Third, it foregrounds the human dimensions of unconventional fieldwork - emotional strain, identity tensions, and the ethical complexities that exceed standard protocols. Fourth, it explores how knowledge generated at the margins can achieve rigor and publishability in top management journals. Finally, it offers a space for early-career scholars to receive direct feedback and guidance from experienced fieldworkers.
Part I: Presentations by eight scholars sharing fieldwork experiences across unconventional contexts (45 min)
Speaker Presentations
Katina Sawyer (Eller College of Management): Katina presents research conducted in organizations serving survivors of commercial sexual exploitation, alongside work in a climate-focused dance organization and a fast casual restaurant start-up, spanning an unusually diverse range of unconventional field sites.
Rashedur Chowdhury (Essex Business School, University of Essex): Rashedur will share his experience from the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh, drawing on fieldwork built directly on survivors' testimonies to examine the gap between rhetoric and reality, and how survivors make sense of their own situation.
Hatim Rahman (Northwestern University): Hatim discusses a study of a state medical board's internal deliberations on physician opioid overprescribing, leveraging sunshine-state transparency laws to gain rare access to high-status professionals' sensitive decision-making processes.
Nishani Bourmault (NEOMA Business School): Nishani will discuss her work at the intersection of qualitative and quantitative methods. Her research explores how French anesthesiologists who adopt hypnosis in the operating room stray from occupational norms and reinvent their work, and how former Paris subway drivers carry internalized norms of responsibility from their previous occupation into managerial roles.
Kisha Lashley (University of Virginia): Drawing on fieldwork across morally and historically weighted contexts - including the marijuana industry, a university confronting a contentious past, and a hurricane-affected island - Kisha explores how trust, humility, and empathy function as core research orientations.
Olivia Brown (University of Bath): Drawing on research with emergency responders and online extremist communities, Olivia examines innovative methodologies for uncertain contexts, with a focus on digital trace data and capturing psychological processes in online environments.
Luke Hedden (University of Miami): Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with power line workers and python hunters, Luke examines the methodological and theoretical implications of research in physically dangerous settings, including how experiences of danger can shape the theorizing process.
Farooq Ahmad (Siena University): Farooq Ahmad examines what happens when the status quo breaks down - specifically, when elite professionals such as specialist physicians become implicated in misconduct. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, he explores the methodological and theoretical challenges of studying professional wrongdoing from the inside, and what access to such settings reveals about the social arrangements that normalize and sustain it.
Farooq Mughal (University of Bath): Part of Farooq's research programme explores the methodological challenges of using observations and ethnographies in non-Western contexts. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in business schools in the global South, Farooq has examined gender power relations within management education, attending carefully to how positionality, identity, and power shape what an observer can see, and what remains obscured.
Part II: Two concurrent roundtable discussions (30 min):
• Data Collection from Professional Organizations
• Data Collection from Vulnerable Communities
Part III: Closing remarks and Q&A with discussants (15 min)
Pre-registration is required. Space is limited.
📝 Register here: 🔗 fahmad@siena.edu
For any questions, feel free to reach out. Farooq Ahmad (Siena University), Farooq Mughal (University of Bath)
------------------------------
Farooq Ahmad
Siena University
Loudonville, NY
------------------------------