Composing Qualitative Research

DEVELOPING THE
THEORIZED STORYLINE

Contributors: Karen Golden-BiddleKaren Locke

Print Pub. Date: 2007
Print ISBN: 9781412905619
Online ISBN: 9781412983709
DOI: 10.4135/9781412983709
Print pages: 48-60
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods Online. Please note that
the pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
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DEVELOPING THE THEORIZED

STORYLINE
One of the hallmarks of qualitative research is the mounds of data, of ten comprised
of hundreds and thousands of pages, produced from having gone in to organizations
to learn about them. Made possible by extended stays in the field—of ten lasting a
year, or even longer, in research programs—we are able to see first hand the everyday
complexities and on-the-ground efforts for resolution associated with issues such as
introducing and implementing technologies (Orlikowski, 1993; Trauth & Jessup, 2000),
working collaboratively in virtual teams whose members are spread across the globe
(Sarker & Sahay, 2004), interacting with family members in emergency rooms during
resuscitation (Morse & Pooler, 2002), entering an occupation (Pratt, Rockmann, &
Kaufmann, 2006; Ibarra, 1999; Van Maanen & Schein, 1979), providing care to older
people in acute care settings (Cheek & Gibson, 2003), coping with disasters (Gephart,
1988, 1993; Turner, 1976; Vaughan, 1990; Weick, 1988, 1993), and so on. As a result,
we are able to produce thick descriptions of everyday life in these contexts that also can
enrich our theories and vitalize our theorized storylines.

But, how do we represent these vast data in developing our theorized storylines for
journal articles that are constrained by space limitations? And how do we do this in
a way that engages readers in our stories? Facing this dilemma, authors’ efforts to
compose qualitative research for journal articles have produced some innovation in
representation. It is no longer the case, for example, that “findings” must be contained
in a single section with that heading. Nor is it the case that all data must be depicted
in tables (although it is increasingly common for additional qualitative data to support
claims to be rendered in this form). No longer are theoretical models placed only at the
fronts of papers. In this chapter, we explore four representational innovations, and the
various solutions derived, that qualitative researchers have undertaken in their efforts of
writing for disciplinary journals.

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COMPELLING BEGINNINGS
Opening lines and sections are crucial elements in the establishment of rapport
between the work and its readers (Law & Williams, 1982). In journal articles, the
conventional “Abstract” remains. But, rather than simply stating what will follow in the
article, some authors are writing “the first sentence so the readers want to read the
second” (Fine, 1988, p. 156). As authors, when we consider how we write and how
we represent our fieldwork in our writing, we are able to construct more compelling
beginnings for our journal articles.

Some authors are choosing to take readers immediately to the field. But, rather than
choosing just any details of their fieldwork to portray, they select those that signify the
theorized storyline that shortly will be developed. Bringing in the field piques readers’
expectation that “real” and interesting organizational situations will be portrayed; it also
provides them an orienting glimpse into the storyline that will be developed. In this
respect, the beginning affords an important opportunity to depict “memorable examples
of …issues and concepts” (Gephart, 2004) being investigated in the broader disciplinary
community, and that signify our storylines.

In the first example (Barker, 1993), we are presented with Ronald's ironic account of
being more closely observed at work now that the small manufacturing company has
restructured into self-managing teams. The article begins with a quote from Ronald that
is interpreted by the author.

I don't have to sit there and look for the boss to be around, and if
the boss is not around, I can sit there and talk to my neighbor or do
what I want. Now the whole team is around me and the whole team is
observing what I'm doing.

“Ronald,” a technical worker in a small manufacturing company, gave

me this account one day while I was observing his work team. Ronald
works in what contemporary writers call a postmodern organization
which is not structured as a rule-based hierarchy. He works with a team
of peers who are all equally responsible for managing their own work

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behaviors. But Ronald described an unexpected consequence of this

team-based design. With his voice concealed by work noise, Ronald
told me that he felt more closely watched now than when he worked
under the company's old bureaucratic system. He said that while his
old supervisor might tolerate someone coming in a few minutes late, for
example, his team had adopted a “no tolerance” policy on tardiness and
that members monitored their own behaviors carefully. (p. 408)

The introductory paragraphs of our second example, a study of risk and blame in
disaster sensemaking (Gephart, 1993, pp. 1465-1466), vividly portray the context of the
study—a gas-line explosion, and the allocation of blame subsequent to the explosion—
and also point toward the developing storyline of organizational sensemaking about risk
management.

Gas Blast Blamed on Wind Shift

A sudden shift in the wind may have triggered a spectacular pipeline

explosion that critically injured five Big City men Tuesday night. The gas
in the high-pressure 51-cm pipeline was probably ignited by equipment
brought in to repair a leak, says [the] director of operations for the
Western Pipe Lines. (Newspaper article, February 20, 1985)

Foreman Was a Family Man

[Western] Pipe Lines (ltd.) lost a 30 year employee when Merv Ginter
died in the burn unit of University Hospital Monday. But to the members
of his family, Ginter's death represents the loss of a husband, a father
and a grandfather. (Newspaper article, March 5, 1985)

Pipeline Worker Dies

[A second] of five pipeline workers injured in an explosion died

Wednesday. (Newspaper article, March 7, 1985)

Public Inquiry Testimony

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In light of the serious nature and tragic consequences of the leak, the
Board is holding this public inquiry into the accident. The purpose of
this inquiry, therefore, is to permit the Board to determine whether any
changes should be made in the way that [Western Pipe Lines] operates,
or the way in which [it] is regulated by the Board, in order to prevent
similar accidents in the future; it is not the primary purpose of this
inquiry to fix any blame for what happened. (Chairperson of government
energy board, March 26, 1985)

At other times, authors take us to the field by telling rather than showing us that
something significant happened. In each of the following two examples, the authors do
this by taking us to the scene of action. The first example (Maitlis, 2004, pp. 1275-1276)
takes us to a meeting of board directors who must decide the principal conductor's
future with the orchestra, an event that points toward the developing storyline of how a
CEO influences (and fails to influence) board decision making.

The directors of a major British symphony orchestra were meeting to

make a critical decision about the orchestra's principal conductor. His
contract was due to expire in two months’ time, and a decision had to
be made whether to renew it for a further three-year term or look for
a new individual to fill this key role. At the start of the board meeting,
the orchestra's chief executive officer (CEO) highlighted several areas
of dissatisfaction with the conductor, including the musician's fear of
him, the lukewarm reception he had received from audiences, and
his failure to bring recording contracts to the orchestra. The CEO
concluded his presentation with a recommendation to the board not to
renew the principal conductor's contract. There then followed a heated
discussion among several board members…. After one and a half
hours of frequently circular debate, the chairman of the board became
impatient and closed the discussion, instructing the CEO to meet with
the principal conductor and offer a contract renewal. The board had
rejected the CEO's recommendation.

In the next example, Wilson Ng and Christian De Cock (2002) take us to the scene of a
hostile takeover, which they describe as a “watershed in Singapore corporate history”

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that provides an entrée into examining how the role of discursive performances shaped
the emerging battle.

Valentine's Day 1995 was a watershed in Singapore corporate history.

On this day, Antony, one of Singapore's oldest companies, launched
a hostile takeover bid for Cleo, a “home-grown success story” which
was one of Singapore's best known companies. The hostility of Antony's
bid surprised the local market; analysts could not recall the last hostile
takeover. The brazenness of Antony's pursuit caught public attention…

To gain public support, Antony executed a meticulous public relations

programme which centred on the appointment of a new chairman
for Cleo. Antony's board of directors nominated a local Chinese
entrepreneur with great public stature for this role… [and who] expected
[their nominee as Chairman] to cement control of Cleo on Antony's
behalf…. Initially the new chairman seemed to reward the faith invested
in him as he began an “extensive program to review and restructure
[Cleo's] operations”…but appearances deceived. Behind a façade of
corporate unity, Cleo's new chairman initiated a power struggle to seize
control of Cleo. He eventually took exclusive, personal control of Cleo
and left Antony, the majority shareholder, without an effective voice in
running Cleo.

The public were never aware of any “battle in the boardroom.” Instead,
public statements painted an official story of change as well organized
and professionally managed with a successful outcome never in doubt.
However, beneath this level of public perception several other storylines
gave conflicting accounts of how Cleo's restructuring was progressing.
These various storylines form the crux of our investigation as they point
to the importance of discursive performances given by key protagonists
in carving out positions of power. (pp. 23-24)

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NOVEL USE OF METHODOLOGY

SECTIONS
Some authors have rearranged space allocated for methodology sections by not only
depicting data collection and analyses, but also portraying the field itself in a manner
that enhances their developing storyline. In creating methodology sections, these
authors are changing the name to broader terms or are inserting sections dedicated
to describing the fieldwork context, such as “research setting,” “research site” or “field
site.” Note how each of the following examples uses this rearranged space to describe
particular settings and events that link the fieldwork to the core ideas of the storyline
being developed.

Our first example, an article on organizing moves in software support hotlines by Brian
Pentland (1992), argues that knowledge is situated performance and that practice
theory can provide the conceptual foundation for this view. Subdividing the “Method”
section into Research Setting, Access and Observation, and Data, he develops the
storyline by using the research setting to establish a hot line in a software organization
as the appropriate setting to study routine and gain theoretically relevant insights into
knowledge as situated performance. His discussion of research setting begins with,

A hot line is a convenient setting in which to study service performances

because the work consists of large numbers of discrete units…that are
processed fairly routinely. Lave (1988) argued that everyday, routine
activities of this kind are especially appropriate topics for practice
theory. (pp. 533-534)

In subdividing a general “Research Focus” section, the second example (Reay, Golden-
Biddle, & GermAnn, 2006) creates a subsection, “Nurse Practitioners in Alberta.” Here,
the authors describe the general governance structure of health care in Canada and
detail the Nurse Practitioner role in terms of typical services, recent growth in numbers
and places of work. This information not only situates nurse practitioners in a particular
geographical context that may be different for some readers, but also in depicting the

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historical developments and present work situations, contextualizes its developing

storyline.

The final example, by Beth Bechky (2003), differentiates the “Methods” and “Analysis”
sections, subdividing methods into Research Site and Data Sources. The first two
paragraphs of “Research Site” provide detail about the site, “EquipCo,” that explicitly
develops its suitability for investigating cross-occupational knowledge sharing. She
explains,

EquipCo was an ideal site to study the dynamics of cross-occupational

knowledge sharing. As a high-tech manufacturing firm that designed its
own products, EquipCo had a strong formal organization, characterized
by the importance of the distribution of engineering drawings.
Additionally, EquipCo faced a quickly changing market, and therefore
new prototypes were being built all the time. The many occupational
communities involved in the production process needed to effectively
share their knowledge to get these machines out the door. In a
manufacturing organization, much of the feedback about the production
process occurs during product “handoffs,” when responsibility for the
product shifts from engineering to prototyping to manufacturing. These
handoffs provided many opportunities to witness the ways in which the
informal social and work organization made the transformation of local
understandings possible. (p. 315)

DATA-THEORY COUPLING
In representing our fieldwork through data excerpts, we have the opportunity to bring
together the worlds of the field and academy. We are looking in two directions: toward
the research situation to the forms and processes of organizational life encountered in
the field, and toward the academy to the literature and processes of creating research
space for the study encountered in our writing. Underscoring this relationship between
depicting data and conveying their theorized significance, the literary critic Wayne
Booth (1961) distinguishes between “showing” and “telling.” He explains that the
“accumulation of accurately observed detail cannot satisfy us for long; only if the details

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are made to tell, only if they are weighted with a significance” do they hold our attention
(p. 114). We show data and tell their significance. We theorize the fragments of life we
show. Consequently, primarily in the middle sections of our manuscripts, we couple
the fragments of organizational life with our theorizing as we develop storylines. The
life we portray is always theorized as, reciprocally, the theory we develop is always
contextualized. Here, we explore a few examples that illustrate how authors variously
relate the showing and telling of data in developing storylines.

Telling, Showing, and Telling

Some authors use a sandwich structure to couple their data with theory: they first
explain the core idea that will be depicted in the following data, then show that data,
and finally tell more abstractly what the data showed. In the first example (Kahn, 1993,
pp. 548-549), we are told and then shown the nature of caregiving that flows between a
social worker and her client in a social service agency.

Other aspects of the flow pattern are highlighted in the following excerpt
of a phone conversation between a social worker and her client, a
mother of four boys. The care that the social worker gave her client
was a rich concentration of each of the dimensions of caregiving. She
made a lot of time available to the woman, patiently inquired about and
attended to her story, showed respect and empathy for her effort and
struggles, supported her with information meant to empower her to
take control of her life, and offered such care consistently during the
conversation. Her end of the conversation included this passage:

I called to see how things are going. I'm glad you're able to use this
phone at work. How are the matches going? (Listens) Good. I'm glad.
How did you feel about that? (Listens) You sound like you handled
that well. (Listens) I'll get back to you about the free shoes we have. I
definitely have you in mind and will start to have a bit more time. Were
you able to apply to some of the housing projects I sent you information
about? (Listens) I'll keep my eye out and when I see things I'll send
them to you. (Listens) You have to remember to do something for

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yourself. With four kids and another 100 at the day-care center during
the day, you have to do for yourself. Get together with other people,
adults at the Center. Make that a priority.

This passage shows the social worker patiently listening and inquiring
into her client's experience, making room for the woman to be present
emotionally (“How did you feel about that?”) and concretely (“Were you
able to apply?”).

This example begins by telling the dimensions of caregiving that flow between social
workers and their clients as situated in the phone conversation between a social worker
and her client, a mother of four boys. The author follows this telling with showing by
materializing those dimensions in the depiction of the actual phone conversation. He
returns at the conclusion of the excerpt to telling again, in his more general translation
of the caregiver's behavior. The distinction between telling and showing is further
highlighted by the manuscript's switching into a different font as the author changes
from narrating the theory in the voice of the observer and organizational scholar to
demonstrating it in the voice of an organizational actor, and back again.

A second example, from an article by Connie Gersick (1988), proposes a midpoint

transition as a critical development event in work teams.

The Midpoint Transition

As each group approached the midpoint between the time it started

work and its deadline, it underwent great change. The following
excerpts from transitional meetings illustrate the nature and depth of
this change. Particular points to notice are members’ comments about
time and their behavior toward external supervisors.

Excerpt 5(E5) The students begin their meeting on the sixth day of an
11-day span.

1. Rajeev: I think, what he said today in class—I have, already, lots of

criticism on our outline. What we've done now is ok, but we need a lot

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more emphasis on organization design than what we—I've been doing

up till now.

2. Jack: I think you're right. We've already been talking about [X]. We
should be talking more about [Y].

3. Rajeev: We've done it—and it's super—but we need to do other

things, too.

4. (Bert agrees.)

5. Jack: After hearing today's discussion— we need to say [X] more

directly. And we want to say more explicitly that.

6. Rajeev: Should we be organized and look at the outline? We should

know where we're going.

(The group goes quickly through the outline members had prepared for
the meeting, noting changes and additions they want to make.)

7. Rajeev: The problem is we're very short on time. (p. 23)

It is significant that Rajeev's remark, “We're very short on time,” was

only the second comment about the adequacy of the time the group had
for the project, and it marked a switch from Jack's early sentiment that
“we've got some more time” (E2, 6). A new sense of urgency marked
this meeting.

As was also the case in the example of caregiving by a social worker, Connie Gersick
begins by making a theoretical point: The development of work teams is characterized
by a midpoint transition. Then, before proceeding to show the enactment of midpoint in
a particular work team, she directs readers to “notice” the elements of that transition,
time and change (in their behavior toward authority) in the fragment of team life that
she then presents. Finally, having shown the data of team life, she once again calls
readers’ attention to the element of time, and in so doing, underscores and advances
the theoretical framework.

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Minimal Telling, Showing, Telling, More

General Telling
Authors also develop theorized storylines by immediately showing data (usually after
a subheading that minimally signals theory), then telling the theoretical significance of
those data after they have been shown. These showing-telling episodes then build into
a more general discussion of theory (telling) that is demarcated from the last section of
the article, for example, the discussion or conclusion.

Our first example of this form of coupling data and theory is the article by Jane Dutton
and Janet Dukerich (1991) examining how individuals and organizations make sense
of and enact “nontraditional and emotional strategic issues,” using the particular issue
of homelessness. A dominant portion of their empirical portrait, then, concerns showing
how the issue of homelessness changes in interpretation over time. The section,
“Interpretations of and Actions on Homelessness,” depicts five chronological phases,
distinguished by key events, major interpretations and major actions regarding the
homelessness issue. The data are both discussed in the text and summarized in a
figure depicting the history of the homelessness issue. In the next section, “The Role
of Organizational Identity and Image,” the authors develop the more general telling
component of the storyline, linking it to relevant literature.

Our second example is the article by James Barker (1993, pp. 419—433), which
examines the evolution of concertive control in self-managing teams from value
consensus to normative rules. The major portion of representing his field work is
the middle section, titled “The Development of Concertive Control” and subdivided
into sections denoting the three phases of development: “Consolidation and Value
Consensus,” “Emergence of Normative Rules,” and “Stabilization and Formalization
of the Rules.” These titles represent minimal telling as they arrange and link data
representation with the theorized storyline. Then, within each phase, James Barker
uses both employees’ words and his own to depict the emergent dynamics:

Phase I began with the chaos of Jack's abrupt changing of the

manufacturing area to teams over that weekend in August 1988. While

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the workers knew that the change was coming, they still walked into
a whole new experience on Monday morning. Bonnie, an original ISE
employee, described the scene for me:

Well it was mass confusion. Nobody knew where they were sitting, what
team they were on. They had an idea of what was going on at that point
and what the team aspect was all about. As far as details, no idea! So,
basically, everybody was just kind of like WOW, this is kinda fun! (p.
419)

Thus, he details concrete events constituting this phase, for example, “Jack assigned
workers to the three new teams by drawing names out of a hat” and makes comments
still quite close to the events, such as, “The challenge for the teams during this phase
was learning how to work together and supervise themselves functionally.” Then, as
the description of the phase draws to a close, James Barker (1993) engages in more
general telling, as represented in the following comments:

This vignette depicts how the team concertively reached a value

consensus that, in turn, controlled individual and collective work…

Although there were slight differences, this value consensus and these
decision premises emerged powerfully and with remarkable consistency
across the new teams…

There were four key points in the consolidation phase… (pp. 422-424)

Our final example is Bob Gephart's (1993) study of disaster sensemaking. In a section
titled, “Analysis,” this article shows the data: individual stories of the disaster by the
assistant district manager, the worker, the district manager and the board. These stories
are conveyed more thoroughly in the accompanying tables. The stories are developed
in the text, primarily by showing verbatim, transcribed data, though some “telling” enters
near the end of each story in reflective comments about the data made by the author.
However, the “telling” explicitly begins with the subsection of “Key Words” in which
conceptually related clusters, for instance, rules and policies, and safety, are developed

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from a textual analysis of the transcript data. Finally, the more general telling is found in
a separate section following Analysis, titled, “Summary of Findings.”

STORYLINES WITH FIELD AND THEORY

COMPLICATIONS
The final innovation involves the representation of both field and theory-based
complications in our storylines. Since disciplinary journals require theoretical
complications, for example, gaps or lacuna, the vast majority of articles published in
them construct such complications as part of their storylines. However, some articles
also articulate a field-based complication alongside, and cohering with the theoretical
complication. In so doing, these articles create the opportunity to resonate more
deeply with readers because they portray theoretical significance as well as “real-life”
significance: that is, real people confronted with significant problems, who in their efforts
to deal with the problems, are fundamentally changed (Franklin, 1994).

In this section, we profile one exemplar article, “The Organizational and

Interorganizational Development of Disasters,” by Barry Turner (1976). Let's examine
in greater detail what it could look like to write theoretical and field significance into
our work. In the following excerpt, he constructs a field-based complication, which we
italicize (pp. 378-379).

Administrative organizations may be thought of as cultural mechanisms

developed to set collective goals…Given this concern with future
objectives, analysts have paid considerable attention to the manner in
which organizational structures are patterned to cope with unknown
events—or uncertainty—in the future facing the organization and its
environment (Crozier, 1964; Thompson, 1967; Lawrence and Lorsch,
1967).

Uncertainty creates problems for action. Actors’ organizations resolve

these problems by following rules of thumb, using rituals, relying
on habitual patterns, or, more self-consciously, by setting goals

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and making plans to reach them… But since organizations are

indeterminate open systems, particularly in their orientation to future
events (Thompson, 1967:10), members of organizations can never be
sure that their present actions will be adequate for the attainment of
their desired goals.

Prediction is made more difficult by the complex and extensive nature of

the tasks…When a task which was formerly small enough to be handled
amenably grows to an unmanageable size, resources may be increased
to handle the larger problem… (Hirsch, 1975)… Alternatively, the task
to be handled may shrink to fit the resources available or the amount of
information… (Meier, 1965)…The success of these strategies, however,
turns on the issue of whether the simplified diagnosis of the present and
likely future situation is accurate enough to enable the organizational
goals to be achieved without encountering unexpected difficulties that
lead on to catastrophe.

The central difficulty, therefore, lies in discovering which aspects of the

current set of problems facing an organization are prudent to ignore and
which should be attended to, and how an acceptable level of safety can
be established in carrying out this exercise.

This complication is grounded in the field; it consists of a real-life problem that members
of a variety of organizations find significant. Which problems should be attended to
so that we can avoid catastrophe? This complication matters, and in its articulation,
places the field context central and figural to the article. To bring home the theoretical
significance of this issue, Barry Turner incorporates relevant literature on uncertainty
into his discussion. Note, however, that rather than problematizing that literature, he
uses it to contextualize the field complication. In this respect, he stories the theory.

He then proceeds to construct the theoretical complication, which is derived from the
field complication, and which we italicize in the excerpt below.

Wilensky (1967) has suggested that to deal with such situations,

one must discover how to recognize high-quality intelligence about

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the problem at hand, using the term intelligence in its military sense.
Wilensky's criteria for high-quality intelligence are that it should be
“clear, timely, reliable, valid, adequate and wide-ranging.” … This is
excellent as a normative statement of what is desirable, but it does little
in practical situations to offer tests of clarity, timeliness, or adequacy
of intelligence. One means which Wilensky did put forward for tackling
these latter issues, however, is by the examination of failures of
intelligence, these being more important than failures of control. Taking
up this suggestion, this article considers the manner in which such an
approach could be used to begin to identify, as Wilensky (1967:121)
puts it, “the conditions that foster the failure of foresight…” (Turner,
1976, p. 379)

This time, the complication is grounded in the extant literature, and in particular, in the
work of Wilensky. However, the theoretical complication does not leave the field behind.
This time it is used as a context of relevance for the theory, grounded in how it helps
“practical situations.” Thus, the storyline embodies two central, figural complications—
one based in the field and the other in the literature—and implies that resolutions will be
developed for both. These complications are so integrally interwoven that it is difficult to
discern where one begins and the other ends.

Finally, Turner (1976) develops an added twist by complicating the complications, and
in so doing, renders them more significant for members of both the field and academic
worlds. He first defines the type of disasters that he will examine as those that “present
problems of explanation,” and then continues:

The concern, here, therefore, is to make an examination of some

large-scale disasters that are potentially foreseeable and potentially
avoidable, and that, at the same time, are sufficiently unexpected
and sufficiently disruptive to provoke a cultural reassessment of the
artefacts and precautions available to prevent such occurrences. The
intention of this examination is to look for a set of patterns that precede
such disasters. Having identified such a pattern, one can go on to
ask whether it can also be found in the preconditions for other major
organizational failures which do not necessarily lead to loss of life, but

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which, nevertheless, provoke the disruption of cultural assumptions

about the efficacy of current precautions, such as the collapse of a
public company…(p. 380)

We want to continue reading in order to gain insight into how to prevent disasters and
organizational failures. Does he develop patterns, and if so, what are they? For it is
this insight into disasters, if disclosed, that resolves the significant complications. By
constructing a storyline that integrates cohering field and theoretical complications,
Barry Turner opens up his work and ideas to readers in both worlds.

In this chapter, we have explored some representational choices authors face when
drawing on fieldwork to develop theorized storylines. As authors, we have available to
us our vast field data, of ten reaching hundreds and even thousands of pages. Which of
the hundreds of collected experiences and stories do we select to write into our texts?
How do we incorporate our field engagement to develop—vitalize and enrich—our
theorized storylines? Edmonson (1984) points to the need for selectivity in the choice
of what from organizational life is to be included in our write-ups. These “condensed
examples” should not only illustrate theoretical insights, but also embody vividness
that brings the points alive in a way that evokes the human interest of readers. The
examples should draw readers into the organizational situations studied and invest
them in the storylines developed. We have shown how authors variously seek to
accomplish this in their texts through the construction of compelling beginnings, the
novel use of methodology sections, specified and coherent data-theory coupling, and
the creation of twin sets of complications based in the field and academy. Examples
such as those highlighted throughout this chapter develop the theorized storyline by
providing vivid and significant examinations of organizational life that connect with us as
readers.

Page 17 of 17 Composing Qualitative Research: DEVELOPING

THE THEORIZED STORYLINE
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