Paradigm development in organisational science: Interpretative phenomenological analysis and explorations of absenteeism

This paper is intended to propose the use of IPA in the generation of diversity in methodology in organisational science. The case of IPA research on Absenteeism is used primarily to introduce the uninitiated organisational science researcher to IPA and its value as a tool of inquiry. Saunders et al, (2009) state that interpretivism takes a position which identifies that the world of business and management is “far too complex to lend itself to theorising by definite laws and that rich insights into this complex world are lost if such complexity is reduced to a series of law like generalisations” (p.113). In this paper, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is proposed as an interpretativist approach to paradigmatic development within the organisational sciences. It represents an experiential qualitative approach to research which aims to offer insights into how a given person, in a given context, makes sense of a given experience. IPA has its theoretical origins in phenomenology and hermeneutics and as one of several approaches to qualitative, phenomenological psychology, is distinctive because of its combination of psychological interpretative, and idiographic components. As a qualitative research approach, Larkin (2013) expounds that the IPA researcher is attempting to understand a participant’s relationship to the world, and to explore the meaning of the events, relationships and processes that are personally salient to them. Employing IPA and a within-person research design, the main aim of this study was to uncover participants’ in-context ‘lived experience’ of absenteeism. IPA is immersed in the micro-analysis of slices of human life but in no way is it an attempt to test a pre-set hypothesis; therefore IPA is concerned with the meanings which those experiences of absenteeism hold for individuals. Participants are positioned idiographically as the sense-making experts in absenteeism. IPA exposed the gap between what is assumed about absenteeism and how it is experienced; sewn together with IPA’s idiographic sensitivity to context. Recasting organisational science research with IPA treads new furrows in that it revels in a sovereignty of idiographic expression and gives voice to participants’ sense-making of a phenomenon through systematic analysis of the dataset and the evolution of structured themes.