The Construction of the Organizational Object in Organization Studies: An Invitation to Epistemic Reflexivity with Bourdieu

With reflexivity becoming an increasingly important theme in organization studies (OS), this article extends an invitation to consider how researcher reflexivity can become a conceptual resource for developing organizational research designs. Engaging with and adding to current theoretical debates on reflexivity, we draw on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory and career as exemplars in proposing the importance of ‘epistemic reflexivity’, which we suggest has untapped potential to further theorizing and address scholastic biases. We discuss how reflexivity can be translated into an orientation to research that guides methodological awareness and leads to epistemologically robust research designs, encouraging new and more diverse theory generation that seeks to liberate itself from tradition and power structures within the field. Building on Bourdieu, we identify three interrelated principles of epistemic reflexivity for the construction of the organizational research object: (1) breaking with pre-constructed categories and research objects with consideration of the choices made in the research process; (2) reflecting on the researcher’s social origin and position in the academic field; and (3) the positioning of the research vis-a-vis other studies and academic traditions in the OS field. We further argue that these principles are developed throughout the researcher’s career, contributing to the construction of an embodied ‘reflexive researcher habitus’. We suggest that this reflexive research orientation to research object construction helps in moving the OS field towards heightened research transparency and methodological rigour for the development of research objects that capture the complexity of organizational phenomena and their diverse contexts.