Methods for Investigating Organizational Knowledge Communication

For the 2016 edition of JOOKC we, the editors, issued a general call for research articles focusing on methodology and methods of special interest to researchers carrying out research in the knowledge communication of organizations. We did so with a view to opening up a discussion of novel methodological ways of conducting research pertaining to the relationships between organization, knowledge and communication. The underlying reasoning was primarily a twofold one: First of all, in its capacity as a 3rd order disciplinarity, Organizational Knowledge Communication is independent from the restraints of any one disciplinary doxa and of any one method. That does not mean, obviously, that Organizational Knowledge Communication does not accept or allow for method use etc. But it does mean that scholars viewing themselves as Organizational Knowledge Communication scholars do adhere less to protocol (methodologically and method-wise etc.) than do the bulk of other researchers. What Organizational Knowledge Communication scholars adhere to and ‘live’ in their research, in terms of method and methodology, is an acceptance of the idea that their only obligation is to match the complexity of the object of study with modes of examinations befitting said complexity. Secondly, because we, the editors, had come to the belief that Organizational Knowledge Communication had, by now, reached a sort of state of maturity that would seem to call for a more in-depth account of methods and methodologies of choice among our peers.