Rethinking “insider” and “outsider”
relationships in disaggregated, customeroriented organisations
M.N. Ravishankar and Laurie Cohen
 Background
Field studies in offshore outsourcing firms (Cohen and ElSawad, 2007; Ravishankar and Cohen, 2010; Ravishankar et al., 2011).
Differing levels of maturity of qualitative research in
Business & Management disciplines? (ex: IB and IS)
Reporting of qualitative research in academic journals
(ISR, MISQ, AMJ, SMJ, Org. Sci, Org. St, ASQ,
JMS).
The impact of globalisation on the framing and conduct
of qualitative field studies.
Insiders and Outsiders
 Insiders: researchers sharing a number of
important characteristics with their informants
(nationality, ethnicity, language, cultural
frames).
 Greater practical familiarity with the research
setting and context (Marschan-Piekarri and Welch, 2004;
Karra and Phillips, 2008).
 Outsiders: researchers having relatively fewer
characteristics in common with their
informants.
 Lesser practical familiarity with the research
setting and context.
Insiders and Outsiders
 But we are always ‘outsiders’ when we
embark on field studies!
 The distinctions between the two
categories are also not always clear.
 What’s the big deal about ‘insiders’
anyway?
Benefits of being an insider (Karra & Phillips, 2008)
Ease of access
Reduced resource requirements
Establishing trust and rapport
Language-based advantages
Cultural intelligence
Benefit of being an outsider (Jackson, 2006)
 Objective detachment from
research site and informants
Insider-Outsider distinctions are
largely ignored in qualitative research
 Templetization of the qualitative methods section
has severely obscured our ability to make sense of
these distinctions and their consequences.
 Editors and reviewers favour ‘rigour’ over
frankness.
 Technical descriptions of methods as evidence of
authentic scholarship (we used nvivo; semistructured open-ended interviews).
Insider-Outsider distinctions are largely
ignored in qualitative research
 Very few report on how their insider-outsider
statuses led them to certain types of answers.
 Our answers to the question ‘what is going on
here?’ is often intimately connected to whether
we are insiders or outsiders.
 We must recognise that there are sub-categories
of insiders and outsiders (ex: the privileged
insider).
Globally disaggregated modern
organisations
 Global focus
 North American and European clients
 HQ-subsidiary relationships (Frenkel, 2008)
 Corporate Cultures (Upadhya, 2009)
 Informants with social and cultural
capital (Ravishankar et al., 2010)
Globally disaggregated
modern organisations
 Emphasis on English language (Cohen and
El-Sawad, 2007)
 Extreme discourses of customercentricity
 Cultural homogeneity?
Re-thinking insider-outsider
perspectives in globally
disaggregated
firms
Access
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The myth of insiders’ ease of access
‘High status’ outsiders v ‘Low status’ insiders
When outsiders look like customers.
Differential treatment of outsiders and insiders.
The implications for research outcomes (Ex:
Friedman’s ‘The World is Flat’; Capelli et al.’s (2010) article ‘The
India way: Lessons for the US’).
Re-thinking insider-outsider
perspectives in globally
disaggregated firms
Language
 Neutralisation of insiders’ language advantage
 Informants refusal to speak in local languages
 Local languages as symbols of incompetence
Re-thinking insider-outsider
perspectives in globally
disaggregated firms
Cultural intelligence
• Cultural intelligence can stop the insider
from asking delicate and politically sensitive
questions.
• Limited cultural awareness can be a real
blessing for outsiders.
Re-thinking insider-outsider
perspectives in globally
disaggregated firms
Trust and Rapport
 High-status outsiders may be able to strike
a good rapport with senior managers, but
struggle to ‘hit-it off’ with middle and
junior level employees.
 How does this impact their framing of
qualitative research projects?
 Do cultural explanations start too early?
Some implications and questions
 Need for insiders to design creative
strategies to access, collect and manage
the qualitative research process in
globalised organisations.
 When access to global firms depends to a
great degree on our insider-outsider
statuses, can we still hope to follow the
important prescriptions of qualitative
methodology text books? (for ex: Yin, 2003).
 The value of mixed teams.
Some implications and questions
 Research methods sections need to
reflect about the impact of insideroutsider statuses on the qualitative
research processes.
 Who are low-status outsiders and highstatus insiders?