Reflexive Quantitative Research

Quantitative research relies on measurement and inference procedures that are relatively independent of the researcher’s interpretations, which has given it a reputation as an impartial and reproducible approach for evaluating the scientific worth of management theories. This reputation has recently been called into question. Scholars increasingly doubt knowledge claims based on quantitative research and are concerned about questionable research practices. The proposed solutions revolve around developing and enforcing methodological procedures aiming to reveal and limit the researcher’s subjective choices in the research process. We offer an alternative means to address the issue: reflexivity. Reflexive quantitative research assumes that the researcher’s active role throughout the research process should be taken as a methodological starting point rather than an obstacle to meaningful scholarly inquiry. We reinterpret the process of quantitative management research through Richard Rorty’s pragmatism and specify how reflexivity may arise in its different phases. Reflexive quantitative research is conscious of the possibility of multiple purposes for scholarship and, consequently, calls for a pluralistic and contingent view of epistemology and methodological standards. Reflexivity offers new options for making scholarly contributions with quantitative methods, enabling richer theorizing and offering a novel path out of the methodological crisis of quantitative research.