Reflexivity in Management Research*

ABSTRACT Recently the term reflexivity has entered management discourses about research, education and practice. This paper highlights the ambiguity which prevails concerning the concept of reflexivity showing how the ways in which reflexivity itself is constituted inevitably articulates epistemological circularity in that commentators’ definitions and prescriptions vary according to their tacit metatheoretical commitments. Hence the aim of this paper is to explore this paradox by excavating such commitments and demonstrating how they constitute particular forms of reflexivity – each with distinctive implications for the role of the management researcher in terms of aims, processes, and outcomes. Three generic forms of reflexivity are proposed: the methodological, the hyper or deconstructive, and the epistemic.