I am finding creative research methods in more and more unexpected locations. I stumbled across a fascinating example while researching the ethics of project management for a book I’m co-writing. It is in the International Journal of Project Management which is not a journal I have read much from until recently. The author is Jan Bröchner, an Emeritus Professor from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, who specialises in facilities management in construction organisations. Does he sound like a creative methods person to you? He didn’t sound like one to me – but my stereotyping was soon overturned as I began to read his article. 

Bröchner gathered and analysed fictional accounts of construction project management. He was particularly interested in the way project managers’ individual values were expressed in these accounts. He cites a book from 1994 called ‘Good Novels, Better Management’ as foundational to the idea that fiction can be relevant for organisational research. This is a book I have on my shelves from my doctoral student days 20 years ago! My PhD focused on storytelling and organisations. Though I have lost touch with this area of research since then, it is good to see how it has developed. Bröchner cites other relevant work from 1995 to 2019 to support his contention that studying fiction is more use than conventional research methods for investigating the ethical dilemmas that project managers face and for gaining insights ‘into less desirable managerial behaviours’ (Bröchner 2021:594).  

Bröchner drew on the values identified by the Polish-American psychologist Milton Rokeach in the 1970s as the internal reference points people use to formulate their attitudes and opinions. (I’m not sure how universal these are, as values can be influenced by society, religion etc and may change over time, but most of them seem reasonably widespread.) Bröchner used a five-step method for finding and working with his fictional data. First, he defined the criteria for selecting his data: they had to be novels, short stories, or plays; available in English, French, or German; with at least one construction project as a prominent feature; and a character who is the construction project manager. Using these criteria, he found fourteen novels, two short stories, and four plays for his dataset. The literature he selected ranged from Aristophanes’ play The Birds, written in 414 BC, to The Victoria System, a novel by Éric Reinhardt published in 2011. 

In the second and third steps, Bröchner wrote one short summary to highlight the relevant action; and another to briefly summarise any other relevant details of background information. Here is an example: 

Peter Ackroyd: Hawksmoor (1985) 

Novel. Two intertwined murder stories. One featuring a satanist clerk of works (or supervisor) responsible for building seven churches in 18^th-century London. The other concerning the same churches and a 1980s detective.  

Background: Career of Nicholas Hawksmoor (d. 1736) as assistant to Christopher Wren and supervising architect. (Bröchner 2021:600) 

Bröchner found that all the authors had relevant personal experiences, and many worked hard to understand construction project management (Bröchner 2021:601). 

In the fourth step, Bröchner used the Rokeach values as pre-determined codes and applied those codes to his data. And in the fifth step, he used the results of that coding process to assess how each of the values was represented by the authors, and how frequently each occurred.  

Bröchner found that the top five values were Imagination, (Mature) Love, Ambition, Courage, and Happiness (Bröchner 2021:600). These may not be the first five values you would expect a construction project manager to have. Values such as capability, logic, self-respect, politeness, and a sense of accomplishment seem more likely (and yes, those are Rokeach values too). So Bröchner’s findings are surprising and therefore interesting. He expresses a hope that his pioneering work will shift the focus from ‘management methods that are intended to lead to successful project outcomes to an acceptance [of] project managers as human beings’ with their own values and personal commitments to balance with their work and ethical considerations (Bröchner 2021:602). 

I think this is one of the key benefits of creative research methods: they facilitate people being accepted as people. We are slowly moving away from the idea that people should compartmentalise themselves so that when you are at work your personal life is irrelevant, and only your work-related knowledge and skills can be of use. Creative methods offer an opportunity for people to bring all their knowledge, and skills, and imagination, and ideas, and courage, and love into their research work. With creative methods, there is no need to exclude anything except whatever is not useful for the task in hand.