Marginalized Communities and the Problem of Research Extraction

Abstract

These questions were raised at the end of an interview in 2019, when the first author was conducting research in South Africa on informal economy entrepreneurs. Here was an informant who had just finished recollecting some difficult moments in his life, revealing an implicit expectation that the interview would yield further interactions and reciprocity stemming from the exchange. Yet the naïve researcher struggled to explain to the interviewee that he was leaving South Africa the next day because he had concluded his data collection.

We are both part of a growing number of management and organization researchers who are studying marginalized groups such as refugees, modern slaves, low-caste communities, indigenous peoples or necessity entrepreneurs. The aim of this work is to not only generate novel insights into the factors that drive, sustain and disrupt socio-economic inequalities and inequities, but also challenge the taken-for-granted epistemological and ontological assumptions in management and organization research. However, we observe that, more often than not, the financial, professional and reputational benefits of such work accrue to the researchers involved rather than the communities under study: this is, effectively, a phenomenon of extraction, where knowledge and insights from locals – who have lived experiences of marginalization, exclusion, precarity and deprived human rights – are mined and exported for consumption in places that are far removed, culturally, economically, and geographically from the source. It is as pernicious a practice as it is subtle: conventional resource extraction involves the visible removal of a tangible resource, while this form of ‘research extraction’ can be executed with participants having little say or control over their own narratives – or even knowing that their experiences are being shared.

In this essay, we feel compelled to underscore how problematic research extraction is and identify ways that we, as management scholars, can (and must) mitigate it. These are issues that both of us have both been grappling with in our own work; one of us focuses on impoverished informal economy entrepreneurs in South Africa and the other examines smallholder farmers in Southern Brazil. We have been seeking to move away from a templated and taken-for-granted approach to research, where we collect data on marginalized populations in short, intensive bursts of fieldwork, followed by a return to the ivory tower to write papers, secure grants, present in climate-controlled conference centres and publish in pay-walled journals (perhaps claiming an award along the way for novel or relevant research). This research approach – based on principles of decontextualization, researcher objectivity and contributions to theory instead of practice (Gibbons et al., 2010) – is pervasive yet, we argue, immoral when it comes to studying people in precarious (and sometimes literally life and death) circumstances.

Inspired by the approach of our Brazilian community partner organization that works with local yerba mate tea producers, we propose an alternative paradigm that we label as ‘research infusion’, where we seek to engage in reciprocal action: we seek to absorb (with consent) insights from those steeped in the context while also infusing the context with what we have to offer (knowledge, worldviews, resources, etc.). The emphasis is on research ‘with’ and ‘for’ rather than ‘in/on’ or ‘about’ marginalized communities (Fahlberg, 2023). By outlining what research infusion looks like, we seek to develop a call to action for management scholars who study marginalization, to reflect upon what they can (and must) do differently throughout the research process to avoid extractive practices. Beyond the individual-level call for management scholars to shift their mindsets and practices away from research extraction, we also underscore how research infusion necessitates system-level changes to our profession and to the institution of the business school. Our essay therefore also targets journal editors and deans, calling for changes on how we study marginalization.

In our experience, research infusion must, at a minimum, contain three guiding principles: respect, reciprocity, and reflexivity. The first principle, respect, entails recognizing that the communities of interest are not helpless; they have agency – as well as valuable accumulations of knowledge, lived experience, cultural practices and values – to determine what is best for them. Accordingly, respect involves the researcher embracing a role as an ally of the community as their members journey towards tackling challenges on their own terms and timeline. The research process must therefore be one of consent from – and constant dialogue with – the community, with the goal of producing knowledge that is useful to them based on what they actually need rather than on what we believe they need (Yarbrough, 2020).

The second principle, reciprocity, revises the question of ‘what can we gain?’ when studying marginalized communities into ‘what can (and should) we bring to each other?’. For example, our Brazilian partner is facing challenges in the process of organizing smallholder farmers and traditional communities of rural areas into a cooperative model. We opted to begin our relationship by asking ‘what obstacles are you facing?’ followed by, ‘can we help you (and if so, how)?’. Beyond this, reciprocity implies giving partner organizations and marginalized communities an active voice during the research process throughout the whole study (from research design to dissemination), and thus, sharing the ownership of the research process rather than considering them an object of study for outside interests.

The third and final principle of reflexivity implies an iterative process whereby researchers revisit their underlying assumptions, biases, and worldviews on marginalized communities: management and organization scholars examining marginalization must practice self-awareness and critically reflect on what we are doing on the field, how we are doing it, and identify areas where we can ‘do better’. Reflexivity also, by extension, involves recognizing the power dynamics intrinsic to the relationship between the researcher and marginalized communities. We believe that this principle is essential for research infusion because we can only absorb the knowledge emanating from local partners and communities once we become aware of and accept our own limitations as foreign agents in the research context.

Colleagues in sociology and anthropology have long been grappling with the ethics of studying marginalized groups; they offer useful insights into how the principles of respect, reciprocity and reflexivity can be operationalized into concrete actions in our field (Pittaway et al., 2010). We argue, however, that we must go beyond this by taking stock of the unique set of abilities that we, as management and organization scholars, have to mitigate tendencies of research extraction. Unsurprisingly, this entails a focus on management and organizing: we have sought to apply our resources and our expertise – for instance, in understanding and promoting collective action and interorganizational relationships (Howard-Grenville, 2021) – to support the work of local community organizations whose primary mission is to tackle marginalization. Those who lead and are employed by these organizations have an intimate understanding of their contexts – oftentimes with lived experience of marginalization themselves – and are valuable partners in the research process. Building upon our own experiences (including early mistakes) working with marginalized communities in South Africa and Brazil, we call for three types of engagement by management researchers: Inclusion, Facilitation, and Intervention, which represent our attempts to develop meaningful and reciprocal relationships with the community (and the local organizations that operate within them) in the contexts we study.

We believe that the first type of engagement scholars must engage in is inclusion. Beyond the usual practice of hiring locals for data collection, this engagement also involves the practice of including local stakeholders in other activities such as data analysis and writing – and even further as co-authors on research outputs. For instance, the first author has partnered with an organization in Cape Town that has been working, for well over a decade, on developing sustainable livelihoods for South African township inhabitants. While his early focus was on adding directors as co-authors on academic articles, he realized that this would not generate much value for their organization. Case studies, practitioner publications and conference participation would, on the other hand, do more to increase the visibility of their work. The practice of inclusion, if done substantively rather than symbolically, can shift the narrative of the research away from the outsider and towards those who have experience, whether working or lived, within the community. Admittedly, this is not an easy process with difficulties that are akin to interdisciplinary research: the steep learning curve and the adaptation to different life experiences and expectations (and perhaps even languages) increases uncertainty and can significantly extend the research process. Yet this approach reframes the research towards generating insights that are theoretically and empirically richer, based on the knowledge of community members.

The second type of engagement that we call for is labelled facilitation. When it comes to material and financial resources, we as a research community benefit from access to significant resource pools (e.g., grants from private or public funding bodies) that are simply not available in more resource-constrained environments, especially those in the Global South. Accompanying this privilege is a moral imperative to use these resources to benefit our partners. For instance, the Araucaria Forests in Brazil, where yerba mate naturally grows, are often overlooked and face significant difficulty in competing for funding (and attention) with more well-known biomes such as the Amazon. Therefore, we are co-writing grant applications with our Brazilian partners where funding would be allocated towards organizational activities such as workshops that directly benefit the local populations, as opposed to early grant applications that focused narrowly on academic outputs. However, facilitation goes beyond this to include access to important non-financial resources such as professional networks and diffusion channels. Our collaboration in Brazil includes developing practitioner-focused communications targeted at international outlets, with the aim of raising awareness about how important the Araucaria Forests are for global environmental conservation. Specifically, we are currently working with our local non-profit partner to write a report countering a published study – funded by a large multinational and an international NGO – suggesting that monocultural open-field yerba mate plantations are more financially viable than traditional and native shaded yerba mate. Building from examples such as this, we argue more broadly that researchers delving into such contexts have an obligation to take stock of the resources available to them; this would be followed by dialogue with communities to agree on if and how to leverage such resources to aid these groups in their collective goals.

We also argue for the necessity of a third type of engagement, which we label as intervention. This involves going beyond resource support and entails more direct participation. Importantly, this requires consent from the community: instead of simply assuming that local problems required external intervention, as the first author initially did in South Africa, researchers must first understand how communities are handling their challenges on their own terms. Once this is done, intervention then entails offering our human capital (as management and organization academics) to support community partners in their efforts. Within the work in Brazil, after hearing about the challenges faced by the rural community – and with the encouragement of the partner non-profit organization – we sought to participate more directly in their activities (e.g., providing voluntary consultancy when necessary). The organization asked the second author to help local partners understand the barriers to cooperation among different stakeholder groups and improve the economic livelihoods of the local population (peasant settlements, indigenous tribes, faxinal, and quilombo communities). The application of his human capital occurs in two areas; first, he is using his status as a scientist to legitimize and valorize indigenous knowledge on agroforestry (that has oftentimes been overlooked in favour of industrialized methods); second, he has enrolled a team of management researchers to adapt typical management skills and tools, such as design thinking, value chain mapping, and business model canvases to aid the local community in developing a proposal for a certification scheme for traditionally grown yerba mate. Such actions will help local smallholder farmers and traditional communities to compete more effectively with large-scale monoculture yerba mate producers. Yet this involvement may not be universally welcomed: in Brazil the second author was confronted by the hard reality that some farmers preferred to remain farmers and did not want to engage in value chain activities. Applied more broadly, we are making the case that we, as business school scholars, can deploy our expertise in management and organization to help communities address the challenges facing them – if, of course, they request such help.

Despite our focus on bottom-up changes of mindset and individual-level actions towards research infusion, we are also aware that research extraction is not a practice that can be mitigated by individual actions alone; it is also the result of structural incentives and constraints within management academia. Although we find positive initiatives and important developments of institutional mechanisms designed to mitigate extractive practices, these have only started to occur outside of our field and are mainly among national funding and research agencies. For instance, in 2022 the three major Canadian federal funding agencies issued a joint policy statement that any research concerning indigenous peoples be assessed by a research ethics board regarding the criterion of reciprocity, i.e., ‘the obligation to give something back in return for gifts received… [which is a] necessary basis for relationships [that] benefit both Indigenous and research communities’.

While these institutional changes are welcome, we argue that they are insufficient and must be supported by commensurate actions within our profession as well as within our business schools. Complementing research infusion at an individual level, we proceed to highlight actions for journal editors and deans in ensuring that the principles of respect, reciprocity and reflexivity are adhered to in contexts where marginalized groups are involved. The actions we propose are based on encouraging a more thorough consideration of the process (the ‘how’) of these research initiatives as much as the content (the ‘what’).

Although we have sketched (some) steps forward regarding how management scholars can foster meaningful engagement with marginalized communities, our essay is not meant to be read as a set of suggestions; it is, rather, an exhortation for our profession to recognize and assume the moral responsibility involved in studying these groups. In this regard, we urge management scholars researching marginalization to fundamentally rethink how knowledge creation is approached, and to prioritize practical application over solely academic interests, embrace reflexivity over claims of objectivity, and emphasize local fidelity over global consumption (Gibbons et al., 2010).

Despite the prevalence of extractive research practices, we are heartened by emerging institutional changes meant to embed principles of reciprocity, respect and reflexivity into the research process. However, we believe systemic reform can only happen if it is bolstered by further top-down changes within journals and business schools that encourage and incentivize researchers to make individual-level changes (around inclusion, facilitation and intervention). As such, we hope that we can compel management and organization scholars to consider whether and how their work with marginalized communities can be transformed into prioritizing substantive outcomes over academic outputs. To return to our opening quote, we should, in other words, think about how we can show up tomorrow.