Diaries

Dorota Marsh and Martyna Śliwa

Chapter 43 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Historical Organisation Studies, 2026, pp 160-162 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Diaries have long been valued by historians for their role in reconstructing past events and offering rich chronological insights. For scholars pursuing historical organisation studies (HOS), diaries are particularly effective when the research aims to capture the embeddedness of individual lives within broader organisational and societal contexts. Diaries can be especially useful for amplifying marginalised voices and for exploring phenomena that are difficult to observe directly. The flexibility of diary methods, combined with their potential to reduce the researcher's direct influence over the generated narrative and to grant greater control over it to the participants, makes them particularly well suited in the case of qualitative and longitudinal research. Importantly, diary-based studies require researchers’ commitment to careful ethical navigation and embodied reflexivity to fully realise the richness of the material. Studies by Plowman (2010), Radcliffe (2010), Dawson Scott (2024) and Śliwa (2013) exemplify the application of diary methods in organisational research, including HOS.

Keywords: Diaries; Qualitative research; Microhistory; Longitudinal studies; Participant-centric methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035332922
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