Tiago Teixeira
Creating elite encounters: The ‘campaign’ as approach for interviewing corporate elites
Teixeira, Tiago; Bridge, Gavin
Abstract
Qualitative research in economic geography recognizes the value of accessing business elite perspectives, yet identifying, approaching and interviewing elites present researchers with a set of challenges. Both practical and ethical, these challenges can be particularly acute for research involving ‘contentious’ firms and sectors – those facing increased societal scrutiny due to histories of labour exploitation, bribery and pollution and where there are often strong asymmetries in social power. This paper proposes a systematic approach for managing these challenges and successfully conducting interviews with business elites that we term an interview ‘campaign’. We propose the interview campaign as a strategic, organized and nimble approach designed to achieve a specific goal – an elite encounter. We show how instrumentalism and strategic ambiguity are central to the campaign, and how both can be harnessed to navigate an environment characterized by uncertainty, serendipity and structured relations of power. Our ‘campaign approach’ systematically breaks down a complex process into manageable parts without losing sight of the whole, via clear goals, strategic planning and critical reflection. The need for evidence-based research on corporate strategic action in relation to a wide range of contemporary economic phenomena suggests the campaign approach may have value across many areas of economic geography, business studies and beyond. The paper draws upon established social science literatures on elite interviewing and political campaigning, and on our own experience conducting interviews with senior executives in the oil and gas industry.
Citation
Teixeira, T., & Bridge, G. (2024). Creating elite encounters: The ‘campaign’ as approach for interviewing corporate elites. Environment and Planning A, 56(8), 2121-2142. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x241261701
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Jun 23, 2024 |
Online Publication Date | Jul 23, 2024 |
Publication Date | 2024-11 |
Deposit Date | Sep 17, 2024 |
Publicly Available Date | Sep 17, 2024 |
Journal | Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space |
Print ISSN | 0308-518X |
Electronic ISSN | 1472-3409 |
Publisher | SAGE Publications |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 56 |
Issue | 8 |
Pages | 2121-2142 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x241261701 |
Keywords | business elites, interview, Qualitative methods, contentious firms and sectors |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2866804 |
Files
Published Journal Article (Advance Online Version)
(914 Kb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Published Journal Article
(915 Kb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
You might also like
Energy and Society: a critical perspective
(2018)
Book
Oil
(2016)
Book
Oil
(2013)
Book
Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology
(2015)
Book
The Geopolitics of Energy System Transformation: A Review
(2021)
Journal Article
Downloadable Citations
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2025
Advanced Search