Organization-driven research: how anticipated reputational risk shapes organizational influence on knowledge production in sensitive organizational research

Abstract

While organizational research on sensitive issues often acknowledges gatekeeper control and power asymmetries, these dynamics are typically framed as isolated external constraints or logistical hurdles affecting access and data quality. This perspective does not adequately capture the role of organizations in systematically shaping the research process in its entirety. Following a phenomenon-based theorizing approach, this paper aims to address this gap by introducing the concept of organization-driven research, defined as a distinct phenomenon through which organizations actively shape and delimit research on sensitive issues. The paper draws on 64 semi-structured interviews, fieldnotes, and documented gatekeeper communications collected as part of a qualitative study on destructive workplace obedience conducted within police, military, and university hospital settings in German-speaking countries. The findings reveal three interdependent mechanisms of organization-driven research. First, control over access and information is exercised through strategic gatekeeping and hierarchical participant pre-selection, which embeds participants in relations of accountability. Second, control over the research topic’s perspectivation involves the depoliticization of sensitive topics and narrative control through which certain interpretations are privileged while others are marginalized. Third, control over research design manifests through the modification or restriction of methods previously agreed upon, limiting researcher autonomy over data collection. Accordingly, the paper theorizes organization-driven research as a manifestation of organizational impression management through which organizations seek to regulate how sensitive organizational realities are represented to external audiences, mitigate anticipated reputational risks, and maintain organizational legitimacy. The paper offers a reflexive framework that treats relational dynamics and narrative inconsistencies as analytically meaningful indicators of organizational power relations, and provides methodological guidance for conducting research in settings where organizational influence is likely to shape access, participation, and disclosure. In doing so, the study reconceptualizes organizational influence from a methodological challenge to a constitutive condition of knowledge production in organizational research.