An Open-Ended Interview Approach for Studying Cognition and Emotion in Organizations

I present a way of conducting open-ended interviews that I have used in my own research. Good preparation for interviews includes learning about the interviewee and their context beforehand, developing a list of potential follow-up themes, and various hygiene factors. During the interview, key practices include building psychological safety and earning professional respect, phasing questions appropriately, using various types of elaborating questions, tolerating long pauses, and recognizing that managers are rarely naïve interviewees. Analyzing interview data requires being mindful of the content rather than coding it mechanically, using theories to aide interpretation, and getting deeply engaged with the data.