4.6 Article

Using a 'lens' to re-search business markets, relationships and networks: Tensions, challenges and possibilities

Journal

INDUSTRIAL MARKETING MANAGEMENT
Volume 100, Issue -, Pages 49-61

Publisher

ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC
DOI: 10.1016/j.indmarman.2021.10.008

Keywords

Lens; Re-search; Ontology; meta-questions; business relation-ships; Networks

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This research explores the use of the term 'lens' in social research and defines it as a sociocultural representation and tool that helps negotiate scientific interpretation of the world. The study contributes to industrial marketing by discussing various uses of a lens in literature, introducing a metaphorical lens for reforming knowledge, and highlighting how our lens can unconsciously impact our understanding of the world.
In this research, we wish to address the tension tucked away in scholarly work: the simultaneous need to break in and break out of academic communities and their ways of thinking. More precisely, we are interested in social research (i.e., searching again) processes and how scholars authenticate their research within an established cultural convention. For that purpose, we focus on the use of the term 'lens', which is omnipresent in research texts but rarely defined. Upon completing an integrative literature review and considering the embeddedness of a lens in culture, language, research communities and our ontological assumptions, we define a 'research lens' as a sociocultural representation and tool that helps to negotiate our scientific interpretation of the world. Our contribution to industrial marketing stems from surfacing and discussing four uses of a lens evident in the industrial marketing literature, introducing a metaphorical lens as a way to reform knowledge, and finally exemplifying how our lens tends to either mirror, reflect, symbolize or mirage the contours of our world without our full awareness of it.

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