On reflexivity and bracketing for MBA students
Highlight 5 main ideas on each of the 2 topics of
"reflexivity" and "bracketing" in qualitative research,
notably in doing MBA dissertation projects. Specifically, discuss how
reflexivity and bracketing contribute to the quality of qualitative research
project findings.
In
qualitative MBA dissertation projects, reflexivity and bracketing both
help make findings more trustworthy, but they do so in different ways:
reflexivity keeps you aware of how you shape the research, while bracketing
helps you deliberately manage your prior assumptions so participants’ meanings
stay central. Together, they improve the quality of findings by reducing bias,
increasing transparency, and strengthening credibility and confirmability.
Reflexivity
1. Awareness of the researcher as an instrument.
In qualitative research, the researcher is not neutral; your background, role,
values, and expectations can influence what you notice, ask, and interpret.
2. Continuous self-examination.
Reflexivity is not a one-time statement in the methodology chapter; it is an
ongoing process across design, interviewing, coding, and interpretation.
3. Transparency about positionality.
For MBA dissertations, reflexivity helps you explain how your professional
experience, industry knowledge, or managerial beliefs may shape the study,
which makes the research easier to evaluate critically.
4. Richer interpretation of data.
By reflecting on your own assumptions, you are less likely to rush to familiar
explanations and more likely to detect subtle or unexpected meanings in
participants’ accounts.
5. Improved trustworthiness of findings.
Reflexive practice strengthens credibility because readers can see how
conclusions were reached, not just the final claims.
In an MBA dissertation, this is especially important when the topic is close to
your workplace or industry, because reflexivity helps show that findings are
grounded in the data rather than in your preferences.
Bracketing
1. Setting aside preconceptions.
Bracketing means consciously suspending prior beliefs, theories, and
experiences so you can attend more openly to participants’ perspectives.
2. Reducing researcher bias.
In qualitative inquiry, bracketing limits the extent to which your own
expectations distort data collection or interpretation, which improves the
credibility of findings.
3. Keeping participants’ voices central.
The goal is not to eliminate subjectivity completely, but to prevent the
researcher’s assumptions from overpowering the lived experiences described by
participants.
4. Supporting more authentic findings.
When bracketing is done well, the analysis is more likely to reflect what
participants actually said, rather than what the researcher expected to hear.
5. Strengthening rigor and confirmability.
Bracketing enhances methodological rigor by making it more likely that findings
are shaped by the evidence, not by the researcher’s personal lens.
For MBA dissertations, this is particularly valuable when the researcher
already knows the organization, sector, or problem area being studied.
How
they improve findings
Reflexivity
and bracketing contribute to quality in complementary ways: reflexivity helps
you notice your influence, while bracketing helps you manage it
during the research process. Used together, they support more credible,
transparent, and defensible dissertation findings, especially in interviews,
case studies, and phenomenological projects where researcher interpretation is
central.”
When are reflexivity and bracketing mainly employed
in an MBA dissertation report writing, i.e., chapter 1 (Introduction), chapter
2 (literature review), chapter 3 (research methodology), chapter 4
(presentation of research findings), chapter 5 (discussion of research
findings), chapter 6 (conclusions and recommendations), and chapter 7
(reflection on the dissertation project experience). Try to clarify your
discussion with reference to the research theme of "an evaluation of the
charismatic leadership style on Gen Z employees' job engagement in the Hong
Kong hotel sector.
For
your MBA dissertation on “an evaluation of the charismatic leadership
style on Gen Z employees’ job engagement in the Hong Kong hotel sector,” reflexivity
and bracketing are used mainly across the methodology and
interpretation-heavy chapters, not equally in every chapter. Reflexivity is
a continuous practice that should be visible from design to final write-up,
while bracketing is most important when you collect, code, and interpret data
so your own assumptions do not dominate the findings.
Chapter-by-chapter
use
|
Chapter
|
Reflexivity
|
Bracketing
|
|
Chapter 1: Introduction
|
Light use: explain why you
chose this topic and any insider position you may have in hospitality or
management.
|
Minimal use: not the main
place for bracketing, except to note your awareness of possible
preconceptions.
|
|
Chapter 2: Literature
review
|
Moderate use: show how your
prior beliefs are informed and challenged by the literature.
|
Some use: keep your assumptions
from forcing the literature into a one-sided argument.
|
|
Chapter 3: Research
methodology
|
Heavy use: explain your
positionality, access to participants, interview role, and how you managed
bias.
|
Heavy use: explicitly state
how you bracketed assumptions during sampling, interviewing, coding, and
analysis.
|
|
Chapter 4: Presentation of
findings
|
Moderate use: briefly note
how your interpretation process affected theme development.
|
Heavy use: ensure themes
come from participants’ accounts, not from your expectations about
charismatic leadership.
|
|
Chapter 5: Discussion of
findings
|
Heavy use: compare findings
with literature while acknowledging how your standpoint may shape interpretation.
|
Moderate use: check that
you are not over-interpreting findings to fit pre-existing theories.
|
|
Chapter 6: Conclusions and
recommendations
|
Moderate use: be careful
that recommendations follow evidence, not personal preference.
|
Light to moderate use:
confirm that conclusions remain grounded in the data.
|
|
Chapter 7: Reflection on
the dissertation project experience
|
Very heavy use: this is the
main chapter for reflexive reflection on what you learned about yourself as
researcher.
|
Light use: you may mention
how you continually tried to bracket assumptions, but the focus is reflection
rather than bracketing itself.
|
How
this fits your topic
In
this study, you may already have views about whether charismatic hotel leaders
improve Gen Z employees’ engagement. Reflexivity is needed because your
managerial experience, hotel-sector knowledge, or beliefs about Gen Z can
influence which interview answers you notice as important and how you interpret
them. Bracketing is needed because participants may describe charisma
differently from your own expectations, so you must avoid pre-deciding that
“charisma” always means inspiration, motivation, or positive engagement.
Practical
chapter guidance
Chapter
1
Use
reflexivity only briefly, usually in a short paragraph explaining your
motivation and possible insider status. This is enough to show transparency
without turning the introduction into a reflexive essay.
Chapter
2
Use
reflexivity when you critically assess the literature and recognise that your
reading choices are shaped by your own assumptions. Bracketing is limited here,
but it helps you avoid selecting only studies that support your preferred view
of charismatic leadership.
Chapter
3
This
is the main chapter for both concepts. Reflexivity explains your role as
interviewer and analyst, while bracketing explains how you managed prior
beliefs about Gen Z motivation, leadership style, and hotel work conditions.
For example, if you believe Gen Z employees value authenticity more than
hierarchy, you should state that this belief exists and explain how you
prevented it from steering the interview prompts or coding.
Chapter
4
When
you present themes such as “leader inspiration,” “personal recognition,” or
“emotional connection,” bracketing helps ensure these themes emerge from
participant narratives rather than from your expectations. Reflexivity can be
used briefly to show that you remained aware of how your interpretive lens
shaped theme naming and organization.
Chapter
5
This
is a major reflexive chapter because you interpret the findings in light of
theory and prior studies. You should also use bracketing here by checking
whether your discussion is drifting into advocacy for charismatic leadership
instead of staying faithful to the evidence.
Chapter
6
Use
both concepts only indirectly. Reflexivity helps you make balanced
recommendations for hotel managers, while bracketing helps you avoid
overstating what the data can support.
Chapter
7
This
is the strongest chapter for reflexivity because it is your personal research
reflection. You can discuss how your understanding of leadership, Gen Z, and
Hong Kong hotel workplaces changed through the project, and how your
assumptions were challenged or confirmed. Bracketing may be mentioned as a
technique you attempted throughout the project, but it is not the central focus
of this chapter.
Best
placement rule
A
simple rule is this: reflexivity belongs everywhere, but especially in
Chapters 3, 5, and 7; bracketing belongs mainly in Chapters 3 and 4, and then
again in 5 when you check your interpretations. For your hotel-sector
topic, that means the dissertation should show both that you were self-aware
and that you actively prevented your own assumptions about charismatic
leadership from shaping the findings too strongly.
A collection of blog notes on using chatgpt for
research purpose.
