Archive for

Sep 7

Writing as an iterative process: An interview with Kevin Corley

Kevin Corley
Associate Professor
W.P. Carey School of Business
Arizona State University
Associate Editor, Academy of Management Journal

This interview was done in a crowded, and very noisy, coffee shop cum bookstore in Boston, during AOM in 2012. We had set up a time for the interview beforehand, and I had told Kevin that I would get back to him with a location once we were there. Following my own advice (see my interview with Denny Gioia here), I had gone scouting out the terrain and found this cute little shop off a side street not too far from the main venue. It was quiet, and they had big tables to sit at. Perfect! So perfect in fact (at least it appeared so) that Kevin even organized other meetings there that same morning. It was like he was running his own little office in situ. Unfortunately, it turned out that I wasn’t the only one who had scouted out this perfect spot, so much so that by the time I met up with Kevin there, the place had turned into a zoo. Moral of the story: during fieldwork NOTHING replaces a top-notch recording device.

What I like about this interview is Kevin’s point blank style. This is a real insider story: no fluff, no background music. Kevin tells it like it is, and it’s great.