Breaking the silence about exiting fieldwork: A relational approach and its implications for theorizing.

It is surprising that, to date, a discussion of exiting fieldwork is absent from the management and organization literature-an absence we believe is unjustified. We argue that analyzing exit from fieldwork is important for theorizing. We combine two streams of research-ethnography in the broader social sciences and business marketing on dissolving relationships-to propose a relational framework for conceptualizing and analyzing exit. The framework represents a first attempt to examine exiting in a systematic and nuanced manner, with the objective of understanding why and how breaking the silence about exiting fieldwork may advance theorizing. We develop a typology of four exit types leading to four different approaches to theorizing. We suggest that exit may bring about a new beginning in theorizing rather than closure and that it is not only high-quality relationships in the field but also those that are disruptive that may lead to interesting theorizing.