Bridging the gap between procedural and relational ethics in qualitative research: insights from the ethics review process

Purpose This paper aims to examine how ethics committee documents shape the negotiation of ethical dilemmas in qualitative management and organisational studies (MOS). We show how biomedical logics of harm reduction, inherited from bioethics, become materialised in forms, decision letters and correspondence, producing both protective effects and unintended constraints. Design/methodology/approach Using a case study of a project on migrant brick kiln workers in India, we analyse application forms, decision letters and emails through Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA), treating these as organising texts that define permissible knowledge and language. Findings Ethics documents enact three dynamics that constrain qualitative inquiry: epistemic risk (foreclosing knowledge by privileging immediate utilitarian benefit), political risk (sanitising critical terms such as “modern slavery”) and relational risk (neglecting harms that arise unpredictably in encounters). While committees seek to protect participants and researchers, these textual practices also channel ethics into compliance rituals and depoliticised categories. Originality/value By analysing documents as the unit of study, this paper shifts debates from adversarial critique to constructive reform. We argue for a dialogic model of review that retains safeguards while recognising researchers as reflexive ethical agents. Our contribution is twofold: extending QROM’s debates on reflexivity by framing it as both resistance and common ground with committees and advancing research governance scholarship by showing how ethics documents themselves organise epistemic, political and relational risks.