Summary Qualitative Research Business &
Management, Meyers, 2013.
Table of Contents
Summary Qualitative Research Business & Management, Meyers,
2013......................................................................................... 1
Chapter 2: Overview of qualitative research......................................1
Chapter 3 Research Design...............................................................4
Chapter 4: Philosophical Perspectives...............................................6
Chapter 7 Case study research..........................................................8
Chapter 8 Ethnographic research......................................................9
Chapter 6 Action research...............................................................10
Chapter 10 Interviews....................................................................11
Chapter 11 Participation observation and fieldwork.........................12
Chapter 12 using documents...........................................................13
Chapter 13 analysing qualitative data: an overview.........................15
Chapter 2: Overview of qualitative research
2.1 Why do qualitative research?
- Understanding people, what they say and do.
- Understanding the social and cultural contexts within which people live.
Benefit: To see and understand the contexts in which decisions and actions take
place. It Is often the case that human actions only can be understood in context.
Qualitative research is the best for understanding people’s motivations, reasons,
actions, and the context for their beliefs in an in-depth way. One primary reason
for doing qualitative is because people can talk, this way they can explain who
the feel.
Types of questions: What, How, Why & When.
2.2 What is research?
University setting: Original investigation is undertaken in order to contribute to
knowledge and understanding in a particular field. It leads to new knowledge. It
typically involves and inquiry of an empirical or conceptual nature and is
conducted by people with specialist knowledge about the subject matter, theories
and methods in a specific field.
2.3 Quantitative and qualitative research compared
Quantitative research:
, Developed in the natural sciences to study natural phenomena. Large sample
size, that is good for generalization to a large population, to find out trends and
patterns.
Negative side: Many social and cultural aspects are lost, context is considered as
‘noise’.
Examples:
Survey methods
Laboratory experiments
Simulation
Mathematical modeling
Structured equation modeling
Statistical analysis
Econometrics.
Qualitative research:
Developed in the social sciences to study social and cultural phenomena. Study
in depth, good for exploratory research (when a particular topic is relative new),
and ideal for studying social cultural, and political aspects of people or
organizations. It is difficult to generalize to a larger population.
Examples:
Action research,
Case study research
Ethnography
Grounded theory
Semiotics
Discourse analysis
Hermeneutics
Narrative and metaphor.
2.4 Triangulation
Triangulation: The idea that you should use more than just one research method
in a study in order to gather data if you want to look at the same topic from
different angles.
Alternative is to have multiple researchers, with different method of expertise
and experience.
2.5 Research in business and management
Researcher finds a topic or research problem that is relevant to the body of
knowledge, seeks for empirical evidence and so creates new body of knowledge.