Samenvatting Qualitative
Research in Business &
Management (Myers)
Week 1
Hoofdstuk 2
CH2 Overview of qualitative research
Qualitative research to help researches understand people and what they say and do,
understand social and cultural contexts. Allows researcher to see and understand the
context within which decisions and actions take place. You have to talk to people about it to
understand people’s motivations, reasons, actions and context.
- What is happening here?
- Why is it happening?
- How has it come to happen this way?
- When did it happen?
Research = an original investigation undertaken in order to contribute to knowledge and
understanding in a particular field, leads to production of new knowledge. New in the sense
that the facts, the interpretation or the theories used to explain them might not have been
used in a particular way before in that specific discipline. You have to be up-to-date with the
latest research performed, write literature review of research conducted.
To tell if the research findings are sound and original is if those findings are open to scrutiny
and formal evaluation by experts in a particular field. Findings must be evaluated by those
who are experienced and qualified to do so. This is called the peer review system. This is a
social system, and as such it has its drawbacks but it does ensure that only research of a
certain standard is published.
Some activities do not count as research in a university setting, like; preparation of teaching
materials (normally not formally evaluated by experts in the field as a whole), provision of
advice / opinion, feasibility studies (output is a recommendation to client), routine data
collection (no attempt to contribute new knowledge in the field as a whole), routine
information systems development, any other routine professional practice.
Examples of quantitative methods are survey methods, laboratory experiments, formal
methods (econometrics) and numerical methods. Emphasizes numbers. The numbers come
to represent values and levels of theoretical constructs and concepts and the interpretation
of the numbers is viewed as strong scientific evidence of how a phenomenon works
Examples of qualitative research methods are action research, case sturdy, participant
observation, interviews, questionnaires, documents and texts and the researcher’s
impressions and reactions. Mostly a record of what people have said. Data can help us
understand people, their motivations and actions and the broader context within which they
work and live.
Both quantitative and qualitative research approaches are useful and necessary in
researching business organisations.
Quantitative research
Best if you want to have a large sample size and you want to generalize to a large
population. You want to find out trends and patterns that apply in many different situations.
,Major disadvantage is that many of the social and cultural aspects of organisations are lost
or are treated in a superficial manner. Context is usually treated as noise.
Qualitative research
Best if you want to study a particular subject in depth. Good for exploratory research, when
the topic is new and there is not much previously published research on that topic. Ideal for
studying the social, cultural and political aspects of people and organisations. Major
disadvantage is that it is often difficult to generalize to a larger population. You can however
generalize from qualitative research to theory.
Other distinction between research methods; objective versus subjective, discovery of
general laws versus uniqueness of particular situation, insider versus outsider perspective,
prediction and control versus explanation and understanding.
Triangulation = the idea that you should do more than just one thing in a study, use more
than one research method / techniques to gather data. Look at same topic from different
angles. It is common for qualitative researchers to triangulate data within a study using just
one research method, think about interview with data from (un)published documents. Less
common and more difficult is to combine more research methods in one study (quantitative
and qualitative is hard to combine).
For triangulation you have to be well trained and become an expert in multiple research
methods and you have to understand the underlying perspectives of methods.
An easier way to achieve the triangulation is for a single study to involve multiple
researchers. Each researcher brings to the table his or her own method of expertise and
experience. Researchers do have to respect each other’s expertise and method.
All research in business and management focuses on a topic that is of relevance to one or
more of the business and management disciplines. Disciplinary area is very broad. Often
build on research from other disciplines (statistics, psychology, sociology).
Key feature of qualitative and quantitative research is that it is an empirical investigation; it
relies on empirical data from the natural or social world. Empirical investigation seeks to
contribute to the body of knowledge in a particular field. A researchers finds a topic or
research problem that is relevant to the body of knowledge in a particular discipline.
Normally, the research questions are derived from the research literature, but they could
come from current business practice or own intuition. In order to answer the questions the
researcher uses a research method to find empirical evidence.
Rigorous research = research that meets the standard of scientific research; it is research
that has been conducted according to the scientific model of research, subject to peer review
and published in an academic journal. Emphasis on meeting scientific standards such as
validity and reliability. Theoretical contribution.
Relevant research = research that is of immediate relevance to business professionals.
Results can be used right away. Emphasis on being immediately relevant. Published in
consulting reports or industry magazines. Practical contribution.
Debate in management literature whether research should be more rigorous or more
relevant. Research in business and management can be more relevant and should be able
to deal with complex, unquantifiable issued that are the reality of business. This is where the
value of qualitative research lies. Qualitative research makes research both rigorous and
relevant at the same time.
The choice of research should be based on the topic, the research questions, your own
interest and experience and how relevant you want to be to practice.
,Week 2
Hoofdstuk 3, 6-8
CH3 Research design
Research design = the plan for an entire qualitative research project. Your assumptions,
research method, data collection techniques, how to publish findings, etc. should be flexible
and willing to change the plan as the research project progresses. A purpose of a research
design is to convince your potential supervisor(s), etc. that you are capable of doing the
research and that your research project is viable. Intended to convince the reader that the
proposed research is significant, relevant and interesting.
Your topic will depend upon your previous experience and training in a particular subject.
After generating a topic and a list of potential research questions, the next stage is to choose
a theoretical framework. These theoretical frameworks can be at the individual, group,
organizational or societal level. Source is the research literature. The key is to find or create
a theoretical framework that matches or fits the research problem that you have decided to
investigate.
Deductive top-down, the researches starts with a theory or some hypotheses that he or
she wants to test, confirmatory.
Inductive bottom-up, the researcher starts
with empirical data from which he or she wants
to build a theory, exploratory.
Every completed qualitative research project
consists of essential building blocks / steps:
Philosophical assumptions about the
nature of the world and how knowledge
about the world can be obtained.
Research method: strategy of enquiry. A
way of finding empirical data about the
world. It is also important to decide upon
the unit of analysis (individual, event,
object, relationship or a group,
organisation or industry). Another
important decision relates to site selection, your research questions should be the
primary guide to site selection.
Data collection technique: depends on research topic, your research method and the
availability of data. Your data collection methods should enable you to collect all the
information needed to answer your research questions.
Data analysis approach: although data collection and analysis are logically different
steps, in an actual qualitative research project they often go hand in hand
(interactive).
Written record
There is a tremendous variety of possible research designs. The choice of which design to
use is not one that can be made on purely rational grounds. It often has more to do with you
experience and the experience of your supervisor and what is considered to be acceptable
within your own institution and discipline.
Items of a research proposal
1. Title
2. Abstract (summarize the main point of your research project, how you plan to
conduct the research and the expected findings).
, 3. Introduction (purpose and motivation of research project)
4. Literature review (more than just a summary of relevant research, it should also
include your own critical and analytical judgement of it)
5. Topic (clearly defined topic or research problem along with research question)
6. Theoretical framework
7. Research method
8. Qualitative data analysis approach
9. Timeline to completion
10. List of references
Optional items depend on the kind of research project (think about your budge, etc.).
Grounded theory (literature review of already existing theories).
CH6 Action research
Action research aims to solve current practical problems while expanding scientific
knowledge. Unlike other methods, where the researches seeks to study organizational
phenomena but not to change them, the action researcher is concerned to create
organisational change and simultaneously to study the process. Strongly oriented towards
collaboration and change involving both researchers and subjects. Iterative research
process that capitalizes on learning by both researchers and subjects within the context of
the subjects’ social system. Improve the practical relevance of business research.
Actions research: aims to contribute both to the practical concerns of people in an
immediate problematic situation and to the goals of social science by joint collaboration
within a mutually acceptable ethical framework. Concerned to enlarge the stock of
knowledge. The researcher deliberately intervenes while at the same time studies the effect
of that intervention. Collaboration with business people in real organisations. In other
research methods, any kind of interference is seen as a source of bias and can invalidate
the research findings. Case study is more interested observers rather than active
participants. The whole idea of action research is to learn from the intervention in an
organisation and then use that learning to benefit others.
Two-stage process. First, the diagnostic stage involves a collaborative analysis of the social
situation by the researcher and the subjects of the research, theories are formulated
concerning the nature of the research domain. Second, the therapeutic stage involves
collaborative change. In this stage changes are introduced and the effects are studied.
More comprehensive model suggests that action research can by viewed as a cyclical
process with 5 phases: diagnosing, action planning, action taking, evaluating and specifying
learning.
Diagnosing = identification of primary problems that are to be addressed within the host
organisation.
Action planning = specifies the organisational actions that should be taken to relieve or
address these problems.
Action taking = implements the planned actions.
Evaluating = analyses the effects of the actions
Specifying learning = identifies what was learnt.
This is when the knowledge gained is applied within the organisation and communicated to
the scientific community. May lead to the start of a new action research cycle.
A distinctive feature of action research is that the research process is carried out in
collaboration with those who experience the problem, or their representatives. Uses a
scientific approach to study important organisational or social problems together with the
people who experience them.