Building blocks
Today I've been looking at methods and methodology, particularly in relation to developing theory from case-study research. Qualitative research usually need a bit more work in justifying it to Business research committees, as it's unfamiliar territory in a land where number-crunching empirical studies rule. However, it can do things that quantitative research can't: particularly where the researcher is exploring new territory. In these situations, the research isn't testing a hypothesis. It's laying the groundwork that may lead to new theories being developed.
It's particularly problematic in marketing research, which is where our Small Business study from 2009 fits best. As Summers (2001) puts it, "Many in our discipline appear to believe that qualitative research is inherently not as rigorous or prestigious as quantitative research, and, therefore, the results are difficult to publish. This belief seems to be reinforced by the fact that few doctoral dissertations are based on qualitative research, and one seldom sees a rigorous qualitative research study published in any of the leading research journals in marketing."
It's something I need to be mindful of right from the beginning: designing a study that's robust enough to hold up to these sorts of attitudes, and making it as easy as possible to objectively verify any conclusions I make. Some people have already been soured on qualitative research by studies that just don't feel that it's important to link their conclusions to their data.
Some of today's reading list:
Summers, John O. (2001), Guidelines for Conducting Research and Publishing in Marketing: From Conceptualization through the Review Process. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 29(405): 405-415.
Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. (1989) Building Theories From Case Study Research. The Academy of Management Review, 14(4): 532-550.
It's particularly problematic in marketing research, which is where our Small Business study from 2009 fits best. As Summers (2001) puts it, "Many in our discipline appear to believe that qualitative research is inherently not as rigorous or prestigious as quantitative research, and, therefore, the results are difficult to publish. This belief seems to be reinforced by the fact that few doctoral dissertations are based on qualitative research, and one seldom sees a rigorous qualitative research study published in any of the leading research journals in marketing."
It's something I need to be mindful of right from the beginning: designing a study that's robust enough to hold up to these sorts of attitudes, and making it as easy as possible to objectively verify any conclusions I make. Some people have already been soured on qualitative research by studies that just don't feel that it's important to link their conclusions to their data.
Some of today's reading list:
Summers, John O. (2001), Guidelines for Conducting Research and Publishing in Marketing: From Conceptualization through the Review Process. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 29(405): 405-415.
Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. (1989) Building Theories From Case Study Research. The Academy of Management Review, 14(4): 532-550.