Qualitative Methods in Business Research

A Practical Guide to Social Research

Päivi Eriksson, Anne Kovalainen

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781473952492
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: R&D

This pragmatic, applied textbook showcases the potential and impact of qualitative research in business and management. Using case studies and a global approach it provides you with an overview of the philosophies, methodologies and methods you will need to research in this field.

Demystifying the whole process, it walks you through every aspect of conducting and using research in business, including generating questions, collecting useful data, evaluating the research and disseminating your findings. It also:

• Explores the challenges of working with qualitative data
• Introduces qualitative methods including interviews, focus groups & ethnography

New to the 2 nd edition:

• The role of digital tools and social media, and how you can use them for data collection
• 3 new chapters on qualitative content analysis, visual research and publishing research.

Praise for the 1st edition:

`Comprehensive, current and compelling, a winning combination for any research student or practitioner interested in increasing his/her knowledge about qualitative methods as they apply to business research? - The Qualitative Report

Part I The Business of Qualitative Research

1 Introduction

This chapter will provide information on:

• the purpose of the book
• qualitative business research
• the qualitative research approaches that are covered in this book
• how and for what purposes you can use the book.

The purpose of the book

In this book, we want to show that qualitative business research is important, exciting and a highly rewarding enterprise. Qualitative business research gives you an opportunity to focus on the complexity of business-related phenomena in their contexts. It produces new knowledge about how people and things work in real life, why they work in a specific way, and how we can make sense of them in a way that may enable us to change something for the better.

We further suggest that qualitative business research is particularly relevant because it provides the possibility of adopting a critical and reflexive view about the social world of business and its core processes. This means that, as qualitative researchers, we are willing to ask ourselves what we are doing in our research, for what purpose, and with what kind of presumptions and consequences. Furthermore, as critical and reflexive business researchers, we are interested in how the decisions that we make during the research process shape what we see and find.

Just as with quantitative business research, qualitative business research also draws on more than one philosophical and disciplinary root, and it relies on several methods of data collection and analysis. This is why we consider that it is not fair to write about qualitative business research as one whole. We think that it is essential even for a novice researcher to acknowledge that there are a number of different qualitative research approaches, and even these have some variety in themselves in terms of their philosophical background, focus and research techniques. The main aim of our book is to open up this variety to a reader who wants to learn more about qualitative business research or plans to implement a qualitative research project.

Based on our 25-year experience of teaching qualitative business research, we feel that there is a need for a specialist book such as ours. Many business research books deal with both qualitative and quantitative research, and they do not cover the variety of qualitative research approaches. At best, the sections on qualitative business research in these books discuss only one or two approaches; most often this is case study research, and sometimes ethnographic, grounded theory, focus group or action research. The newcomers in business research, such as discursive, narrative, visual, critical and feminist research approaches, remain outside the scope of most introductory textbooks on business research. We have included all these into this book.

In comparison to the first edition of our book, this second revised edition includes new chapters on Qualitative Content Analysis, Visual Methods and Publishing. All chapters are updated with new content; knowledge, examples, exercises, readings and references.

What is qualitative business research?

Qualitative research is often described in contrast to quantitative research, which dominates the body of scientific work undertaken in social sciences, including business research. It is much easier to compare quantitative and qualitative research than to define them. The author of several qualitative research books in the social sciences, David Silverman provides an extensive discussion on the complexity of defining what quantitative and qualitative research is, and is not. This discussion shows appreciation of both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and a reminder that both of them have a lot of internal variety, which makes any straightforward comparisons between qualitative and quantitative research inadequate (Silverman, 2011). However, there are some major differences. Silverman points out that quantitative research cannot deal with the social and cultural construction of its own ‘variables’. This refers to one of the major interests of many qualitative research approaches, that is, understanding reality as socially constructed: produced and interpreted through social and cultural meanings.

Qualitative research approaches, therefore, are concerned with interpretation and understanding, whereas quantitative approaches deal with explanation, testing of hypothesis, and statistical analysis. Furthermore, in several qualitative research approaches, the collection of data and their analysis are sensitive to the social and cultural context aiming at a holistic understanding of the issues studied. Quantitative research is more prone to structured, standardized, and abstracted modes of collecting and analyzing empirical data.

Owing to the long-standing dominance of quantitative research, most business researchers are trained extensively in quantitative methods and less in qualitative methods. This may be one reason why business research textbooks typically introduce quantitative research as the one that provides more rigorous results, and qualitative research a somewhat suspicious affair, one that can be used as complementary when studying something that is expressed in words and cannot be translated into numbers. Indeed, this is the major way in which qualitative research has been used in social science and business research: as the first phase of study, which is then followed by a quantitative phase.

Another common way to use qualitative methods in business research is to use them as providers of a better understanding of issues that have remained unclear in quantitative studies.

Our book differs from this way of thinking because we consider qualitative business research to be an adequate method of knowledge production, without any link to quantitative research. This does not mean, however, that we would have any objections towards combining qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis in the same research project.

Business research project advisors easily accept that a student performs a purely quantitative research project, whereas a decision to undertake a qualitative research project may require more justification. Being able to justify these choices, however, should be just as important in both cases. Most research methods books teach that the justification should be primarily based on what you want to learn from your research, and not so much on other reasons. When the choice of methodology is based on its appropriateness in relation to the research aims, there is no point in claiming that quantitative methodology is the more desirable form of research and qualitative research is just complementary to it. Not many of us have enough knowledge and experience about both quantitative and qualitative research to be able to make fully justified decisions in relation to our research questions. However, this does not mean that we should not strive to do good research and find compatibility between our research questions and methods. Minimally, knowing the very basics of both quantitative and qualitative research helps you to identify what kinds of research questions and aims are more compatible with either methodology. However, for an enthusiastic ‘qualitative person’ it may be easier to reshape her research questions rather than to engage in quantitative research, and vice versa.

We want to emphasize in our book that making a justified decision between various qualitative approaches is just as important as choosing between quantitative and qualitative research. Making a decision on what kind of qualitative research you want to pursue requires an understanding of the specificities and finesses of different varieties of qualitative methods. This is the kind of knowledge that our book primarily provides – guidance on how to choose between various qualitative research approaches, and practical advice on how to proceed with the chosen one. Therefore, this book is most useful for students who have already made the decision to undertake qualitative research but who have not made a final choice about what kind of qualitative research approach would be the most appropriate in terms of their research aims.

Qualitative approaches introduced in this book

Our experience as teachers of qualitative methods has shown that business students have two major problems in doing qualitative research. First, many students think that qualitative business research means ‘doing a case study with semi-structured interviews’. One reason for this is that, while there is plenty of information available on case studies, it is not easy to find similar information on the range of other qualitative research approaches that are suitable for business-related research. This information is scattered in a number of books and articles and it requires dedication for a student to assemble and make sense of it. Second, when a business student chooses to perform qualitative research other than case studies, it is even more difficult to find practical guidance on how to perform various qualitative research approaches, including the definition of the research questions, collection and analysis of empirical data, links between theory and empirical results and the production of conclusions.

Deciding on a research topic and refining it into research questions is an integral part of any research project. Choosing the most suitable methodology for each research question requires an understanding of the major advantages and possible limitations associated with different methods. Sometimes these limitations are philosophical by nature and sometimes they are more related to the data. In this book, we will cover the major advantages and limitations of each of the methods that we write about.

Throughout the book, we will show that there is plenty of choice in terms of how you can design and implement a successful qualitative business research project. The body of qualitative research approaches that we discuss in this book is wide but not comprehensive. The choice concerning what to include and what to leave out is based on a combination of theoretical and practical considerations. This means that some of the approaches have a well-established theoretical background (critical, discursive, feminist, ethnographic and research) and some do not (e.g. case study and focus group research).

In Part III of the book we introduce different qualitative research approaches that can be used in business research:

• case study research
• ethnographic research
• action research
• focus group research
• grounded theory research
• narrative research
• discourse theoretical research
• critical research
• feminist research
• visual research.

For each of these, we illustrate where they lead in terms of research questions, research designs, data collection and analysis, drawing conclusions and reporting a study. When introducing these qualitative approaches, we place particular emphasis on how to analyze empirical data and how to refine research questions and generate new ones from the data. Some qualitative researchers would call these approaches ‘methods’, but we prefer a wider definition because several data collection and data analysis methods can be used in most of the approaches that we write about.

Our aim is not only to enlighten the most common approaches used in business research, but also to give an overview on some approaches that have not gained wide popularity among business researchers as yet. We want to emphasize that qualitative research is a rich field of inquiry, which provides a vast number of approaches that can be adapted to the interests and contexts of business research. The qualitative approaches, and the specific versions within each of them, that we have chosen for this book, are all suitable for studying business-related topics, issues, and research questions, but they are not too demanding for graduate students or other novice qualitative researchers.

We have selected the qualitative approaches of this book with two aims in mind. Case studies, ethnographic research, action research, focus group research and grounded theory research have all been adopted by business researchers, which means you can find examples of their use in research books and scholarly journal articles. We also provide references to these examples in each of the respective chapters.

Narrative and discursive research, as well as critical, feminist and visual research, have not been so extensively used in business research as yet, but the interest in them is growing. We think that these approaches are highly interesting for two reasons. First, they widen the potential of qualitative business research beyond the more traditional choices. Second, they blur the boundaries of disciplinary fields within social sciences – for instance, the boundary between business research and sociology, business research and social psychology, and business research and cultural and media studies. Some of the approaches (e.g. focus group research) are more like research techniques and perhaps easier to adopt by novice researchers. Others might require prior understanding and interest in the philosophy of social sciences and epistemological and ontological questions. However, we have made an effort to write about these in a way that they can be read without extensive prior knowledge of the philosophy of science.

How to use this book

We have designed this book to provide core reading for a graduate course on qualitative business research. It should also be useful for more specialized courses at masters and doctoral level studies as well as MBA courses focusing on certain qualitative research approaches, such as case studies or action research. To assist the reader in understanding the finesses of, and differences in, qualitative business research, we have included throughout the book several pedagogical features, such as chapter summaries and objectives, key points, name and subject indexes, and a glossary of qualitative research terminology. In addition, we provide lots of examples of published business research using different qualitative research approaches included in this book. We also provide a list of further reading and practical exercises at the end of each chapter.

The structure ...