Research Methods for Strategic Management

Giovanni Battista Dagnino, Maria Cristina Cinici, Giovanni Battista Dagnino, Maria Cristina Cinici

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780415506304
• eBook ISBN: 9781135071813
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The field of strategic management has developed significantly since its birth from "business policy" and "business planning" in the 1960s. Pioneering studies were essentially normative, prescriptive, and often based on in-depth case studies. The evolution of strategic management into a respected field of academic study resulted from the adoption of research methods previously employed in economics. Today, research in strategic management is likely to employ a mixture of methods borrowed from related and unrelated disciplines, such as politcal sciences, psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics, which can be confusing to researchers new to the field.

This book provides the reader with a broad introduction to the array of qualitative and quantitative research methods required to investigate strategic management. Throughout the book, strong emphasis is placed on practical applications that transcend the mere analysis of the theoretical roots of single research methods. The underlying result is a book that encourages and aids readers to "learn by doing" – in applying the implications of each chapter to their own research.

This text is vital reading for postgraduate students and researchers focused on business strategy.

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INTRODUCTION

New frontiers in research methods for strategic management

Giovanni Battista Dagnino and Maria Cristina Cinici

Aims of the book

This book aims to offer a systematic compendium of research methods and approaches in the field of strategic management. In our intention, by reading this volume engaged scholarship will be placed in the favorable position to design and execute thorough qualitative and quantitative applied investigation.

In more detail, the book hunts for a harmonic amalgamation of a collection of methods in strategic management inquiry. In fact, it includes methods that have been (and are) customarily used in the field (e.g. multilevel methods, or cognitive mapping), methods that are completely novel (e.g. semiotic analysis or neuroscientific methods), less-used (e.g. structural equations modeling and multiple case method) or simply heretofore unexploited (e.g. qualitative comparative analysis and mixed methods). In such a way, we intend to tackle a critical need that every strategy researcher (from graduate and postgraduate students engaged with their theses and dissertations to more experienced junior, mid-career and senior scholars) usually experiences when he/she has to start a new research endeavor: how to make the inquiry they are carrying out as rigorous, robust and validated as possible?

Our proposed target is that the book will help researchers and scholars to become fully aware of the generous options of research methods that are relevant to current strategic management investigation, appreciate their present wealth, and find some suitable guidance in selecting the most appropriate method(s) for designing and executing their investigation activities. As it is straightforward to understand from what we have argued heretofore, we have taken the decision to discount econometric methods and single-case study methods from our selection. This choice is motivated by the fact that, while we recognize that the two categories of methods are unquestionably popular in strategic management analysis, they are at the same time widely taught in courses and seminars and it is straightforward to locate an array of good references on these traditional approaches.

The book’s original contribution rests in the fact that, to our knowledge, this is the pioneering rumination of a collection of qualitative and quantitative methods and approaches in the strategy field. Consequently, the book seeks to conveniently stretch into a “practical sourcebook” for researchers keen to generate and/or test knowledge in the strategy field and its relevant sub-fields (global strategy, strategic entrepreneurship, corporate strategy and governance, management of knowledge and innovation, strategy for practice, behavioral strategy, strategic sustainability and so on).

For theories and ideas of strategy have profoundly influenced neighboring areas (Ketchen, Boyd, and Berg, 2008); the book may be valuable to researchers in disciplines that, in the current organization of management knowledge, are deemed germane to strategic management, such as organization theory, organization behavior, human resource management, international business, marketing management, and operations and supply management. It can also be beneficial to other fields of fruitful exchange with strategic management, such as contemporary history, business history, economic geography, international affairs, and political science. Drawing on the wisdom of a variety of prominent colleagues and scholars in designing, testing, and developing theories and perspectives relevant to strategic management studies, the book seeks to expose the current state-of-art as regards wise selection of research methods and perspectives,

Strong emphasis along the book is placed on practical applications that transcend the mere analysis of the theoretical roots of the specific research method. We acknowledge that judicious and rigorous scholarship can nowadays win maximum benefit only if methods are properly designed and applied, while methodological missteps may irremediably jeopardize the overall validity of results, thereby inhibiting the researcher’s ability to properly develop knowledge and inform managerial choices. For this reason, the contributors to this volume have collectively infused a good deal of wisdom and accuracy in elucidating and illustrating each research methods in detail, supplying practical applications and useful suggestions to current and prospective investigators. For each method taken into account, the chapters will provide specific illustrations with a handful of details so that interested readership may easily realize how things work and undertake it, thereby fully embodying the method(s) chosen in their current and future work.

The underlying message of this endeavor is that the book’s readership is expected to activate a multiple virtuous cycle of learning-by-reading in the scholars and researchers who will be reading it and of learning-by-doing in those who will find themselves applying the methodological recommendations herewith presented. In other words, by reading the book and applying to their data, contexts, and fieldworks the detailed suggestions contained in the chapters of this volume, the prospective readership are expected to gain advanced prowess on how to employ a specific method in research, thereby fireproofing the concrete contribution of this volume.

Background of research methods in strategic management

Strategic management as a field of inquiry has journeyed dramatic developments within the last three and a half decades. Rooted in early 1960s’ applied management area often termed “business policy” and/or “business planning” (Andrews, 1971; Ansoff, 1965), pioneering studies in the strategy tradition were essentially normative and prescriptive in purpose. In the initial years, the main goal of strategic management was to immediately convey the required applied knowledge to business practitioners, rather than to hunting thorough knowledge for pursuing genuine scientific advancements. Under this circumstance, the appropriate widely used method for accomplishing the study’s objective was barely inductive in character, e.g. in-depth case studies typically of a single firm or industry.

The field underwent spectacular growth, especially subsequent to the appearance of Schendel and Hofer’s book Strategic Management (1979) and the almost contextual establishment of the Strategic Management Journal (SMJ) in 1980, and the Strategic Management Society in 1981. As the strategy field’s stature and reputation progressively advanced within the management sphere, so did its theoretical status and empirical sophistication (Dagnino, 2012).

The desire to elevate the newly launched field to a more rigorous scientific and academic discipline compelled early strategic management scholars to look at research methods, distinct from case studies, which were able to produce more rigorous, generalizable, and practically applicable results, in the quest to unambiguously uncover the sources of firms’ and industries’ competitive advantage. For this reason, strategic management started to embrace the structure-conduct-performance (SCP) paradigm of industrial organization economics and emphasizing scientific generalizations based on study of broader sets of firms and industries (Rumelt, Schendel, and Teece, 1994). Consequently, in the 1980s and 1990s strategy researchers began to increasingly employ multivariate statistical tools (e.g. multiple regression and cluster analysis), with large data samples primarily collected from secondary sources to test theory. The use of these methods has quickly turned into the standard way of doing research in a large number of Ph.D. programs taught in universities and business schools and thus in strategic management research as a whole. Subsequently, depending on the research question under scrutiny, strategy scholars started to use a plurality of methodological approaches, such as multiple case studies, event studies and event history analysis, all the way to multi-dimensional scaling, panel data analysis, network analysis, and so on (Van de Ven, 2007).

The evolution of strategic management into a more respected scholarly field of study was, at least initially, a result of the adoption of scientific methods originating from industrial organization economics and, more specifically, from Michael Porter’s (1980; 1981) transplant of the SCP paradigm in strategy analysis. Subsequently, in the 1990s and 2000s the development of the resource-based view (Barney, 1991; Peteraf, 1993) and the dynamic capabilities perspective (Teece, Pisano, and Shuen, 1997; Teece, 2007) came to pose a major methodological (and epistemological) problem to strategy researchers. In many respects in fact the study of heterogeneous firm features required a multiplicity of methods to identify, measure, and understand firm resources and capabilities, that were purported to reside within the boundary of a firm. More importantly, the proponents of the resource-based view and the dynamic capabilities perspective suggested that each firm has distinctive endowments of resources and capabilities that in turn contribute to achieve and sustain competitive advantages. Actually, the exclusive use of research methods using large data samples, secondary data sources, and econometric analyses suddenly started to ring a bell in scholarly wisdom as they appeared to be as rigorous as insufficient, particularly when operated to examine intangible firm resources, knowledge, and capabilities (Danneels, 2002; Seth, Carlson, Hatfield, and Lan, 2009). Because of the focus on a firm’s idiosyncratic resources and capabilities, the bearing and generalizability of firms’ knowledge started to be put at odds (Grant and Verona, 2015).

TABLE 1.1 Path of methods used in strategic management research (1960–2010s)

	1960s and 1970s	1980s	1990s	2000s
Name of field	Business policy or business planning	Strategic management	Strategic management	Strategic management
Dominant frameworks or perspectives	Long-range planning SWOT analysis PIMS studies	Structure-conduct-performance paradigm	Resource-based view Knowledge-based view	Resource-based view Knowledge-based view Evolutionary and behavioral perspectives
Type of methods preferably used	Qualitative	Quantitative	Quantitative	Quantitative and qualitative
Specific technique(s) typically used	Single case study	Statistical analysis	Econometric analysis	Multiple case study Statistical and econometric analyses Discourse analysis Mixed methods Multilevel inquiry

Nowadays, these conditions have considerably changed since strategic management research of the mid-2010s is likely to integrate and contrast multiple theories and to develop more fine-grained and complex models (Priem, Butler, and Li, 2013). Hence, a forceful call has emerged for raising a more inclusive approach where inductive qualitative research drawing on basic disciplines, such as sociology, political eco...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction New frontiers in research methods for strategic management
• 2 Evolutionary Lineage of the Dominant Paradigms in Strategic Management Research
• 1 Testing and developing theory in strategic management
• 2 Analyzing texts and talks in strategic management
• 3 Novel methodological approaches in strategic management research
• 4 Research design and execution in strategic management
• Index