Introduction
Three decades ago McGrath 1981 stressed that āa single observation is not scienceā (p. 191) and amply demonstrated that all research methods are inherently incomplete and fraught with often fatal imperfections. He offered methodological pluralismāābowling [dilemmas] over with multiple methods ā¦ embedded in multiple designs, using multiple strategiesā (p. 209) āselected from different classes of methods with different vulnerabilitiesā (p. 207)āas the solution for transcending methodological vulnerabilities, maximising the theoretical and practical desiderata and capturing the nuances of rich data.
Mixed methods designs, in which qualitative and quantitative techniques complement and enhance each other, can help overcome the inherent limitations of quantitative and qualitative methods because they simultaneously provide data depth and breadth whilst safeguarding generalisability and transferability of results (Hesse-Biber and Leavy 2008; Johnson et al. 2007). Moreover, multiple methods and sources of data minimise the danger of common method variance (the āvariance that is attributable to the measurement method rather than to the construct of interestā) which is a concern in approximately 41% of attitude measures (Podsakoff et al. 2003, p. 879). Finally, they enhance triangulation as they allow for findings to be cross-checked (Bryman and Bell 2007).
Despite their having been found to work well for many disciplines (Hewson 2008), especially those that are naturally āmultifaceted [and] crossing national, cultural, organizational, and personal boundariesā (Sedoglavich et al. 2015, p. 257), and their increasing popularity (Bryman and Bell 2007; Cui et al. 2015; Hesse-Biber and Leavy 2008; Hewson 2008), they account for only 4ā9% of the total business literature (Harrison 2013). One of the main reasons for their limited use is cost (Kemper et al. 2003). In this chapter, we propose that a large part of the resource restrictions (such as limited time and funds or scarcity of equipment and competent data collectors) plaguing traditional mixed methods research designs can be reduced by using the internet for qualitative research sampling and quantitative data collection. We demonstrate that online research increases rather than sacrifices reliability, validity and generalisability on the altar of cost-efficiency.
Practicalities, however, are but a small and rather mundane part of the necessity for management scholars to explore novel methodological approaches. It is the emergent reality of the twenty-first-century world that forces us to re-examine both our tools, attitudes and identities. The understanding that complex interactions of multiple stakeholders over boundary spanning networks cause time-delayed effects that cannot be solved analytically by applying deterministic linear models is not new (Lutha and Virtanen 1996). From applications of chaos theory (Arnaboldi et al. 2015; Murphy 1996) to various management problems we also know that the qualitative properties of dynamic systems cannot be captured by the cross-sectional data collection techniques of modernity. Everyday universal experiences, such as consumption, for example, have been demonstrated to be āso diverse, variable,ā¦ esoteric, ā¦ and dependent on the specific nexus of the person, the object and the context as to be rendered totally immaterial and thus, incommensurable to modelling ā¦ by the tools [used in] the modern and post-modern milieuā (Panigyrakis and Zarkada 2014a, p. 18).
Mixed methods designsāby virtue of their inherent dynamism, decentralisation, multiplicity and multifacetednessānot only control for the context of management practice of the twenty-first century identified in Panigyrakis and Zarkada (2014a, b), namely the remnants of the hyperreality, fragmentation and juxtaposition of opposites that characterised postmodernity, but also transcend the fluidity of personal and communal identities and the brutal sociocultural restructuring that comes with the transition to metamodernity. Quantitative methods alone cannot detect Baudrillardās (1988) āfantastic cagesā of consumption or what Lacan described as the powerful images that reside between language and the unconscious, feed desire for the sake of desire (Sharpe 2005) and form the bases of Sternbergās (1995) āiconic capitalismā. At the same time, qualitative methods alone can only capture valuable but largely ungeneralisable subjectivities thus limiting the resulting theoriesā practical applicability in a globalised economy consisting of billions of interconnected consumers, entrepreneurs and employees and millions of interacting organisations, institutions and markets.
Metamodern socioeconomic phenomena, however, take place in the yet largely uncharted territories of the Web 2.0+ as much, if not more, than they do in the physical world. Cyberspace, Augmented and Virtual Reality experiences are as real as the chairs they sit on to their partakers. Space and time are reconfigured and the loci and nature of communications between people and organisations are shifting. The one-way controlled transmissions of information over broadcast media of modernity have evolved into incontrollable multi-party conversations over Online Social Media Networks. Content, experiences and emotions are Posted, Shared, Liked and Commented upon alongside organisational communications. It is thus obvious that the internet is fast becoming the single largest and most readily accessible repository of ādigital life stories, an invaluable database of socio-demographics, opinions, needs, desires, values, grievances and hatesā (Zarkada and Polydorou 2013, p. 108). New collective identities emerge, old ones are renegotiated, reputations and brands that had been carefully crafted over decades are deconstructed, virtual teams replace hierarchies and remote work is becoming the norm, e-commerce volumes increase and even governments invite online bids to public auctions. It follows that management researchers need to be where their subjects are: in the largest ever village square.
Indeed, the 3.7 billion most affluent, educated and influential people in the world (i.e. 89% of the North American, 74% of the European and 73% of the Australian and Oceanian population) meet daily online (Internet World Stats 2016) and interact freely over physical, national, linguistic and psychic barriers. What is more important, they spend on average 6.6 hours per day living the World Wide Web (web) experience (Kemp 2016). Even the Japanese and South Koreans, the laggards in internet usage, are online for about 3 hours every day (Kemp 2016). Internet-based research has for over a decade now been quite popular (Hewson 2008; Wang and Doong 2010), mainly because of its time and cost benefits and despite concerns over the quality of the data it yields and its generalisability (Fricker 2008; Hewson 2008). Since these concerns were voiced, however, the frame bias concern has been practically eliminated by the rapid adjustment of internet usersā demographics to include the over 65-year-olds, the poor and the uneducated (Deutskens et al. 2004; Wang and Doong 2010) as well as people living in remote areas of the developing world (Dahir 2016). The opposite is actually fast becoming the case: it is the use of traditional media that excludes whole generations who shun print and increasingly switch off broadcast media (Luck and Mathews 2010), that is, most of GenY, the Millennials and all those whose birth pictures were posted on Facebook and are now old enough to own tablets. It is obvious that internet-based research is a sounder methodological approach to reaching large, dispersed or interest-based populations than pen-and-paper or telephone surveys (Hewson 2008). After all, the world average of internet users has tripled during the past decade (it reached 43.9% at the end of 2015) whilst the fixed telephone line subscription rate has declined to the level of 1998 (14.34%) (International Telecommunication Union 2016a) and mail volume has been halved (United States Postal Service 2006). What is more important is that almost 60% of the worldās population (Statista 2016) carry the web in their smart mobile devices with them wherever they go.
In this chapter, we propose that, to understand the āclick and mortarā world that twenty-first-century people and organisations inhabit, and to be able to study, not only the unstructured and multifaceted emergent problems but also the traditional research themes which are being reconstituted by Web 2.0+ technologies and mentalities, management scholars need to be able to reach their subjects both in their physical and their avatar forms using new and exciting methods. We add to the voices (c.f. Hewson 2008) that call for internet-mediated mixed methods research as a solution to overcoming resource constraints. We also argue that these methods serve the purpose of addressing current and future social circumstance efficiently whilst safeguarding data quality by using freely available technologies such as web analytics and e-marketing techniques. We aim to assist the management research community in overcoming the well-documented (Harrison 2013; Harrison and Reilly 2011) limited familiarity with both mixed methods designs and IT functionalities.
As an example, we offer our study of consumer-based brand equity of celebrity footballers (Tzoumaka and Zarkada 2013, 2016; Zarkada and Tzoumaka 2014, 2015; Zarkada et al. 2014). The inability of traditional methodological approaches to serve consumer culture theory and the organisation-stakeholder meaning cocreation process has been well documented (Panigyrakis and Zarkada 2014a) so we needed to...