Grounded Theory

A Practical Guide for Management, Business and Market Researchers

Christina Goulding

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9780761966838, 9780761966821
• eBook ISBN: 9781446228975
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

Written with a clarity of style and a practical slant throughout, Grounded Theory represents a primer for organizational, business, and marketing students studying for research degrees who would like to adopt the grounded theory methodology approach for their dissertation or thesis. In a similar vein, it also should be a hugely important resource for researchers. It aims to both properly contextualize grounded theory by looking at its background, characteristics and the different sides of the argument of its potential for the researcher, but also to outline how the approach may be applied within a research context.

Grounded Theory is different from other texts on four levels:

• It offers an overview of qualitative methods in general and locates grounded theory in this context;
• It compares and contrasts the various grounded theory approaches in an accessible manner;
• It offers an in-depth case study for students and researchers to follow/use;
• And it provides a critique of the methodology itself.

Essential reading for advanced students and academics in the fields of organizational and business studies, marketing and management.

Part One

PHILOSOPHY, PRINCIPLES AND PROCEDURES

1

The Qualitative Turn in Management Research

Introduction

The last decade has witnessed several shifts in emphasis among teachers and researchers when dealing with research methodology. First, method has given way to a discussion of methodology. Second, the pre-eminence and predominance of quantitative methodology has been replaced by an emphasis on qualitative methodology in British sociology. Third, stages of social investigation have been replaced with the idea of research as a social process. (Bryman and Burgess, 1994: 1)

Whilst Bryman and Burgess mention the paradigmatic shift in thinking within the field of sociology, this change in thought has spread beyond the immediate field of the humanities and is evinced in the growing number of publications based upon qualitative research evolving from the disciplines of business and management. Even the realm of marketing research, once so heavily reliant on the survey instrument as the main source of data collection, is starting to place greater emphasis on understanding consumer behaviour through qualitative insights, rather than rushing to measure and predict actions before such insights are established. Furthermore, these developments are not purely confined to the domain of academia, but have started to enter the world of commercial research. Shankar and Goulding (2000) note that the Market Research Society commissioned Robson and Hedges (1993) to research the issue of the analysis and interpretation of qualitative research. They found that clients on the whole ignored the issue of analysis and interpretation, as they felt this was the domain of the researcher. Glen (1999) further reinforced this point, viewing analysis and interpretation as a ‘black box’, with the data being the input and insights into the research problem the output. Interestingly, there is some evidence that managers are more likely to trust the findings derived from qualitative research more so than the findings of large-scale quantitative surveys, mainly as a result of the vividness of the data (Shankar and Goulding, 2000).

Qualitative Research in the Commercial World

On the surface, therefore, it would appear that how researchers arrive at their conclusions is not too important for clients so long as they get some insights (Shankar and Goulding, 2000). The researchers’ experience, methods and ultimately ‘value-adding’ abilities are often more important than the theoretical basis upon which their insights are based. However, not all practitioners operate in this way. Semiotic Solutions, for example, is a company which specialises in cultural qualitative research, drawing upon techniques borrowed from linguistic philosophy, cultural anthropology and the systematic study of signs and codes. Its findings have formed the basis for many national and international television commercials, as in the case of the British Telecom ‘It’s good to talk’ campaign (Valentine and Evans, 1993; Alexander et al., 1995). Additionally, Semiotic Solutions has been responsible for image and brand changes for organisations as large as Tesco and Coca-Cola. The company’s success in promoting itself lies largely in the fact that it locates its insights in theory, it is explicit about it, and it communicates this to its prospective clients (Valentine and Evans, 1993). A sound theoretical basis upon which to base interpretations can therefore give a practitioner credibility in the rhetorical battle to convince clients of the usefulness of qualitative insights (Shankar and Goulding, 2000). Nonetheless, companies such as Semiotic Solutions are the exception rather than the rule and it is within the academic domain that the philosophical and theoretical debates are receiving the greatest attention.

Academic Divisions in Thought and Practice

Whilst there may be a paradigmatic shift within the field of management studies, it is still in its infancy with many publications continuing to reflect the positivist tenets of enquiry (Hirschman, 1993). Furthermore, it still appears to be a necessary requirement for those engaged in qualitative research that they defend their choice of methodology by first providing a rationale for not using the logical deductive and objective approaches most commonly associated with the scientific canons of positivism. The reverse, however, does not appear to be true. On examination of research publications derived from a positivist or, more commonly, a quantifiable perspective, scant, if any, attention is paid to justifying the use of such a framework in the light of other possible qualitative methodologies. To some degree this is due to the fact that the rules and procedures for establishing knowledge within the positivist framework are less diverse than interpretive methodologies. There are also many cases where accusations of methodological muddling have been made regarding the procedures and epistemological claims (Baker et al., 1992; Stern, 1994; Goulding, 1999a) of the end product. Consequently, owing to the nature of qualitative research, its processes, procedures, goals, claims and diversity of philosophical and intellectual underpinnings, some justification and clarification are often called for. Furthermore, this justification should be based on a demonstrated understanding of what each method involves. Dreher (1994: 293) sums it up in her essay on evaluating qualitative research from the reviewer’s perspective, in the statement that:

The single most important element in constructing a research design is the consistency of the method with the research questions being asked. Providing a rationale for using a specific method should not be a treatise on the relative merits of phenomenology or logical positivism, but rather the clearest explanation possible for why the proposed strategy has the potential for answering the specific research question … this explanation should be grounded in an analysis of the existing research literature.

Although this book is concerned with detailing one specific methodology, that of grounded theory, it is necessary to first outline the philosophical orientations of research methods in general in order to anchor them within the domain of qualitative enquiry. The aim of this chapter, therefore, is to outline briefly the differences in possible approaches to the study of organisational or consumer behaviour, by providing a summary of positivism which is then contrasted with two popular qualitative methodologies, phenomenology and ethnography, before the other extreme in the spectrum, postmodernism is discussed.

The Positivist Paradigm

Paradigms in Conflict

From a review of the literature it is quite clear that this book could be devoted to analysing the ongoing debates surrounding positivism versus humanistic methods of enquiry. The field is riddled with opponents levying attacks against advocates of the opposing tradition. On the one hand, many positivists perceive qualitative research to be exploratory, filled with conjecture, unscientific, value laden and a distortion of the canons of ‘good’ science. For example, Miles and Huberman (1994: 49) refer to a tongue-in-cheek quote from Gherardis and Turner (1987):

The message … is that quantitative work is courageous, hard biting, hard work. Collecting hard data means making hard decisions, taking no nonsense, hardening one’s heart to weaklings, building on a hard core of material, using hard words to press on to hard won results which often carry with them promises of hard cash for future research and career prospects. By contrast soft data [are] weak, unstable, impressible, squashy and sensual. The softies, weaklings or ninnies who carry it out have too much of a soft spot for counter-argument for them to be taken seriously, they reveal the soft underbelly of the social science enterprise, are likely to soft soap those who listen to them. They are too soft hearted, pitying and even foolish to be taken seriously, so that it is only right that they should be employed on soft money.

On the other hand, humanists or interpretive researchers argue that positivism in the social sciences is pseudo-scientific, inflexible, myopic, mechanistic, outdated and limited to the realm of testing existing theories at the expense of new theory development. This debate is as widespread within the field of management, and consumer behaviour in particular, as it is in any of the humanities. Many of these arguments, however, are based on misconceptions, misinterpretations and a certain degree of mistrust regarding the nature and philosophies of the other. Both fields have their different schools of thought, methodologies and intellectual foundations. It is not enough to reject positivism based on the premise of quantification, the use of questionnaires and statistical analysis. This is not necessarily positivism. To reject the paradigm on these grounds alone without exploring its meaning would be to progress from a starting point of half-hearted understanding and appreciation.

Positivism: Philosophical Foundations

One widely cited author on the subject, Shelby Hunt (1991), recognises this fundamental divide between proponents of the two conflicting schools of thought, and proposes that the debate has largely been poorly informed about the origins and beliefs of an early group of philosophers known as logical positivists. This group of German philosophers (the Vienna Circle) working in the 1920s and 1930s developed a perspective which was highly influenced by the work of Mach, from whom they drew their conviction that science should avoid metaphysical concepts and rely only on observables; from Hume they developed the belief that inductive reasoning is impermissible and only conclusions derived from deduction and direct observational experience could be labelled ‘certainties’; and from Wittgenstein they constructed their ‘verifiability principle’ which required that only statements that could be shown to be true or false could be treated as having cognitive meaning.

Thompson (1993) points to the further influences of the seventeenth-century philosophers Descartes and Compte. For Descartes, mathematics reflected the divine perfection of God’s worldly creations. Consequently, understandings that could be expressed in terms of this language provided an indubitable knowledge of the divine natural order. Compte formally adopted the term ‘positivism’ to describe his methodological procedures for attaining ‘positive’ knowledge of theory-neutral empirical facts. For Compte, mathematics constituted a supra-human language of description and by using mathematics as the sole method for attaining facts, the realm of scientific knowledge would be purged of culturally bound assumptions and beliefs (Thompson, 1993). Hunt (1991) proceeds to argue that taken on face value, these underlying conditions of positivism have been the source of much criticism and have served to discredit the paradigm. He highlights three elements of positivism in particular that have instigated much debate: the notion of causality, the machine metaphor, and the concept of ‘reality’.

With regard to causality he refers to the accusation that the positivist approach emphasises causal explanation due to the assumption that ‘real causes’ exist, which is an axiom of positivist thinking. In this light Wittgenstein’s construal of ‘acausalism’ means that there can be no question of, for example, invoking a memory as a cause of behaviour. Hunt disputes this accusation as ahistorical and pre-Humean in thinking. He maintains that ‘the positivists rejected causality because they viewed “cause” as an unobservable, metaphysical concept that violated their Humean scepticism’ (p. 34).

The second misconception centres around the idea of determinism and the machine metaphor, a framework for constructing the world view as mechanistic in which reality is perceived as a machine-like event determined by forces and constraints. Hunt suggests that rather than accept this view, the positivists aimed to develop an alternative by creating one that replaced the machine metaphor with one that was indeterministic and probabilistic.

The third area of debate concerns the ontological interpretation of reality and the concept of reification. In relation to this, critics claim that: ‘The positivists tend to take a realist position and assume that a single objective reality exists independently of what individuals perceive … in contrast interpretivists deny that one real world exists: that is, reality is essentially mental and perceived’ (Hunt 1991: 35). With regard to reification, there is the accusation that positivists ‘reify’ subjective states and treat them like objects. However, Hunt again disputes this point referring to the fact that the positivists embraced a minimal reality known as ‘empirical realism’ and that those influenced by the work of Mach and Hume viewed unobservables as metaphysical concepts to be strictly avoided rather than attempt to make them concrete.

The Positivist/Interpretivist Debate

Science v Humanism

Even when considering positivism in a dispassionate light it is hard to ignore the overtones of the physical sciences, which brings into play the question of treating human social behaviour in such a detached and ‘logical’ manner. Even if the objective is not to identify ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ as if it occurs in a test tube, it is hard to deny the metaphysical, the intangible and the irrational as aspects of the complex, interactional and sometimes conflicting influences that constitute human behaviour. Nevertheless, the paradigm remains saturated with the language and logic of the physical sciences, almost as if the physical sciences have the exclusive premium on credibility. Atkinson and Hammersley (1995) refer to the characteristics of the physical sciences which are mirrored in the positivist paradigm. These include a common logic with the physical sciences reflected in the experimental and quantifiable variables which can be manipulated to identify relationships, as the model for social research and the establishment of universal laws. These universal laws, or the ‘covering law’ model, are characteristic of explanations of events derived from deduction and statements of regular relationships between variables which hold constant across all relevant circumstances. According to Bryman (1984: 77);

Quantitative methodology is routinely depicted as an approach to the conduct of social research which implies a natural science, and in particular a positivist, approach to social phenomena. The paraphernalia of positivism are characterized typically in the methodological literature as exhibiting a preoccupation with occupational definitions, objectivity, replicability, causality and the like. The social survey is typically seen as the preferred instrument within this tradition because it can apparently be readily adapted to such concerns. Through questionnaire items concepts can be operationalized; objectivity is maintained by the distance between observer and observed along with the possibility of external checks upon one’s questionnaire; replication can be carried out by e...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgement
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One: Philosophy, Principles and Procedures
• Part Two: Grounded Theory: An Illustration of the Process
• Part Three: Some Concluding Remarks
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index