Business Research Methods Lecture 4

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Business Research MethodsLecture 4

• Aims
• Which research methods are available?
• How do they connect to research philosophies
• Using data collected by others
• Secondary Data
• Biography an example

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Methodologies - strategies - methods

• What is research strategy?
• Define field of research
• ? Research community
• Ontology
• Epistemology
• Methodology
• Methods

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Main strategies

• Difference strategy vs tactics
• Robson (1993)
• experiment
• survey
• case study
• cross sectional
• longitudinal
• action research
• Archival (Jankowicz)
• Secondary data (Saunders)

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Strategies

• Experiment
• e.g.. Little Albert
• e.g.. Sexual fetishism
• Generally positivist
• definition of theoretical hypothesis
• selection of samples from know pop
• change one or more variables
• measure
• control

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Strategies

• Survey
• allows for large amounts of data
• based on questionnaire?/ standardised
• quantitative?
• Methods
• questionnaires
• structured observation
• structured interviews

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Strategies

• Case study
• Robson(2003) detailed knowledge - single or
  number of related cases
• Useful rich understanding of context
• answering Why? / What? How?
• methods
• interviews
• observation
• documentary analysis
• questionnaires

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Strategies

• Longitudinal
• snapshot / diary of events over a given period
• strength - study change and development
• weakness - research might affect research process
• Cross sectional
• study at a particular time
• quantitative or qualitative

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Purpose

• Exploratory
• to find out what is happening
• to seek new insights
• to ask questions
• usually qualitative
• Description
• to portray accurate profile
• requires previous knowledge
• may be qualitative or quantitative
• Explanatory
• seeks explanation usually in form of causal
  relationships
• may be qualitative and or quantitative

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Purpose

• Case studies appropriate for exploratory work
• Surveys appropriate for descriptive studies
• Experiments are appropriate for explanatory
  studies
• But not always!!

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Research Questions

• Degree of control
• focus on current or past events
• Experiment - RQ (how/why) control (yes) focus on
  current events (yes)
• Survey - RQ (who/what/ where/ how many/ how much)
  control (no) focus on current events (yes)
• Case - RQ (how/why) control (no) focus on current
  events (usually bot not necessarily)

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How to choose a method(s)

• Methodology / strategy
• Research questions
• Degree of control
• Purpose of research
• Cost
• Access / feasibility
• Individual preference
• Time

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Methods (part 1) - Desk based research

• research in general
• - not information gathering
• - not transportation of facts
• - not rummaging for information
• Research is
• Systematic
• Critical
• Evalulatative

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Research Questions

• OConnnel Davidson
• RQ To explore the discrepancies of control
  within the prostitute client relationship
• RQs need to generate new insights
• RQs informed by methods informed by topic choice

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Secondary Data

• Primary Vs Secondary
• What is secondary data?
• Types? (Saunders 2000190)
• Documentary
• Written documents
• Survey based secondary
• Census
• Continuous survey
• Adhoc surveys

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Secondary Data

• Advantages
• Resource requirements
• Unobtrusive
• Quality
• Longitudinal
• Comparative
• Disadvantages
• Might not match your need
• Tie in with RQs
• Aggradations and definitions
• Access?

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Issues in documentary research

• Authenticity
• You cant always believe what you read
• Check does it make sense / different versions /
  consistency / transcribed by many/ circulated via
  those with interest/ reliable source
• Credibility
• Is it free from error / distortion
• Representativeness
• Constitute a representative sample of the
  universe of documents as they originally existed
• Partial account of one person

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Biographical research

• Deals with single cases equated with narrative
  interviews
• Source of data for long time
• Presents a perception of self from viewpoint of
  author of biography
• How you do it depends on methodology
• Holistic
• Particularistic
• Comparative
• Content analysis
• Quantitative
• Classification

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The formation of top managers a discourse
analysis of five managerial autobiographies

• Using autobiographies from major industrial
  figures
• RQs Where do managers theories on how to manage
  come from?
• Categories that emerge from interpretive process
• 20 years of life (with justification
• Method of analysis
• Incidents connect with adult life and work
• Themes to connect
• Produced unified grounded theory