This textbook on research designs provides undergraduate and graduate students with detailed guidance to tackle their research projects. It has been recommended and developed for university courses in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The authors offer students relevant research designs in business and management. They show how to overcome the common qualitative and quantitative methods divide. For this purpose, the textbook focuses on the scientific problem-solving process. It emphasizes the importance of an appropriate research design to produce intellectual contributions. The authors describe the most relevant research designs in business and management research. They assess each research design about its suitability to answer specific research questions. The textbook also covers academic writing and provides valuable tips about the whole research process. It not only serves students as a resource to conduct their research projects. Moreover, it is also a helpful reference throughout the entire academic career.
These proceedings represent the work of researchers participating in the 17th European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies (ECRM) which is being hosted this year by Università Roma TRE, Rome, Italy on 12-13 July 2018.
The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Business and Management Research Methods provides a state-of–the-art overview of qualitative research methods in the business and management field. The Handbook celebrates the diversity of the field by drawing from a wide range of traditions and by bringing together a number of leading international researchers engaged in studying a variety of topics through multiple qualitative methods. The chapters address the philosophical underpinnings of particular approaches to research, contemporary illustrations, references, and practical guidelines for their use. The two volumes therefore provide a useful resource for Ph.D. students and early career researchers interested in developing and expanding their knowledge and practice of qualitative research. In covering established and emerging methods, it also provides an invaluable source of information for faculty teaching qualitative research methods. The contents of the Handbook are arranged into two volumes covering seven key themes: Volume One: History and Tradition Part One: Influential Traditions: underpinning qualitative research: positivism, interpretivism, pragmatism, constructionism, critical, poststructuralism, hermeneutics, postcolonialism, critical realism, mixed methods, grounded theory, feminist and indigenous approaches. Part Two: Research Designs: ethnography, field research, action research, case studies, process and practice methodologies. Part Three: The Researcher: positionality, reflexivity, ethics, gender and intersectionality, writing from the body, and achieving critical distance. Part Four: Challenges: research design, access and departure, choosing participants, research across boundaries, writing for different audiences, ethics in international research, digital ethics, and publishing qualitative research. Volume Two: Methods and Challenges Part One: Contemporary methods: interviews, archival analysis, autoethnography, rhetoric, historical, stories and narratives, discourse analysis, group methods, sociomateriality, fiction, metaphors, dramaturgy, diary, shadowing and thematic analysis. Part Two: Visual methods: photographs, drawing, video, web images, semiotics and symbols, collages, documentaries. Part Three: Methodological developments: aesthetics and smell, fuzzy set comparative analysis, sewing quilts, netnography, ethnomusicality, software, ANTI-history, emotion, and pattern matching.
The European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies was established 19 years ago. This event has been held in countries across Europe, including Ireland, England, France, Malta, Portugal, Spain to mention only a few of the countries who have hosted it. The conference is generally attended by participants from more than 25 countries. The Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods (indexed by Scopus) publishes a special edition of the best papers presented at this conference. The conference once again played host to the Innovation in Teaching of Research Methodology Excellence Awards
Methodology is the ?eld which is indisputably complex. In the academic world, it is often said to be important, yet in everyday academic practice, it is not always treated accordingly. In teaching, methodology is often a mandatory course. Usually, it consists of learning how to adopt several common approaches when doing research, and how to conceive a research design (often leading to a survey). This usually leads to collecting data on a modest scale and – when the opportunity arises – analysing the data with the help of some statistics. Ask the students of their opinion at the end of such a course and they tend to heave a deep sigh of relief and say, “I have got through it. ” Then their real courses start again, in which methodology often does not play a role at all. We are of the opinion that writing-off methodology in this way is a real pity. It ignores the valuable role that methodology should play in academic teaching as a whole. Here, methodology is presented as a form of thinking and acting that, while obviously entailing research work, can also include the design and change of organisations. This broad approach has been purposefully chosen, as it is almost obvious from research and graduation projects that the students do not really have a clue what methodology involves and, therefore, wasting their time by producing work that has a little quality.
