Systematic review of modern techniques in qualitative research

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Systematic review of modern techniques in qualitative research

Ramakrishnan Vivek

MBA(Rajarata University), BBA(Jaffna University)

Abstract

According to Mayan (2009), being a qualitative researcher entails various activities “It is a pleasure to share life and learning with others to make sense of our reality jointly. Non- experimental qualitative research is not only conducted with people but also performed through people.” According to its many definitions, qualitative research entails significant interpersonal contact. Throughout the process of qualitative research, from strategy to implementation, effective communication is essential.

While numerous new qualitative research tools have emerged over the last several decades, those linked to communication technology have emerged as the most important and impactful. Because there is little information available regarding communication technologies in qualitative research, this article aims to produce an overview of the new developing technologies currently being used. For that, the writer has reviewed several pieces of literature on qualitative research. As surfaced from the literature, qualitative research has transformed to new heights using modern techniques. Therefore, qualitative researchers must keep up to date with the latest technological advances to get maximum productivity.

Keywords: hybrid methods, management research, qualitative research, skype, social mobile devices (SMD), VOIP, teleconferencing.

Introduction

Ongoing changes in the technological context and society overall continually pose new methodological challenges for managerial research (Pettigrew, 1990). However, facing such challenges can be aided by technological and societal developments that have brought them about, as they offer new tools and possible approaches. Any new approach must undergo a process of refinement and standardisation to become a concrete solution. This is precisely the aim underlying the conception, proposal, and final making of this special issue of Management Decision: to contribute to clarifying, formalising, and eventually standardising new methods for management research currently in the early stages of their maturation, beginning with those based on qualitative approaches (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994; Myers, 2013). communication management teleconference

Qualitative research follows an approach that does not dissociate the analysis from the researcher's experience (Mills, 1959, pp. 195-226). Such an approach is common to the methods of data collection and interpretation of all qualitative research fields, thereby uniting management studies to other social sciences such as sociology, anthropology (Sanday, 1979; Van Maanen, 1988; Vidich and Lyman, 1994), linguistics (Manning, 1979) and history (Tuchman, 1994), at least on the methodological plane. Such “transdisciplinary contamination” is revealed by the fact that work such as Yin's (1981, 1984, 1993), which is linked to research in the field of pedagogy (Yin, 2005), is among the most often cited in management case study research as well.

Given these transdisciplinary associations, management literature has long contained a vast body of work on the use of case studies, ethnography, and so-called action research (Van Maanen, 1979; Mintzberg et al., 1976; Mintzberg, 1979; Gill and Johnson, 1991). This special issue aims to offer the opportunity to discuss some new qualitative research methodologies that have emerged only recently, not only in response to changes in today's business environment but also thanks to the creativity of management researchers.

Traditional research methodologies have been under considerable strain by the potentialities associated with new high-tech tools for producing, acquiring, and sharing information, particularly the internet. Exploiting these new tools has prompted a sort of “hybridisation” between different qualitative methodologies and even between qualitative and quantitative ones, resulting in methods that are clearly distinct from those used in the past, at least in terms of applications (Harrison and Reilly, 2011).

The following section addresses some aspects of the change in context that has favoured the emergence of some new qualitative research methodologies. At the same time, the subsequent one examines the processes of methodological hybridisation that have been associated with such change. Finally, the conclusions propose some keys for reading the papers presented in this special issue.

Literature review

Change in context and new qualitative research methods. Current ongoing changes in the (technological, sociological, and anthropological) settings in which producers and consumers are called upon to act nowadays have been providing strong impetus to developing new research approaches to management. The new global digital setting in which business decision-makers and practitioners operate has been accompanied by a transition to more complex research methodologies, which seems to favour recourse to qualitative methods of investigation (Gummesson, 2006, pp. 170-171). In short, such changes have led to greater complexity, and in addressing such complexity, the qualitative dimension is essential. This new complexity is also connected to modern means to create more widely disseminated knowledge, which in turn calls for access to know-how and skill on the part of all actors in the spheres of consumption and production, who may be therefore called upon to carry out ever-more active and important roles (Sridhar and Srinivasan, 2012).

This is especially true regarding creating that enormous (quantitative and qualitative) database offered by the internet. The fact that the contents of the internet, above and beyond their interactive aspects (particularly accentuated in social networks), are multimedial, consisting of texts, images, audio, and video (Belk and Kozinets, 2005), offers substantial opportunities for qualitative research (Kozinets, 2010). In addition, the widespread availability of quantitative data (analytics) offers unprecedented possibilities for conducting contemporaneously qualitative and quantitative research (Jick, 1979; Mingers and Gill, 1997).

Qualitative research offers some well-known advantages. Miles and Huberman (1994) maintain that properly gathered qualitative data provide a “focus on naturally occurring, ordinary events in natural settings so that we have a strong handle on what `real life is like [y] that confidence is buttressed by local groundedness, the fact that the data were collected near a specific situation, rather than through the mail or over the phone” (p. 10).

With the emergence of new methods in qualitative management research, the creativity of individual researchers can contribute greatly to formulating new research designs, as well as to developing new instruments of research (e.g., software) (Zhang and Segall, 2010). New research methods can exploit the study of internet communities, as in digital ethnography or net-ethnography (Hine, 2000; Kozinets, 2002; Bowler, 2010). In brief, changes in business contexts may regard the followings aspects:

• Technological - The internet offers new possibilities for research in terms of amassing vast quantities of data and developing tools for processing and disseminating such data.

• Sociological - Changing social roles alter the usefulness of traditionally adopted classifications, such as “consumer” or “worker/producer,” with a consequent need to rethink their significance.

• Anthropological - These stem from the adoption of new methodological tools (and resulting classifications) for studying the “culture” and “communities” of the internet (ethnography), as well as from the transnational nature of modern contexts (ethno-methodologies).

The management studies of recent years furnish many examples of the “blooming” of new methodological possibilities and solutions, which have been made not only possible but even necessary by the new settings in which businesses operate. Such evolutionary trends involve management as well as marketing and the study of consumption behaviour (Arnould and Wallendorf, 1994), a field in which increasing attention has been focused, for example, on “consumer skills” (Cam' and Cova', 2008, 2011). The study entails modifying current research methodologies and defining new, at times non-standard, ones, with particular attention to those based on a qualitative, sociological, or anthropological framework (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994; Cayla and Arnould, 2013).

The research methodology problem has been framed in terms of language (Manning, 1979); qualitative methods provide different answers from specific quantitative methods. In management studies, the issue of research methodologies is particularly noteworthy in that it has significant effects on the possibilities for communication between researchers and business policymakers in collecting data and disseminating results. In this sense, adopting new qualitative research methodologies can contribute to reducing the gap between theory and practice in management (Guercini, 2004).

Qualitative research and its answers are particularly relevant to management issues, for which recourse to hybrid solutions and mixed methods seems justifiable. Qualitative methods do not adopt a simplifying approach; they do not focus on any single aspect; they do not attempt to break complex problems down into several simpler specific issues. The issue, or problem, is viewed in its entirety with respect to one or a small number of subjects of the analysis. Moreover, qualitative research can help establish a different relationship between observer and observed and hence aid in overcoming the so-called “Cartesian dualism” since the relationship between observer and observed appears somewhat more direct and multifaceted (Mintzberg, 1979) and, therefore, not amenable to measurement via the techniques of the “hard sciences” (Bonoma, 1985, p. 200; Woodside, 2010).

The various facets of, and the relations between, different qualitative research methods can be represented by the so-called “tree of qualitative methodologies” proposed by Harry Wolcott (1992), which describes the “qualitative strategies in educational research” as a tree rooted in the “everyday life” activities of “experiencing,” “enquiring” and “examining,” whose trunk gives rise to the following different main branches of qualitative research:

• “Nonparticipant observation strategies,” from which stem the secondary branches of “nonreactive/unobtrusive research,” “human ethology,” and “observer study,” this last giving rise to “connoisseurship.”

• “Participant observation strategies,” which branches off into “ethnography” and “field studies,” the former in turn giving rise to “community study,” “ethnology,” “anthropological life history,” “micro-ethnography,” and “ethnography of communication,” and the latter to “ethnomethodology,” “conversation analysis,” “phenomenology,” and “post-structuralism.”

• “Interview strategies,” which divides into “detective journalism,” “biography,” and “oral history.”

• “Archival strategies,” branching out into “history,” “literary criticism,” “philosophy,” and “content analysis.”

The hybridisation between different qualitative methods. The works presented in this special issue demonstrate that newly available technologies can make quantitative data more accessible, standardised, and obtainable at a low cost (Germann et al., 2013). This is clearly evinced by the easy accessibility of Google Adwords “Analytics,” or other indicators (number of visits, comments, “likes” and “dislikes,” etc.) associated with social network users (Naylor et al., 2012), which appear as service “commodities,” in that they are standardised and easily available thanks to technology (Branthwaite and Patterson, 2011). The qualitative components of research (sentiment analysis, psychological judgments, taste, irony, etc.) may be more challenging to obtain, specific, and endowed with greater added value, even in managerial and marketing research. At the same time, however, some aspects of quantitative research are by now undeniable necessities, and hence all that remains is to see just how qualitative and quantitative methodologies can be integrated (Harrison and Reilly, 2011; Davis et al., 2011).

However, this integration process is not free of cognitive cost for the researcher because it involves the contemporaneous evaluation and side-by-side application of different paradigms (Brocklesby, 1997). Integrating different methodologies is also a focus of current attention for the “research economy,” so to speak. Indeed, if we take, for example, the methodologies based on the collection and analysis of original online texts, whose investigation may profit from both quantitative and qualitative analyses, such databases (e.g., “linguistic corpora”) entail the costs of collection and selection, which may be exploited to the fullest by using the material for both quantitative and qualitative analysis (Ludwig et al., 2013). Another good reason to integrate different methodologies is the relationship between the researcher and economic actors, whether managers, entrepreneurs, or consumers. The development of action research (Gummesson, 2000, p. 178; Pihlanto, 1994) and its integration with other methods, or the involvement of practitioners as “witnesses,” who can be considered co-researchers (Gummesson, 2000, p. 21), also heads in the direction of the economy of research effort, in the sense that it reveals otherwise obscure content, often linked to the tacit knowledge (if not unconscious perceptions) of consumers and entrepreneurs. Indeed, such content research results do not emerge without the involvement of the managers, entrepreneurs, or consumers themselves as co-researchers, in that such involvement can improve the communication processes between the practitioners' setting and the research context (Guercini, 2004).

The authors of the papers in this special issue speak of “hybridisation,” “integration,” or “combination,” proposing “both the expected and serendipitous synergies obtained through the particular blend of methods” to produce more effective research results (Leonard-Barton, 1990, p. 248). The works herein address new methodologies and ways to use existing ones (such as case studies and ethnographical research) in their conceptual and empirical applications. Research strategies become integrated, while data collection and processing methods may also change considerably. New qualitative methods are often viewed considering their “hybridisation” with other qualitative or quantitative methods, thereby providing:

• New perspectives in case study research.

• New ethnography and participant observation forms are applied to new settings and

topics.

• New techniques in content analysis, text analysis software, and applications, and new software for analysing texts and website content.

• New forms and applications of historical methods in management research.

• New forms of hybridisation between qualitative and quantitative techniques in management research; and

• Other new methods stem from qualitative research techniques and new ways to apply traditional qualitative methods to management research.

From the summary of the various contributions to this issue, what emerges is a strict relation between the research topic and the qualitative methods adopted. For instance, the case study method (Yin, 1984; Woodside, 2010) has been widely applied to industrial marketing research (Hakansson, 1982; Borghini et al., 2010; Easton, 2010), for which much empirical data analysis has been conducted based on this method, while the methodological questions have only been addressed more recently. Case research has been the object of increasing attention, giving rise to a specialised body of literature focussing on its role as a management methodology. Despite its limitations and the criticisms levelled at it, case research has been viewed as a prime source of “grounded theory” (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Eisenhardt, 1989) and a “systematic combining” of theory and empirical research (Dubois and Gadde, 2002). In a “glass is half full” perspective, given its many merits, case research is to be considered a consistently useful method (Yin, 1981).

The contribution of qualitative methodologies is fundamental to “fixing” the knowledge of enterprise decision makers (managers and entrepreneurs). The relationship between method and topic also finds a defining framework within the reference scientific community since the subject of knowledge is linked to that of the community (Von Glasersfeld, 1981). Scientific knowledge obviously regards the scientific community (Kuhn, 1962; Paul, 2009), just as managerial and entrepreneurial knowledge regards the community of researchers and scholars; it also pertains to managers and entrepreneurs. New qualitative methodologies help build bridges between the research community and practitioners, favouring the development of shared language and context.

So, what do we mean by “hybrid” methodology in management? Recourse to mixed qualitative and quantitative methodologies comes to be viewed as an empowering (at times even necessary) element, not so much because it satisfies the positivistic requisites of “scientificity,” that is to say, it produces knowledge that is “true” (in that it regards reality) and “certain” (in that it is a “homomorph” of reality) (von Glasersfeld, 1981), but instead because in management studies the sought-for knowledge is not “certain truth,” but “useful knowledge.” In this way, hybrid research using both qualitative and qualitative methods can be proposed as a heuristic solution for obtaining useful knowledge by exploiting both processes of knowledge creation, that is, analytical as well as heuristic (Plebe and Emanuele, 2006).

One essential aspect of qualitative research, in particular forms such as “action research,” is that it enables the researcher to share the context of management practitioners (Miles and Huberman, 1994, p. 10ff.). Management researchers who adopt quantitative methodologies can study a managerial phenomenon without sharing the business context: they can acquire some data and, armed with a variety of mathematical and statistical tools, write studies on production activities without ever having seen a production facility or write about distribution networks without ever having talked to a supplier about a client or a client about a supplier.

The remoteness of the analytical setting from the context of the object of study seems confirmed by quantitative research's very instruments. Instead, in qualitative research, based on case studies, the research setting and the management context overlap, enabling methodologies such as ethnography or participant observation to achieve results unattainable by other methods (for instance, formulating a theory or a research hypothesis). The advocates of quantitative methods view the separation of research from direct contact with the actors in the studied phenomena as necessary to guarantee “objectivity,” while exponents of qualitative research, to the contrary, believe that the absence of experience and contact with the complexity of the phenomena prevents them from capturing a number of “global” or overall aspects (Gummesson, 2006, p. 170; Capra, 2002, p. 36). Exponents of hybrid forms of research have gone beyond such ideological stances to espouse a pragmatic attitude, often focused on the specificity of the problem at hand and aimed at seizing the more significant opportunities afforded by the available fact-finding elements.

Communication Technologies in Qualitative Research. Most qualitative inquiry is grounded in the information collected from observation, text, talk, and interviews (Mayan, 2009). At a very basic level, qualitative researchers then engage in the process of studying communicative practices in context. Data collection is the main task in qualitative research after choosing a methodology and methods. Data collection in qualitative research is commonly accomplished through three components (Creswell, 2007; Patton, 2002): 1. Interviews 2. Observations 3. Documents