Chapter 4

1. Chapter 4 In the chapter, it reveals of three main philosophical positions in relations to research: • Positivism • Interpretivism • Realism Comparison • Figure 4.1 • They are different, if not mutually exclusive views about the way in which knowledge is developed and judged as being acceptable. • All three have an important part to play in business and management research (p2) (p3) (p4) (p16) (p5) (p6)

2. Positivism • Refers to natural science disciplines • Results of findings in this classification is highly structured and that they can be replicated • Eg: • Pure Science disciplines, maths, chemistry, physics, etc. • Applied Sciences, such as Engineering fields (p1)

3. Interpretivism • Research works done here are mainly not based on the development of theories or rule of laws but to study and generalize the complexity of social aspect in business and management discipline • Remenyi et al. (1998:35) • “the details of the situation to understand the reality or perhaps a reality working behind them” • Social constructionism • Seek to understand the subjective reality of those that they study in order to be able to make sense of and understanding their motives, actions and intentions in a way that is meaningful for those research participants • Such as cultural differences in management styles (p1)

4. Realism • “Based on the belief that a reality exists that is independent and human thoughts and beliefs” • It shares the features of positivism and interpretavism • Understanding people’s socially • Such as by social forces, structures or process that influence to their behavior • Eg. Ethical study toward people using computers, say in accounting firms (p1)

5. (p8) (p13) (p12) (next lecture) (p1) 5

6. Chapter 4 (cont) • Question: Do we need to really know which area of these three is your research project? (p7)

7. Chapter 4 (cont) • In reality, we are more interested to gain understanding to those elements of the inner layer shown in Figure 4.1 That is, • Research approaches • Research strategies Other relevant issues: creditability of findings (p8) (p12) (p14)

8. Research Approaches • Two main approaches to research: • Inductive, building theory • Deductive, testing theory • These two approaches should not be thought of mutually exclusive • Both can be used in combination on the same research project • The main influence on the choice of research approach should be the research questions and objectives • Difference between them (p9) (p10) (p11) (p7)

9. Inductive • As mentioned, this approach of research is based on the observations to the behavior or pattern of our study subjects • They are two possible forms of output: • Descriptive or qualitative results • Building up to a theoretical framework or theory (refer to a social capital literature review paper as an exmaple) (p8)

10. Deductive • Five sequential stages of a deductive research (p 117): • deducing a hypothesis • a statement to which a set of relationship between, say a and b is tested • expressing how the variables are measured • testing point 1 using a statistical method • examining the result • modify the outcome, if needed Generally, the above steps could be activated only when we identified and borrowed a model from literature as a basis for our research (p8)

11. Deduction Scientific principle Move from theory to data Study the causal relationships Collection of data A highly structured approach Theory based on literature Control of data validity Sample size is important Induction Gaining understanding of subjects by observation Close understanding of the research contest Collection of qualitative data Flexible structure Less concern of the generalization Differences (Box 4.1, p89) (p8) TRA (or model built based on literate review) TAM (Or applications)

12. Research strategy The main research strategies are: • Experiment • Eg. The use of computer lab for conducing e-Banking • Survey • Eg. Sent questionnaire for data collection • Case study • Eg to study an operations of a firm or culture of a society • Grounded theory • Building a model/theory from observation on how an event operates/works • Ethnography • Study the human races/characteristics • Action research • Study of a subject with refinement, such as dephi study for top key elements in IT development • Again, these should not be thought of as discrete entities • There may be a combination of some of these in the same research project (p13)

13. It could be: Cross-sectional Referring to the time horizons, or point of time, at which the subjects we study Longitudinal Studying the subject for a period of time, so that the change can be observed (Org Beh & Human Dec Process) In addition, they may also be classed into: Exploratorystudies Refer to what is happening, in primarily format Descriptivestudies Refer to portray an accurate of subjects, or its population behavior Explanatorystudies Refer to the study of causal relationships between variables Explaining how things work Research Projects/strategies (p7)

14. Creditability of research findings • Care should be taken to ensure that research results are: • Valid • In term of models, measurement items for variables • Reliable • Selected samples, biasness-free between dependent and independent variables • Ethical issues • Which might be included/implied by the choice of research strategy Later, we will examine methods to secure the creditability of items 1 and 2.

16. Positivism Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsM5j-uPUhU&list=PLF72D5222CD89DFF1 Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js_gg0E6dLI Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8caOrfCt3M Research approach: http://www.wider-mind.com/research/wdn-positivism-v2.pdf Interpretivism Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtfKRUfKE54 Research approach: http://www.ipia.utah.edu/imps/html/research.html Realism Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZIRNnxO6w8 Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbwgr3TEVUE Research approach: http://srmo.sagepub.com/view/the-sage-dictionary-of-social-research-methods/n172.xml (p1)