BRM

1. BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS (QUALITATIVE)
Term 2 MBA (2022-23)
Session 1: Introduction

2. QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: OVERVIEW
Qualitative research involves collecting and analyzing non-numerical data (e.g., text, video, or
audio) to understand concepts, opinions, or experiences.
Examples of research questions:
What factors influence employee retention in a large organization?
How is a mobile App on health adopted and used by the elderly users?
Qualitative researchers often consider themselves “instruments” in research because all
observations, interpretations and analyses are filtered through their own personal lens. Hence,
reflexivity is important while writing up methodology.
Highlight: Flexibility, natural settings, meaningful insights, generation of new ideas.
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3. QUALI & QUANTI: COMPARISONS
Richly detailed data, not quantified data
Data is quantified in quantitative research and analysis, whereas in qualitative research
quantified data only has a supporting role.
Contextualised rather than decontextualized
Qualitative research takes into account the cultural, social, institutional, temporal, and personal
or interpersonal characteristics of the context in which the data is collected.
Naturalism Vs. control
Interviews and observations are held in the naturalistic setting – where people work, live, shop
or simply hang around.
Researcher as ‘instrument’ Vs. detached instrumentation
An approach of keeping distance and passivity is followed in quantitative research. Whereas, in
qualitative research, researcher herself is the primary instrument of data collection.
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4. QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: OPPORTUNITY
Qualitative methods are well suited to investigating consumer and marketing phenomena within
cultural contexts that have previously been overlooked, or across cultural contexts that vary
dramatically from one another.
Qualitative research can thrive with the help of abundant data available online – customers
networking on social media, online purchases and complaints redressed on company websites.
[From the perspective of industry] There is a growing sense of the need to get a deeper
understanding than numbers alone can provide.
[From the perspective of academe] There is growing acceptance towards qualitative research.
The nature of final product/publication has also extended to videographic content – videos on
consumer behavior are being increasingly promoted by peer-reviewed journals and other quality
platforms.
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5. QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: HISTORY
Research practices among professionals originated first, before it gained acceptance in academia
(Belk et al.).
Qualitative approaches to applied marketing research first gained recognition in 1930s.
Paul Lazarsfeld and team: Produced studies that included systematic analysis of hundreds of
interviews conducted with consumers. Methods: Probing, detailed questioning of interviewees, and
survey data.
In 1940s and 50s: Projective methods and ethnographies gained attention. Industry leaders
increasingly valued the results from qualitative research. Interpretive lens began to receive attention,
based on the works of semioticians and psychologists.
Initially, researchers followed push button-based Focus Groups (FGs) – i.e., only binary responses
were allowed. However, the responses they received lack depth. FGs are more open-ended at
present.
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6. QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: CHALLENGES
Qualitative research continues to grow in terms of market share, however its status has often
been contested.
Challenges emerge from:
• Practiced prejudices against qualitative work [The myth that ‘real research’ is quantitative still
prevails among market researchers.]
• Inappropriate data collection techniques [e.g., client wants to be present during
interviews/FGs; client insists on getting one or two FGs when FGs are not the suitable method
to meet the clients’ needs]
• Impoverished analyses that fall short of professional ideals [Qualitative research is time
consuming and the analysis of qualitative data is rarely fast. This means that for quick results,
researchers tend to make a superficial analysis.]
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7. QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: BARRIERS
• Most top-ranked journals are biased towards publishing studies conducted using
quantitative methods.
• There is a wide-spread notion among academic community that the knowledge produced
by qualitative research is ‘everyday knowledge’ and that produced by quantitative research
is ‘scientific knowledge’.
• Scholars of qualitative research methods are rarely recruited in reputed business schools,
especially in the West.
• Students graduate without doing a single course in qualitative methods.
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8. PHILOSOPHIES ON KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY
Objective Vs. subjective epistemology
Objective epistemology: The possibility of a theory-neutral observational language where
our sensory experience of the objects of reality provides the only secure foundation for social
scientific knowledge. Language helps the observer to passively register the facts.
Subjective epistemology: Language either creates reality or versions of reality. Universal
truth of science is refuted; truth is socially constructed through language games, discourses,
interests, traditions or world views.
Realist Vs. subjective ontology
Realist ontology: Social and natural reality has an independent existence prior to human
cognition.
Subjective ontology: What we take to be reality is an output of human cognitive processes.
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9. PHILOSOPHIES ON KNOWLEDGE AND REALITY
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10. POSITIVISM (NEO-EMPIRICISM): REALIST (O) OBJECTIVIST (E)
Similarity between positivists and neo-empiricists: our sensory experience provides
the only secure foundation for management research
Difference between positivists and neo-empiricists: Difference in defining what is
observable and not metaphysical. [For positivists, erklaren (to explain) is important. For
neo-empiricists, verstehen (understanding) and the deployment of reputedly qualitative
methods of data collection is important.]
The kind of reflexivity involved here is ‘methodological reflexivity’ (meaning: a localized
critique and evaluation of the ‘technical’ aspects of the particular methodology
deployed rather than the underlying metatheoretical assumptions that justify that
methodology in the first place.]
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11. SUBJECTIVE (O) SUBJECTIVE (E)
Truth, whether in terms of rationally grounded consensus or of correspondence to an independent
reality, is no longer considered to be a worthwhile goal for management research or a possible
moral basis for managerial practice and authority. [Postmodern thought is a classic example of this
pattern]
Deconstruction: is a way of resuscitating the subordinate terms, elevating them, amplifying the
silent voices in order to problematize the dominant understanding. Rather than creating a new
hierarchy, deconstruction re-constructs a duality of awareness within conventional consciousness.
Two movements of deconstruction
Overturning -- terms are shown to suppress their binary opposites.
Metaphorization -- recognition that positively and negatively valued terms are defined in relation
to each other and inhabit each other.
Unsettling the hegemonic representations in any text and concept is important. Management
researchers must reflexively deconstruct their own representational practices.
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12. KANTIAN VIEW: REALIST (O) SUBJECTIVE (E)
Immanuel Kant introduced the idea of transcendentals. It is based on human mind’s innate
capacities vis-à-vis a conception of reality. A noumenal reality exists independently of cognition
since a condition of human consciousness is that there must be something to be conscious
about; The a priori contents of the human mind anticipated and organized every sensory, or
phenomenal, experience. Transcendentals are accessible to us through rational reflection.
Rational deliberation involving an exploration of the transcendentals is achieved in qualitative
research. The kind of reflexivity associated with the Kantian view is epistemic reflexivity, which
is variedly named as self-reflection, socio-analysis, infra-reflexivity, radical reflexivity, reflexive
realism, and level 4 reflexivity.
As per epistemic reflexivity: knowledge cannot and should not be the outcome of privileged
access and dissemination by the authoritative few, rather legitimate knowledge must be the
outcome of unconstrained public debate and agreement.
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