Principles and Practice in Business and Management Research

This text seeks to address issues of research methodology in business and management at both a theoretical and practical level. In providing examples of research methods in action, the book is intended as a practical complement to a standard methods text. In the authors' opinion, business and management do not offer a distinctive mode of explanation, rather they comprise the application and development of theoretical and empirical knowledge from established disciplines to business and management activity. In drawing from a number of intellectual sources, management research is multi-disciplinary, and often inter-disciplinary, in nature. Consequently, approaches to empirical research are wide ranging. The authors attempt to bring together the theory and practice of business and management research. In the introduction they provide a classification of research methodologies in terms of (i) philosophical assumptions regarding the nature and explanation of social action upon which they are premised, and (ii) data collection and analysis techniques with which they are implemented.
These themes are then illustrated in the following chapters, each of which is an account of a research project in action.