Creating Your Own Qualitative Research Approach: Selecting, Integrating and Operationalizing Philosophy, Methodology and Methods

Abstract

Qualitative research for theory building is gaining increasing prominence in management research. With the growing complexity of organizations and their experience of continuous flux, suitable approaches to create action-oriented knowledge are emerging. The underexplored aspects of interpretive ontology and epistemology are being adopted more and more by contemporary scholars. The nascent state of the field is a challenge, on one hand, but an opportunity to become innovative, on the other. The article narrates one such attempt of devising a qualitative research approach by synthesizing from multiple perspectives and addressing the issues of philosophy, methodology and methods. The three issues are taken for granted in quantitative positivist research as the methodologies and methods are built on a positivist philosophy. However, it becomes a challenge in a qualitative research as methodologies and methods have been built for the philosophy of both positivist and interpretive thinking, an issue often not so explicit. Moreover, the existing resources on qualitative research have a partial appeal as they lean in favour of either one of the three issues—philosophy, methodology or methods. One needs to be creative in developing a holistic approach by selecting, integrating and operationalizing all the three issues.