Change of Research Context

I have decided to change my research essay context from international joint ventures to supply alliances since I realized the difficulty of collecting evidence to support the central argument.  

First, in my former international joint venture (IJV) research context, I need to do three interviews. I need to conduct interviews with accountants in the IJV to determine how management control systems are used in IJV. I also need to interview each boundary spanner of the partners in IJV to collect information regarding to the social relationships between them, as well as the relationship between either one of them with outsiders. However, the target IJV that I am aiming to conduct interviews is in their busy seasons currently and prefers getting interviews after this busy period. This means that I could not finish the research essay within time limited. Second, I am struggling for deciding which IJV partner side should I stand for. Previous literature does not give clear guidance regarding to  which partner side should research papers stand for in IJV literature. The results of the research essays based on one partner may differ from that based on another partner. Third, theoretical definition of IJV is vague, which makes it difficult to determine an IJV.

Due to time constraint and the difficulty in collecting evidence. I decided to use supply alliances as my research context. The choice of supply alliances is for the following reasons. First, supply alliances are pervasive nowadays, which provides rich evidences pool. Second, supply alliance literature provides some guidance in relation to which partner side should a research stands on. Lastly, the identification of supply alliances is clearer than that of IJV.

Good Proposal Template

Kerry uploaded a good proposal template, which has eight closely related elements: key academic paper, research problem/gab in that academic paper, the importance of the research problem/gab in that academic paper, basic process model of to be developed, the central theory to be used, suitable evidences to fill the gab, the ways of collecting those evidences.

A good research proposal also needs logic and continuous flow of these eight elements rather than develops them as separated pieces. This means whenever we write a research paper, we have to consider the eight elements together where each element copes with each other. For example, research problem/gab in extant literature must be answered by developing a research model for which requires an appropriate theory to support. The evidence collected must be related the model we develop and be able to answer the research problem/gab. In this way, the research paper can make readers feel “comfortable” and trigger their interest of keeping on reading.

From my experience, it is not always easy to develop such a good research proposal with these eight closely related elements. Sometimes, although you have a good research problem and model, the data is hardly to collect, which force you to change your research topic. Sometimes, although you have good ways for collecting great data, you find it hard to make significant contribution to extant literature based on those available data. But this does not mean we are unable to develop a good research proposal following this template. If we can think thoroughly these elements together and conduct a sufficient amount of researches at the beginning to determine the feasibility of our thoughts, it can save lots of time when we write our research proposal.   

Experiences of First Interview

Me and Yi did three interviews last Friday. I would like to share my experience with all of you.

Overview of the interview process

Before doing interviews, we first illustrated the aim and the procedure of the interview to interviewees. Then, we assured these three interviewees that a) any information obtained in the interview will not be reported without their consent b) information obtained in the interview will be used only for the purpose of this study. Lastly, we informed these three interviewees that they would be given the report if requested. These proceudres seek to promote trust between interviewees and us so that interviewees are open amd honsty to respond our questions.  

All three interviewees are Chinese students. The first interviewee is a male and currently doing a master degree in ANU. The second interviewee is a female and currently doing a master degree in ANU. The third interviewee is a female who finished her master degree in ANU two years ago. These three interviewees were asked about their experiences of studying in ANU and living in Canberra. 

Some thoughts about the interviews 

First, these three interviewees are all my close friends. These three interviewees are willling to cooperate with us. From the interviews, I could not tell that they were inentionall hiding nor relutant to tell us information. I am curious to think whether the interviews would be so favouring if the interviewees are those who I did not know? Next time I will test this.  

Second, all these three interviewees are Chinese internatinal students who have traditional Eastern norms and values. I am wondering whether interviews results will be different if interviewees are from Western countries (e.g. Euro)? 

Third, at the first instance, me and Yi were struggling whether to design specific questions for interviewees. We finally agreed with each other that we would not design specific questions which may limit the scope of interview results. But in our real research project, since our research project focuses on specific issues, is it necessary for us to design specific issues before doing interviews? 

Fourth, I found it is quite helpful that if we could do tape recording and taking notes/memos simultaneously. This is specifically useful when we do critical analysis, which can save us a lot of time. We do not need to re-listen interview and we can pick up critial information from our notes/memos. 

Lastly, we did our first two interviews on a group context and third interview individually. We found group interviews may make interviewees more relax, which is favourable to the interview results.     

Building Relationship before Doing Interviews

As discussed a little bit with Yi on yesterday's class, I would like to share this interesting question with all of you. The key point is whether interviewees will perform differently or disguise the truth when they know the interview will be recorded.

To be honest, I had little experiences in doing interviews. But Yi told me his experience yesterday that when he had several interviews with Chinese people in China. He finds that interviewees will hide or disguise the truth. Instead, they fabricate some fake information to make short shrift of interviewer. I think there are many reasons for Chinese interviewees to behave this way. First, they may be afraid to leak some confidential information during the conversion. Second, they may feel uncomfortable if they know that they will be recorded. Thus, they may be intentionally some information. Third, they may try to avoid some negative effect on them in case their recodings is used by others to act against them. Fourth, they will respnd negatively if they know they are going to be recorded. The worst situation is that they will not give the researchers even an interview opportunity if they know that the interview is to be recorded.

As disussed above, the questions then I have is whether we have to do tape recordings when we conduct interviews? Or, there may exist a way to overcome this issue?

One solution I am thinking about is to build relationships with interviwees before interviewing them. This may specially useful in doing interviews for Chinese people. In China, building relationships with people and develop personal social networks are extremely importnat both for personal development and dealing business. There are many ways to build such relationships such as introduction by mutual friends, relatives, governments, professors and colleagues.

The introduction letter is far less enough to build relatinoships with interviewees. There are many things you could to develop your relationship with interviewees to a deep stage. For example, inviting them to have a relaxed meal, trying to watch and play sports with them if they have such interest and introducing friends who maybe helpful to them. 

After the attempt to develop relatinoships with interviewees, they may deem you as a good friend on who they can trust. This may wide up their baseline to sensitive questions and may allow you to do intervoew recordings. 

These are my thinking and some tips in doing interviews, specially for Chinese interviewees. Hope this can help.     

Case Study vs Field Study

Case study is a qualitative research method where a or multiple cases with specific context are investigated. Case study foucses on studying organizations, events and activities with its specific context, aiming to link theory to practice. In this way, it provides practical evidence to test, support or refute existing theory, as well as to develop a new theory. Therefore, case study is particularly useful in answering "how" and "why' questions, as well as identifying problems and best practices in the particular context. Schon (1983, p.50) argues that case study is vauable to the "entire process of reflection-in-action, which is central to the 'art' by whcih practitioners sometimes deal well with situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness and value conflict". 

Case study may take researchers either a short or long time to complete, depending on the research question. Data collection for conducting a case study may be in the form of interviews, archival documents and experiments.

Field research is about studying phenomena in their nature setting (Atkinson and Shaffir, 1998). Researchers who advocate field research contend that natural behaviour can not be captured from the outside. Field research is particularly useful when researchers want to study the natural habit of their target observations, standing from the point of view of those who are observed.

In order to collect data in field research, researchers have to pick up a particular site and stay in that site for a long period. Further, researhcers have to get used to the "local cultural" of the research site and get recognized by "local people" in the research site. Shaffir and Stebbins (1991) describes field research as a continuous process including getting in, learning the reopes, maintaining relatinoships, and leaving.

Nevertheless, whenever doing case study or field research, it is always important to pick up case(s) or research site that a) is helpful in answering research problems/questions and b) is closely related to the theoretical framework in the research paper.

Building a theory

Shirley classifies the structual of theory into five types: theory for analyzing, theory for explaining, theory for predicting, theory for explaining and predicting, and theory for design and action. Although there may be different types of theories, i am thinking how these different types of theories are derived through the well-designed process of theorizing.

There are various well-recognized theories in various disciplines (e.g. agency theory, actor-network theory, and institutional theory), whcih are used extensively used by researchers. However, it is possible to have a good 'anonymous theory' as long as it is well-theorized. One way to build a theory is to use well-recognized theories as basis and transform them to suit a specific context. Another way is to create a new theory where we have to link and bridge two or more constucts by developing a sensable process between constrcuts. Either way, a good theory 'makes a significant original contribution to knowledge'.

   

Qualitative Research and Quantitive Research, which ine is better?

Generally speaking, quantitive research aims to derive a relationship between two variables which is out there indepent of human beings while qualitative research attempts to investigate the processes in a particualr phenomena. I think there is no 'the best research approach' as qualitative research and quantitive research are based on different views. Quantitive research generates a constant relationship, which seems to create new knowledge. However, this may be too general and the 'golden rule' may not be suitable for all situations. Qualitative research focus contextual factors, which enables researhcers to gaint insight knowledge. However, complexity is introduced since each context will have a specific rule.

Really, both quantitive and qualitative research have pros and cons. Researchers could apply either one of the two research mehtod, depending on their believes and research questions. Maybe the mix use of quantitive research and qualitative research will bring a suprising result.