Enhancing the Trustworthiness of Qualitative Research in International Business

Zusammenfassung

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Reliability, validity, generalisability and objectivity are fundamental concerns for quantitative researchers. For qualitative research, however, the role of these dimensions is blurred. Some researchers argue that these dimensions are not applicable to qualitative research and a qualitative researcher's tool chest should be geared towards trustworthiness and encompass issues such as credibility, dependability, transferability and confirmability. * This paper advocates the use of formalised and software-based procedures for the analysis and interpretation of qualitative interview data. It is argued that International Business research, with a focus on international datasets, equivalence issues, multiple research environments and multiple researchers, will benefit from formalisation. The use of software programmes is deemed to help to substantiate the analysis and interpretation of textual interview data.

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Auszug

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Enhancing the Trustworthiness of Qualitative Research in International Business

Introduction

The International Business literature predominantly deals with an empirical and analytical research agenda. The focus is on quantitative methodologies, pursuing well-defined research problems with rigorous empirical investigations (Yang/Wang/Su 2006). We argue that research in International Business (IB) often deals with dynamic and volatile situations that demand creative and flexible research designs and methodologies (Ghauri/ Gronhaug 2005, McDonald 1985). Many scholars suggest exploratory research and qualitative methodologies to capture multi-dimensional phenomena (Anderson 1983, Yin 2003) and non-linear, sometimes fuzzy, patterns of our realities (Firat 1997, Sinkovics/ Penz/Ghauri 2005). These perspectives are supported by methodological arguments, that qualitative methodologies can help to find "meaning behind the numbers", provide flexibility without requiring large samples (Sykes 1990) and offer a clear and holistic view of the context (Denzin/Lincoln 1994, Ghauri/Granhaug 2005, Ruyter/Scholl 1998). Moreover, driven by the globalisation of markets, production, and diverse business environments, there is an increasing emphasis on comparative empirical research methodology (Cavusgil/Das 1997, Knight/Spreng/Yaprak 2003, Sekaran 1983). As a result, cross-national and/or cross-cultural perspectives which emerged in the psychological literature (e.g., Berry 1989, Pike 1966, Triandis/Berry 1980) were quickly adopted in other fields and extended to areas such as Management, International Business and Marketing (see e.g., Cavusgil/Das 1997, Peng/Peterson/Shyi 1991, Steenkamp/Baumgartner 1998, Earley/Singh 1995)1. However, despite calls for more integrative research, and attempts to breaking down the 'positivist-epistomologicaP divide, the adoption of qualitative methodologies in IB is still scarce (Parkhe 1993, Peterson 2004, Yang/Wang/Su 2006). It is against this background that we endeavour to consider methodological issues for qualitative International Business research, particularly that building on text narratives from interviews.

Problem and Purpose

The literature offers a vast collection of methods for qualitative inquiry (Bickman/Rog 1997, Denzin/Lincoln 1994, Miles/Huberman 1994, Peterson 2004, Strauss/Corbin 1994, Van Maanen 1 983) and these methods appear particularly suitable for research where multiple actors and environments are involved. Current standards of qualitative data analysis are often considered as less rigorous and half-formulated art (Miles 1979). Researchers acknowledge the need to analyse qualitative data and establish meaning in a systematic way...

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