SAGE Research Methods (SRM)

Covering all the major qualitative approaches in business studies (including case study research, ethnography, narrative inquiry, discourse analysis, grounded theory and action research), this practical how-to guide shows how qualitative methods are used within management, marketing, organizational studies, etc. Within each approach, the authors consider crucial issues such as framing the research, generating research questions, getting access, collecting empirical materials, reporting the results and evaluating the research.

Accessible and reader-friendly this handbook promotes the curent overarching business philosophy of customer/market focus by emphasizing the need for market research to provide the insights required for making decisions. This book identifies such troubling current trends as biased sample answers on long questionnaires, and `professionals' whose job is to skew focus group responses. Top international researchers from both academia and practice have come together here to provide a broad range of ideas and applications.

This is a research book with a difference. It tells the truth about the research process. Each phase of a research project is addressed in the simultaneous order in which researchers often undertake them. Importantly, the book recognizes that writing up a research project is rarely organized in the form in which the dissertation is finally presented. Readers are given guidelines to help them assess the kind of researcher they are and the all important question of how to chose a research project is answered.

This is an invaluable introduction for all students and researchers of management confronting a new research project. How to frame their research questions? Which questions to ask? How to assess the relevance and value of different research methodologies? How to evaluate the outputs of research? Understanding Management Research provides an overview of the principal epistemological debates in social science and how these lead to and are expressed in different ways of conceiving and undertaking organizational research.

Each year, academic institutions produce thousands of social science graduates, skilled in applied social research - many more than can be absorbed into the teaching profession. In this volume, Marilyn Mitchell provides information often left out of the social science curriculum - how and where can social scientists put their skills to use in the private sector? The book outlines some of the basic private sector research settings, and then provides clear and sensible advice on how to rename skills and market most effectively to the business community.