BRI

The Essentials of Qualitative

Business Research

Video Title: The Essentials of Qualitative Business Research

Originally Published: 2017

Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Ltd.

City: London

ISBN: 9781526419552

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781526419552

(c) 2017 SAGE Publications Ltd.

This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods.

[MUSIC PLAYING] [The Essentials of Qualitative Business Research]

DR. EMMA BELL: I'm Emma Bell, and I'm a Professor of Management and Organization Studies at

Keele University. [Dr. Emma Bell, Professor of Management and Organization Studis].

DR. HUGH WILMOTT: And I'm Hugh Wilmott, and I'm a Professor of Management at Cass Business

School and also at Cardiff Business School. We're going to be talking about qualitative business

research, and we're going to start with a quote from C. Wright Mills, who refers to intellectual

craftsmanship.

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: We perhaps prefer to call that intellectual craft person ship. The

quote really indicates the kind of area that we want to talk about today. The key point is that we want

to suggest that qualitative research is not about religiously following procedures,

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: but it's a much more creative process, a process where craft is

the appropriate metaphor, where we try to craft our activity to be creative, to recognize that there's a

room for rules and procedures, but also scope to be much more creative in understanding

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: the social world. So it's this craft practice that we want to explore

and emphasize today. So in this tutorial, we want to cover three areas. We want to start by identifying

some of the characteristics of qualitative business research. Then we want to explore a little bit on

how qualitative business

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: research is crafted. And then we want finally to look at some

of these threats and opportunities for qualitative business research. [What is Qualitative Business

Research?] The first point to be made is that business, and management, and so on, is one sphere

of what

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: we do which can be researched. There are other spheres like

religion, or family, science, and so on. But our focus here is the area of business and management,

broadly defined. And we would say that this sphere comprises a lot of practices, social practices, what

people do on a day to day basis.

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: And so the methods of social science are equally applicable

for studying this sphere. So we have psychologists. We have sociologists, and anthropologists,

economists, and so on, examining the sphere. [What is Qualitative Research?]

DR. EMMA BELL: So we've talked about qualitative business research, but I want to explore in a

little more detail now what we mean by qualitative research. And we need to start by using the

word, "interpretation." Interpretation is crucial to what qualitative researches do. That involves the

interpretation of words.

DR. EMMA BELL [continued]: That include various forms of textual data, interview data, written

words. And so often, the distinction that is made between quantitative research and qualitative

research is that the former is about numbers, and the latter is focusing on words.

DR. EMMA BELL [continued]: But that really is to oversimplify things. In some ways, the matter of

interpretation is something that's common to both quantitative and qualitative research. And so we

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might say that because of that, both kinds of research are "crafty." They involve some aspect of

turning text or interpreting it

DR. EMMA BELL [continued]: in a way that changes its meaning or overlays meaning. And so

qualitative research involves a continuous exercise of judgment, a continuous process of

imaginatively working with data in ways that transform it.

DR. EMMA BELL [continued]: [How is Qualitative Business Research Crafted?]

DR. HUGH WILMOTT: So we'll start by looking at three quotes that in different ways, illuminates what

we mean by craft in qualitative business research. So take a look at the first quote. ["Research is a

craft. The learning of craft skills may take years of trial and error. Through practice one learns to ask

research questions, how to conduct research projects, and what to strive for when writing a research

paper. Significant research then, is a way of thinking that can be called craftsmanship."] Caft, R.

(1983). Learning the craft of organizational research, Academy of Management Review, 8, 539-546.

It recognizes that the development of these skills occurs over time.

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: They can't be rushed. It's a matter of continuous practice and

refinement, a process of trial and error, of learning as much from the difficulties of undertaking

research as from the successes, and developing really a way of thinking, the kind that Emma was

discussing just now,

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: where imagination, the capacity to think in more broad ways

to make connections, and so on, becomes very, very important. [Craftwork involves the disciplined

creativity that results in a tangible and well made product--in this case, the piece of research.

Knowledge of methods and theoreticcal paradigns alone is therefore insufficient for engaging in the

craft of research. Of much more value is the noton of an intellectual tradition."] Prasad, P. (2005).

Crafting qualitative research; Working in the post-positivist traditions. Armonk, NY; M.E. Sharpe.

But as the second quote points out, it is a disciplined process, and that discipline comes through

processes of self-reflection,

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: but also through engaging with other researchers, getting

feedback from other researchers, and developing, as any craftsperson would, the capacity to

undertake research, working within specific intellectual traditions. So these traditions develop over

time,

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: and people develop apprenticeships within those traditions.

"Craftwork is construed as the more exploratory expressions of embedded and aesthetic forms

of knowledge. Craft is a starting place, a set of possibilities. It avoids absolutes, certainties, over

robust definitions, solace. It offers places, interstices, where objects and people meet. It is unstable,

contingent. It is about experience. It is about desire. It can be beautiful. (de Waal)" Cunlife, A.L.

(2011). Crafting qualitative research; Morgan and Smircich 30 years on. Organizational Research

Methods, 14, 647-673. The final quote, again, tries to highlight some of the important features of craft

work. So, for example, it is skeptical about certainties.

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DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: It's skeptical about absolutes. In other words, it is constantly

questioning existing forms of authority. It looks for gaps that exist, in terms of how we think, rather

than following rigid pathways.

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: And therefore, there is a degree of instability about it. There's a

degree of contingency about it, and there's a kind of aesthetics about the process. I suppose it's like

when you see something that is being produced by a crafts person, and you can sense that there is

an aesthetic quality

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: to that piece of work.

DR. EMMA BELL: So we need to understand research craft work as a socially embedded practice,

or something that relies on skills, on being regularly practiced, as an activity that's learned within

communities, that's learned by doing research, that's

DR. EMMA BELL [continued]: learned by enacting certain practices within groups. And so from that,

we get a sense of the nature of craft as an activity that is intuitive, that is tacit, rather than explicit, and

therefore,

DR. EMMA BELL [continued]: cannot be acquired through the following of set rules and procedures.

And the image that you see on the slide now is of a craft worker, of somebody working with clay, and

forming it into a pot. And we see this as a very useful metaphor,

DR. EMMA BELL [continued]: in terms of communicating what the essential characteristics of

research craft entail, because it highlights the intimate relationship between the craft worker and the

object with which they engage. They work with their hands to form something,

DR. EMMA BELL [continued]: and it's a creative process of engagement. And the quote that you see

here relates to the nature of that learning process, the way in which it is a form of apprenticeship.

Very often, and I think Hugh and I could probably exchange stories of how we learnt our research

craft,

DR. EMMA BELL [continued]: but we learnt it through watching others, through doing research in

groups, and talking about research with other researchers. And it's that kind of process of learning

that we believe is essential in qualitative business research. In this next image, you see a patchwork

quilt,

DR. EMMA BELL [continued]: which is another useful metaphor for thinking about the nature of

qualitative business research as craft, as an activity involving piecing together, working in what is

sometimes referred to as bricolage, a process of taking existing materials, and forming them into

something new.

DR. EMMA BELL [continued]: And this image also draws attention to something about the process of

analyzing qualitative data as an activity which involves forming patterns, patterns in the data that then

become something meaningful, something which is recognizable. [Key points -Qualitative research is

a creative process

DR. EMMA BELL [continued]: that can be likened to a craft. -Like a craft, it is mastered by learning

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while doing. -It requires a deep commitment to exploration, involving imagination and creativity. -If

done well, it results in a well made research product that has credibility, new insights, contributes to

the tradition and is illuminating to the participants.]

DR. HUGH WILMOTT: So drawing this section of our tutorial to a close, we've tried to summarize

some of the key points. And we begin with this quote from Adamson, whose book is called, Thinking

Through Craft. And he stresses how for him, at least, and for us, craft is very much a process.

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: It's an approach. It's an attitude, a habit of action. It's something

that develops over time through practice, through adversity, through learning from others, through

trying out things, finding out what works, and what doesn't.

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: As he says, it's not about a classification of objects, or people, or

institutions. So we've tried to identify how craft is experienced, and also, how craft is characterized.

And we've stressed that it involves

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: a deep commitment, a personal commitment to exploration

involving imagination, involving creativity. That involves, in itself, considerable effort, physical effort,

as well as mental effort. You need to have the stamina to maintain a research

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: program to keep going, not to get disappointed, not to get

deflected, and so on. And the idea, in the end, is to come out with a well-made product. What does

that mean? It means something that has credibility, something that

DR. HUGH WILMOTT [continued]: offers new insights, and of course, something ultimately that

contributes to whatever intellectual tradition that you happen to be working in and one hopes also is

illuminating for the people who you happen to be researching.

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