Respond to two or more of your colleagues’ postings in one or more of the following ways:

Post an analysis of the relationship between your personal research philosophy and quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Your analysis should include the following:

· Identify the key concepts, propositions, precepts, etc., of your personal research philosophy, including any rationale for your choice. 

· Analyze the relationship between your research philosophy and the chosen research methodology for your Doctoral Study.

· Analyze how the choice of methodology can impact a Doctoral Study, as well as influence later research decisions and results. 

Be sure to support your work with a minimum of two specific citations from this week’s Learning Resources and at least one additional scholarly source.

Guillermo

My doctoral study aims to understand the role of customer relationship management in driving repeat business for capital goods, when products are purchased infrequently, i.e., more than five years between purchases.

Personal Research Philosophy

My personal research philosophy follows the principles of pragmatism as explained by Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill (2015). Throughout my career in marketing, research is intended to provide enough reliable information to drive product development and sales strategy effectively, and this means that research must consider the most salient aspects of each research approach to ensure a positive outcome and avoid costly mistakes. Positivism is needed to ensure the data is objective and unbiased. Critical realism helps account for different behaviors and attitudes because a “one size fits all” solution rarely works. Interpretivism allows the understanding of the best customers and identifies similarities in other customer groups, or segments, to leverage existing strengths as avenues for growth. The postmodernist philosophy is useful to help reconcile data to views and expectations of different stakeholder with different vantage points. For example, engineering needs different inputs than accounting or sales when it comes to customer preferences.

Research Methodology for Doctoral Study

The doctoral study will use a two-phase approach for inquiry. The exploratory phase will rely on qualitative research to understand the process and decision factors that different facilities use to determine how to choose potential suppliers; this stage will help identify the common attributes sought by potential customers. The descriptive phase will quantify the relative importance of the factors used is supplier selection to determine the relative importance of relationship in the supplier selection.  This combined approach is intended to help identify and qualify the relative importance of a CRM system as a tool for customer retention over long periods.

Research Decisions and Results

The use of a combined approach is expected to help avoid bias and pre-conceived idealizations that may hinder substantive inquiry (Borgianni, Cascini, & Rotini, 2015). The topic of CRM is widely understood, and the role of relationships is considered a significant contributor for repeat business in on-going relationships, but questions exist about the role of relationships when the time between interactions is long (Dowell, Morrison, & Heffernan, 2015).   As proposed by Onwuegbuzie and Leech (2005) the combined approach will help improve descriptive and empirical precision in a sub-segment of the population where research is limited.

 

References

Borgianni, Y., Cascini, G., & Rotini, F. (2015). Business Process Reengineering driven by customer value: A support for undertaking decisions under uncertainty conditions. Computers in Industry, 68, 132–147.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2015.01.001

Dowell, D., Morrison, M., & Heffernan, T. (2015). The changing importance of affective trust and cognitive trust across the relationship lifecycle: A study of business-to-business relationships. Industrial Marketing Management, 44, 119–130.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2014.10.016

Ketokivi, M., & Mcintosh, C. N. (2017). Addressing the endogeneity dilemma in operations management research: Theoretical, empirical, and pragmatic considerations. Journal of Operations Management, 52, 1–14.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jom.2017.05.001

Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Leech, N. L. (2005). Taking the "Q" out of research: Teaching research methodology courses without the divide between quantitative and qualitative paradigms. Quality and Quantity, 39(3), 267–295.  https://doi:10.1007/s11135-004-1670-0

Saunders, M. N. K., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2015). Research methods for business students (7th ed.). Essex, England: Pearson Education Limited.

Michael

Scholars have many different ways to conduct and write research papers. The decision must occur early in the process, so the study reads succinctly. As Walden University Doctorate of Business Administration students, we must consider each method and choose one that best represents our chosen business problem. In this week’s discussion, I identify my particular research philosophy and the rationale for its use. Then I analyze the relationship between the research philosophy and my chosen research methodology for my Doctoral Study. Finally, I examine how the choice of the methodology can impact a Doctoral Study and future research decisions. 

Personal Research Philosophy and Rationale

Pragmatism research starts with a problem and aims to contribute practical solutions for the future (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2015). This philosophy analyzes the problem with a perspective that something is wrong and needs a correction using a single method or multiple methods to undertake the research. I believe this best fits my Doctoral Study because of the criteria we students must use at Walden University. We begin with a business problem that a business leader has the power to mitigate. The business problem is essential to the Doctoral Study, so it is equally vital to the research. A researcher has two distinct tasks, the first is to be specific to what they want to find out, and the second is to determine the best way to do it (Abutabenjeh & Jaradat, 2018). Using pragmatism also allows the researcher to follow a qualitative or quantitative approach or both as the methodology (Saunders et al., 2015). 

Research Philosophy and Research Methodology

Qualitative and quantitative methods present a different view of the studied phenomenon and use different means to persuade the reader of the validity of the conclusions drawn (Firestone, 1987). As noted above, while using a pragmatic approach, I could use a qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methodology. So far, I have chosen the quantitative because of the use of numerical data and my ability to find enough to support the study. The foundation of the Doctoral Study will be the problem so supporting it with statistics seems reasonable, and it matches my chosen philosophy. More specifically, my research objective is confirmatory meaning the goal of the study is to test or prove a hypothesis (Onwuegbuzie & Leech, 2005).

Impact of Research Methodology

Research methodology has a significant impact on the Doctoral Study because it affects future decisions that occur throughout the fact-gathering process. A quantitative research design may use questionnaires as data collection whereas qualitative is more personal and may use interviews (Saunders et al., 2015). Both will require access to the participants, but the qualitative method uses a more intimate approach and more time investment than a simple one-page questionnaire. It is also worthy to point out because of the time investment, and it might be difficult to find people to participate in a one-on-one interview compared to just completing a questionnaire. An ideal quantitative researcher remains detached to avoid research bias, but the qualitative researcher becomes immersed in the phenomenon of interest (Firestone, 1987).   

Conclusion

Completing a scholarly paper such as a Doctoral Study is quite an academic achievement. Throughout the time spent, there are common decisions an author must make that have a profound effect on the outcome of the study. This discussion looked at the philosophy that I will incorporate as part of my Doctoral Study. It then reviewed the relationship between research philosophy and methodology. Lastly, it explained how methodology choice might affect later research decisions and results. Scholars should evaluate how philosophy and methodology apply to their research and develop sound reasons to support how to conduct their study.  

References

Abutabenjeh, S., & Jaradat, R. (2018). Clarification of Research Design, Research Methods, and Research Methodology: A Guide for Public Administration Researchers and Practitioners. Teaching Public Administration, 36(3), 237–258. doi:10.1177/0144739418775787

Firestone, W. A. (1987). Meaning in method: The rhetoric of quantitative   and qualitative research. Educational Researcher, 16(7), 16–21. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED292816.pdf

Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Leech, N. L. (2005). Taking the “Q” out of research: Teaching research methodology courses without the divide between quantitative and qualitative paradigms. Quality and Quantity, 39(3), 267–295. doi:10.1007/s11135-004-1670-0

Saunders, M. N. K., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2015). Research methods for business students (7th ed.). Essex, England: Pearson Education Limited.