Week 1 – Assignment: Apply the Qualitative Method and the Research Problem

SAGE Research Methods

The Essentials of Qualitative Business Research

Pub. Date: 2017

Product: SAGE Research Methods

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

Methods: Qualitative data collection, Qualitative data analysis, Qualitative measures

Keywords: business and management, craft work, judgment (psychology)

Disciplines: Business and Management, Economics

Access Date: January 4, 2023

Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Ltd.

City: London

Online ISBN: 9781526419552

© 2017 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

[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 re-

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

manship.

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 Re-

search?] 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 re-

ligion, 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, econo-

mists, 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 interpre-

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tation 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 re-

search 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

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

ing text or interpreting it

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

itative 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 re-

finement, 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 cre-

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

edge 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 feed-

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back 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, contin-

gent. 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.

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

tioning 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 com-

munities, 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 re-

search 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.

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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 qual-

itative business research as craft, as an activity involving piecing together, working in what is some-

times referred to as bricolage, a process of taking existing materials, and forming them into some-

thing 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 re-

search is a creative process

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

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 in-

volving 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 deflect-

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

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mean? It means something that has credibility, something that

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

tributes 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.

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

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