MGMT 8101: Theory Building and Research Design

This invaluable sourcebook makes available all the longitudinal studies conducted over the past 60 years in the US and Canada. In one easy-to-use, convenient volume, the Inventory will enable the reader to locate and access data effortlessly. Each study is described in detail, including information on the purpose of the study, the names and addresses of the principal investigators, how the study was conducted, the current status of the study and a list of related references.

The relationship between theory and practice, research and action, is fundamental to all fields of applied social science. Should research findings and knowledge be useful for science, practice, and policy? If so, how should such research be designed, carried out and disseminated to achievethe twin goals of rigor and relevance?These challenges are particularly relevant in the applied areas of management and organization studies where there is a distinct responsibility for researchers to engage with the 'real world'. In this carefully crafted and thoughtful book, leading management researcher Andrew Van de Ven bothpresents the broad intellectual challenge of 'engaged scholarship', and also sets out a clear framework and guidelines for carrying out soundly based and useful research for advancing both science and practice.At a time when some may question the value and status of academic knowledge; and others, contrastingly, urge a closer relationship between researchers and research users - be they businesses, governments or other institutions - the challenge of engaged scholarship is as relevant as ever, and thereis a real need for the thoughtful and considered approach offered by Van de Ven.The book both provides a manifesto for engaged scholarship in the social sciences, and clear framework for research design and methodology. It will be an invaluable reference point and guide for academics, researchers and graduate students across the social sciences concerned with rigorous andrelevant research in the contemporary world.

Here is the first book a prospective doctoral candidate should read. Updated to reflect both modern technological advances and the realities of contemporary academia, it serves as an excellent overview of the dissertation process in most academic fields. Advice starts with selecting an advisor and a dissertation committee, then covers problems connected with selecting a dissertation topic, submitting the proposal, working with an advisor, and writing and defending the dissertation.

This long awaited successor of the original Cook/Campbell Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings represents updates in the field over the last two decades. The book covers four major topics in field experimentation:

Fully revised and updated, the second edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, first published in 2001, offers a source of social and behavioral sciences reference material that is broader and deeper than any other.

Revised edition of: International encyclopedia of the social sciences / David L. Sills, editor. c1968-c1991.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

This masterwork covers 231 alphabetically arranged philosophers with biographical detail and representative works, and over 160 photos and illustrations, from ancient Greek and Chinese thinkers to contemporary philosophers such as Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Students and general readers will gain a perspective on the development of philosophical thought from 900 B.C.E to modern times. Each chapter contains a biographical essay, followed by one or more overviews of representative works, and ends with an annotated bibliography providing suggestions for additional reading. These philosophers and works are most frequently taught at the secondary and undergraduate levels, commonly referenced either directly or indirectly in our daily lives, and considered by both scholars and well-read laypersons to be among the most influential of all time. World Philosophers and Their Works not only covers Western philosophers-from the Greeks, including Plato and Aristotle, through modern thinkers such as Paul M. Churchland, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Annette C. Baier-but also examines philosophical standouts from Asian and African cultures. The chronological range of coverage extends from ancient Chinese texts to great modern influences on contemporary thought.

A comprehensive history of world philosophy, this book is also a social history of global intellectual life. Eschewing polemics, it presents a sophisticated view of the multiple cultures of world history, disintegrates stereotypes of regional cultures, and reveals how creativity is driven by a range of conflicting positions in each community. We see what is sociologically universal about Western, Indian, and Asian intellectual life, as well as what combinations of social ingredients have produced their divergent pathways.

Praise for the Second Edition:  "In opposition to most literature on how to conduct good social science research which is either empirically oriented or gives priority to theoretical and philosophical considerations, which tends to make empirical research look odd or irrelevant, this volume on ′Reflexive Methodology′ explicitly turns towards a consideration of the perceptual, cognitive, theoretical, linguistic, political and cultural circumstances as backdrop of data interpretation and research design. It showed up to be the most important and informative resource and a source of enlightenment to my lecture on methodology at our institute. I can highly recommend the volume to lecturers and students alike."   Professor Sabine Troeger, Geography Institute - Library, University of Bonn Reflexivity is an essential part of the research process. Mats Alvesson and Kaj Sköldberg make explicit the links between techniques used in empirical research and different research traditions, giving a theoretically informed approach to qualitative research. The authors provide balanced reviews and critiques of the major schools of grounded theory, ethnography, hermeneutics, critical theory, postmodernism and poststructuralism, discourse analysis, genealogy and feminism. Useful reading for students and researchers across the social sciences. The first edition established itself as a ground-breaking success, providing researchers with an invaluable guide to a central problem in research methodology - namely, how to put field research and interpretations in perspective, paying attention to the interpretive, political and rhetorical nature of empirical research.  The second edition introduced a new chapter on positivism,  social constructionism and critical realism, and offered new conclusions on the applications of methodology. This third edition of Reflexive Methodology provides further updates on new research, including neorealism, and illustrations and applications of reflexive methodology in formulating research strategies, that build on the acclaimed and successful previous editions

This book offers a one-volume introduction to social science methodology, relevant to the disciplines of anthropology, economics, history, political science, psychology, and sociology. It is written for beginning students, long-time practitioners and methodologists, and applies to work conducted in qualitative and quantitative styles. It synthesizes the vast and diverse field of methodology in a way that is clear, concise, and comprehensive. While offering a handy overview of the subject, the book is also an argument about how we should conceptualize methodological problems. Tasks and criteria, the author argues - not fixed rules of procedure - best describe the search for methodological adequacy. Thinking about methodology through this lens provides a new framework for understanding work in the social sciences.

With indispensable advice for students from all social science backgrounds, this handbook provides the core conceptual and practical skills to embark on successful research.

Revised and updated in its fifth edition, Approaches to Social Research is a rigorous yet clear and engaging introduction to research methods.

Now in its third edition, this market-leading textbook continues to provide students with an excellent explanation and demonstration of the main approaches and techniques in social research methods.The book shows students how to assess the contexts within which different research methods may be used, and how they should be implemented. It covers both quantitative and qualitative research and examines the significance of this very distinction. In an accessible and student-friendly manner, thebook shows students how to go about doing their own research projects and how to write up their research.In addition to presenting a wide range of features within the text, including up-to-date empirical research examples, the third edition supports students and lecturers with a full set of online resources.bOnline Resource Centre/bFor lecturers resources include PowerPoint slides, notes to accompany the slides, case studies with questions, and a test bank to enable lecturers to create their own unique online testing sessions. For students the resources include instant feedback multiple choice questions, web links, an onlineresearch guide, interactive Excel tutorials, and access to the real-life student experiences used in the book.

A student-friendly textbook that introduces the most cutting-edge research methods applied to engaging social issues In this new Seventh Edition of his perennially successful social research text, author Russell K. Schutt, an award-winning researcher and teacher, continues to make research come alive through research stories that illustrate the methods presented in each chapter.

This long awaited successor of the original Cook/Campbell Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings represents updates in the field over the last two decades. The book covers four major topics in field experimentation:

A survey drawn from social-science research which deals with correlational, ex post facto, true experimental, and quasi-experimental designs and makes methodological recommendations. Bibliogs.

Survey Research Methods presents the very latest methodological knowledge on surveys. Author Floyd Fowler provides students and researchers who want to collect, analyze, or read about survey data with a sound basis for evaluating how each aspect of a survey can affect its precision, accuracy, and credibility.

The use of longitudinal field research methods is fundamental to understanding the dynamics of organizational life and to developing and testing theories of organizational adaptation, change, innovation and redesign. This book focuses on both the design and conduct of longitudinal research in the field and on the methods used to analyze and interpret process patterns in longitudinal data. The contributors discuss a wide range of methodological issues including: ethnographic methods; longitudinal and comparative case studies; event history analysis; and real-time tracking of events. They also address various procedures that can be used to tabulate, code and interpret both quantitative and qualitative data collected in the field.

For at least a decade, the function of the ethnographer's work as simple cultural description has been challenged. In response, ethnographic texts have been deconstructed for their origins, their biases, and their literary devices--all of which have resulted in heightened methodological self-consciousness and a concern for reflexivity. This volume explores many of the dimensions of the representational challenges facing contemporary ethnography. The distinguished contributors--Van Maanen, Manning, Wolcott, Agar, Fine, Richardson, and others--cover topics such as fieldnotes; the role of description, narrative, humor, and acknowledgments; the relationship between ethnography and other forms of writing; and alternative means of presenting ethnographic work. Anyone interested in qualitative methods, particularly ethnography, and those who are involved in the examination of the inner workings of ethnographic writing will consider this a valuable work.

Editors Norman K Denzin and Yvonna S Lincoln have put together a volume that represents the state of the art for the theory and practice of qualitative inquiry. Built on the foundation of the landmark first edition, published in 1994, the Second Edition is both the bridge and the roadmap to the territory that lies ahead for researchers across the disciplines.

Unlike other types of qualitative research, the clinical perspective in field research does not aim to be impartial and uninvolved. The clinician is usually a consultant brought in specifically to effect change in an organization, and therefore works under a very different set of technical and ethical restraints. Edgar Schein succinctly outlines the clinical perspective in field research, how it differs from other types of qualitative research and its inherent rewards and difficulties.

Using an engaging, straightforward writing style, the authors draw on their more than 50 years of hands-on experience in the field to cut through theory and offer practical guidance on every facet of the focus process, including tips for avoiding problems and pitfalls.

The teaching of qualitative analysis in the social sciences is rarely undertaken in a structured way. This handbook is designed to remedy that and to present students and researchers with a systematic method for interpreting qualitative data', whether derived from interviews, field notes, or documentary materials. The special emphasis of the book is on how to develop theory through qualitative analysis. The reader is provided with the tools for doing qualitative analysis, such as codes, memos, memo sequences, theoretical sampling and comparative analysis, and diagrams, all of which are abundantly illustrated by actual examples drawn from the author's own varied qualitative research and research consultations, as well as from his research seminars. Many of the procedural discussions are concluded with rules of thumb that can usefully guide the researchers' analytic operations. The difficulties that beginners encounter when doing qualitative analysis and the kinds of persistent questions they raise are also discussed, as is the problem of how to integrate analyses. In addition, there is a chapter on the teaching of qualitative analysis and the giving of useful advice during research consultations, and there is a discussion of the preparation of material for publication. The book has been written not only for sociologists but for all researchers in the social sciences and in such fields as education, public health, nursing, and administration who employ qualitative methods in their work.

Most writing on sociological method has been concerned with how accurate facts can be obtained and how theory can thereby be more rigorously tested. In The Discovery of Grounded Theory, Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss address the equally Important enterprise of how the discovery of theory from data--systematically obtained and analyzed in social research--can be furthered. The discovery of theory from data--grounded theory--is a major task confronting sociology, for such a theory fits empirical situations, and is understandable to sociologists and laymen alike. Most important, it provides relevant predictions, explanations, interpretations, and applications. In Part I of the book, "Generation Theory by Comparative Analysis," the authors present a strategy whereby sociologists can facilitate the discovery of grounded theory, both substantive and formal. This strategy involves the systematic choice and study of several comparison groups. In Part II, The Flexible Use of Data," the generation of theory from qualitative, especially documentary, and quantitative data Is considered. In Part III, "Implications of Grounded Theory," Glaser and Strauss examine the credibility of grounded theory. The Discovery of Grounded Theory is directed toward improving social scientists' capacity for generating theory that will be relevant to their research. While aimed primarily at sociologists, it will be useful to anyone Interested In studying social phenomena--political, educational, economic, industrial-- especially If their studies are based on qualitative data.

The case study method of teaching is a widely used educational technique in advanced learning situations, such as professional training. Although the employment of this approach is extensive, the potential as well as limitations of the method have not been comprehensively assessed. In contrast to other books on the subject that concern the details of implementation, An Audit of the Case Study Method integrates evidence on the issues and potential achievements to be attained in employing the method in different knowledge domains.

Providing a complete portal to the world of case study research, the Fifth Edition of Robert K. Yin′s bestselling text offers comprehensive coverage of the design and use of the case study method as a valid research tool. The book offers a clear definition of the case study method as well as discussion of design and analysis techniques. The Fifth Edition has been updated with nine new case studies, three new appendices, seven tutorials presented at the end of relevant chapters, increased coverage of values and ethics, expanded discussion on logic models, a brief glossary, and completely updated citations. This book includes exemplary case studies drawn from a wide variety of academic fields.

A leading M.I.T. social scientist and consultant examines five professions--engineering, architecture, management, psychotherapy, and town planning--to show how professionals really go about solving problems.The best professionals, Donald Schön maintains, know more than they can put into words. To meet the challenges of their work, they rely less on formulas learned in graduate school than on the kind of improvisation learned in practice. This unarticulated, largely unexamined process is the subject of Schön’s provocatively original book, an effort to show precisely how ”reflection-in-action” works and how this vital creativity might be fostered in future professionals.