Search results

As qualitative researchers struggle to come to grips with the technological revolution, they are faced with the necessity of learning and teaching qualitative data analysis software in higher education research courses. This change has significant implications for their practice as researchers and teachers. In this article we provide experienced‐based recommendations for individual practice (research instructors, dissertation advisers, and doctoral students) and for institutional practice (scaling up for deep integration of qualitative data analysis software). Our recommendations are grounded in hard‐earned experience gleaned from many years of working with individuals and institutional contexts to improve the use of qualitative research in higher education.

As qualitative researchers struggle to come to grips with the technological revolution, they are faced with the necessity of learning and teaching qualitative data analysis software in higher education research courses. This change has significant implications for their practice as researchers and teachers. In this article we provide experienced‐based recommendations for individual practice (research instructors, dissertation advisers, and doctoral students) and for institutional practice (scaling up for deep integration of qualitative data analysis software). Our recommendations are grounded in hard‐earned experience gleaned from many years of working with individuals and institutional contexts to improve the use of qualitative research in higher education.

The purpose of this paper is to present a method for a structured literature review (SLR). An SLR is a method for examining a corpus of scholarly literature, to develop insights, critical reflections, future research paths and research questions. SLRs are common in scientific disciplines dominated by quantitative approaches, but they can be adapted in accounting studies since quantitative and qualitative approaches are commonly accepted.

A literature review, as a piece of academic writing, must have a logical, planned structure. The authors also argue it requires tests based on qualitative and quantitative methods. Therefore, the authors describe ten steps for developing an SLR.

The SLR method is a way that scholars can stand “on the shoulders of giants” and provide insightful and impactful research that is different to the traditional authorship approaches to literature reviews.

Traditional literature reviews can have varied results because of a lack of rigour. SLRs use a process that, through a set of rules, potentially offers less bias and more transparency of the execution and measures and techniques of validation and reliability.

SLRs provide an approach that can help academics to discover under-investigated topics and methods, nurturing, therefore, the development of new knowledge areas and research approaches.

The paper presents accounting researchers with an opportunity to develop insightful and publishable studies, and also serves as a basis for developing future research agendas in the accounting field. The authors advocate the SLR method especially to higher degree research students and emerging scholars as a way of potentially developing robust and defensible research agendas and questions.

Hybrid structures are emerging in the leisure sector that are neither museums nor amusement parks, but which borrow elements from both. Dedicated to the exploration of a cultural theme (cultural heritage, ecosystems and historic events), they use experiential marketing levers to entertain large publics while at the same time pursuing the cultural integrity of heritage. This study aims to examine how visitors perceive and experience the offer proposed by these hybrid museums and how they manage the dual (cognitive and sensorial) stimulation. The authors then consider the extent to which the experiential levers used to dramatize these venues help to deliver a unique experience.

The authors developed a qualitative approach based on a case study methodology. The authors first selected the case studies (the Cité du Vin – a wine museum in Bordeaux, France and the Cité de l’Océan – a museum dedicated to the ocean at Biarritz, France) and analysed them from two angles. The authors began by examining the managerial perspective from secondary data to identify the experiential levers used by providers and the promises made to visitors in terms of experience. The authors then analysed the visitors’ experiences through a netnographic approach. The data were drawn from visitor reviews of their experience as posted on Tripadvisor.

The authors show that hybrid museums manage to provide visitors with edutainment value, but the promise made by managers for a memorable experience by way of an immersive journey is not kept. The authors demonstrate that a hybrid museum environment contains certain elements that prevent visitors from enjoying immersion. More specifically, the authors note issues regarding the way the theme is expressed through spectacular buildings, the way visitors are free to choose their visit and the scenarization presented through digital devices. The authors also show that hybrid museums are perceived largely as traditional museums and so are subject to culturally-established preconceptions.

This contribution concerns a topic that has drawn little attention in the marketing literature, namely, hybrid museums. The authors adopted a qualitative methodology from the perspective of both the provider and the consumer to gain a global understanding of the hybrid museum. The data were analysed using a manual thematic analysis, completed with a QDAS to support the findings.

Giampietro Gobo called for new methods that combine qualitative and quantitative approaches in a single instrument, suggesting this was the next challenge facing social research and mixed methods in particular. The purpose of this paper is to respond to that challenge.

An overview of methods, demonstrating their inherently mixed qualities, with special emphasis on a range of methods that can be classified as merged.

The real challenge is not to find merged methods, but to ensure integration of the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the methods used during the analysis and writing processes.

Researchers need to be alerted to the mixed elements within their work, to learn how to better tap into these and to exploit the integrative potential of their methods during analysis and writing. Researchers need more “rounded” methods training.

This paper refocuses the challenge facing mixed methods research.

The purpose of this study is to uncover ground truth insights underlying the agriculture crisis from the perspectives of rural farmers in North-East Nigeria. The needs of individual farmers are otherwise not adequately reflected in national or regional economic development strategies.

A unique sequential mixed-methods research design was adopted for this study. A grounded theory approach was used for the literature review followed by a consensual qualitative research (CQR) technique. Data were collected through a semi-structured sense-making focus group (FG) held at a field site with agricultural extension workers. The CQR technique included brainstorming, the nominal group technique, open discussions, sense-making and consensual agreement on the most important ideas. The FG sense-making was recorded, and discourse analysis was conducted to develop thematic concept maps using NVivo software.

Agriculture crisis ground truth insight themes were consistent with the extant literature but several different issues were also found. Rural farmers in North-East Nigeria have significant challenges with government support in six core areas, namely, farm input quality and dissemination, fair input subsidization, training, market facilitation, corruption and insecurity.

The target population of this study was rural farmers in Adamawa State, North-East Nigeria. A relatively small sample of 16 agricultural extension workers – very experienced farmers who also act as mentors and are paid incentives by the government for doing so – was used.

In tackling the agriculture crisis in Nigeria, policymakers will do well to recognize the realities that the rural farmers face and their needs, the government must address the areas highlighted in this study where support for farmers lacks and urgently review the current process of farm inputs dissemination.

Agriculture crisis problems were explored from the perspectives of rural North-East Nigerian farmers, who have not been previously sampled due to cultural, language, literacy and schedule constraints. The extension workers were better able to communicate agriculture crisis insights in modern economic planning terminology because they are well-educated farmers, knowledgeable about the problems due to their field experience and because they have more flexible work schedules. A unique sequential mixed-methods constructivist research design was used with an embedded CQR technique, which would be of interest to scholars and research institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore garment consumption decision processes of female consumers when they have the option to sew or purchase their clothing.

This research study presents a segment of the findings from a larger qualitative grounded theory study on women who choose to sew clothing for themselves (Martindale, 2017). This research analyzed the interview data pertaining to the unique sew or purchase decision-making process in which these consumers undertake as well as the related control over ready-to-wear consumption that sewing provides them.

The ability to sew resulted in a unique consumer decision-making process in regard to the clothing purchases due to the control it provided them over their ready-to-wear consumption. The women developed factors that they used to make the decision to sew or purchase. Over all the ability to sew provided them the option to sew or purchase clothing, allowing the women more control over their clothing selection specifically in regard to the garments body fit.

This study was limited to English-speaking women living in the North America. The qualitative data collected are specific to this sample which cannot be generalized to all female home sewers. Research involving a larger population of women from a larger geographic area is needed.

The newly developed sew or purchase model provides an understanding of the control that having the option to sew or purchase provides female consumers. The findings offer apparel industry professionals a new perspective on ready-to-wear consumer dissatisfaction. The investment that is made when a garment is sewn instead of purchased has the potential to increase wardrobe sustainability as the consumer experiences more attachment to the clothing they have made. The model serves a starting point for further exploration into other craft-related consumer decision behaviors.

Purchasing decisions of this nature have yet to be considered in published research. Exploring these women’s decisions who operate outside of typical consumer culture and developing a model for this consumer behavior explains a phenomenon not yet addressed by existing consumer consumption research.

Service development and outsourcing are growing trends in humanitarian logistics (HL). Humanitarian organizations (HOs) have developed specialized units to perform logistics activities on behalf of other aid organizations, as a commercial logistics service provider (LSP) would do. The purpose of this paper is to explore the characteristics of HOs acting as LSPs and the differences with their commercial counterparts.

This research uses a two-level content analysis of 149 annual reports from 50 local and international HOs, performed with the help of qualitative data analysis software. First, a manifest content analysis identified the number of occurrences of logistics-related words and later, a latent content analysis studies the use in context of such words to characterize the nature of HOs as LSPs.

Evidence shows that some international HOs – in some cases through specialized logistics units – perform the same activities as commercial LSPs, providing similar services. However, due to the characteristics of the humanitarian context, HOs acting as LSPs can offer a wider range of value-added and dedicated services to clients (other HOs) than commercial LSPs.

Exploring the activities performed by HOs on behalf of other aid organizations and characterizing them as service providers constitutes a first attempt to grasp the unique features of these particular humanitarian LSPs. The results open the discussion about the services HOs offer, thus contributing to theory development in HL.

The identification of HOs acting as LSPs introduces a new actor to the humanitarian network, which the authors refer to as humanitarian service provider (HSP). This supposes two main managerial implications. First, the results support the idea of seeing servitization as a competitive difference, having a substantial impact on the way HOs build their strategies and achieve competitive advantage. Second, HSPs can push their commercial equivalents to identify new activities or services to offer and maintain their competitive advantage with regard to the newcomers.

This paper furthers the discussion on the concept of HSPs and demonstrates its uniqueness, thus contributing to the ever-growing body of knowledge of HL research.

This paper aims to analyse “how”, “why” and “where” authors use citations of Robert Yin’s classic text, Case Study Research: Design and Methods, to determine the application of methodological transparency in published case study research.

The analysis is conducted using a structured literature review methodology.

The results reveal problems of obliteration by incorporation, miscitations, appeals to ethos, rhetorical convenience and a shadow effect, also known as adumbration. The authors argue that case study research relying, either in full or in part, on Yin’s methodology should transparently describe how and which parts of the methodology have been applied. Thus, the conclusions signal some opportunities for improving transparency in the use of citations in case study research.

The analysis highlights behaviours that may lead researchers to questionable findings due to a lack of methodological transparency in developing case study research, along with some recommendations for avoiding such problems. Improving transparency is useful for readers to understand what was done, for reviewers and editors to evaluate the research, and to guide other researchers who wish to conduct case study research.

This research compares citation practices in case study research in accounting and management with a focus on citations of Robert Yin. The results build on previous studies that analyse how scholars apply case study methodology that encourages researchers to adopt greater transparency.