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The purpose of this paper is to synthesise current literature on the conceptualisation of rigour within qualitative studies and to identify factors which contribute to the enhancement of rigour for the practical implementation of qualitative research.

This paper presents an interpretivist stance in line with a qualitative approach to research. A systematic review method was adopted to provide a structured and rigorous selection of relevant literature. Data was analysed using a thematic synthesis method, as outlined by Thomas and Harden (2008).

The results of the thematic synthesis identified seven descriptive themes in the literature: conceptualising rigour, conceptualising truth and value in knowledge generation, participant trust and communication of truth, rigour in research design and implementation, subjectivity, reflexivity and researcher identity, reader confidence and transparency and strategies for enhancing rigour. These descriptive themes were further developed into three analytical themes: ethical co-construction, methodological alignment and multi-perspective interpretation.

This paper presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the concept of rigour in qualitative research. The themes identified are applicable across fields and provide an original application of thematic synthesis.

The purpose of this paper is to present a framework intended to guide students and novice researchers in learning about the necessary dimensions for assessing the rigour of qualitative research studies. The framework has four dimensions – (T)rustworthiness, (A)uditability, (C)redibility and (T)ransferability. The development of TACT is informed by various discourses of rigour in the qualitative research methods literature. Results of an empirical verification of TACT suggests that postgraduate students and faculty learning qualitative research found the framework useful for learning rigour in qualitative research methods. TACT also serves as an important theoretical tool for setting directions for further discourses on teaching and learning critical aspects of rigour in qualitative research methodology.

The formal verification of the TACT started with a development of a rating tool. The tool consisted of a total of 16 items, 4 items per each dimension. The items were ranked on five-scale Likert points (1=very important, 2=important, 3=neutral, 4=less important, 5=not important). The instrument was piloted and tested for reliability revealing an overall Cronbach’s α (α=0.86), which indicates a good level of internal consistency (George and Mallery, 2003) among the dimensions. The tool was put online and sent out to participants enroled in workshops on “assessing rigour in qualitative research studies”.

Overall, participants found TACT to be a useful framework for learning different dimensions for assessing qualitative research. They saw various benefits associated with the use of the framework including providing a better process for undertaking and reporting outcomes of qualitative research and for exploring different dimensions of rigour. Participants also indicated that using TACT facilitates reflexivity and fosters dependability of research outcomes. They stated that TACT could help researchers think about their personal relationship with a phenomenon being studied as well as the quality of data collected. Others said that TACT allows researchers to think about achieving transference and gaining confidence in the research findings.

TACT is best suited as a teaching toolkit in qualitative research methodology courses. It is also useful as a platform for fostering a shared language in undertaking peer-review of methodological dimensions of qualitative research studies.

Though a general framework for accessing rigour in qualitative research studies is highly desirable, the usefulness of TACT in rendering rigour is subject to a particular academic tradition.

TACT facilitates the exploration of different dimensions for assessing the outcome of qualitative research.

TACT is a general framework drawn from the literature and teaching practice and empirically validated.

The purpose of this paper is to appraise methodological rigor in the application of discriminant analysis (DA) in export-focused research and to offer guidelines for future studies.

The sample includes 89 empirical peer-reviewed studies, comprising 102 models published over the period 1979-2014. Content analysis and vote counting are used to evaluate each of these studies.

This review highlights major flaws in the application of DA in export research. The shortcomings are self-evident particularly concerning suitability of DA for research context, completeness in the reporting of descriptive results, and validity and reliability of predictive results.

The study takes the position that the lack of methodological rigor may be undermining the eminence of knowledge in exporting, and this has extensive implications for both researchers and practitioners.

This review outlines steps to assess methodological rigor associated with DA and offers guidelines for scholars seeking to enhance rigor in future research.

The purpose of this paper is to underscore the fundamental importance of relevance to an applied field such as supply chain management (SCM). It is argued that simultaneity of research rigor and relevance is necessary to assert claims of impact.

This paper acts as a reflective essay, inductive reasoning and prescriptive framework.

Impact needs to be evaluated based on both rigor and relevance, and not exclusively based on whether a paper is published in a “top-tier” journal. Without relevance, academic research in SCM will cease to be of practical importance.

The primary limitation is that this is a conceptual paper relying on logical arguments.

The paper exhorts academics in SCM to recognize and insure practical relevance in their research. It develops strong arguments for why such a combined focus is needed and should be encouraged by journals.

Thought provoking paper intended to change how the field evaluates research for its impact. General strategies for increasing relevance in academic research are offered.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive narrative account of supervisory conversations with doctoral students. They include providing knowledge and experience about the nature of qualitative and quantitative approaches and their respective histories and rigour requirements.

An introduction reveals the complexity, debates and dialectics that are engaged with during the doctoral supervisory process. Two design issues are discussed. One is research design; the other is supervisor method.

Rigour in interpretive research is distinctive, linked to its characteristics and the unique role of the researcher as an instrument of data collection, conscious of the need to give voice to respondents and preserve their authentic responses. The audit trail is a centrepiece for both rigour and the reflection, reflexivity necessary to address ongoing biases, decisions and dilemmas.

Supervisory conversations are dynamic but there is a core, a set of initial conditions and these relate to the ethics and integrity of the doctoral student and the supervisor.

The paper penetrates the social space where supervisors and doctoral students interact. Within the text, “advice” and seminal ideas are presented from literature and the supervisor's experience that will inform researchers and demonstrate a supervisor method.

The purpose of this paper is to present an eight‐step simulation model development process (SMDP) for the design, implementation, and evaluation of logistics and supply chain simulation models, and to identify rigor criteria for each step.

An extensive review of literature is undertaken to identify logistics and supply chain studies that employ discrete‐event simulation modeling. From this pool, studies that report in detail on the steps taken during the simulation model development and model more than one echelon in logistics, supply chain, or distribution systems are included to illustrate rigor in developing such simulation models.

Literature review reveals that there are no preset rigor criteria for publication of logistics and supply chain simulation research, which is reflected in the fact that studies published in leading journals do not satisfactorily address and/or report the efforts taken to maintain the rigor of simulation studies. Although there has been a gradual improvement in rigor, more emphasis on the methodology required to ensure quality simulation research is warranted.

The SMDP may be used by researchers to design and execute rigorous simulation research, and by reviewers for academic journals to establish the level of rigor when reviewing simulation research. It is expected that such prescriptive guidance will stimulate high quality simulation modeling research and ensure that only the highest quality studies are published.

The SMDP provides a checklist for assessment of the validity of simulation models prior to their use in practical decision making. It assists in making practitioners better informed about rigorous simulation design so that, when answering logistics and supply chain system questions, the practitioner can decide to what extent they should trust the results of published research.

This paper develops a framework based on some of the most rigorous studies published in leading journals, provides rigor evaluation criteria for each step, provides examples for each step from published studies, and illustrates the SMDP using a supply‐chain risk management study.

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss, among alternative European currents, a “foundationalist perspective for management research” (FPM) which redefines the identity, rigor and relevance of management research.

The management literature has documented a wide range of criticisms about standard management research which are most often summarized as “the relevance gap” or the “translation problem”. The paper presents the historical development, in the French context, of an epistemological debate about management as an academic field which led to FPM as an alternative to standard approaches and as a solution to such criticisms. In this approach, the identity of management science, its principles of relevance and its definition of rigor, cannot be defined separately.

FPM offers a consistent approach of management research as a science that studies “models of collective action”. Rigor is redefined as the appropriate combination of different types of interactions between the researcher and its object. From the point of view of management research, rigor supports relevance and relevance is a condition of rigor.

The paper focuses on the French context of management research. Yet, the new epistemology of management research that it presents may contribute to the international conversation on the future of the field. In more specialized areas of research, the paper discusses two implications of this new epistemology: a theory of managerial techniques as a critical view of classic organization theory; and a model of collective innovative design as a critical view of standard R&D and project management.

The paper presents a new approach of management research which is built on a new epistemology of collective action. It offers an original way to build management science as a basic science; to avoid the weaknesses of mainstream statistical research; to depart from the “applied social science” model.

There has been a growing call regarding broad criteria for assessing qualitative methods' reliability and validity in international marketing (IM) research. In response, this study synthesizes the past literature to present an overarching, yet adaptable, trustworthiness verification framework for assessing the rigor of various qualitative methods used in IM.

The paper draws on qualitative research from various disciplines. It uses content analysis to examine how trustworthiness is conceptualized in qualitative studies in International Marketing Review (IMR) from 2005 to 2019.

The analysis reveals that strategies to ensure rigor and trustworthiness of qualitative research in IMR are partially applied. There remain gaps in implementing quality criteria across the trustworthiness dimensions of credibility, transferability, dependability, conformability and ethics.

This paper highlights the importance of incorporating strategies for assessing the quality of qualitative research in IM research. Since the analysis only focused on IMR, future research should explore and test the framework in other IM and business journals to reach a broader consensus in assessing qualitative studies' rigor.

IM researchers have yet to develop a consensus regarding broad criteria for assessing qualitative methods' reliability and validity. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to question whether the management studies is rigorous and/or relevant is a recurrent debate in the discipline. There is reason to believe that this dichotomy is simplistic as relevance is a consequence of rigor (defined in a variety of ways in the literature), whereas the epistemic value of rigor must per se be examined in more detail.

Drawing on the study of the analytical philosophy of Donald Davidson, rigor is here conceptualized as the capacity to examine how intersubjective meaning is constituted on the basis of the semantics of the everyday language.

In Davidson’s pragmatist view, individual beliefs are established through communication, and beliefs generate preferences and “pro-attitudes” that result in social action. Using Ian Hacking’s term undoing as a critique of a proposition or idea as being no contender for truth (or some other quality) at all, the paper questions the proposition that scientific rigor can be operationalized as the use of data collection and analysis methods developed in other and more authoritative disciplines, e.g. economics. On the contrary, to make accurate descriptions of beliefs, preferences and actions on the basis of the use of everyday language is the mark of scientific rigor in management studies.

The paper addresses the question of how rigorous research in management studies is essentially a matter of explanation, and that explanation, in turn, demands a more elaborate theory of action. The paper also introduces the work of Donald Davidson as an important figure when theorizing action.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how traditional ethnography as an established methodology can promote and strengthen both rigor and relevance in qualitative service research.

This paper is based on ethnographic methodology literature and experience of ethnographic studies in the field.

In particular, the three ethnographic aspects of fieldwork, prolonged time in the field and sensitivity to language and cultural codes can increase rigor in service research, while the central ethnographic premises of flexibility and reflexivity can contribute to its relevance.

Service researchers are encouraged to consider engaging in ethnographic research and to realize its potential to increase both rigor and relevance in service research endeavors.

Rigor and relevance are central and important research quality criteria, and these are often referred to as being mutually exclusive. This paper suggests how traditional ethnography can promote and strengthen both rigor and relevance in qualitative service research and thereby further advance this research area.