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The introductory paper begins with the issue about the relevance of research in management. It emphasizes the need for scholars to adopt methodologies best suited to the research problem of their choice. This paper contains sections on the nature of management research, dominant research paradigms, the methodological domain, quantitative versus qualitative research, and triangulation in using multiple methodologies. The paper provides a background to the purpose of the book and summarizes in brief the purpose of each the subsequent papers.

The methodological discourse of mixed-methods research offers general procedures to combine quantitative and qualitative methods for investigating complex fields of research such as higher education. However, integrating different methods still poses considerable challenges. To move beyond general recommendations for mixed-methods research, this chapter proposes to discuss methodological issues with respect to a particular research domain. Taking current studies on the transition to higher education as an example, the authors first provide an overview of the potentials and limitations of quantitative and qualitative methods in the research domain. Second, they show the need for a conceptual framework grounded in the theory of the research object to guide the integration of different methods and findings. Finally, an example study that investigates transition with regard to the interplay of the individual student and the institutional context serves to illustrate the guiding role of theory. The framework integrates different theoretical perspectives on transition, informs the selection of the research methods, and defines the nexus of the two strands that constitute the mixed-methods design. As the interplay of individual and context is of concern for teaching and learning in general, the example presented may be fruitful for the wider field of higher education research.

The chapter proposes that higher education researchers descriptively analyze and evaluate practices regarding university leadership and management through the lens of phronēsis (understood as “practical reasonableness”). It elaborates and develops an emerging orientation, coming from a range of social and organizational theorists, for a “philosophical” or “moral sociology” that derives neo-Aristotelian insights into agency and social practices.

The multidimensionality of the concept of disability makes the development of questions to measure the concept very complicated. In addition, the purposes of data collection can require a variety of different dimensions of the concept of disability to meet the variety of data uses. This paper proposes a data matrix for use in focusing the methodologist on the issues related to the multidimensionality of the concept and the variety of data needs when planning surveys. Discussions of the three components of the matrix, purpose, conceptual domains and question characteristics, provides the reader with an understanding of the elements of this tool. Multiple tables provide examples of the possible uses of the matrix.

Identity exploration is a central mechanism for identity formation that has been found to be associated with intense engagement, positive coping, openness to change, flexible cognition, and meaningful learning. Moreover, identity exploration in school has been associated with adaptive motivation for learning the academic material. Particularly in the fast-changing environment of contemporary society, confidence and skills in identity exploration and self-construction seems to be increasingly important. Therefore, promoting students’ identity exploration in school within the curriculum and in relation to the academic content should be adopted as an important educational goal. The purpose of this paper is to describe a conceptual framework for interventions to promote students’ identity exploration within the curriculum. The framework involves the application of four interrelated principles: (1) promoting self-relevance; (2) triggering exploration; (3) facilitating a sense of safety; and (4) scaffolding exploratory actions.

We begin the paper with a conceptual review of identity exploration. We follow by specifying the conceptual framework for interventions. We then present a methodological-intervention approach for applying this framework and describe three such interventions in middle-school contexts, in the domains of environmental education, literature, and mathematics.

In each intervention, applying the principles contributed to students’ adaptive motivation and engagement in the academic material and also contributed to students’ identity exploration, though not among all students. The findings highlight the contextual, dynamic, and indeterminate nature of identity exploration among early adolescents in educational settings, and the utility of the conceptual framework and approach for conceptualizing and intervening to promote identity exploration among students.

This paper contributes to the conceptual understanding of identity exploration in educational settings, highlights the benefits and the challenges in intervening to promote identity exploration among students, and discusses the future directions in theory, research, and practice concerned with the promotion of identity exploration in educational settings.

Entrepreneurship remains a young scholarly discipline characterized by low paradigmatic development. Herein, we discuss theoretical and methodological issues associated with this rapidly emerging yet still developing research area. We argue that theory and methodology are symbiotic components of research and should develop concurrently in order to support the evolution of a paradigm for entrepreneurship research. Further, we posit that effective growth of entrepreneurship research will occur as a result of appropriately extending theory and methods from other scholarly disciplines as well as from theoretical and methodological innovations that are unique to entrepreneurship. Based on the positions taken in this chapter, we also advance recommendations for scholars to consider as work is completed to develop a systematic body of knowledge about entrepreneurship.

Making links between micro and macro levels has been problematic in the social sciences, and the literature in strategic management and organization theory is no exception. The purpose of this chapter is to raise theoretical issues in developing micro-foundations for strategic management and organizational analysis. We discuss more general problems with collectivism in the social sciences by focusing on specific problems in extant organizational analysis. We introduce micro-foundations to literature by explicating the underlying theoretical foundations of the origins of individual action and interaction. We highlight opportunities for future research, specifically emphasizing the need for a rational choice programme in management research.

In this book we consider the foundation of ethics to be the moral law. Contrarily, in mainstream terminology ethics is defined as values manifesting human behavior in congruence with certain civil conduct that are commonly agreed upon by society at large (Spencer, 1978). In reference to the social preference basis of ethics and morality we can adopt formalization by using two different approaches. One approach is to consider linear aggregation of preferences. The other is to treat morality and ethics within complex aggregation types.¹

This chapter conceptualizes computational methods across three related, yet distinct approaches: (1) Social Simulation, (2) Data Science, and (3) Big Data. Group communication research is then situated and reviewed along these three lines of research. Although some areas have considerable visibility (e.g., network analysis, text mining), some areas are less visible in group communication research (e.g., Social Simulation, Big Data designs). The chapter concludes with suggestions for issues regarding reliability, validity, and ethics.