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The objective of this paper is to describe a counter‐intuitive view of the deductive research process.

The paper should be seen as addressing a debatable subject where there is no “right” or “wrong”, but one which hopefully will stimulate and/or provoke a certain degree of afterthought and reflection. An applied approach to the research process is presented and discussed.

The paper contends that the counter‐intuitive approach illustrated may uncover pitfalls and flaws in research endeavours at an early stage of an intended research process.

It is important that the four elements of idea, support, implications, and contribution are thought through properly in detail before too much investment in time and resources, as well as intellectual effort, has been made, in order to avoid frustration and discontent among involved stakeholders.

The paper contends that it is essential to dedicate and pay attention to the intended research process as a whole before actually going through with it.

It is hoped that the presented counter‐intuitive view of the deductive research process will assist scholars (e.g. junior faculty and doctoral students) in their efforts to perform research endeavours.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the interconnection between the research process, the report structure and journal outlets in scholarly studies.

Conceptual frameworks to link the research process with the report structure, and in turn with journal outlets, are presented.

These indicate that the research process and the awareness of the components of the report structure as well as potential journal outlets may at an early stage uncover any pitfalls and flaws in one's scholarly studies in academia.

A transparent understanding and foresight of what is ahead in, and interconnected between, the elements of the research process, the components of the report structure and the potential journal outlets are crucial to enhance the ultimate scholarly performance. The discussion is in part limited to the commonly applied “deductive” research process in academia, though most parts also are applicable to the “inductive” research process.

It is important that the elements of the scholarly research process and the components of the report structure are thoroughly thought out in detail before too much investment in time and resources, as well as intellectual effort, have been made in order to avoid frustration and discontent. In addition, the potential journal outlets also need to be considered at an early stage of research.

Transparent understanding and foresight of research processes, report structures and journal outlets provide essential and valuable insights for scholars. The author has striven to show that realizing the link between the scholarly research process, the scholarly report structure and the potential journal outlets available will assist in efforts to perform and communicate the outcome of scholarly studies.

Independent travelers are those vacationers who have booked only a minimum of their transportation and accommodation arrangements prior to departure on the vacation. Independent travel is an important and growing sector of worldwide tourism. Choice of vacation itinerary for the independent vacation represents a complex series of decisions regarding purchase of multiple leisure and tourism services. This chapter builds and tests a model of independent traveler decision-making for choice of vacation itinerary. The research undertaken employs a two-phase, inductive–deductive case study design. In the deductive phase, the researcher interviewed 20 travel parties vacationing in New Zealand for the first time. The researcher interviewed respondents at both the beginning and the end of their New Zealand vacations. The study compares pre-vacation research and plans, and actual vacation behaviors, on a case-by-case basis. The study examines case study narratives and quantitative measures of crucial variables. The study tests two competing models of independent traveler decision-making, using a pattern-matching procedure. This embedded research design results in high multi-source, multi-method validity for the supported model. The model of the Independent Vacation as Evolving Itinerary suggests that much of the vacation itinerary experienced in independent travel is indeed unplanned, and that a desire to experience the unplanned is a key hedonic motive for independent travel. Rather than following a fixed itinerary, the itinerary of an independent vacation evolves as the vacation proceeds. The independent traveler takes advantage of serendipitous opportunities to experience a number of locations, attractions and activities that they had neither actively researched nor planned.

This chapter examines existing approaches to conducting qualitative process research (i.e., studies that view phenomena as becoming or evolving over time) by analyzing published process research in six premier organizational journals from 2010 to 2017. We identify four modes of performing process research that we label evolutionary process stories, performative process stories, narrative process stories and toolkit-driven process stories, and explore the particular ways in which they formulate and link empirical and theoretical elements. We also identify some of their specific challenges and suggest directions for the future.

The paper discusses some of the central features of IMP and industrial network research. Different types of empirical phenomena that are in focus of this research are presented. The paper also comments on epistemology, acknowledging some of the underpinnings of industrial network research and how they affect the use of case studies. Examples of case or narrative methodology are provided, taking a starting point in a set of chosen doctoral theses. In addition, a condensed version of the author’s own experiences from a case research and case-writing process covering a period of more than five years is provided (Andersson, 1996a, b). Literature support is brought in for the fact that case writing and the creation of narratives is often a long and ambiguous process of finding a final plot which merges the theoretical with the empirical. The conclusions and comments summarize some of the main implications and ideas emerging from the text, and points also to some emerging discussions in social science on the importance and status of narrative knowledge.

This chapter presents trailing research (TR) as an approach for studying organization change in real time. I argue that TR can contribute in bridging the practitioner-scholar divide as well as generating methodologically rigorous, theoretically strong, and practically relevant research. I contrast the method with more traditional ways of researching change, such as positivistic research and action research and discuss various phases of the research process by drawing on my own experience with TR. While the objectives of the research are more similar to action research, the role of the researcher differs from both action research and positivistic research.

This article proposes a theoretical framework that synthesizes the main factors explaining the strategic contribution of communication department to open innovation (OI) processes. Because there is little or no research literature on communication and OI, the purpose is to fill this gap. A literature review and empirical qualitative research were conducted to weigh the significance of the framework in practice.

An interdisciplinary literature review was necessary to identify the main factors that explain the communication contribution to OI. The analysis of three multinational case studies has helped to enrich the proposed framework. Six semi-structured interviews were conducted with in-company communication managers and innovation managers in order to capture their perceptions.

Communication emerges as a strategic function with the potential to be embedded in the whole OI process. The main conclusion is that it may play an increasingly central role in enhancing relationships with external partners. Moreover, it enacts its strategic role while facilitating the enhancement of the organization's overall communication capability – that is, trust, transparency and a coherently articulated narrative.

This article has not been designed as a comprehensive overview of the topic, nor it is designed to be statistically representative or generalizable. The study was conducted with the intention of exploring the theoretical and practical contributions of communication department to OI, as well as to raise awareness among scholars and practitioners on this new but neglected topic for research. Its qualitative approach serves to assess the value of the framework proposed, and the key issues highlighted here require further research.

The theoretical framework proposed may enable innovation managers to identify the factors in which the communication function and its practitioners may play a role for facilitating OI processes. Likewise, communication practitioners may find it useful to foster their organizational role and capabilities within these processes.

This article underlines the significant contribution that the communication function may play in OI processes. Research on this topic has been neglected thus far, despite its significance for the competitiveness of companies and the economy as a whole.

The purpose of this paper is to explore scenario development (SD) as a method for engaging known challenges in collaborative research projects, i.e. SD is the construct under investigation.

Criticism of the dominant, rational approach to project management (PM) and its underlying hypotheses highlights a considerable PM research gap for research projects (research problem). The authors undertake a six-step constructive research approach to investigate if SD (the construct) constitutes a fruitful method to support the management of collaborative research projects. A two-part literature review summarizes known challenges in collaborative research projects and introduces the history and application of SD methodology. The work includes participatory action research (PAR) in two case studies, constituting a qualitative research method.

The authors found the SD method to be useful for structuring and analyzing intuitive project processes. However, using SD in the management of single projects presents some fundamental challenges. SD, like PM, struggles with issues related to myopic decisions, a “predict and provide” attitude with clear aspects of path dependency in the project front-end as well as inconsistent and/or missing identification of success criteria among different stakeholders.

This paper does not provide any comprehensive, normative account of scenario techniques or compare SD with other foresight and future studies methods. Although PAR is in itself a research method that demands systematic description and execution, the focus of this paper is the overall constructive research approach.

The paper offers a broadened repertoire of methods to describe and analyse project stakeholder situations (collaborative aspects) and to structure and balance the need for both rational and intuitive project processes (research aspects). The SD method also supports development of graphical storylines and facilitates the use of influence diagrams, event trees and cost/benefit analysis.

Although PM literature contains several references to SD, the practical application of SD at single-project level has, to the authors’ knowledge, never been described in the PM literature.

Research into manufacturing strategy is increasing in popularity but there are no well established research methodologies which are specific to the field. Briefly reviews current methodologies, identifies their shortcomings, and notes areas for improvement. Then discusses a research methodology which was developed to address these. This three‐stage methodology has been successfully applied to the process of formulating manufacturing strategy and suggests that similar methodologies might be appropriate for future strategy research.

This paper examines how informal knowledge transfer processes unfold during the repatriation of Malaysian executives. The goal is to develop a repatriate knowledge transfer process model, explaining the informal process through which repatriates make decisions about and transfer newly acquired knowledge.

Given the unexplored nature of the informal knowledge transfer process the study investigates, this research adopts an exploratory qualitative research approach using interview data from 10 Malaysian corporate executives over a period of 14 months, covering prerepatriation and postrepatriation stages.

The findings indicate that from the repatriates' perspectives, the process flows during repatriates' knowledge transfer depend on the ability and motivation of repatriates, as well as their opportunity to communicate the newly acquired knowledge to their home country organization. We likewise learned that the repatriates' ability to overcome repatriate adjustment and knowledge transfer challenges is crucial in order for them to proactively initiate informal knowledge transfer.

This research is significant as it will assist current and future expatriates to plan and prepare for repatriation and eventual knowledge transfer. The findings will also be useful to organizations that employ repatriates in preparing action plans for repatriation rather than solely focusing on expatriation.

Research and practice formally argue that expatriates are expected to transfer knowledge from the home country organization to the host country organization. While on assignment, expatriates become exposed to various types of new knowledge during the assignment, setting them up to disseminate this newly acquired knowledge to their home country organization upon repatriation – however, knowledge transfer upon repatriation is largely informal. This paper examines how this informal knowledge transfer process unfolds in the repatriation context over a period of 14 months by qualitatively tracing the experiences of 10 Malaysian corporate executives.