Risk Management - research technique - Essay Example

As a result, this demands a clear statement of the problem (Patton, M. Q., 2002). It is never an aimless search for something nonspecific with the hopes of coming across an incidental solution, rather it demands a clear objective and plan. Research will always underpin the current knowledge on the field with critical weightage on both the positive and negative findings, and the researcher consequently must have enough openness and reasonable flexibility to identify and analyse the true colours of the data.

To be able to do this, the researcher would aim towards systematic collection and analysis of the collected data to answer the original research objectives (Babbie, E. 2004), and this is where the methodology is to be carefully selected depending on the question. This work will attempt to explore the application of methodology in researches in risk management. Over the last two decades, different authors have voiced some serious concerns about effectiveness of using the prevailing positivism that states that only authentic knowledge arising from strict scientific methods affirming theories is acceptable.

Epistemology is theory of knowledge that studies a concept or a question that belongs to both truth and belief by justification through a methodical study considering that fact that there would always be limitations in any concept to arrive at the truth, so that new questions will arise. In the general sense in our specific area, this is a general term indicating knowledge from any source that can be analyzed and corroborated, questioned, authenticated, or discarded. Ontology, on the other hand, describes the basic categories of existence to define and categories of entity.

This, therefore, can study conceptions of reality. An example would make these definitions clear. In the field of risk management, a search for what and how, the recognition of risk, its assessment, is epistemology. Whereas, when one desires to develop strategies to manage a given risk in order to mitigate it using managerial resources, it calls for study of the conceptions of reality so that the nature of the knowable things are explicit, and a methodology further calibrates distinct entities that are measurable.

Research grows and develops within the intellectual climate of the times. Within the last 50 years or so, there has been a gradual but notable drift from qualitative research based on conceptions of reality towards quantitative research based on logical positivist model, then a critique of the positivist model, and then a greater acceptance of qualitative research (Strauss, A., and Corbin, J. 1990). There had invariably been debate between the two schools of approaches, as to which method is the most suitable in terms of technical feasibility to arrive at the truth or reality and more importantly, these were framed in terms of epistemology: what is the best way to comprehend the world.

No wonder, there is still continuing debate regarding this across the line of division since notions of epistemology rest within ontology, what is the nature of the world one wishes to know about.Quantitative ResearchQuantitative