The Design of Research - Essay Example

The design will attempt to answer the questions of what are the assumptions, how are we going to conduct our study, and the justifications for the choice of the research method. This section of the research will partly adopt Saunders’s research union approach (Saunders et.al 2009 p, 12-17) or model that consists of six stages that include the philosophies, approaches, strategies, choices, time horizons, techniques, and procedures.

Research Philosophy
The most suitable philosophy for our study is pragmatism. Pragmatism enables the researcher to avoid philosophical issues that might arise from choosing either positivism or phenomenology. This will enable the researcher to use the most appropriate approach to comprehend the research problem as it is neither constrained to reality nor philosophy (Saunders et al., 2009, p 108-120). Despite this elaborate choice, the research will apply interpretivism and subjectivism. The study will analyze current existing literature from various sources, that is, secondary data. The researcher will also attempt to analyze the data collected to make conclusions. The research will try to study the available bodies of knowledge on the subject to establish whether the body of knowledge is valid or not Collis and Hussey (2003, pg.48); this is referred to as epistemology.

Since pragmatism is focused on giving solutions to the research questions, it is the most appropriate method to be used in the study. Because positivism only recognizes observable phenomena as valid knowledge, we will resort to interpretivism as it is sensitive to subjective implications, and social phenomena constitute the valid body of knowledge (Lewis, Saunders & Thornhill, 2009, p.109, p.119). Business economics is known to involve contemporary subjects that are complex and non-quantifiable and hence require in-depth analysis where the researcher's views may be subjective. In the same view information, information from the various online databases such as EBSCO, Emerald, and Blackwell may be quantitative giving an objective view to the study. This means that a pragmatic approach would be appropriate for the research.

Research Approach
The research will employ qualitative data to meet the research objectives. This research seeks to explore and comprehend the social problem. The process will involve scrutinizing emerging inquiries and processes. The data will be analyzed in the setting in which it was collected as indicated in the secondary data sources. The research will, therefore, use an inductive approach where the aspects will be built from a particular to a general thesis as the researcher construes the information. The research data will come from publications, articles, and journals. The research will entail a broad analysis of previous research on the same topics or those related to our research topic. Once the available literature has been analytically reviewed, the researcher will inductively build on the various aspects that have been or have not been looked at by past studies.
The study will involve the use of qualitative data collected from libraries such as online databases that the researcher will access to gain more relevant and updated information. These will include websites and databases such as EBSCO, Emerald, and Blackwell. The research will involve analysis of news postings on various websites during the year.

Research Strategy
The research will employ ethnographic and archival strategies of research. The archival method enables the researcher to analyze or investigate events from a distance. The research is practically a step away from real observation. Since data from the various databases and data collected from a third party will be used in our research, this will constitute archival research. This type of information takes various forms depending on why it was initially collected. This information will assist the researcher to save time, finances, and effort. It also means that there is no need for permission as is in the case of the primary methods of data collection. These are some of the pragmatic justifications for the use of this research strategy.
The study will further employ aspects of ethnographic research which will enable the researcher to investigate social interactions, behaviors, and their relation to the research problems. The research uses ethnographic methods by studying the research works of other ethnographers hence in some sense putting the researcher in the setting that the previous ethnographer had placed himself/herself in when they were conducting the participant observation sessions or in–depth interviews. Read More