Qualitative research in accounting and management the emerging agenda

1、qualitative research in accounting and management : the emerging agendalee d. parkeruniversity of adelaide, australiaabstract contemporary interdisciplinary research in accounting and more recently, management, is increasingly employing qualitative research methodologies. this paper examines the uni

2、que features and relevance of qualitative research and addresses its critics. a select group of methodologies are examined with respect to their utility for and approach to accounting and management research questions. the features of historical research, field based case study, ethnography, grounde

3、d theory, and action research are considered with reference to contemporary accounting and management research and the development of the qualitative research agenda is advocated.qualitative research (qr) has experienced an upsurge in the accounting and management (a&m) fields of inquiry in the rece

4、nt past. it has increasingly found favour with researchers as an adjunct to quantitative empirical research and more importantly as a research approach in its own right. conferences are increasingly including or specialising in qr and more journal editors are now publishing such studies. yet it must

5、 be said that the majority of a&m researchers remain unacquainted with or resistant to such methodologies. this presents the a&m field with several dilemmas. first, subject areas and avenues of inquiry of potential significance to business, government and society are being virtually neglected. secon

6、d, a glass ceiling syndrome faces qualitative researchers working or aspiring to work in predominantly positivist academic research environments. third, an inadequate pool of expertise is available for training doctoral students and emerging new researchers in these methodological traditions.this pa

7、per sets out to offer a fundamental rationale and justification for the expanded application of qr methodologies in a&m research, and argues for its ongoing relevance and development. to these ends, it identifies the unique features and capabilities of qr and positions it in relation to the positivi

8、st research paradigm that dominates a&m research. qrs relevance to contemporary research and policy issues are considered, particularly through an evaluation of the potential of selected qr methodologies with reference to the a&m domains. the selected qualitative methodologies of historical research

9、, field based case study, ethnography, grounded theory, and action research are considered as examples of developing and emerging research traditions in contemporary a&m research literature and the development of the qr agenda is advanced.defining qualitative researchqr involves the study of subject

10、s in their natural settings whereby the researcher conducts a systematic enquiry into meanings, attempting to interpret and make sense of phenomena and the meanings that people attribute to them (shank, 2002). so qr studies a situated world, considering phenomena in their specific macro and micro, s

11、ocial, institutional, political, economic and technological contexts. the qualitative researcher is particularly focussed upon understanding process and context and employs a variety of methods in an attempt to interpret and understand the world. these include interviews, observations, field notes,

12、memos, recordings, transcriptions, document copies, historical texts, photographs, artefacts, etc. these offer multiple perspectives of the world, all of which incrementally add to our understanding of its operation and its implicit meanings (denzin and lincoln, 2000).so qr is most often carried out

13、 via the researcher engaging directly in intense, prolonged contact and experience in the field amidst live situations that make up the everyday activities and processes of people and organisations. whatever the object of study, it is investigated from a holistic viewpoint in order to access activit

14、ies, events and relationships in their whole context. many of the methods employed attempt to capture the perceptions and understandings of the actors from the inside so as to better understand how they make sense of, act in and manage their daily work and situations (miles and huberman, 1994).thus

15、qr is inherently multi-method. it tries to obtain an in-depth understanding of phenomena, recognising that an existential objective reality cannot be captured. instead, in penetrating and articulating multiple constructed realities of actors and researchers, the qualitative researcher employs multip

16、le methods in pursuit of complexity, depth, richness and rigour. observation, conversation, participation and interpretation form the fundamental diet. these may be applied to the tasks of exploration of phenomena hitherto ignored or neglected, interpretation of phenomena that have not been well und

17、erstood, or explanation of phenomena in terms of context, process and outcomes. the researcher may adopt a particular meta-theory or paradigm to inform their investigation, or abjure pre-commitment to any one particular meta-theory or paradigm. so in pursuit of processual understanding of the meanin

18、gs underlying beliefs and practices, qr embraces complexity, uncertainty, context, rich/thick description, and a range of approaches to analysis. all of these are oriented towards the pursuit of meaning (denzin and lincoln, 2000; shank, 2002).a case of resistance and neglect in the a&m disciplines,

19、as in other disciplinary fields, qr has been criticised, rejected or ignored for a variety of reasons:1. that it is akin to soft science or journalism.2. that it is simply humanism in disguise.3. that it is unscientific and subjective.4. that it breaks the value free assumptions of scientific resear

20、ch.5. that it cannot produce verifiable truth statements.6. that it cannot produce statistically generaliseable findings.7. that it lacks rigour.(denzin and lincoln, 2000; hammersley and atkinson, 1995; yin, 1989)all of these criticisms spring fundamentally from a lack of familiarity with and awaren

21、ess of the methodological philosophies and principles that inform the methods employed. labels such as applied in 1. and 2. above are arbitrary and ill-informed classifications that serve no productive purpose for researcher or critic. they are best answered by the qualitative researchers ability to

22、 apply, justify and articulate the appropriateness of their choice of informing methodologies and methods employed. the accusation of subjectivity presumes that the world can be entirely conceived and explained as an existential reality which exists independently of the observer and is restricted to

23、 a tangible world of things that can be seen, touched and measured. instead, the qualitative researcher recognises and investigates a world of intangible relationships, meanings, understandings and interpretations that are complex, multidimensional and cannot exist independently of actors and resear

24、chers. quantitative researchers are trained to believe that they are neutral value free agents, independent of their research subjects and research data. hence they critique qr as relying so heavily upon researcher engagement with or involvement in research sites, that they cannot produce valid, rel

25、iable findings that are value free. the qualitative researcher response is to assert that no researcher is value free. all researchers bring to their research objectives, research question framing, project scope definition, survey questionnaire design and interpretation of results a whole raft of va

26、lues: their prior education, their disciplinary focus, their understanding of the literature relating to the topic, and the paradigm within which they have located themselves. recognising these inevitable researcher involvements, the qualitative researcher deliberately pursues direct reflexive engag

27、ement with actors, field sites and data as a means for penetrating latent meanings and agendas that underlie manifest observed practices and behaviours.the criticism that qr cannot produce verifiable truth statements and statistically generalisable findings misses the point of qr entirely. qr aims a

28、t theoretical generalisability in the sense that the researcher seeks to identify and penetrate, understand and articulate narratives, concepts and relationships in their oftentimes unique contextualised settings. theoretical depth, richness and uniqueness are objectives sought and valued. differenc

29、e is valued as highly as similarity. the meaning of the experience being studied and its potential theorisation is at the heart of the qualitative researchers concern. researchers and readers to compare these new insights with meanings they have previously encountered on a case by case basis and the

30、reby incrementally modify or add to their prior stock of meanings. the critique of lack of rigour reflects critics lack of acquaintance with the fundamental methods employed within the various methodological traditions of qr. the more structured qualitative methodologies have their own equivalents t

31、o positivist method concerns such as validity, reliability, triangulation. the less structured qualitative methodologies reject many of the positivists constructions of what constitutes rigour, favouring instead the flexibility, creativity and otherwise inaccessible insights afforded by alternative

32、routes of inquiry that embrace storytelling, recollection, and dialogue.so a legacy of the modernist era when a&m academics sought to emulate the methods and status of the natural sciences, is an uninformed critique or simple ignorance of the objectives, traditions and rationales for qr. this is ref

33、lected in the dominance of research literature by studies constructed in a positivist paradigm, the minority of research journals treating qr as part of their mainstream publishing output, and the lack of dedicated qr methods courses available to postgraduate research students in the a&m disciplines

34、. this scenario is fortunately, slowly changing. naturalism or positivism?a brief reflection on the fundamental differences between naturalistic qr and positivist quantitative research highlights the particular claims to a place in the sun for qualitative researchers. quantitative research focuses u

35、pon the measurement of causal relationships between variables with a view to building models that can predict outcomes. it is concerned with measuring and establishing quantity, amount, frequency, and intensity. qr focuses upon processes of social experience, seeking to understand how people experie

36、nce and create meaning within processes. this is often induced from relationships developed between the researcher and the researched within specific situational contexts (denzin and lincoln, 2000). positivists aim to test deductively derived theories through the selection and control of relevant va

37、riables, comparing what should occur with what does occur in terms of theoryneutral facts, thereby producing conclusively valid knowledge. they seek to establish laws of behaviour. naturalistic qualitative researchers aim to study the social world as nearly as possible to its natural state and being

38、 in close personal contact with the natural setting so that they can observe, describe and interpret what happens in that setting, how it happens, in what contexts and what meanings are imputed by participants. to the qualitative researcher, the dominant concern is the inductive investigation of the

39、 phenomenon under study rather than testing a set of prior hypotheses. laws of behaviour are rejected on the grounds that actors behaviour is continually constructed and reconstructed through their changing interpretations of the situations in which they find themselves. thus the primary concern mus

40、t be to study and learn their culture or subculture in order to penetrate the conscious and subconscious assumptions and understandings that shape their view of the world and their actions (alvesson and skoldberg, 2000; flick, 2002; hammersley and atkinson, 1995).qualitative researchers contend that

41、 the certainty, independence, neutrality and objectivity prized by positivist researchers, is a mirage. instead so-called scientific research is permeated and infused with culture, language, stories, symbols, selective perception, cognition, social conventions politics, ideology, and power. this ren

42、ders complex and uncertain, the relationship between reality (which is socially constructed) and text (the researchers attempt at representing that reality) (alvesson and skoldberg, 2000) . qualitative researchers claim unique advantages in their research tradition in comparison to the positivist tr

43、adition. they assert their ability to more closely access the actors individual and small group perceptions, environment and attitudes through direct observation and personal encounter in interview. the quantitative counterparts are restricted to more distant, inferential methods (such as the survey

44、 questionnaire). qualitative researchers also pride themselves in their direct engagement of everyday social life, in turn criticising the quantitative researchers propensity to abstract from, model and only study indirectly this natural setting (denzin and lincoln, 2000). contemporary relevanceshan

45、k (2002, p.11) argues that the goals of qr are insight, enlightenment and illumination:we are searchers and discoverers and reconcilers of meaning where no meaning has been clearly understood before, and we do not feel that our understanding of meaning is complete until we discover and understand it

46、s role in practice and experience.the focus which qr uniquely offers is the investigation of peoples lived experience in naturally occurring events and situations. its subject areas are studied through data collected directly from the scene of the action. it draws out the detail, richness and textur

47、e of organisational and individual processes, events and relationships over sustained periods of time. qr can go beyond the often simplistic causal models of the quantitative study, to draw out understandings of how and why things happen as they do (miles and huberman, 1994).in stark contrast to the

48、 positivist commitment to the neutral, independent, disengaged researcher, qr offers reflexivity as a potentially revealing path to new understandings. the researchers own historical and geographical background, and personal commitment to the research project provide rhetorical vigour to the researc

49、hers account and explicates the particular perspectives and orientations which they have brought to bear in their analysis and conclusions (gergen and gergen, 2000). in addition reflexivity embraces the researchers direct communication and interaction with the field and its members as an explicit an

50、d valuable part of the process of producing new knowledge: the researcher articulating via field notes, memos and research report their feelings, perceptions, impressions as data alongside all other data collected from the field (flick, 2002). thus qualitative researchers to varying degrees surrende

51、r themselves to the cultures they study and reflect upon that experience. in addition the researcher recognises and values the consequences of any research, namely that it has the capacity, even by the questions it poses and certainly by its published results, to shape the environment in which, poli

52、tical, professional, organisational and managerial decisions are made (hammersley and atkinson, 1995).qr allows researchers to study subject areas in their entirety and to represent their complexity, ambiguity and variability: aspects of professional and organisational life that are often ignored. t

53、he qualitative researcher offers the study of the routine everyday process, as well as of the exceptional, unusual event, group, situation, or practice. in this way diversity is recognised and valued. multiple perspectives and stories are embraced as accumulating understandings of the complex world

54、in which we live, reflecting many differing and changing social and organisational cultures, histories and contexts (flick, 2002).we now turn to consider five selected qualitative methodologies, each of which shares some characteristics and concerns in common, but which also offers unique perspectiv

55、es and approaches to the study of a&m issues. their respective characteristics, research aims, knowledge generating potential and a&m relevance will be examined.rediscovering historyin accounting particularly, historical research has proliferated over recent decades, as researchers discover hitherto

56、 unknown roots of contemporary practice, revisit and challenge conventional wisdom concerning beliefs about rationales for accounting principles and measures, investigate issues previously ignored by the accounting profession, and develop foundations for informing future accounting policy choices. s

57、o accounting histories are serving utilitarian, intellectual and critical roles for accounting academia and the profession. contemporary perspectives are set into the perspective of a longer time frame, past-present-future linkages are highlighted, the progressive, regressive and discontinuous featu

58、res of accounting change are revealed, policy precedents and choices are unearthed, and previously unquestioned assumptions and beliefs are challenged (carnegie and napier, 1996; napier 1989; parker, 1997, 1999; previts et al, 1990ab; tosh 1991). a&m history can help us to explain the past, and its

59、contribution to our present. it can enhance our understanding of how contemporary attitudes, practices and theories have developed and can illuminate the impacts of events, practices and policies upon organisations, groups and individuals. instead of simply offering a unitary perspective on policy and practice, it can also offer multiple and at times competing interpretations of that past. in this way, our preconceptions about accounting principles, practice and our profess