The seminar in qualitative (comprehensive) research methods aims to introduce the wide variety of existing methods to the Phd students in management. This variety is due first to the flourishing development of methods (case studies, interviews, group and focus group, content analysis and discourse analysis, stories and narratives, archival research, action
research…organizational ethnographies). A second reason for this diversity relies in the philosophical debates that cross qualitative approaches, contrarily to quantitative research. In particular, the basic opposition between realist or relativist philosophical stances (existence of a single reality independent of the observer or contrarily multiple realities and findings that are observer dependent) have led to multiple rich debates, even at the level of each method.

The first objective of the seminar is to give an idea about this diversity but acknowledging that exhaustivity is not arguably a reasonable objective. After a general introduction in lesson 1 on qualitative research in management, lesson 2 present the process of starting a research method while lesson 3 address fundamentals of qualitative data analysis including coding
technics. Lesson 4 is dedicated to the use of software in qualitative analysis Then lesson 5 to 12 discuss into details the main approaches in qualitative analysis (content, interviews, focus groups, ethnography, case studies, historical methods, mixed methods, grounded theory, and action research). Each lesson ends with a lesson and a “to go further” bibliographies.

Due to the long-lasting dominance of quantitative research methods in different fields including management, research using qualitative approaches have been sometimes considered as secondary and as a reaction have developed strategies to mimic quantitative approaches, copying for example the criteria for quality. Moreover, it has been documented that the choice for qualitative research is not cultural nor institutional free (Cassell et al 2018).
However new trends and opportunities, even in Anglo-Saxon countries are nowadays flourishing giving place to new research, new reviews.

The second objective of this seminar is to help students to figure out what is a robust approach in qualitative research, whatever precise method they would choose. To do so, each lesson on methods will be illustrated by examples proposed by the teacher or (former) Phd students.

The quality issue will be at core of this example’s discussions. The evaluation of this course will consist in the finalization and presentation of a conference paper using a qualitative method.

Please see the course details here and guidelines