Perspectives on Management Research Design and Orientation: Quandaries and Choices

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the quandaries or difficult choices that affect detailed research design as well as the 'big' orientations or paradigms that motivate studies in the field of business and management research. Many of these choices and decisions are now commonly assumed to be mere preferences, no longer worthy of debate. As in the case of whether to collect data that is say, more easily quantified than qualified. Or whether the demands of practice are incommensurable with those of the social sciences. Such oppositions and tensions are discussed here in the context of recent surveys of managerial work.