Fundamental concepts in management research and ensuring research quality : focusing on case study method

This paper discusses fundamental concepts in management research and ensuring research quality. It was presented at the European Academy of Management annual conference in 2008

Accommodating Perceptions, Searching for Authenticity and Decolonising Methodology: The Case of the Australia / Papua New Guinea Secondary School Student's project

This paper discusses the development process of a research methodology for accommodating the exploration of recipients’ perceptions of a foreign educational project. The search for authenticity in methodology remains an issue for qualitative inquiry which has its origins in a constructive epistemology. Theoretically positioned within a postcolonial framework, the search for authenticity in methodology presented a challenge for the researcher. Specifically, this paper will focus on the research problem, issues relating to evaluation of aid programs, decolonising methodology and the search for authenticity. The paper concludes with some findings of the research project, demonstrating that decolonising methodologies create new possibilities in educational research with specific reference to educational assistance and postcolonial societies. It reveals the complexities of cultural politics and its influences on foreign financial assistance. These findings include the concepts of cultural identity, ethnicity, hegemony and ambivalence which characterises the nature of Papua New Guinea education and society

Leadership in construction partnering projects: Research methodological perspective

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the use of partnering in construction. Central to any successful partnering arrangement is the change in cultural and behavioural characteristics towards mutual trust and understanding. According to Schein, cultural and behavioural characteristics can be shaped and reflected by proper leadership. This research probes leadership as the response to address complex relationships of behaviour and culture in large scale partnering projects. This involves understanding, interpreting, explaining and mapping complex human behaviour. Therefore it is very important to comprehend and implement a suitable research methodology to carefully extract appropriate information. This paper justifies the social constructionism stance and case study approach for the leadership study as the response to address complex relationships challenges of behaviour and culture in construction partnering projects. For this purpose, the nested approach is used, highlighting the main facets of the arguments to justify the selection of appropriate research philosophy and research approach

Is it time to forget science? Reflections on singular science and its history

The name history of science refl ects a set of assumptions about what science is. Among them is the claim that science is a singular thing, a potentially unifi ed group of disciplines that share a common identity. Long promoted by scientists and philosophers on the basis of a supposedly universal scientifi c method, this claim now looks very embattled. I trace its development from the early nineteenth century and the growth of the positivist movement to its various manifestations in the twentieth century. Recently, some historians have called for the term science to be relinquished, and for adoption of a more relaxed pluralism. Yet the complex legacy of the notion of singular science cannot be so easily abandoned