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2.0 Methodology

Drafted Hassan 19.4 – edited rf 28.4

2.1 Introduction

The phenomenographic approach is used in this study to discover the qualitatively different ways in which research student understanding the research process. The phenomenographic approach was developed by an educational research group in Sweden during 1970s to describe the qualitatively different ways in which aspects of reality are experienced. The main focus of phenomenographic is the meaning structure of live experience that is the meaning an aspect of reality takes on for the people studied (Marton, 1981; Marton & Booth, 1997). This method is an empirical qualitative method in reaction to the limitations of the dominant quantitative methods in education. [HASSAN, ADD REFS HERE TO JUSTIFY THIS STATEMENT.] The main emphasis of phenomenographic study is taking the respondent’s perspective on certain issues or a phenomenon (Marton et al., 1997) which is referred to as peoples’ conceptions. Conception refers to people’s ways of experiencing their specific versions of reality and are presented in the form of categories of descriptions (Sandberg, 1997). With the idea of phenomenographic method, this study will adopt the phenomenographic approach to explore PhD student’s (UQBS) ways of understanding or making sense of their research contribution to management practices.

2.2 Justification for the paradigm and methodology

This study is based on conceptions of research as a contribution to management practices (Bruce, 1994). Specifically, this study explored how students perceive their research contribution attributes are integrated in to management practices. In exploring the conceptions of contribution of research to management practices among PhD students, this study employs the social constructionist ontology and epistemology assumptions. The social constructionist research tradition is the assumption that person and world are inextricably related through a persons’ lived experience of the world. For example, Sandberg outlines the social constructionist argument that:

‘…..human descriptions are always coloured by our specific historical, cultural and linguistic understanding of reality. Therefore, reality is socially constructed by continuous negotiation between people about what their reality is’ (Sandberg, 2001)

The focus of constructionism is on human awareness or consciousness and its place in the social world. Constructionists argue that the social world is not a physical entity or, a material object that is outside human consciousness. According to constructivism, social system is not something out there like solar system. The social system exists only as inter-subjective awareness among people. It is a human invention or creation, not of a physical or material kind, but of a purely intellectual kind that can form ideas. It is a set of ideas, a body of thought, a system of norms, which has been arranged by certain people at particular time and place. If the thoughts and ideas that enter into existence of organization change, then the system itself will be changed. This is because, the system exists only in thoughts and ideas (Daniels, Spiker, & Papa, 1997).

The constructionism approach assumes the following ideas:

i. Human relations consist essentially of thoughts and ideas and not of material conditions or forces.

ii. The core elements of ideas upon which constructivists focus, are inter-subjective beliefs (ideas, conceptions and assumption) that are widely shared among people.

iii. Those shared beliefs compose and express the interests and identities of people, for example the way people think of themselves in their relationships with others.

iv. The ways relationship are formed and expressed. (ADD REF HASSAN WHERE FROM??)

Human relations according to this approach consist of thoughts and ideas and not of the base of material setting. This is the philosophical element of constructivism and for them the social world exists independent of thoughts and ideas of the people involved. They emphasized further by describing social world as a world of human consciousness, which involves thoughts and beliefs of ideas, concepts, language, discourses and understandings among human beings, especially groups of human beings (Czarniawska, 2003). Therefore based on social constructionism paradigm, in this study we are describing the thoughts, beliefs and ideas among PhD students in Business School in relation to how their research contributes to the practice of management.

2.3 Research procedures

A phenomenographic approach to student experience is adopted during an empirical study among UQ Business School PhD student who have gone through the confirmation process. The confirmed candidates have completed the four coursework offered in Business School namely the Qualitative and Quantitative Method, Academy Research in Management and Critical Overview of Management Research. There is about (number of student have confirmed). To obtain data that captured the greatest possible variation in experience in the coursework within this group, however because of the limitation of time we selected 5 PhD students who have confirmed their candidature. In a full study, at least 20 respondents are required in which the variation of a phenomenon would be expected to reach a theoretical saturation {Giorgi, 2002 #22}

In exploring what constituted PhD students understanding on the research contribution to management practices, we used interviews and observations. The aim of interviews and observation is to capture the possible variation in conceptions of understanding in PhD students. First, the participant will be informed about the purpose of study and they will read consent form before commencing the interview and then sign their consent. The consent form explains what the project aims to achieve and what participation involves. It also indicate that participants are free to withdraw at any time without prejudice and that when the results are drawn up they will be presented in summation form without any identifying information. The form lists the information participants need to be aware of regarding how the research is to be conducted and provides a space for participants to sign that they have read and understood the conditions. A copy of the understanding and consent form is attached in the appendix. The interviews took place in or near the PhD student’s office and lasted between around thirty minutes.

Two principal questions were put to the selected PhD students:

How does research in general contribute to the practice of management?

How does your research contribute to management practice?

These questions were explored to achieve greater detail and verified with follow-up questions. For example, questions such as “Did you think about contribution to management practices in your research?”, “Can you explain that further”, and “Can you give example?” were posed so that the PhD students are require to give details and show what their statements meant in real situations. This dialectical process continues until we made no further progress, or we reached thirty minutes. The interviews were audiotaped and transcribed word-for-word. In all, the transcriptions amounted to some (number) pages of single-spaced text [or (number) of lines].

2.4 Validity and Reliability Criteria

The validity of phenomenographic studies concerns with researcher’s justification for presenting the outcomes space and claims based on those results, as credible and trustworthy. The judgement of credibility and trustworthiness then lies with the person reading the study. In this study, to deal with the validity issues we will adopt Sandberg (2000) three criteria to justify interpretation which are known as communicative validity, pragmatic validity and reliability as interpretative awareness. The communicative validity engage an ongoing dialogue in which another knowledge claims are argue throughout the research process while the pragmatic validity entails analysing the knowledge produce in action {Booth, 1997 #23}. The three criteria have shown to answer the issue of validity in phenomenographic which put emphasis on the quality of valid knowledge produce through human experience {Giorgi, 2002 #22}.

Reliability as interpretative awareness means acknowledging that researchers cannot escape from their interpretations but must explicitly deal with the throughout the research process {Sandberg, 2000 #25}. The reliability in phenomenographic studies concerns with the replicability of the outcome spaces. Sandberg (1997) argues that interjudge reliability is derived from an ‘objectivistic epistemology within the positivistic research tradition’. Interjudge reliability is the use of a second coder to look at phenomenographic data to see if they find the same categories as the original coder. The categories are provided as part of the process. This process may be unreliable if the data is poor, or coloured by the researcher’s pre-understanding, or superficial, so general categories are found rather than a specific conception. However Sandberg (1997) claims that the basis of phenomenography is a ‘phenomenological epistemology’, that is a subjective conception of reality, thus alternate processes of reliability are required. Consistent with this view in Sandberg (2000) interpretative awareness is suggested as a substitute that is the subjectivity of the interpretation must be dealt with, identified, controlled and checked. Sandberg (1997) suggests five steps to bracket prior knowledge, in what he calls ‘phenomenological reduction’. The steps include:

‘being open’ [EXPAND HERE}
describe, but not go beyond, the experience described
‘treat all individuals as equally important’ which he calls ‘horizontilsation’
look for structure to the meaning, and keep exploring alternative interpretations until a conception ‘has been stabilised’
use what and how the reality is conceived to correlate the description with reality.

Based on the five steps above, the ‘epistemology of intentionality underlying phenomenography’ is stressed, to achieve ‘reliability’ {Sandberg, 1997 #21}. Therefore, in this study the five steps will be adopt to deal with the issues on reliability. Furthermore, these five steps will enable us to check and recheck the reliability and validity issues in conducting research. As many scholars put emphasis of these two important issues in conducting research {Bagozzi, 1991 #11}

In collecting data, communicative validity is achieved by: establishing a community of interpretation to make sure an initial understanding between the students and researcher about the student’s research contribution to management practices; using only two principal open-ended interview questions to encourage the students to identify and describe to us what they conceived and understand about their research contribution to the management practices; follow-up questions during the interview to help us understand the students ways of conceiving of research contribution to management practices. In this study the pragmatic validity was achieved by: asking follow-up questions that requires the students to demonstrate what statement in practices and observing the students’ reactions to particular interpretations of their statements.

Reliability as interpretative awareness was achieved when obtaining data by being oriented to the ways in which the students were conceiving of their research contribution to management practices throughout the interview. To achieve this and based on Sandberg (1997) steps we primarily asked what and how questions in order to encourage the students to focus on describing what contribution to management practices meant for them; treat all the students’ statement about their research contribution to management practices as equally important and ask extensive follow-up questions that required the students to elaborate on and be more specific about what they meant by their statements.

In the analysis, communicative validity was achieved by making interpretation of the students’ statements about their research contribution to management practice that were consistent with both the immediate context of surrounding statements and the transcript as whole. The identified conceptions also were presented to the students. The students confirmed that the identified conceptions were valid.

Reliability as interpretative awareness is important during the analysis (similar to obtaining data process) where we focus on the ways the students conceived of their research contribution to management practices. We tried to maintain such focus by trying to hold back our own pre-understanding of research contribution to management practices and continuously checking to see if our interpretations were grounded in the students’ description of research contribution to management practices; initially treating all the statements made by the students as equally important in our interpretations and checking our interpretation of each student’s conception by reading through transcripts expressing one particular conception then using a qualitatively different conception.

Beside the above steps, we also employed an independent coder to satisfy the argument that researcher may interpret the answers based on their preconceived ideas {Currell, 1999 #26}. We chose a random sample of five transcripts and the (number) of conceptions. (Figure) % agreement was achieved between the independent judgement and ours.

2.5 Conclusion

Bruce, C. S. 1994. Research students' early experiences of the dissertation literature review. Studies in Higher Education, 19(2): 217-229.

Czarniawska, B. 2003. Social constructionsm and organization studies. In S. Clegg (Ed.), Debating organization: Point-counterpoint in organization studies.: 128-139. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Daniels, T. D., Spiker, B. K., & Papa, M. J. 1997. Perspective on organizational communication (4 ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Marton, F. 1981. Phenomenography - describing conceptions of the world around us. Instructional Science, 10: 177-200.

Marton, F. & Booth, S. 1997. Learning and awareness. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Sandberg, J. 2001. The constructions of social constructionism. In M. Tyrstrup (Ed.), Invisible management. The social constuctionism of leadership: 28-48. London: Thomson Learning.

Sandberg, J. 1997. Are phenomenographic results reliable? Higher Education Research & Development, 16(2): 203-212.