Description
This book aims to offer a systematic compendium of research methods and approaches in the field of strategic management. In our intention, by reading this volume engaged scholarship will be placed in the favorable position to design and execute thorough qualitative and quantitative applied investigation.
In more detail, the book hunts for a harmonic amalgamation of a collection of methods in strategic management inquiry. In fact, it includes methods that have been (and are) customarily used in the field (e.g. multilevel methods, or cognitive mapping), methods that are completely novel (e.g. semiotic analysis or neuroscientific methods), less-used (e.g. structural equations modeling and multiple case method) or simply heretofore unexploited (e.g. qualitative comparative analysis and mixed methods). In such a way, we intend to tackle a critical need that every strategy researcher (from graduate and postgraduate students engaged with their theses and dissertations to more experienced junior, mid-career and senior scholars) usually experiences when he/she has to start a new research endeavor: how to make the inquiry they are carrying out as rigorous, robust and validated as possible?
Our proposed target is that the book will help researchers and scholars to become fully aware of the generous options of research methods that are relevant to current strategic management investigation, appreciate their present wealth, and find some suitable guidance in selecting the most appropriate method(s) for designing and executing their investigation activities. As it is straightforward to understand from what we have argued heretofore, we have taken the decision to discount econometric methods and single-case study methods from our selection. This choice is motivated by the fact that, while we recognize that the two categories of methods are unquestionably popular in strategic management analysis, they are at the same time widely taught in courses and seminars and it is straightforward to locate an array of good references on these traditional approaches.
The book’s original contribution rests in the fact that, to our knowledge, this is the pioneering rumination of a collection of qualitative and quantitative methods and approaches in the strategy field. Consequently, the book seeks to conveniently stretch into a “practical sourcebook” for researchers keen to generate and/or test knowledge in the strategy field and its relevant sub-fields (global strategy, strategic entrepreneurship, corporate strategy and governance, management of knowledge and innovation, strategy for practice, behavioral strategy, strategic sustainability and so on).