Methodology‐as‐Technique and the Meaning of Rigour in Globalized Management Research
| Author | Emma Bell,Nivedita Kothiyal,Hugh Willmott |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12205 |
| Published date | 01 July 2017 |
| Date | 01 July 2017 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 28, 534–550 (2017)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12205
Methodology Corner
Methodology-as-Technique and the
Meaning of Rigour in Globalized
Management Research
Emma Bell, Nivedita Kothiyal1and Hugh Willmott2
Open University Business School, Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK, 1Institute of Rural
Management Anand (IRMA), Anand, Gujarat, 388001, India, and 2Cass Business School, City University
London, London EC1Y 8TZ, UK
Corresponding author email: emma.bell@open.ac.uk
This paper analyses the genre of ‘methodology-as-technique’, which we suggest
provides the underpinning logic for a particular conception of scientific rigour that
is increasingly regarded as normal in globalized management research. Based on a
qualitative interview study of management researchers in the peripheral context of
India, we associate the methodology-as-technique genre with social scientific methods
of organizing, conducting and disseminating knowledge founded on Western neo-
imperialism and colonialism. Our analysis draws attention to the consequences of the
genre of methodology-as-technique which relate to a narrowing and displacement of
research goals, erasure of context, and devaluation and marginalization of alternatives.
By providing insight into how methodology-as-technique comes to dominate in peripheral
locations such as India, we suggest that these normative constraints also present an
opportunity for denaturalization, by making what is increasingly seen as normal appear
alien or strange. We conclude by arguing that countering restrictive definitions of rigour
in management research relies on development of a more expansive and inclusive con-
ception of the global that fosters indigenous ways of knowing and promotesdecolonizing
methodologies.
This whole concept of scientific researchis something
which bothers me .. . If you do a good qualitative
analysis, it is not considered and qualified to be sci-
entific research. It is still subject to bias.But if you do
quantitative analysis, it is objective. So .. . the ten-
dency today is to get into quantitative research . . .
Management is .. . getting removed from the social
sciences .. . It is becoming more economics and all
the rest is seen as . . . superficial and not substantial;
that’stheproblem.(Paul,DeanofFaculty)
This project was funded by a British Academy of
Management Researcher Development Grant 2014 on
‘The globalisation of management research methods’,
BAMRDGS2013 14833.
Introduction
The enduring, heated nature of rigour-relevance
debates and proliferation of methods textbooks,
articles and training programmes, suggests an
ongoing preoccupation with the pursuit of
methodological rigour in management research.
Positivist quantitative research is widely supposed
to be more rigorous than other methodologies
(Daft, 1980; Shrivastava, 1987), as it is considered
capable of delivering a unified body of knowledge
based on systematic theory development and
testing. More ‘rigorous’ methods are promoted as
a way of developing ‘stronger’ theory and/or pro-
ducing knowledge that is less context-contingent
© 2016 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
Globalized Management Research 535
and more ‘generalizable’ (Aram and Salipante,
2003, p. 190). Yet, despite the prominence of
rigour in management research, the practices
through which researchers construct the meaning
of rigour are less well understood.
This can obscure important contextual and
discipline-specific dierences in how rigour is
defined. In disciplines aligned to a positivist philos-
ophy of science,the meaning of rigour is ostensibly
settled and taken for granted. In those disciplines
more closely aligned to a hermeneutical philosoph-
ical tradition, unitary conceptions of rigour are
considered to oversimplify ontological and epis-
temological dierences and complexities (Abbott,
2004; Becher, 1989). Here we understand research
as a socially embedded activity conducted within
pluralistic communities of practice (Knorr Cetina,
1999; Schwartz-Shea, 2014) that enact particular
methodologies through which particular notions
of rigour are framed and institutionalized.
We reflect on a conception of rigour that
currently dominates management research glob-
ally. Our empirical focus is India, an emerging
economy where management research is becom-
ing more ‘internationally’1oriented (Saunders,
Wong and Saunders, 2011). Through a process
of ‘problematization’ (Alvesson and Sandberg,
2011), we examine the socio-historical and
institutional conditions that have led to the natu-
ralization of a positivist conception of rigour and
marginalization of alternatives. In the following
section, we provide an overview of debates about
the globalization of management research and
core–periphery dynamics that shape knowledge
production. Next, we analyse how researchers in
India engage with the notion of rigour, showing
how this engagement is closely aligned with what
Hammersley (2011) characterizes as the genre of
‘methodology-as-technique’. Hammersley (2011)
identifies methodology-as-technique as one of
three broad genres of social scientific research that
have emerged in the West over the past 50 years.2
1The use of the word ‘international’ in this context
takes no account of neo-colonial power relations, since it
equates to the adoption of ‘national’ – primarily US – re-
search practices worldwide.
2Hammersley’s (2011) other two genres are
‘methodology-as-philosophy’, which incorporates the
ontological and epistemological assumptions used to
justify dierent approaches to research, and the third
genre, ‘methodology-as-autobiography’, which conceives
of research as a messy, creative and unfolding process
This genre is distinguished by attempts ‘to codify
the methods social scientists use, specifying their
character and proper application in relation to
the dierent research tasks’ (Hammersley, 2011,
pp. 20–21). Issues of methodology are translated
into ‘a relatively small number of clearly defined
options’, chosen either based on fit between the
research problem and the method of studying
it or ‘as a matter of taste’ (Hammersley, 2011,
p. 21). Finally, we consider the implications of
methodology-as-technique in understanding the
meaning of rigour in management research.
Rigour is often invoked as an ostensibly ob-
jective, universal means of evaluating research
quality. Our analysis illuminates how, in practice,
rigour is a socially constructed and contested con-
cept that, in its dominant form, closely corre-
sponds to the genre of methodology-as-technique
and routinely privileges positivistic methods of
producing knowledge. The focus of our analysis is
the expansion of management research in an emer-
gent, industrializing economy but we suggest simi-
lar pressures aect researchers inWestern contexts.
We endeavour to illuminate this hegemonic pro-
cess by giving voice to management researchers
in the peripheral location of India. Through this
we attend to the homogenizing and detrimen-
tal eects of such universalistic conceptions of
rigour, founded on historically and culturally con-
tingent Westernphilosophical and methodological
traditions. In the process, alternatives, including
methodologies and methods that are potentially
valuablein researching indigenous forms of knowl-
edge, are delegitimized and marginalized. Yet our
analysis also suggests that the periphery can oer
an instructive vantage point from which not only
to observe and respond to these homogenizing de-
velopments, butalso to question and disar m them.
Globalization of management research
The globalization of social science raises con-
cerns about neo-colonialist reproduction of core–
periphery dynamics between global North and
South with regard to methodological practice and
norms of knowledge production (Alatas, 2003;
learnt through first-hand experience. Within this genre,
attention is directed to the dynamic characterof research,
and consideration is given to the interdependent rela-
tionship between the researcher and the production of
knowledge.
© 2016 British Academy of Management.
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