"Ethnography of Ethnographers" and Qualitative Meta-Analysis for Business

Bibliographic Data

ID5948043
AuthorsJosh Kaplan (0000-0001-7466-5142), Alexandra Mack (Pitney Bowes (France))
Year2010
Volume2010
Issue1
Pages100-112
Publication date2010-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings (CONFERENCE)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1559-890X • E-ISSN: 1559-8918
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1559-8918.2010.00010.x
OpenAlexW2090098987
LanguageEN
References cited17

The use of meta-analytic studies has grown steadily in recent decades as a means of establishing greater confidence and robustness of social science findings, but such approaches remain rare in the business world. This paper offers two inter-linked qualitative meta-analytic approaches for business: one that both draws on pre-existing data to gain insight into new strategic questions and reaches across multiple studies to achieve greater generalizability and robustness, and a second that studies researchers and research practice as a means of reflecting on and improving methodology in particular organizations or research groups. Drawing on an in-house study the authors conducted for a Fortune 500 corporation, this paper articulates these two approaches and points to potential dangers and opportunities in applying them in other settings. In a moment in which researchers are increasingly called upon to do more with less, our approach provides flexibility and adaptability to environments inhospitable to marshalling resources to new original research

Adaptability · Corporation · Economics · Ethnography · Flexibility (engineering · Generalizability theory · Knowledge management · Management · Management science · Marshalling · Political science · Qualitative research · Robustness (evolution · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Engineering · Management and Organizational Studies · Psychology