Business Research Methods

Emma Bell is Professor of Organisation Studies at the Open University, UK. She has an enduring interest in methods and methodological issues and has published widely in this area. Emma is a past Co-Chair of the Critical Management Studies Division of the Academy of Management, current joint Vice-Chair of Research and Publications, British Academy of Management, and joint Editor-in-Chief of Management Learning.

Alan Bryman was Professor of Organizational and Social Research at the University of Leicester from 2005 to 2017. Prior to this he was Professor of Social Research at Loughborough University for thirty-one years. His main research interests were in leadership, especially in higher education, research methods (particularly mixed methods research), and the 'Disneyization' and 'McDonaldization' of modern society. Alan was also the author of the bestselling textbook Social Research Methods (Oxford University Press, 2015) as well as contributing to a range of leading journals: he was an extraordinarily well-cited and internationally renowned social scientist.

Bill Harley is Professor of Management in the Department of Management and Marketing at The University of Melbourne. Bill's academic research has been motivated by an abiding interest in the centrality of work to human life. His work has been published in journals including the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Journal of Management Studies, Industrial Relations, and Work Employment and Society. Bill was previously General Editor of Journal of Management Studies and is currently on the editorial boards of the same journal, as well as Academy of Management Learning and Education and Human Relations.

Part 1: The research process
1. The nature and process of business research
2. Business research strategies
3. Research designs
4. Planning a research project and developing research questions
5. Getting started. reviewing the literature
6. Ethics in business research
7. Writing up business research

Part 2: Quantitative research
8. The nature of quantitative research
9. Sampling in quantitative research
10. Structured interviewing
11. Self-completion questionnaires
12. Asking questions
13. Quantitative research using naturally occurring data. structured observation and content analysis
14. Secondary analysis and official statistics
15. Quantitative data analysis
16. Using IBM SPSS statistics

Part 3: Qualitative research
17. The nature of qualitative research
18. Sampling in qualitative research
19. Ethnography and participant observation
20. Interviewing in qualitative research
21. Focus groups
22. Language in qualitative research
23. Documents as sources of data
24. Qualitative data analysis
25. Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis. using NVivo

Part 4: Mixed methods research
26. Breaking down the quantitative/qualitative divide
27. Mixed methods research. combining quantitative and qualitative research