Search results

Giampietro Gobo called for new methods that combine qualitative and quantitative approaches in a single instrument, suggesting this was the next challenge facing social research and mixed methods in particular. The purpose of this paper is to respond to that challenge.

An overview of methods, demonstrating their inherently mixed qualities, with special emphasis on a range of methods that can be classified as merged.

The real challenge is not to find merged methods, but to ensure integration of the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the methods used during the analysis and writing processes.

Researchers need to be alerted to the mixed elements within their work, to learn how to better tap into these and to exploit the integrative potential of their methods during analysis and writing. Researchers need more “rounded” methods training.

This paper refocuses the challenge facing mixed methods research.

Computer-aided/assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) supports qualitative and mixed methods researchers to organize, analyze, and explore data in a meaningful, and efficient, way. Successfully utilizing CAQDAS software can be challenging, particularly for the novice researcher. To assist all researchers 21 CAQDAS dilemmas are articulated. These relate to choosing, using, and getting started with the software, as well as writing about CAQDAS use. These dilemmas suggest there is no right way to use CAQDAS programs, rather the specific research project, along with researcher experience and philosophy, should drive the extent to which any project utilizes the extensive CAQDAS capabilities, while also encouraging the researcher(s) to drive their ideas and exploration beyond what they initially thought possible.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a rejoinder to Joannidès and Berland's comment on Gurd's paper on the use of grounded theory (GT) in interpretive accounting research, re‐establishing the basics of GT.

A refutation by argument.

Argues that GT is definable and the term should be used only where appropriate.

Researchers in accounting should be careful when claiming to use GT. Credibility would be enhanced if there was a more careful explication of method in interpretive research.

This paper continues the debate on GT and should assist both new and experienced researchers to explore the basis of their approach.

Rapid advancements in blockchain technology transform various sectors, attracting the attention of industrialists, practitioners, policymakers and academics, and profoundly affect construction businesses through smart contracts and crypto-economics. This paper explores the blockchain innovation ecosystem in construction.

Through a qualitative study of 23 diverse interviewees, the study explores how open or closed the blockchain innovation ecosystem in construction is and who its emerging orchestrators are.

The data showed that construction aims towards an open innovation blockchain ecosystem, although there are elements of hybridisation and closedness, each system pointing out to different orchestrators.

The study has implications for governments and large companies in construction, showing that open innovation initiatives need to be encouraged by policymakers through rules, regulations and government-sponsored demonstrator projects.

The data showed that there is lack of readiness for business model change to support open innovation blockchain ecosystems in construction.

This is the first study applying the open innovation theory in the construction industry and sheds light into the phenomenon of blockchain, suggesting routes for further democratisation of the technology for policymakers and practitioners.

WE ask our readers to accept the old wish for a Happy Christmas, although we know that in some minds there may be a thought that happiness in such times as these is problematical. Yet we are, so far, a fortunate people, in spite of our difficulties. As a nation we survive and increase in Strength as in confidence. As librarians we have given the best of our men and women to the active services, and most of those who remain are immersed in one way or another in the national effort. We have lost fine libraries in a night, but the will to survive, to win and to create Still survives and kicks. The days are full of difficulties, problems to be solved, high fences and dangerous to be climbed, but we have got through so far, and are convinced we shall continue. It is the most absorbing age in human memory, and we are happy to be alive to overcome its challenges.

This paper aims to investigate the practices, drivers and barriers which influence the implementation of green leases in South Australia. Despite some efforts on legal aspects of green leases, only a few studies have examined these aspects from an operational perspective. In addition, very little empirical evidence was presented in previous studies to show how green leases work in real-life settings.

Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with landlord and tenant representatives who have considerable experience in green leases. These interviewees were selected via a purposive sampling technique that identified buildings which use green leases in South Australia. The concept of interface management (IM) was used to operationalize this research.

The green leases were found to be mainly initiated by tenants while government involvement, economic and environmental benefits are the main drivers in South Australia. Drivers such as staff retention, well-being and corporate social responsibility are found to be more relevant to tenants. Lack of awareness and transaction costs are the main barriers to the implementation of green leases.

This study focuses on the South Australian context and mainly covers dark green leases. There are implications for the government’s continued involvement and the promotion of lighter shades of green leases to overcome operational issues and barriers identified in this study.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge on the subject of green lease implementation from an operational perspective. In addition, the study introduces a conceptual framework via IM that could be used in future research endeavours.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and theorize the type of hate-love relationship to performance measurement systems (PMSs) that individual researchers tend to develop in academia. To this end, the paper draws upon Foucault’s writings on neoliberalism to analyse PMSs as neoliberal technologies holding certain qualities that can be expected to elicit such ambivalent views.

The paper is based on a qualitative interview study of researchers from three Swedish universities, who were asked to reflect upon questions related to three overall themes, namely, what it means to be a researcher in contemporary academia, the existence and use of PMSs at their universities and if/how such PMSs affected them and their work as researchers.

The empirical findings show that the hate-love relationship can be understood in terms of how PMSs are involved in three central moments of governmentality, where each such moment of governmentality tends to elicit feelings of ambivalence among researchers due to how PMSs rely on: a restricted centrifugal mechanism, normalization rather than normation and a view of individual academics as entrepreneurs of themselves.

Existing literature has provided several important insights into how the introduction and use of PMSs in academia tend to result in both negative and positive experiences and reactions. The current paper adds to this literature through theorizing how and why PMSs may be expected to elicit such ambivalent experiences and reactions among individual researchers.

This study examines how an externally imposed management control system (MCS) – hospital accreditation – influences the salience of organisational tensions and consequently attitudes of management towards the system.

Data are collected using a case study of a large public hospital in Spain. In-depth interviews were conducted with 27 senior and middle managers across different functions. Relying on the organisational dualities classification in the literature, tensions are unpacked and analysed.

Evidence is presented of how hospital accreditation increases the salience of organisational tensions arising from exposition of the organisational dualities of learning, performing, organising and belonging. Salient tensions were evident in the ambivalent attitudes of management towards the hospital accreditation system.

The role of mandatory external control systems in exposing ambivalence and tensions will be of interest to organisational managers.

The study extends the management control literature by identifying an active role for an external MCS (accreditation) in increasing the salience of organisational tensions and triggering ambivalence. Contrary to the prior literature, the embedding of both poles of an organisational duality into the MCS is not a necessary precondition for increased tension salience. The range of attitudes towards MCSs beyond those specified in the previous literature (positive/negative/neutral) is extended to include ambivalence.