The Proceedings

of the
10th European Conference
on Research Methodology
for Business and
Management Studies
Normandy Business School
Caen
France
20-21 June 2011

Edited by
Marie Ashwin
Normandy Business School, France
Copyright The Authors, 2011. All Rights Reserved.

No reproduction, copy or transmission may be made without written permission from the individual authors.

Papers have been doubleblind peer reviewed before final submission to the conference. Initially, paper
abstracts were read and selected by the conference panel for submission as possible papers for the
conference.

Many thanks to the reviewers who helped ensure the quality of the full papers.

These Conference Proceedings have been submitted to the Thomson ISI for indexing.

Further copies of this book can be purchased from http://academic-conferences.org/2-proceedings.htm

ISBN:978-1-908272-02-7 Book

Published by Academic Publishing Limited

Reading
UK
44-118-972-4148
www.academic-publishing.org
 Contents
Paper Title Author(s) Page
No.
Preface vi
Biographies of Conference Chairs, Programme vii
Chair, Keynote Speaker and Mini-track Chairs

Biographies of contributing authors viii

Challenges of Conducting Qualitative Khodayar Abili 1
Research in Iranian Universities and Research
Institutes
Action Research in a Foodservice Store: Mohamed Afifi, Peter Jones and Anita Eves 9
Reflections on Methodology
Integrating Affect With Psychological Contract Ghulam Ali Arain, Imran Hameed, Delphine 17
Breach (PCB) and Work Attitudes: A Case of Lacaze and Jean Marie Peretti
Pakistani University Teachers
Towards a Methodology of the Imagination: A Andrew Armitage 25
(Radical) Proposal
Egalité, Fraternité, Liberté - A Supervision Marie Ashwin and Alan Hirst 33
Journey Across Cultural Frontiers
A Fuzzy Logic System for Evaluating Quality of Vijaya Bandyopadhyaya and Ranja 42
Management Institutions Bandyopadhyaya
Business Systems Analysis as Research Peter Bednar and Christine Welch 51
Plumbing the Depths: Research as a Patrick Bradbery 59
Developmental Tool
Researching Innovation in Teaching Methods Ann Brown and Martin Rich 67
for Business School Courses
The Five Ps of Mixed Methods Research Roslyn Cameron 76
Inciting Advanced Levels of Practitioner Robert Campbell, Gillian Green and Mark 84
Reflection Through Progressive Graphic Grimshaw
Elicitation
The Customer Satisfaction Process Oriented Lucio Cappelli, Roberta Guglielmetti, 93
Model (CS-Pro Mod): a New Theoretical Giovanni Mattia, Roberto Merli, Maria
Approach to Measure Customer Satisfaction Francesca Renzi
A Design Science Approach to Development Marian Carcary 108
of the IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT
CMF)
Overcoming QCA Method’s Difficulties Thanks Guillaume Chanson 116
to the SC-QCA Protocol
Development of a Project Management Christina May May Chin, Andrew Spowage 125
Methodology for Use in a University-Industry and Eng Hwa Yap
Collaborative Research Environment
Research Methodologies and Professional Caroline Cole, Steven Chase, Oliver Couch 133
Practice: Considerations and Practicalities and Murray Clark
The Benefits of Using Expert Interviews in the Helen Cripps 140
Development of Research

i
Paper Title Author(s) Page
No.
Interwoven Quantitative and Qualitative Analytics Msoud Dedashti, Malek Elahi, Roberto 155
in Management Research Villarroel and Bridget Tang Qian Peng
Methodological Aspects of Assessing the Quality Voicu Dan Dragomir 162
and Quantity of Corporate Environmental
Reporting
Cross-Cultural Management: Global Knowledge Jean-Pierre Dupuis 171
or Local Knowledge?
Visual Methodologies: Photo-Elicitation in the Stephen Fanning 180
University Classroom
Photos as Mirrors in Sport Stephen Fanning, Madeleine Ogilvie, 189
Maria Ryan, Kate Mizerski, Martin
MacCarthy, and Helen Cripps
Pragmatism in a Research Design Ji Gopal, Suman Bhakri, and Prakash 198
Sharma
How Paradigmatic Lens Explain Variations in Dipanjan Goswami, Gour C Saha, Neera 205
Drug Adoption Model Jain, Anupama Chadha and Abir
Goswami
The Determinants of Drug Adoption in India: A Dipanjan Goswami, Gour C Saha, Neera 214
Study on Antihypertensive Drugs Jain and Rubi Khan
Exploring the Effects of Identity-Based Trust: A Imran Hameed, Ghulam Ali Arain, Olivier 224
Mediation Analysis Roques and Jean Marie Peretti
The Impact of Cultural Dimensions on the Project Nicole Hargreaves and Lewis Endlar 232
Management Triple Constraint Model
The Viable System Model (VSM) and Qualitative Sandra Hildbrand and Shamim Bodhanya 241
Studies: A Research Perspective to Manage in a
World of Complexity
Observing Dispersed Agile Project Processes Robert Hughes 249
Demystifying the Arduous Doctoral Journey with Rahinah Ibrahim 256
an Eagle Vision of a Research Proposal in Jiffy
The Death of the Aspiration for High Diane Keeble-Ramsay and Andrew 264
Performance Working, Post the Global Credit Armitage
Crisis - Researching its Meaning in the
Workplace
Deletion, Distortion and Data Collection: The Jenny Knight 271
Application of the Neuro-Linguistic Progamming
(NLP) Meta-Model in Qualitative Interviews
Writing Under Cover: Content Analysis of Deborah Knowles 278
Nigerian 419 eMails
The Problems of Teaching Research Mortaza Kokabi 285
Methodology in a Middle Eastern Country: The
Iranian Experience
Real Life Learning by Doing and Experiencing: A David Lamb 291
Research Based Project to Investigate the
Effectiveness of an Experiential Learning Model
With Event Management Students
Conversation Analysis - an Analytic Perspective Arminda Lopes 301
Conciliating Grounded Theory With Actor- Eurico Lopes 311
Network Theory to Research Decision-Making
Under Uncertainty

ii
Paper Title Author(s) Page
No.
Conversation Analysis - an Analytic Arminda Lopes 301
Perspective
Conciliating Grounded Theory With Actor- Eurico Lopes 311
Network Theory to Research Decision-Making
Under Uncertainty
Researching Australian gun Ownership; Martin MacCarthy 320
Respondents Never lie…or do They?
On the Promotion of the Utilisation of Hendrik Marais, Magdalena Pienaar-Marais 328
Research Findings by Graduate Students in and Simon Gathua
Management Studies: A South African
Perspective
A Critical Discussion on the Selection of a Jorge Tiago Martins and Miguel Baptista 339
Data Collection Technique for an Interpretivist Nunes
Grounded Theory Study: In-Depth Interviews
vs. Focus Groups
A Functional Measurement Approach to Cope Davide Massidda, David Polezzi and Giulio 348
with the Nonlinearity of Judgments in Vidotto
Marketing Research
Postgraduate Research Methods Teaching Elisabeth Michielsens and Peter Urwin 355
and Variations in Undergraduate Background
A Proposed Mixed Methods Approach to Abbas Nandwani, Gary Bell and Jon 367
eService Project Appraisals Warwick
Replication Logic and Original Contribution to Bongani Ngwenya 377
Body of Knowledge: Can the two Ever Meet, or
Co-Exist?
Postgraduate Business Research Methods: Hester Nienaber 386
Facilitating Learning by Adapting Teaching
Strategies to Match Learning Styles
Faulty Results by Neglecting Mobile Service Susanne Niklas, Stephan Böhm and Stefan 395
Usage Context Strohmeier
Is There a Causal Relationship Between Alcina Nunes, Jorge Lopes and Carlos Balsa 402
Construction Activity and the Portuguese
Economy? An Econometric Empirical
Application
Evaluation of Dynamic Participation in Alcina Nunes 411
Portuguese Active Employment Programmes
The Granularity of Scale Response Noel Pearse 420
Categories: The use of a 21-Point Scale
Applying a Social Networking Approach to Oluwarotimi Abayomi Randle 430
Solve Problems in Online Survey Research
SMEs Experience of Collaboration and Their Karsten Boye Rasmussen and Heiko Thimm 435
IT Maturity
Balancing Guidance and Independence in Martin Rich 445
Student Learning of Research Skills
An Integrated Research Process Model: A Faith Samkange 450
Conceptualized and Contextualised
Methodology for Interrogating Complex
Technological Development Issues
Double Roles: Employer Organization Focused Risto Säntti 459
Research

iii
Paper Title Author(s) Page
No.
Project Management Bodies of Knowledge; Miles Shepherd and Roger Atkinson 465
Conjectures and Refutations
Colour Coding: An Alternative to Analyse Bernd Stottok, Martin Bergaus and Andrea 472
Empirical Data via Grounded Theory Gorra
Student Reservation Price: How Much Will Matthew Sutherland, Teresa Waring and 481
Prospective Students pay for Their Nigel Coates
Undergraduate Degrees?
Ethics in a Developing Country Context Nicola Swan and Trevor Long 490
Project Organisation and the ‘Community of Jonathan Tanner and Gary Bell 498
Practice’ Theory: Exploring the Connectivity
An Exploration of Mobility Behaviours Using Kaye Thorn, Kerr Inkson and Stuart Carr 506
CHAID Analysis
Adaptation of the Spiral Model of Software Nathalia Tjandra and Geoffrey Darnton 518
Development to Business and Management
Dissertations and Research Projects
Incorporating Design Science Research and John Venable 529
Critical Research into an Introductory Business
Research Methods Course
Telephone Requests for Participation and Catherine Wang and Mark Saunders 537
Refusals: Reflections on Gaining Interview
Access to Chinese Managers
Communities of Practice as a Vehicle for Christine Welch and Tammi Sinha 547
Research Into Business Improvement Practice
The Use of Case Study Research George Onatu 555
Methodology and Design in the Study of
Information
PhD Papers 565
Utilising Multiview as Framework: Enabling a Dave Hagan 567
Reflection on Software Development Practice
Characteristics Influencing International Nurlida Ismail, Faridah Hj Hassan and 574
Students’ Information Search Behaviour and Nooraini Mohamad Sheriff
Satisfaction for a Private Higher Education
Institution
Proposal to Explore the use of new Strategies Gary Marchioro 584
to Create a Community Based Decision
Making Process for Indigenous Peoples.
Overcoming Major Changes in a Research Nasser Mohammed Al Khalifa and Pat Gray 591
Environment: A Study in Qatar’s Civil Service
From Aeronautical RCM Engineer to Reluctant Paul Moxey 598
Academic: A Reflection From Past to Practice
to Praxis
Potential Technique for Capturing Building Zohreh Pourzolfaghar, Rahinah Ibrahim, 605
Design Tacit Knowledge to Decrease Cost and Rusli Abdullah and Nor Mariah Adam
Time Overruns
Rumination to Reflection: The Quest to Re- David Caton Roberts 614
Visit Entrepreneurial Learning
Researching Sustainable Development of the Nicola Swan 621
Rural Poor in India

iv
Paper Title Author(s) Page
No.
Using Photo-Elicitation to Explore Place Joanna Tonge, Susan Moore, Maria Ryan 629
Attachment in a Remote Setting and Lynnath Beckley
Guanxi and Networking in Social Network Dauw-Song Zhu, Yi-Kang Chen and Louis 638
Theory: Culture and its Affect on Attitude White
Conceptualizing and Designing a Qualitative Molefe Coper Joseph 647
Study: Insights From a Doctoral Study on
Youth Livelihoods in Botswana
Work in Progress Papers 657
Methodology for the Construction of a Óscar Arias Londoño 659
Research Problem on Management Process
Toward a Large Dams-Specific Project Omar Bentahar 663
Management Framework
Practical Considerations on Research Methods Ovidiu-Niculae Bordean and Anca Borza 668
in Corporate Governance
An Empirical Investigation of Relevance in Dan McAran 672
Information Systems Research
Methodology for Analysis and Modeling Risk in José Vásquez Paniagua 676
an Investment Project

v
Preface
The 10th European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies is hosted
this year by the Normandy Business School in Caen, France. The Conference Chair is Dr Isabelle Royer,
University Lyon 3, France and I am pleased to be Programme Chair.

The now well established aim of ECRM is to provide an occasion for individuals, working in the area of
business and management research to meet and discuss their experiences of using the varied and
expanding range of research methods available to them.

The opening keynote address is by Dr David Bednall, Deakin University, Australia.

In addition to the main themes of the conference there are mini tracks on Teaching Research Methods and
Methodologies, Mixed Research Methods, Project Management and Visual Methodologies. For the second
year ECRM is incorporating a PhD Colloquium and we have been impressed with the range of research and
calibre of work that has been submitted for this.

With an initial submission of 195 abstracts, after the double blind, peer review process there are 91 papers
published in these Conference Proceedings. These papers come from some 23 different countries including
Australia, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, India, Iran, Ireland, Italy,
Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Phillipines, Portugal, Romania, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, United
Kingdom, and Zimbabwe. A selection of the best papers – those agreed by a panel of reviewers and the
editor will be published in a conference edition of the EJBRM (Electronic Journal of Business Research
Methods www.ejbrm.com). These will be chosen for their quality of writing and relevance to the Journal’s
objective of publishing papers that offer new insights or practical help into the application of research
methods in business research.

I wish you a most interesting conference.

Marie Ashwin
Programme Chair
June 2011

vi
Adaptation of the Spiral Model of Software Development to
Business and Management Dissertations and Research
Projects
Nathalia Tjandra1 and Geoffrey Darnton2
1
Edinburgh Napier University, UK 
2
Requirements Analytics, Bournemouth, UK
nathalia@nathaliatjandra.com
gdarnton@requirementsanalytics.com
Abstract: Many higher education programmes in the UK require some form of dissertation or research project as
part of meeting the level descriptors required for final year undergraduate (H), master's (M), and doctorate (D) of the
Framework for Higher Education Qualifications (QAA 2008). This paper presents the outcome of an informal auto-
ethnographic study to match the realities of creating a dissertation with advice available in a number of methodology
textbooks. In itself, an auto-ethnographic consideration of research methods was interesting and unusual. The
attempt to match the auto-ethnographic experiences with several methodology textbooks led to an articulation of
what is hopefully a framework that could be used to strengthen current textbook approaches by analogy from
software engineering (spiral model). The key result is presented in this paper as a spiral model for the development
of a dissertation or research project. The paper includes brief discussions beyond the spiral model and a traditional
inductive-deductive dichotomy.

Keywords: research methodology; spiral model; auto-ethnography; methodology textbooks; writing a dissertation

1. Auto-ethnography and the problem definition

Research is ‘something that people undertake in order to find out things in a systematic way thereby
increasing their knowledge’ (Saunders et al. 2009). Systematic means that research has to be based on
logical relationships not just beliefs, and to find out things means that a research might have multiple
purposes which may include describing, explaining, understanding, analysing, criticising and analysing
(Ghauri and Grønhaug 2005). The lack of structure in the dissertation process might be a reason for
failure in completing dissertations (D’Andrea 2002). However, research must have clear purposes or a
set of things that you want to find out.

The majority of undergraduate and postgraduate business and management (B&M) students are required
to complete a research project or dissertation to demonstrate an ability to conduct research.

Fulfilling the criteria of B&M research is not an easy task. Firstly, students must identify a research topic
(Saunders et al. 2009) helped by personal experience, books, journal articles, supervisor
recommendation or cases provided by companies. For many students, limited business experience or
direct contact with customers may create problems in demonstrating applicability of their research - a
requirement for H- and M-level dissertations.

Auto-ethnography is ‘a reflexive means by which the researcher-practitioner consciously embeds himself

or herself amidst theory and practice, and by way of intimate autobiographic account, explicates a
phenomenon under investigation or intervention’ (McIlveen 2008). Auto-ethnography has been used by
researcher-practitioners in variety of disciplines (Anderson 2006; Ellis and Bochner 2000; Etherington
2004; Reed-Danahay 1997; Roth 2005). However, the application of this qualitative method in business
management research is still limited. Perhaps the main reason for this is that the method requires
researchers to perform a narrative analysis pertaining to self as intimately related to a particular
phenomenon. Thus, one purpose of auto-ethnography is to invite the audiences to understand the
researched phenomena by using the researchers’ perspectives. Compared to other common research
methods such as surveys and interviews, auto-ethnography does not show a boundary between the
researchers and the subject researched. The researcher is sometimes part of the research. It is common
in auto-ethnographic research, that researchers explore their own opinions and experiences to
understand the phenomenon. Therefore, some data used in auto-ethnography research are research
diary and journals which record the researchers’ opinions or experience.

This paper is based on the experience of the first author of conducting a Master's marketing dissertation
by using an informal auto-ethnography (Tjandra 2009). The research is considered as an informal auto-
ethnography because the research itself was not intended to be an auto-ethnographic study. However,

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the conduct of the research which was partly based on the reflexive experience of the author in the
process of analysing theory and reality of the researched phenomena reflected the nature of auto-
ethnographic study.

The dissertation discussed in this paper is ‘The importance of country of origin to international branded
clothes and the influence of national culture to its evaluation’ (ibid). The dissertation identified and
explored the influence of different backgrounds towards the perception of country-of-origin of international
clothing brands. The study was conducted qualitatively involving 67 respondents from 21 nationalities.
The idea of the research was based on the first author’s own perception towards the country-of-origin of
international clothing brands. The author, originally from one of the less industrialised countries, used to
believe that less industrialised countries would produce lower quality clothes because of manufacturing
practices and lower costs. Therefore, she felt it was not worth buying expensive international branded
clothes made in less industrialised countries. However, during her study she learned that the majority of
international fashion brands have been outsourcing their products overseas. Furthermore, the author’s
conversations with different consumers from different countries indicated that they have different
perceptions towards the country-of-origin of international branded clothes and some of their opinions
could be clustered based on their nationality. Based on this observation, the author felt that a better
understanding about the phenomenon and exploration about why and how country background
influences the customers’ perception towards country-of-origin would be an ideal master’s dissertation
topic.

The decision to write the dissertation in a narrative way was simply because the author felt that the
research idea was developed based on her own experience and her willingness to understand reality and
theory using her own perspective. The attempt at understanding reality and at the same time seeking
theory to explain reality was a challenging task. Most of the time, the process involved cross-stages
reflection. The unusual order of conducting the research encouraged the author to find an alternative
order and structure to do it. The process of experiencing the phenomena, becoming part of the research,
trying to understand reality and reflecting them with the theories is consistent with auto-ethnographic
research. Of course, this was realised after the dissertation was completed and the author was informed
about the existence of auto-ethnographic method!

Nevertheless, the author was able to identify some fundamental issues regarding relationships between
country-of-origin and consumers’ country background. These include: relationships between consumers’
country economic status (developed or less-developed countries) with country-of-origin and relationships
between country-of-origin and national culture. The results also confirmed past research findings such as
relationships between country-of-origin and product type, relationships between country-of-origin and
brand and relationships between country-of-origin and price. Therefore, a reflexive research method such
as auto-ethnography can be a valid method to be used for business and management research.
2. Software development paradigms, experiences and the spiral model
Early reflections led to an exploration of lessons from software development to see if there are any
analogies that may be helpful in outlining a process for research project development which are not
evident from traditional methodological textbooks used by B&M students. The principal reason for
exploring the software development world was experience of the second author with methodological work
within that field and recognizing immediately that the processes being described by the first author were
consistent with the spiral method.

Early software development thoughts led to aspirations to apply engineering principles to software
development. An engineering approach to producing a new artefact is usually a very linear process: what
is the problem to be solved?; analyze the problem situation; what kind of artefact will help to solve the
problem?; design; construct; test; deploy; maintain; retire. This early flirtation of software development
with engineering led to the emergence of a new field called 'software engineering' first articulated in 1968
(Naur and Randell 1969). "The phrase 'software engineering' was deliberately chosen as being
provocative, in implying the need for software manufacture to be based on the types of theoretical
foundations and practical disciplines, that are traditional in the established branches of engineering" (ibid,
p13).

A 'Waterfall Model' for software development, essentially a porting of traditional views of an engineering
life cycle into the software world was published in 1970 (Royce 1970). Royce's "pure" waterfall is shown
in Figure 1.

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 Nathalia Tjandra and Geoffrey Darnton

Figure 1: Implementation steps to develop a large computer program for delivery to a customer (Royce
1970)
The fundamental essence of the "pure" waterfall model is that it is a top-down decomposition of a
process to produce an artefact, into a sequence of activities. In reality, implementation of the waterfall
model has never been quite as mechanical as that, although some project managers insist that an activity
cannot be commenced until the immediately prior activity has been completed. An appropriate way to
interpret this diagram is to say it sets out activities that need to be done, more than stating a sequence in
which they should be done. Royce recognized that there may be substantial variation in the order of
performing those activities, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Iterations may not be confined to the successive steps (Royce 1970)

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 Nathalia Tjandra and Geoffrey Darnton

As is so often the case, necessity is the mother of invention. Both Royce and Boehm had worked for
TRW who were involved in major projects including support for satellite launching. Boehm expressed the
problem eloquently "for example in 1969, I think TRW was the first organisation in the world, who's
software put a $50 million satellite into the Atlantic Ocean, where it was not supposed to go. Things like
that tend to get our management focused quite a bit on formalised quality assurance, automated aids and
things like that" (Teichroew and Darnton 1992).

Jumping forward almost 2 decades saw evolution from the waterfall model to the Spiral Model (Boehm
1988). This followed several years of experience of large projects high in novelty or complexity
(Teichroew and Darnton 1992). We recognize the evolution is more extensive than used here (Boehm
2006). The spiral model is set out in Figure 3. Note that following an appropriate number of iterations, the
process ends with a waterfall model. The essence of the spiral model is that subsequent iterations
identify increasing commitment to the project final goals, a concept refined later and expressed as
incremental commitment (Boehm and Lane 2007).

Figure 3: Spiral model of the software process (Boehm 1988)

The analogy applied to writing a dissertation is that the writer will follow a linear sequence of activities
such as introduction, literature review, methodology, results, analysis, and conclusions. Many students
and supervisors will have experienced requests for review and comment on drafts of these separate
sections.

In the late 1980s, there were two important innovations in the field of software development. Firstly, TRW
evolved the spiral model. A key problem with implementing the waterfall model, is that a common

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symptom of a defective method of development is the recognition of project problems too late in the
development process. In other words, fundamental problems in the requirements may not become
evident until design, coding, or even implementation. This problem is not unique to software
development. For example, humans have been creating footbridges for a few thousand years. We have
plenty of experience. However, when the new Millennium Bridge was built over the Thames, a
fundamental defect was not discovered until a large number of people started walking over it as part of
the opening ceremony. It wobbled, and it was not designed to wobble! The wobble was not discovered
until the implementation phase (BBC 2000). Everyone will agree that this was far too late in the Bridge
development process. It required expensive remedial work. If the project management lessons that led to
the evolution of the spiral model had been applied during the development of the Millennium Bridge, the
subsequent problems may well have been avoided. The spiral model has associated with it a
fundamental need for risk assessment and attenuation. The development process starts with a concept of
what is required and what is desirable. However, initial progress is not measured by defining how to build
what is required; it starts by assessing which aspects of the project pose the greatest risk. The obvious
analogy for writing a dissertation lies in defining the eventual scope of the research to be undertaken.

The second key innovation at the end of the 1980s for software development projects was recognition
that it is inappropriate to have one development method per organisation used for all situations. There
are activities to be done, but order and iteration of those activities will depend on the problem to be
solved. This is now recognized by standards (IEEE 2006; ISO 2008). The clear analogy for a dissertation
process is that there are activities to be done, but order and iteration depend on the nature of the
research required.
3. Adaptation of the software development spiral model to research project
development
A linear model is useful to identify what activities need to be done. The fundamental differences between
the waterfall and spiral models relate not to activities per se, but to sequencing, iteration, and recursion.
There is an additional question that some activities may be mandatory, and some may be optional.
Analogies from IEEE 1074 and ISO 12207 help here, because the fundamental approach in IEEE 1074 is
that it sets out a portfolio of possible activities, and the method designer should use them appropriately
depending on problem and context. For example, in the research project world, is it necessary to conduct
a literature review? To many, the answer will be an obvious "yes", but this is not always the case. There
is no reason why a researcher cannot design some scheme of enquiry, then go and do it, without any
literature review, and obtain interesting and useful results. The need for a literature review only arises
from either the nature of the research project, or the context within which it is being done. If a student is
writing a dissertation as part of a UK master's degree, then the need for a literature review arises from the
M-level descriptors (QAA 2008) (the context for the informal auto-ethnography reported here): similarly
for a doctorate.

Although there is increasing variety in types of dissertation, many dissertations follow: planning the
project, choosing a topic, writing a critical literature review, researching and analysing, interpreting the
research and framing arguments and writing up (Fisher et al. 2007; Saunders et al. 2009). Students can
be forgiven for presuming that many research methods books suggest a linear method of creating a
dissertation..

Thus, students may presume that a research project is a linear process. Nevertheless, this perception is
often not appropriate; reality is often more messy and great ideas sometimes have little or no relevance
(Saunders and Lewis 1997). Therefore, Saunders et al., (2009) suggested that ‘While research is often
described as moving through stages outlined above, one after the other, this is unlikely to be the case. In
reality you will probably revisit each stage more than once. Each time you revisit a stage you will need to
reflect on the associated issues and refine the idea’ (ibid p.10). They present a research process model
(figure 4) that might be helpful to realise the importance of reflecting and visiting each stage and the
possibility of repeating the stage.

When students apply a linear model, they tend to break the dissertation into separate components
developing them separately. This approach could be described as a top down approach which means
that it breaks up the research in order to gain insight to the compositional subsystems. This order is the
equivalent of a "pure" waterfall model of software engineering research illustrated by Figure 1. A limitation
of applying the waterfall model to B&M research is that there is limited opportunity to evaluate whether

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the research questions are relevant to the business world before the actual research is conducted. Doing
so is a requirement for H- and M-level dissertations.

Figure 4: Research process model (Saunders et al. 2009)

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 Nathalia Tjandra and Geoffrey Darnton

Boehm’s spiral model (Boehm 1988) was applied to the master's dissertation discussed in section 1.
Realising the importance of relating theory and marketing practice, after developing research questions
from the literature review, the author wondered whether the research would have any value or relevance
to the current market situations or consumers. The limited experience or access of working in the
business environment contributed to the doubts that the author had.

Following Boehm’s spiral model, top-down and bottom-up approaches were applied. Top down means
decomposing the system into component parts. This was done by writing a preliminary literature review
which resulted in forming research questions. The research questions were used to develop a small scale
primary research in form of semi-structured interviews to a few respondents.

Bottom up approach means using individual component activities to build an emergent whole. This was
done by taking the results from the preliminary research to develop the final literature review. Thus, the
literature review was richer and based on reality in the market or business world. By doing this, the author
had the opportunity ‘to stop and look around’ in order to evaluate whether the initial literature review
should be developed further or whether the same research questions should be used in the research.
Furthermore, the results of the preliminary research also helped the author to identify the most
appropriate research methods (whether it should be a quantitative or qualitative) for the actual primary
research. Most importantly, the top-down and bottom-up approaches were very useful in indicating if
there are other issues or problems in the real world but have not been explored by the literature review.
Thus, by applying the spiral approach, the author was able to evaluate whether the proposed research
was portraying the current issues that were faced by the consumers or the market.

For example, the initial literature review suggested that country-of-origin influenced consumers' product
evaluations (Gaedeke 1973; Hahn et al. 2006; Hong and Wyer 1989; Lee and Ganesh 1999; Nagashima
1977; Okechuku 1994; Pappu et al. 2007; Schooler 1965; Tse and Gorn 1993). However, the preliminary
primary research indicated that the majority of the respondents ignored the country-of-origin of
international branded clothes because it was very common to see that the majority of the clothes were
made in the less industrialized countries. Based on the preliminary research findings, the author decided
to explore further the trend of international fashion retailers to outsource their products to less
industrialized countries. Even though the preliminary research only involved a small number of samples,
the result was very useful to develop research that portrayed the current issues faced by customers in the
market. Perhaps by adopting the spiral model, students who have limited access to the business world
can have an opportunity to understand the reality of the market or business world, combining this
information with available theory to develop new knowledge, thereby enriching their learning experience.

Patton (2002) suggests that analysing the data when the fieldwork is still going on is important to identify
patterns of answers or next movement in the data collection because during the course of fieldwork,
ideas of directions for analyses will occur, patterns will shape and possible themes spring to mind.
Sometimes, insights found during fieldwork analyses emerge almost serendipitously and any
development found during the field-based analyses should be recorded. Therefore, the advice that was
given to graduate students for repressing analytical insight that occurred in the field and just
concentrating on data collection might endanger the potential for developing new knowledge (Patton
2002). Although Patton (ibid) mentioned the importance of doing analyses in the early stage of qualitative
data collection, he did not mention the possibility to review the literature further in order to find the
‘incidental’ findings that might be found in the early stage of data collection. He only mentioned that by
doing field-based analyses, researchers could have additional analytics insights and interpretation that
occurred during the data collection beside the questions that were generated during the conceptual and
design phases of the research.

The idea of a spiral approach to a literature review has been recognised by Saunders et al.,(2009) as
shown in Figure 5. There are two major purposes of reviewing the literature (Sharp and Howard 1996):
preliminary research that will result in the development of ideas, questions and objectives; and critical
review which demonstrates the ability to handle different approaches to the same topics. Although Figure
5 recognises the importance of iterating a literature review, it does not include visiting the literature review
after some primary research has been conducted. The result of this approach is that students may ignore
some important findings of the primary research and fail to link them back to the theories found in the
literature review.

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Figure 5: The literature review process (Saunders et al. 2009)

The experience of applying the spiral model of software development indicates several benefits of
applying the model to academic business marketing research. The first benefit is that students can
investigate whether past researchers’ theories that they reviewed in the literature review portray reality in
the current market or business environment. Research results would be more beneficial if they portray or
apply to the current situation. Therefore, by exploring the topic found in the literature review prior to the
actual primary research, researchers can evaluate whether the research questions reflect reality. Thus a
literature review can be created which is not only based on past research but also relevant to the current
market situation. For example, the author’s dissertation (Tjandra 2009) indicated the fundamental link
between country-of-origin and product categories. The product categories theme was the input from the
preliminary primary research not the initial literature review. Preliminary research indicated that the
respondents’ country-of-origin perceptions are different for different product categories (for example,

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international branded clothes and electronic products). Without this preliminary research the author could
neglect the findings without knowing that research on different country-of-origin perceptions of product
categories exists.

The author’s experience of using a linear research model in her undergraduate dissertation (Tjandra
2007) indicated that because the research questions were only based on the literature review without
understanding the reality, students could end up with new data which might not be relevant to the critical
literature review. Thus, students might decide to drop or ignore these data which could be important and
reflect reality. The implication of this is that the research might be limited by the literature review and
could miss an opportunity to create or contribute a new knowledge. By using the spiral model, the first
author was able to focus the research and create research questions that are relevant to both existing
literature review and the current market situation. Another benefit of using the spiral model is that after
the preliminary research was conducted key methodological decisions are sounder.

It is arguable that the adaptation of the spiral model is more relevant for students who decide to adopt a
critical realism philosophy in their dissertation. Critical realists believe that knowledge is neither wholly
subjective nor objective but it is the result of interaction between object and subject (Proctor 1998). This
argument is developed from Sayers (Sayers 1985) who argued that the truth is tested by experience and
practice, and knowledge is the result of historical interaction of theory and experience. Critical realists
recognise that knowledge is produced by human beings and they can be mistaken. The production of
knowledge is a social process but it cannot be reduced to its sociological determinants of production
(López and Potter 2001). Therefore, critical realists argue that ‘truth is relative to be sure but there is still
both truth and error’ (ibid, p.9). According to Saunders et al., (2009) ‘"what we experience are sensations,
the images of the things in the real world, not the things directly" (p.590). Critical realists view the social
world as constantly changing making it more suitable to be adopted in B&M research, because its
purpose is often to understand phenomena as a starting point to recommending change. This view also
makes the critical realists recognise the importance of a multi-level study which can change the
researchers’ understanding of the topic that they study (ibid). By adopting the spiral model, researchers
are allowed to iterate and evaluate the critical literature review based on the preliminary primary research
findings can be described as conducting a multi-level study. However, the application of this model in the
context of positivism or interpretive philosophies should be investigated further.

There are some limitations that must be considered when applying the spiral model to B&M research.
First, it takes more time to create a final literature review as further secondary research must be carried
out after the preliminary primary research. The spiral research model is very appropriate for exploratory
study when the situation is not much known or only few studies have been undertaken on the issue. This
is because the spiral model can investigate current issues that happen in the public/ market based on the
theories. However, application to other types of research must be investigated further. In applying the
spiral model to her dissertation, Tjandra (2009) adopted qualitative methods (interviews) for both
preliminary and actual primary research. Therefore, its suitability to be applied in mixed methods and
quantitative research should be evaluated further.
4. Conclusions
In methodological terms, there are two key issues for this paper: (1) is it reasonable to describe what
happened, as 'auto-ethnography'?, and, (2) what were the results of the self-reflection? Auto-ethnography
is still young, as can be seen by emerging anthologies in the field (Bochner and Ellis 2002), but what was
done is consistent with "...the ethnographic research process is never neatly linear or sequential.
Research steps often overlap and mix...even after a research focus is set, it is possible for the focus to be
modified and refined while data are being collected" (Chang 2008) (p61). What happened is also
consistent with Sorokin's need for intuition: "Neither intuition, nor reason, nor empirical evidence alone is
sufficient" (Sorokin 1969) (p546). Sorokin's recognition of the essential presence of intuition even in
extremely positivistic approaches, provides a compelling argument in favour of making more use of auto-
ethnographic approaches. Ultimately, Boehm's Spiral model proved to be a powerful metaphor and was
adapted into a spiral model of B&M research as shown in Figure 6. The core research reported in the
dissertation followed the iterations shown, with a final 'waterfall' approach once the key dissertation
activities had been committed.

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Figure 6: Spiral model of business and management research (adapted from Boehm 1988)
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