02-01-2021 Management research methods Yang Guoging Hebei University, China IMANE ATWANI Qualitative Research Methods: Applying a Case Study in Supply Chain Management Abstract Nowadays with the advance in technology and world-changing especially with the influence of the internet, research in any field has become crucial, in this paper we will focus on the application of qualitative research method in supply chain management, this paper aims to examine the process of research in business, besides, we present in brief a summary of the management research methods courses. As a second part, we will analyze the qualitative ‘method and present the general concept about it, by citing the relative characteristics of data collection methods and the origins and history of qualitative research, also a review application of the case study as an approach in the supply chain management and the combination of methods that can be used, and finally, the different recent issues that this metho facing especially with the case study approach. Keywords: Research process, qualitative research, case study approach, methods of data collection,02-01-2021 Introduction For those who plan to pursue their further education such as a Master's or Ph.D. field, they must know that research is the backbone of these degrees and especially if you want to pursue your career in higher education, research will be part and parcel of your life, However, the research is very important for those who are inspired to be managers in a non-academic sector in any area in business. especially with the management paradigm shift and how the world is changing with the advance in technology. In this paper, we will focus on the research process as a whole and the major stages from identifying the management dilemma to gathering and analyzing the data and making a decision about the problem, by presenting a summary patagraph about management research course where the purpose is to understand how good research is conducted and how it should be done. The second part of the paper focuses on a discussion about the qualitative methods where we present the main aspects with the point of views of different authors, the methods of data collection in the qualitative research which are used in the majority of the researches we will approach four methods of data collection that are mostly used; interviews focus group observations and the case study as an approach to conduct the research. There is a discussion about the origins and the history of the qualitative method and the case study. Since we are studying the research method in business I choose supply chain management as a topic to review how the case study is conducted with the research process. Finally, the current problems and issues that this qualitative research method is facing, the conclusion will summarize the paper and the important points discussed in the case study.02-01-2021 I- Summary of classes The first part of our classes gives an introduction to business research, The purpose of business research is to reduce the risk in managerial decision making and to solve specific problems. With the new environmental measurements, several factors influence research one of these factors may be Information overload, and Greater computing power and speed. Therefore, business research is becoming a fundamental step in decision making which will be very valuable in many strategies and tactics. There are two categories of research applied and basic research and 4 types of research reporting, descriptive, explanatory, or predictive, and each one of them is conducted depending on the phenomena studied. Another important point is ethics in research, the goal of no harm should be achieved and the participants should be aware of the benefits expected from the study and explain their rights and protection, and make sure that the participant has given full consent to participation. Like participants, sponsors also have the right to confidentiality; a code of ethies is required to avoid any unethical behavior. Then we discussed the languages in research and the terminology used by researchers, several terms have been introduced such as Concepts, constructs, and variables (may be classified as explanatory, independent, dependent, moderating, extraneous, and intervening.) operational definition, hypothesis theory and models, and we illustrated that sound reasoning is essential for producing scientific results in business research, In the other part, we introduced the sequential research process that is formed from 6 stages, the first stage consists of clarifying the research question, beginning with discovering the management dilemma and then defining the management question which is translated into the research question by using the exploratory research and that is called “management-research question hierarchy”. The purpose of The exploratory research is to have a better understanding of the existing problem. moving from the management question to the research question, the researcher uses both internal and external secondary sources which include published studies, document analysis, expert interviews. with individuals involved with the problem(IDIs). The second stage is proposing research The first step of this stage is budgeting. It is important to budget the research limit the costs of this research, after that the research must be evaluated, the proposal can be oral -if the manager directs his own research —but it's preferable to be @ written proposal because it set the outlines to follow such as methods of investigation, the extent of analysis, and the timing of each phase as well as of delivery of results and each of sponsor and researcher can refer to the document to see whether w1 planned is done or not. Stage 3 is about the research design than the phase of data collection that can be conducted by approaches qualitative or quantitative and sometimes they can be combined with the data collection there are several methods such as interviews, surveys, observation, focus group, and many others. After this, there is the stage of analyzing the data and finally taking the management decision. Besides, we had a lecture about data mining (SPSS modeler software) that can be used in business areas. Moreover, we introduced the method of rebuts optimization which aims to deal with uncertainty and choose the better solution,02-01-2021 II-Qualitative research methods 1, What is qualitative research? There is no doubt that the qualitative research method is very important in the research process especially in business research. there is a numerous definition of the qualitative method of them says that “Qualitative researchers are interested in understanding the meaning people have constructed, that is, how people make sense of their world and the experiences they have in the world.” (Merriam, 2009, p. 13) that depends in the first place on people’s insights and choices and reasons of thinking that way It consists of gathering the primary data by using various methodologies to understand in depth the people behavior and insights basically it is designed to answer the questions “how” and “why”, the sources of the data collected can be generally gathered from people, organization or texts, either the type of gathered data are various it could be images texts records audios or videos depending on the phenomena studied. 2. Methods of Data Collection ‘There are several qualitative methods but the most common and used are cited as follow: © Interview an interview is an “open-ended questions and probes yielding in-depth responses about people’s experiences, perceptions, opinions, feelings, and knowledge. Data consists of verbatim quotations and sufficient content/context to be interpretable” (Patton,2002.), the interview can be conducted by different ways, structured, unstructured, or semi-structured interview approach, Structured interviews are based on a predetermined list of algorithmically framed questions to guide the interviewer. This approach resists improvisation and the tracking of intuitions but has the advantage of facilitating consistency between participants. In contrast, unstructured or semi-structured interviews can start with defined questions, but the interviewer has considerable latitude to tailor the questions to the specific direction of the responses, to allow for more intuitive and natural conversations. between researchers and participants. As a general rule, you should keep interviewing other participants until you have saturated your area of interest, that is until you hear nothing new. The number of participants therefore depends on the wealth of data. © Focus group Focus group is considered as unstructured interviews with numerous participants, is used to explore specific questions. It consists of bringing together a group of individuals who have a specific profile corresponding to the objectives of the research. In this sense, it differs from the interview, However, it comes close to it in that it leaves more room for the voices of the participants. The interaction between the different participants is considered, in certain circumstances, to be superior to the individual interview. Defining the objectives of such an approach, informing participants of the expectations that researchers have of them, and leading these meetings to raise various scientific and ethical questions. They are of the same order as those present in the interview.02-01-2021 © Observation method of collecting data from the perspective of a situation, The objective is to observe practices as closely as possible, with the minimum of filters and without the situation being modified as a result of the observation. © Case study Case study -also called case history —is considered more as an approach than a method, it’s a combination of qualitative methods, now is widely recognized as a management research strategy it is considered as the in-depth study of one or a few research objects, which allows obtaining a broad and detailed knowledge of these last. The basic idea of the case study is that if we study carefully any unit of a certain phenomenon, we will be in the conditions to know some general aspects of it or we will have, at least, a perspective that will guide further research, Normally, case studies focus on several specific cases or projects from which the evaluator hopes to derive information about the entire program. It is therefore very important to choose the cases wisely so that the conclusions drawn from them can be applied to the entire target population, 3. History of qualitative methods To understand where qualitative research is going, it helps to take a quick look at its origin. qualitative research emerged in the early 20th century as the influence of psychoanalysis began to enter the commercial world. In 1945, the father of qualitative research, Paul Felix lazarsfeld, had shown how psychology could provide a framework for interpreting human behavior. He introduced the world to unstructured interviews and group discussions, and stressed the importance of answering the important question "why?" More famous than Lazersfield was his pupil, Emest Dichter, the "Freud of the supermarket age"(Oli Conner). Dichter developed his ideas in a prosperous postwar America when mass production and abundance of consumer goods meant companies began to rely on branding to differentiate themselves (Oli Conner). Arguing that people didn't know why they made their buying decisions, he began to uncover the personality behind brands and the hidden desires and drives behind buying decisions. During the 1960s and 1970s, projective techniques such as word associations, sentence completion, all began to gain traction. This also saw the “qual vs quant" debate intensify as qualitative methods began to take hold. Until this period, scientific, provable and quantitative research was the dominant paradigm. And that will be so until the 1980s when qualitative research really started to deliver what customers wanted. The explosion of qualitative research throughout this decade encouraged people with different skills to add to the mix, and it was no longer necessary to have a psychology degree to be a qualitative researcher. If-Application of qualitative methods in supply chain 1- Case study research In the field of supply chain management SCM, the prospect of complex reactive processes could advance the meaning, explanation, and understanding of how the relationships between people involved in various activities in logistics-oriented organizations affect patterns of02-01-2021 action. Logistics and SCM are about how one can add value to a product in the flow of materials, services, and information. It is about knowing how a product is transformed, stored, transported, sold and recycled. Because the qualitative approach aims to "understand the phenomenon in its own terms" (Hirshman, 1986), the first step in the qualitative research method is the collection of data, In general, the researcher makes several field visits to observe the phenomenon in a natural setting to begin to frame an understanding. Researchers who adopt the qualitative approach are interested in directly learning from daily experiences from the perspective of the participants The researcher should choose the research approach depending on the phenomena studied in supply chain management. Either to choose the quantitative approach for a narrow understanding or qualitative approach for a focused understanding in accordance with the variables. Conceming the common ‘methods used in the research, many papers emphasize the case study method as the most used methodology in SCM research; it provides a flexible data collection. Stuart et al (2002) suggest that case studies are an appropriate research methodology to map the field of supply chain management, as they allow identification and description of critical variables, the analysis of a supply chain and managerial issues therein are highly unstructured problems which can be dealt with in an exploratory research design using case studies (Yin, 2003) There are several purposes of using a case study. Yin (2003: 3) distinguishes three types of case studies: - An exploratory case study is aimed at defining the questions and hypotheses of a subsequent study or at determining the feasibility of the desired research procedure. - A descriptive case study presents a complete description of a phenomenon within its context. -An explanatory case study comprises data bearing on cause-effect relationships explaining how events happened. besides there are a single case and multiple cases. 2- Research process The research process for a case study in CSM is conducted in 5 stages but the insurance of the validity and reliability of the research for a better quality |-iterature review One of the crucial steps in the research process is the literature review, it consists of gathering information from existing research, reading some articles related to the phenomena to study. This step is important throughout the research period and it gives a pre-understanding of the issues in supply chain management. 2- Research question starting by identifying a research question that deserves to carry out research about it by making sure that the variables are understood and the questions are narrow and searchable. It is essential to be able to formulate a convincing research question with regard to the state of knowledge on the topic and to verify the relevance of the case to this topic, Each case must be clearly defined, in its nature, space, and time, which means that the temporal (beginning and end of the case) and spatial (geographical area, organization, social group), as well as the types of data and the priorities and challenges of data collection and analysis, must be known in order to choose the appropriate methodological approach. 3-Choose the Case02-01-2021 After clarifying the research question and reviewing some literature it’s time to choose the case and the companies, in this step the type of the case should be determined rather choose the single case or the multiple cases to noted that the research should take under consideration the application of multiple case study is more difficult and require the experience at the same time is more expensive also the type of the case (exploratory, explanatory, description). 4-Data collection ‘The researcher has a variety of methods to collect the primary data such as the interview observation focus group which is considered as an advantage in the case study to capture a variety of insights and perspectives. For example, if the researcher will use the interview they should set the interview questions and they should be valid the interview time and length and the interviewer should have the required skills in addition there is a specific characteristic when choosing the sample, Whether to conduct a face-to-face interview, structured or unstructured interview 5-Data analysis This step should be done precisely and it may be time-consuming; it consists of converting the raw data to classified and categorized data by using a various number of methods depending on the case studies and the methods of data collection. coding is the most common method to categorize the data in qualitative analysis, it involves assigning some symbols or names to regroup the answer the coding can be done manually or by using the specific computer software the recorded data should be labeled with the time, to mention that data analysis should be in parallel with data collection and the entire research process, not until the end of collecting data 6-Report findings The report of the case study aims to describe the study (o give an interpretation of the analyzed data, it involves to analyze the findings and introduce some recommendations, The goal is to make the reader understand the study as if he was a member of the research that’s why it should outline all the details about the research with respecting the structure of the report, 3-the issues and limitations of ease study. Despite that it has many advantages, case studies have received criticism. Yin (1984) discusses three types of arguments against case study research. - First, case studies are often accused of a lack of rigor. Yin (1984:21) notes that “too many times, the case study investigator has been sloppy, and has allowed equivocal evidence or biased views to influence the direction of the findings and conclusions”. - Second, case studies provide very little basis for scientific generalization since they use a small number of subjects, some conducted with only one subject. The question commonly raised is “How can you generalize from a single case?” (Yin, 1984:21), - Third, case studies are often labeled as being too long, difficult to conduct, and producing a massive amount of documentation (Yin, 1984), In particular, case studies of ethnographic or longitudinal nature can elicit a great deal of data over a period of time. The danger comes when the data are not managed and organized systematically. A common criticism of the case study method is its dependency on a single case exploration making it difficult to reach a generalizing conclusion (Tellis, 1997). Yin (1993) considered case methodology ‘microscopic’ because of the limited sampling cases. To Hamel et al. (1993) and Yin (1994), however, parameter establishment and objective setting of the research are far more important in the case study method than a big sample size.02-01-2021 Conclusion In this paper we discussed qualitative research and various methods to collect the data by introducing the case study, the approach of the case study is a research methodology mobilized to study phenomena in real situations, whether they are new or complex, or to extend knowledge on phenomena already investigated. The case studies thus provide a detailed and in-depth analysis on a limited number of topics, as an approach that combines different methods for a depth understanding, it makes it possible to collect various data and to make them analytically converge to highlight the lessons of the case. It is not a research method focused only on the exploration of a phenomenon but on a better understanding of the behavior of the subjects studied. in the case study the research process in the supply chain management start a literature review, determining a research question determining the case or the multiple cases collect the data by using in most the research the interviews with all his types the observation and the focus group by making attention that the data is analyzed from the beginning of the data collection and final draw a conclusion about the research. A good case study in qualitative research uses different methods and aims to achieve the goal of validity and reliability. however, it is often the subject of criticism concerning the generalization of the results obtained due to the small number of cases studied, or the lack of objectivity of the researchers which would bias the results. However, it remains a method widely used by social science researchers who publish case studies with all the care and rigor required.02-01-2021 References 1-Assessing the rigor of case study research in supply chain management Stefan A. 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