Research strategies in theory-building research

The relative efficiency or convenience of different research strategies will differ for different topics or phenomena. But in general we advise selection of an appropriate research strategy in the following way: 1. decide whether experimental research would be useful and feasible, if not; 2. conduct a theory-building comparative case study. Regarding point 1, above, theory-building experimental research is useful in principle in two following situations: ■ if an independent concept A is known and an independent concept B must be found; and ■ if both the independent and dependent concepts are known but not yet the type of their relation. In these two situations an experiment could be designed and conducted in which the value of concept A is manipulated and the effects are observed. If the dependent concept B is known, its value will be meas- ured in the different experimental situations defined by different val- ues of the independent concept A. If the dependent concept B is not yet known, it must be discovered first. The value of the independent concept is experimentally varied and the experimenter attempts to dis- cover interesting differences between the different experimental con- ditions as well as with the control condition, if any. As mentioned earlier in the context of theory-testing research Chapter 4, experimental research is usually not feasible in business research. If an experiment is not feasible, then the principles of convenience and efficiency point to selecting only a small number of instances for observation point 2, above. On the other hand, a minimum number of instances is required for several reasons. First, if the researcher does not know what the relevant factors or effects could be and does not know how the concepts in the resulting proposition will be related e.g. in a deterministic or probabilistic way, it must be discovered whether there is a range of relevant causes or effects and, therefore, a range of diverse instances needs to be compared. But, second, if it is already known from the start that there is some evidence for a deterministic relation, an effect must be found consistently in more than one case in order to find a can- didate sufficient condition or a cause in more than one case in order to find a candidate necessary condition. In order to find other types of candidate relations such as a deterministic relation or a probabilistic relation even more cases are needed – three is the bare minimum. This means that the comparative case study is the preferred research strategy.

8.4 Outcome and implications

The outcome of a successful theory-building study usually consists of one or more new propositions that also have been put to an initial test. As dis- cussed in Chapter 3, theory development consists of building propos- itions, testing them in an initial test, and enhancing robustness and generalizability through replications. This means that theory-building research always needs to be followed by testing in another instance of the object of study or in other groups or populations.

8.5 Summary

This chapter can be summarized by the following list of four types of theory-building research: ■ specifying a relation between two known concepts – proposition-building by an experiment, or a comparative case study; ■ specifying a relation between a known independent or depend- ent concept and an as yet unknown dependent or inde- pendent concept – proposition-building by an experiment or a comparative case study; ■ specifying a relation between as yet unknown independent and dependent concepts – proposition-building by a com- parative case study; ■ discovering and describing a relevant concept by a comparative case study. We will discuss in detail how to design and conduct theory-building case studies in Chapter 9. The theory-building case study In this chapter we assume that a theory-building research objective of one of the four types discussed in Chapter 8 has been formulated and that, after it has been assessed that an experiment is not possible, it has been decided that a theory-building case study needs to be designed and conducted. This chapter has the same structure as the preceding ones: ■ 9.1 How to design and conduct a theory-building case study; ■ 9.2 Case Study 5: Building propositions about the kind of company representatives involved in communication with pro- viders of business services by Wendy Van der Valk and Finn Wynstra; ■ 9.3 Methodological reflection on Case Study 5.

9.1 How to design and conduct a theory-building case study

9.1.1 Introduction

This chapter deals with theory-building case study research, which is always a comparative case study. It discusses case selection, the discov- ery of yet unknown concepts, measurement, data presentation, and the manner in which relationships can be discovered in the obtained scores.