In Pursuit of the Paradigm 99 and Lincoln, 2000: 5). Constructivism relies on the assumption that the world consists of a social construction of knowledge and researchers immerse themselves in and share a culture that can be described through ethnographic data or narrative and analyzed for themes or regular patterns. Subjectivism assumes an individual construction of reality through a personalized experience (Sayr, 2001).
Some differences between constructivism and positivism are identified by Lincoln and Guba (2000) including most importantly the elements of revelation, passion, values, resocialization and altruism on the one hand, over the alleged establishment of facts or ‘laws’, the approach of the ‘dis- interested scientist’, and a dispassionate and technical approach on the other.
There are plainly opportunities and benefits for the increased sharing of environments by researchers and practitioners that span existing mutual interest and provide wider impact on the field of interest. There are some advantages to one form of enquiry over the other form of enquiry depending on the circumstances and the purpose. Sometimes the choice has as much to do with opportunity for study as the ability to choose the means of study. On other occasions it is a reversion to experience and convention, a pragmatic choice of the ease and wish to publish, or simply the favouring of one methodology over the other on account of personality, social skills and personal choice.
This research is concerned with the search for and the development of a theory or paradigm based on the context and rationale advocated in Part I. The term ‘naturalistic’ has several aliases including postposi- tivistic, ethnographic, phenomenological, subjective, case study, quali- tative, hermeneutic and humanistic (Lincoln and Guba, 1985). The study seeks a revised concept of strategic positioning and this suggests the need for an ontological approach based on qualitative and generic methods (Miles and Huberman, 1994) with the benefits of emerging issues and interpretations from the verificational nature of qualitative research (Charmaz, 1995) and the use of empirical materials (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000). A generic approach within a qualitative framework will use a variety of phenomenological methods in order to gain the best conceptual understanding and these are discussed in the next section.
Participant observation ‘simultaneously combines document analysis, interviewing of respondents and informants, direct participation and observation, and introspection’ (Denzin, 1978: 183). Reid (1978: 42) points out that sometimes ‘practical’ reasoning is required because there are ‘practical’ questions to be answered and in these circum- stances, ‘we always have to take some existing state of affairs into account. We are never in a position to make a completely fresh start, free from the legacy of past history and present arrangements.’ Patton (1980: 124–5) summarizes the values of participant observation research felt by most phenomenological researchers:
1. By direct observation the researcher is better able to understand the context.
2. First-hand experience enables the researcher to relate to the envir- onment through direct experience, ‘to develop an insider’s view of what is happening’ (127).
3. The researcher is able directly to observe activities and infer mean- ings that are not seen by participants and staff.
4. Through direct observation, the researcher can learn things that participants and staff are not willing, or even able, to disclose.
5. The researcher can include his own perceptions and impressions of what is, or what is not, important and essential to understanding.
6. First-hand observation and participation enables the researcher to gather data through direct experience enabling understanding and interpretation of the setting and participants.
Van Maanen (1988: 4) clearly sees the role of the ethnographer as par- ticipant in nature and observes that:
Ethnographies join culture and fieldwork. In a sense, they’d sit between two worlds or systems of meaning – the world of the ethno- grapher (and readers) and the world of cultural members (also, increasingly, readers, although not targeted ones) . . . Ethnographies are obviously experientially driven, in that writers seek to draw directly from their fieldwork in the culture of study.
Action research has been described as a systematic collection and analysis of data leading to change selection and tries to parallel the scientific method (Shani and Pasmore, 1985). This type of research can combine the utility of participant research with experimental and causal methods of research. It is not, however, usually welcomed as an appropriate
In Pursuit of the Paradigm 101 means of either management or research as it stands accused of using a business as a ‘laboratory’ for business research without the ability of a safe environment in case experiments go wrong! Observation of differ- ent methods based on existing theories and a priori rationalization almost sum up current management practice and therefore, as proposed in the previous section, the possibility and good sense of a major practi- tioner contribution to marketing theory. Participants in practical research often have to live with the consequences of their observations and therefore action research requires practical significance over meth- odological sophistication. Experience and theory need to be synthe- sized and integrated and the ‘final interpretive theory is multivoiced and dialogical. It builds on native interpretations and in fact simply articulates what is implicit in those interpretations’ (Denzin, 1989:
120). Van de Ven (1992: 120) notes the importance for ‘researchers to place themselves into the manager’s temporal and contextual frames of reference’ whilst Moustakis (1995: 1) draws attention to the need for ‘direct observations of the activities of the group being studied, communications and interactions with the people, and opportunities for informal and formal interviews’. Denzin, (1997) draws attention to the importance of experience: ‘The starting point is experience . . . often begins from the painful autobiographical experiences of the writer’ (57) leading to ‘standpoint texts’ (55).
Participant research techniques include the recognition that it is helpful to regard fellow participants as people rather than subjects and the conducting of research among them rather than on them (Denzin, 1989; 1997). This is perhaps a more appropriate way to assess human behaviours than employment of more predictive methods of science to an unpredictable and varied environment. The aim of this research is to assist judgement and decision-making in practical terms rather than establish an academic elitism through the aspirations of collegiate convention and publication hierarchy. Perhaps Feyerabend (1997: 9) has a point when he says: ‘Science is an essentially anarchic enterprize:
theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives.’
Case study and ethnographic approach
Spradley (1979: 8) speaks of the ethnographer using the process of
‘observing other people, listening to them, and . . . going beyond what is seen and heard to infer what people know’ based on what people say, how people act, and the artefacts people use. Ethnography is distinct because of the interpretation and application of findings from
‘a cultural perspective’ (Wolcott, 1980: 59). Patton (1980) identifies the benefits of depth and detail through careful description and direct quotations without the disadvantages of attempting to fit activities and experiences into the predetermined categories of a questionnaire. Van Maanen (1982: 104) remarks about ethnographic research in particular:
The result of ethnographic inquiry is cultural description. It is, however, a description of the sort that can emerge only from a lengthy period of intimate study and residence in a given setting. It calls for the lan- guage spoken in that setting, first hand participation in some of the activities that take place there, and, most critically, a deep reliance on intensive work with a few informants drawn from the setting.
Van Maanen (1988) recognizes a wide choice of presentation styles:
realistic, impressionistic, confessional, critical, formal, literary and jointly told. Realist tales ‘provide a rather direct, matter-of-fact portrait’, impressionist tales are ‘personalized accounts of fleeting moments of fieldwork case in dramatic form’, and confessional tales ‘focus far more on the fieldworker than on the case’ (Van Maanen, 1988: 7). He identi- fies four principal conventions used in traditional ethnographies:
1. Experiential authority – the author exists only in the preface to establish credentials.
2. Documentary style – outlines particular details that represent typi- cal activity or patterns.
3. Culture members point of view – presents through quotations, explanations, syntax, cultural clichés.
4. Interpretive omnipotence.
The essence of postmodern approaches to ethnography is a mixture of immersion in the lives of those within the context of the study followed by reproduction and interpretation of the stories told by the subjects (Denzin, 1989). This is the nature and benefit of a participative approach to the ethnographic study: ‘Ethnographic research focuses on the ques- tion: “what is the culture of this group of people?” This means intensive fieldwork in which the investigator is immersed in the culture under study’ (Patton, 1990: 67).
Golden-Biddle and Locke (1993) underline that written research accounts based on ethnography are convincing because authenticity, plausibility and criticality are developed. They note the role of rhetoric in the readers’ interaction with, and interpretation of, the written
In Pursuit of the Paradigm 103 account through the normalization of unorthodox methodologies and the probing of readers’ previous assumptions underlying their work.
Style and rhetoric are an important factor in the development of theory through qualitative studies (Van Maanen, 1995a). Arnoud and Wallendorf (1994) point to four distinctive features that guide ethnographers’ market- oriented research practice:
• Primacy to systematic data collection and recording of human action.
• Extended, experiential participation by the researcher in a specific cultural context referred to as participant observation.
• Interpretations of behaviours that the persons studied and the intended audience find credible.
• Incorporation of multiple sources of data.
Wolcott (1995: 15) prefers ‘an approach that keeps humans always visibly present, researcher as well as the researched’, whilst Moustakis (1995: 8) describes a ‘focus on consciousness and experience’ as essen- tial in participant-observation ethnography. Denzin (1997) argues: ‘It is now understood that writing is a form of enquiry’ and in marketing research terms, ‘ethnographic methods allow marketers to delve into the actual occasions and situations in which products are used, services are received and benefits are conferred’ (Mariampolski, 1999: 79).
Janesick (2000: 390) uses the term methodolatry to denote ‘the idolatory of method or slavish attachment and devotion to method’ giving two examples of the manifestation of methodolatry:
• Survey researchers who discard responses that do not accommodate statistical techniques they have been taught.
• Dissertations that contain 30 or more t tests about no particular issue with little reflection.
The reader is led to understand the meaning of the experience through a presentation of descriptive data (Janesick, 2000) that suggests a differ- ent way to perceive the problem or new ways of seeing the established and much vaunted approach. Feyerabend (1997: 33) highlights the issue:
There is no idea, however ancient and absurd, that is not capable of improving our knowledge. The whole of history of thought is absorbed into science and is used for improving every single theory.
Nor is political interference rejected. It may be needed to overcome the chauvinism of science that resists alternatives to the status quo.
There are three types of case study: intrinsic, concentrating on a par- ticular topic rather than theory building; instrumental, concentrating on an issue or theory; and collective, using several case studies to support a better understanding of larger issues (Smith, 1994; Stake, 2000). An instrumental case study provides insight into the issues raised by the rationale and combines the benefits of the ethnographic approach to theory building. Ethnographic methods were selected for their long- standing tradition in studying cultural phenomena (Clifford, 1988) uti- lizing participant observation as the principal data collection technique with field notes, journal entries and the collection of documents serving as data for interpretive analysis.