Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to introduce the themed issue about qualitative research in the business and management field Design/methodology/approach – The paper considers some issues about how to define the term “qualitative research”, and then introduces each of the papers in...

Purpose – To contribute to improved research practices by addressing three key realities in management research, all being largely disregarded by research: complexity, context and persona (the human and social aspects of researcher behaviour). Design/methodology/approach – Based on...

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to outline the development of academic research in the discipline of accounting, paying particular attention to the important contribution made by qualitative research projects. Design/methodology/approach – Provision of a historical trajectory based on...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the qualitative synthesis and use of existing management research to inform management practice. Design/methodology/approach – Three methods of qualitative synthesis, each with contrasting methodologies, are presented and their potential...

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to investigate the role of management support in a lean implementation. The impact the lean implementation made on communication within the organization is also examined. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative methods were used to study the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on the understanding that can be gained about employees' use of voice as a response to organisational change using qualitative research and, in particular, narrative analysis. Narrative analysis of voice can provide insight into why voice is used...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine why social entrepreneurs in the USA choose to operate an entirely fair trade business and the factors that affect fair trade social entrepreneurship. Fair trade seeks to benefit producers in developing countries by providing a market for their...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of a novel method for performing content analysis in managerial research – crowdsourcing, a system where geographically distributed workers complete small, discrete tasks via the internet for a small amount of money....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide insightful evidence of phenomena in organization and management theory. Textual data sets consist of two different elements, namely qualitative and quantitative aspects. Researchers often combine methods to harness both aspects. However, they...