Practice, Introspection and Outlook of Qualitative Research in Management

Abstract

In recent years, qualitative research method has been widely used domestically and developed to be an important instrument of building management theory, and connection between theory and practice. This paper briefly reviews the qualitative research on management within the latest 40 years, and divides this evolutionary process to three phases – chaos phase, emerging phase and standardization phase. In addition, this paper makes a critical introspection about current problems in qualitive research and points out three areas with serious deficiencies, including deficiencies research design, improper theoretical sampling, superficial phenomenon excavating and insufficient contextualization. Aiming at these problems, this paper proposes three targeted recommendations, that is, promote the spirit of academic craftsman, strengthen dialogue with literatures in order to make specific theoretical contributions, and study from international academic journals.