Business Research Methods: Concept Theory & Research Designs

This essay provides an overview of concept theory, examining various theoretical perspectives and their application in business research. It delves into quantitative research designs, highlighting experimental, quasi-experimental, descriptive, and correlational approaches, emphasizing their strengths and weaknesses. The essay also explores qualitative research designs, focusing on naturalistic inquiry, emergent design, and purposeful sampling, while acknowledging the limitations of qualitative methods. Furthermore, it discusses mixed methods research, integrating both quantitative and qualitative data to provide a more comprehensive understanding of research problems. The essay concludes by comparing and contrasting qualitative and quantitative designs, emphasizing their unique characteristics and applications in business research.

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Concept theory
The concept theory has been proposed by many scholars amongst which are Carey,
2012. However, there are several theories that have been put forward in describing what the
concept theory is for example; theory-theory, the classical theory, the prototype theory,
conceptual atomism and the pluralism and eliminatism. The theory is defined as a well-
stipulated set of general propositions of thoughts. This theory outline the perception of how
things or ideas are being identified, conceptualized and implemented in order to generate
business opportunities or any other related avenues. These theories tend to bring out a casual-
explanatory of how the properties of objects and events of same categories attribute processes
that have been named or classified. These names are developed purposely for identification of
physical or invisible/ non-physical phenomenon (Cooper, Schindler & Sun, 2016). These
names are constructed or created from letters, symbols, words or signs which are the building
block of a theory; they comprise of empirical realities such as leadership, inflation, emotion
(Carey, 2012, p. 113-124).
Findings
Quantitative research design
Is a methodical formal and objective systematic process of collecting/ gathering data
concerning the world. It enables a more descriptive method of testing and examining
relationships, their cause and impacts. It has four major designs for comparing and
contrasting the formulated approaches depending on the degree designed for controlling the
primary variables for the experiment. These include; experimental, quasi-experimental,
descriptive and correlational.
 The correlational design focuses mainly on the relationship between the variable in
consideration of statistical data. It does not put more emphasis on the observation,
cause, and effect of the information gathered.

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 The descriptive design focuses on the description of the present condition of the
phenomenon or variable. It majorly concentrates on the observation during the data
gathering stage.
 Casual-comparative or a quasi-experimental tends to exploit more on the causative
effect of the relationship amongst the two or more phenomenon or variables. There is
no manipulation of the independent variables in testing the casualty and phenomenon.
 Experimental designs or the true experimentation which tends to use a scientific shift
in establishing the cause of the relationship between the groups of a phenomenon in
the research study. Its test methodology based on the manipulation of the independent
variables with optimal phenomenon control system.
Qualitative design
It is the model that systematically put forward a subjective approach to describe the day
to day life encounters and their real translation or truthful meaning. The design implies that
the entities and procedures are not examined based on the amount, frequency and quantity of
these processes (Abdou & Pratt, 2012). The qualitative researchers majorly put more
emphasis on the correlation between the reality and the causal effects of the variables or
phenomenon depending on the nature of those realities. Unlike the quantitative design,
qualitative put more emphasis on the casual relationship amongst the variables as opposed to
be the processes. It as well depends on the relationship between the social and their code of
conducts of the scientist while in investigating the cause of the research problem. There are
three elements that are involved in the qualitative research; naturalistic which is the study of
realities without any sense of manipulation or controlling as they are set by nature itself
(Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2016, p. 113). Emergent refers to the act of acknowledging the
situational change and understanding the need to create or pursue a new way out on the
emerging issues; purposeful for the study or research work. The area of study is selected

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based on its use of these items i.e. events, cultural practices, community and critical
scenarios. The mode of gathering information includes having a one on one interview to
cover the peoples experience and perceptions, the researcher having a personal experience
and encounters of the realities as they are, keeping a close empathic stance with the people to
be interviewed without taking sides so as to bring out the responsiveness, respect, awareness,
and openness for being mindfulness and the attentive situational dynamic system. The
collected data is analyzed using different techniques such as; inductive analysis, the holistic
perspective, context-sensitive and taking each and every case is unique in its own way. The
qualitative researcher should own the perspective and voice. The researchers’ concentration
mainly reflects an equilibrium between the world complexity and understanding these
variables by having a strict consciousness and politically aware (Turner, 2014, p. 754). The
qualitative design has some demerits;
 The process of collecting information is time-consuming thus expensive
 There is no ability to find out causality of research problems
 Inability to compare and contrast between the quantity and quality of the data
obtained from the research work and non-consistent to the conclusion
 Drifting the real objective of the research work by altering the context of the research
Mixed method
This is the methodology of doing or performing the research that entails gathering,
integrating and analysing both the quantitative and qualitative information and research study
problem. It involves the crucial understanding and analysis of the gathered data from both the
two designs with a goal of properly understanding the research problem. For the quantitative
information, it entails the analysis of the obtained statistical data from the close-ended
information contained in the questionnaire or checklist used during collecting the data for
solving the research problem (Creswell & Clark, 2017). Whereas the qualitative data provides

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for the open-ended data gathered from the field. It strictly follows the direction of
aggregating this information and putting the opposing ideas collected in a more uniform way
for a better understanding of the data collected. By putting or mixing these methodologies the
researcher gets a clear view and better understanding of these issues as opposed to when one
of them was preferred. The mixed method has three main designs which are sequential
explanatory, concurrent triangulation and concurrent nested which are mixed according to the
strength of every design and the desired path the researcher would wish to follow (Johnson &
Onwuegbuzie, 2016).
Similarities and Differences.
There has been no similarity between the qualitative and quantitative designs only that
they are used in finding the research to be used (Lewis, 2015).However they show various
distinctive characteristics such as; the semi-structured or unstructured techniques with non-
statistical data analysis with conclusive and descriptive in nature used in recommending
exploratory or investigative findings that cannot be used in making generalised findings for
decision making where qualitative form is applied whereas the quantitative research relies on
random sampling that produces numerical, hard facts data used in computational and
statistical methods which can be categorised and measured in terms of units of measurement.
Graphs and tables can be constructed from the primary data obtained from the quantitative
research thus ease the analysis of the results. Qualitative research is holistic in nature and
follows subjective approach while quantitative is particular is objective. Qualitative is process
oriented contrary to quantitative purpose in examining the causative effects and relationship
between the variables (Lewis, 2015).

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Reference
Abdou, I.E., and Pratt, W.K., 2012. Quantitative design and evaluation of
enhancement/thresholding edge detectors. Proceedings of the IEEE, 67(5), pp.753-763.
Creswell, J.W. and Clark, V.L.P., 2017. Designing and conducting mixed methods research.
Cooper, D.R., Schindler, P.S. and Sun, J., 2016. Business research methods (Vol. 9). New
York: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Lewis, S., 2015. Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches.
Health promotion practice, 16(4), pp.473-475.
Turner III, D.W., 2014. Qualitative interview design: A practical guide for novice
investigators. The qualitative report, 15(3), p.754.
Carey, S., 2012. Précis of the origin of concepts. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34(3),
pp.113-124.s like happiness, morale, productivity.
Johnson, R.B., and Onwuegbuzie, A.J., 2016. Mixed methods research: A research paradigm
whose time has come. Educational Researcher, 33(7), pp.14-26.
Johnson, R.B., Onwuegbuzie, A.J. and Turner, L.A., 2017. Toward a definition of mixed
methods research. Journal of mixed methods research, 1(2), pp.112-133.