Qualitative Methods in Organizational Research

This report delves into qualitative methods in organizational research, highlighting various techniques such as observation, ethnography, and interviews. It emphasizes the importance of qualitative research in understanding employee behavior and organizational culture, supported by data analysis and descriptive statistics. The report concludes with insights on the significance of qualitative methodologies in business research.

Running Head: DATA ANALYSIS AND BUSINESS INTERPRETATION
QUALITATIVE METHODS IN ORGANISATIONAL RESEARCH STATISTICAL
REPORT ON UNIVERSITY STAFFS AND THEIR GENERAL CHARECTERISTICS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Abstract:
The comprehensive text brings in one volume of the range of methods available for undertaking qualitative data
collection and analysis. For the past two decades have seen an increasing scholarly interest in qualitative
methodologies to study the complex business phenomena. When we set off on our mission to raise the profile of
qualitative research in the organizational arena. We felt that focus off our aspirations was unproblematic. Over
the years, our volumes and various conferences symposia we have organized have retained the tile of qualitative
methods.
Kvale defines the qualitative research interview as an interview, whose purpose is to gather descriptions of the
life world of the interviewee with respect to the interpretation of the meaning of the described phenomena.
Qualitative methods have achieved an increased prominence since the 1990’s.

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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................................................3
AN OVERVIEW OF QUALITATIVE METHODS IN ORGANISATIONAL RESEARCH................................3
Observation Method.............................................................................................................................................3
Ethnography.........................................................................................................................................................4
The In-Depth Interview........................................................................................................................................4
Focus Group.........................................................................................................................................................4
The Nominal Group Technique............................................................................................................................4
The Delphi Method..............................................................................................................................................4
DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION.....................................................................................................4
Descriptive Analysis............................................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES.........................................................................................................................................................8

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INTRODUCTION
Qualitative research is a class of research methods in which the investigator takes an active role in
interacting with participants. Quantitative research produces results in numbers, whereas qualitative research
produces flow diagram and narrative description of the processes. Some qualitative research methods bride and
that are adaptable to organizational research include observation, ethnography, interview, focus group
discussion and projective techniques. These research methods are useful in answering questions on why
employees behave the way they do in organizations. The simplest way to define qualitative research is to note
that the results are primarily expressed in words (as opposed to quantitative research), in which the results are
primarily expressed with numbers. For example, Wixon, Pietras, Huntwork and Muzzey describe their applied
research involving product development at digital equipment corporation by noting that qualitative research
allowed them to discover “exactly what users and customers want to”. Thus, their qualitative research provided
them with verbal or visual descriptions of their customers and needs.
AN OVERVIEW OF QUALITATIVE METHODS IN ORGANISATIONAL
RESEARCH
Observation Method
Observation is a type of research method in which the researcher observes participants for
understanding their behaviours and culture. Here the research uses camera, audiotape or videotape equipment to
facilitate the observation. In the organisation persons like supervisors, human resource experts or consultants are
using observational method, the three observational methods which are simple observation, participant
observation and archival data sources.
Simple observation involves observing and recording used observational techniques to identify the
behaviours that are effective and ineffective to work supervisors.
In participant observation observer is also a participant in the event he or she is studying. For example,
the researcher may also be a member of board being studied.
The third observational method archival data sources utilizes any form of data or records that exist,
independent of a research being conducted. A database has been used in several investigations of behaviours in
organizations as archival data.

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Ethnography
Ethnography is a research method that uses qualitative field observation methods of assessing
behaviour to study a society culture and described as it as the art and science of describing a group or culture.
Such a group can be a workgroup, team or organization and the culture should be organizational culture.
The In-Depth Interview
Interviewing in organizational setting simply requires verbal accounts to learn about social life of
workers. Interviewing could be structured, unstructured or semi-structured. For qualitative research,
interviewing is flexible and dynamic and is there described as in-depth interviewing.
Focus Group
A focus group discussion is a type of graph in-depth interview. It involves interaction among small
group of people, of between 6 and 12, common characteristics who respond to and build on what others in the
group said. Focus group discussion is quite useful in organizational development research programs.
The Nominal Group Technique
The nominal group technique developed by van de ven and Delbecq included the following phases:
 Introduction where the question to be explored is distributed.
 Round robin creation of a numbered list of all ideas on flip chart without debate.
 The discussion on ideas on flip chart.
 The rank of priorities.
 The nominal process technique involves problem identification, solution generation and decision-
making.
The Delphi Method
Jopp describes the Delphi method as a group discussion process that requires bringing together of a
panel of experts who are selected based on the areas of expertise required for forecasting.
DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION
Descriptive Analysis
The table 1 below shows the descriptive measures of the overall salary of the employees in the
university.

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The scatter diagram in figure 1 gives the relationship between the age and salary of the employees in
the university. It shows that only 1.93 percent of the salary can be predicted correctly with the information about
age. The diagram also shows that the variables are not much related to each other.
20 30 40 50 60 70 80
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
f(x) = 0.401011150356673 x + 88.0616164554332
R² = 0.0192958460643117
Salary
Age
Salary
Figure 1: Scatterplot showing relation between age and salary.
Figure 2 given below shows the distribution of salary of the employees in the university. The diagram shows
that most of the employees have high salary in the university.

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30-50 50-70 70-90 90-110 110-130 130-150 150-170
0
5
10
15
20
25
Salary Distribution of Employees
Salary
Frequency
Figure 2: Salary Distribution of the University employees.
Figure 3 shows the age distribution of the employees of the university. It is clear from the diagram that most of
the employees working in the university are aged.
21-28 28-35 35-42 42-49 49-56 56-63 63-70
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
Age Distribution of Employees
Age
Age
Figure 3: Bar graph of employees’ age distribution
Figure 4 shows clearly the length of service for the employees in the university. Most of them have
served the company for a very long time.

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1%
42%
25%
32%
Overall
A
B
C
D
Figure 4: Service length of employees
From figure 5, it is clear that most of the employees travel to the university by car. Thus, it can be
assumed from the information that most of the employees reside at places which is distant from the university.
Another assumption, which can be made, is that the employees get quite a high salary to afford travel by car
from their residences to the university.
Bike Bus Car Foot
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Mode of Transport
Transport
Frequency
Figure 5: Graph showing the mode of transport the employees avail
CONCLUSION
Although argued that qualitative methods of research offer an alternative to the highly quantitative
methods, Qualitative research involves the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical materials such as

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case study, personal experience, introspective, life story, interview, observational, historical and interactional
and visual texts that describe routine and problematic moments and meaning in individual’s lives.

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REFERENCES
Gioia D.A., Corley K.G. and Hamilton.A.L (2013), Setting Qualitative Rigor in Inductive Research Notes on
the Gioia Methodology, Organizational Research Methods 16(1),15-31.
Silverman D (2014), Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for Analyzing, Talk, Text and Interaction, Sage
Publications.
Miles M.B and Huberman A.M. (2014) quantitative data analysis.
King N (2014) Doing template analysis: Qualitative Organizational Research and Core Methods and Current
Challenges (pp 426-450)
Catherine Cassell Gillian Symon (2012), Qualitative Organizational Research, Sage Publications.