Im doing research on external advisors on M&A. So far I conducted interviews with M&A advisors working in different companies, completely unrelated. I have seen that most qualitative research is based on case studies where interviews are conducted among different individuals within the same organization, or cross-case studies where many individuals from few organizations are interviewed. My question is, is it possible to conduct research based on single individuals working in similar, but different organizations? I have 1 interview for each company/professional. The unit of research is the profession itself, so I think it makes sense, but I still did not find similar research papers in management research with a similar approach.
The most common approach to sampling in qualitative research is what is known as purposive (or purposeful) sampling, where your participants are chosen to meet the purposes of the research. So, what really matters is that you can offer a clear justification for how you selected your sample to meet your research goals. It sounds like your selection criteria meet that standard, which means there is not a problem.
Sometimes, it would be better if you vary the hierarchy position of participants (different perception of same phenomena du to different level of power / qualification ...). The more different perception you gather, the better and richer your analysis will be.
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