How Over the past fifteen years or so, Africa has experienced an economic boom, which has resulted in some of the best growth rates in the world, as well as an increase in foreign direct investment. This new context has already prompted research on the African business environment, innovative entrepreneurial and managerial practices in Africa, the contribution of African practitioners to the production of "actionable" knowledge for management in Africa, the emergence of new management models in Africa. Although very useful for the production of managerial knowledge in Africa, this research has some limitations, including the weak African theoretical contextualisation and the inadequacy of the theoretical models used to analyse African managerial practices. This general observation justifies the growing interest of researchers and/or practitioners, working in an African context, to revisit current explanatory models and propose new ones
This opens up a new avenue in the theoretical approaches of African organizations. This concern is consistent with that already observed in other contexts.
In addition to this fundamental theoretical question, there is also the question of the method. How to explain the influence of quantitative research methods in an African socio-cultural context mainly characterized by the abundance and richness of oral communication, the prevalence of words and symbols over numbers and figures, the strength of the comprehensive reasoning mode over the explanatory one? This ultra-quantitative approach to management has long shown its limits and caused many serious effectscan you make your research relevant using quantitative and qualitative methods In the context of social science ( Business administration) in Africa ?
Dear Shamba,
The research is relevant in any part of the world if it is "pragmatic research" (see Saunder et al., 2009 or later editions), i.e. it is rigorous and has practical relevance. Moreover, the practical relevance is more important. The most general question that always has practical relevance is how to increase firm's competences (know-hows, systems and business relationship) without increasing unit costs. Most business and management research issues can be presented as an attempt of a partial response to that question.
Thank you Igor Gurkov for your response and the reference to saunder et al 2009. Do you have details about saunder et al 2009 ?
I bet that quantitative and qualitative methods lie on different ontological and epistemological perspectives representing two distinct Worldview ! How to discover the scientific truth ?
Hi,
This is the link to the last edition of Saunders (2019). It is the best basic book on research methods-- https://www.worldcat.org/title/research-methods-for-business-students/oclc/1085583624?referer=di&ht=edition
It Chapter 1 you will find there the difference between 'pedantic' and 'pragmatic science'. The latter is rigorous and relevant regardless to the particular approach used. In reality, there is no difference between qualitative and quantitative methods, moreover, qualitative methods (studying artifacts, action research, observations, interviews) give you more precise results than quantitative ones where you are always limited by statistical interference (90, 95, 99%), but the truth can be in the remaining 10-five or one percents.
Absolutely right Prof Igor Gurkov ... any basic academic research (either qualitative or quantitative) is very much "pragmatic" in its very nature and purpose if it follows the scientific standards for rigour and unbiased interpretations of inferences.
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