Calificación de la sociedad como laboral

Ontologies concern theories of reality, and are thus the starting point of philosophical enquiry. The first aspect of ontology, objectivism, holds that social entities are objective; that they exist independently to the social actors concerned with their existence (Saunders, Lewis, & Thornhill, 2007). However, this study adopted the subjectivist view, which assumes that social phenomena are created through the experiences and perceptions of social actors (Saunders et al., 2007). This study’s

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subjectivist approach – that reality is constructed by the people experiencing that reality - was a foundation of the research design decisions detailed in this section.

While ontologies concern theories of reality, epistemology is more concerned with operationalising the research enquiry itself. Epistemology relates to “the nature of knowledge and what constitutes acceptable knowledge in a field of study” (Saunders et al., 2007, p. 597). It is often discussed in terms of two poles. The first of these, ‘natural science’, is concerned with the objective collection and analysis of ‘facts’; ‘positivism’. The second is phenomenology. Phenomenology focuses on meaning and reflexivity; the simultaneous and unfolding nature of individual experience as socially constructed (Saunders et al., 2007), interpretation and perception informing practice and vice versa.

Interpretivism, a branch of phenomenology, is concerned with the subjective understanding of people’s differences as social actors. While quantitative (quantity/numeric driven) research is more closely associated with positivist approaches, qualitative (quality rather than quantity driven) research is more closely associated with interpretivist approaches (Maylor & Blackmon, 2005), which glean knowledge from interpretation and insight (D'Cruz & Jones, 2004).

This study adopted a qualitative, inductive approach to building knowledge, through interpretivism. Deductivism – or theory testing – was rejected on the basis that no SIR- specific theory has yet been developed to test. Inductive approaches consider theory- building an output of empirical data (Locke, 2007), while qualitative approaches offer richness and depth (Alvesson, 1996; Cappellen & Janssens, 2010; Denzin & Lincoln, 2008), and enable flexible exploration (Morgan & Smircich, 1980), all of which are required due to a near-absence of SIR knowledge. Additionally, there has potentially

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been an overuse of quantitative methods in the expatriate management literature. An advantage of utilising qualitative methodology is articulated here:

Adopting a qualitative methodology repositions the individual as the central focus and contributes a more emic perspective than much of the current expatriate management literature allows. (Richardson & McKenna, 2006, p. 17)

This represents a call for a greater use of qualitative methods in expatriate management research, and to empower expatriates to set future research agendas through consideration of the issues important to them.

Moreover, this section takes the position of Edmondson and McManus (2007) that an appropriate research approach and design is a function of methodological fit. Methodological fit refers to the match between the research context and research design. The primary input into methodological fit, Edmondson and McManus argue, is the level of prior work in a field. The level of prior work indicates the level of knowledge in a particular area. When knowledge is mature, quantitative research is usually more appropriate (Edmondson & McManus, 2007). This is because open-ended, exploratory research has contributed to the building of knowledge, and research that tests hypotheses can provide confirmation and help answer remaining questions.

Conversely, when there is little or no existing knowledge, qualitative approaches help scope a topic area and identify elements for further exploration or explanation. It could also be argued that where knowledge is nascent, a quantitative survey and statistical modelling might be appropriate research tools to provide scope for subsequent

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qualitative investigations. However, this is dependent on asking the right questions in such a survey, and this thesis takes the position that when knowledge is nascent, it is seldom possible to know which questions to ask. This results in:

…fishing expeditions. Any statistically significant relationships among variables that emerge by chance are likely to be over-interpreted as evidence to support an emergent theory. (Edmondson & McManus, 2007, p. 1171)

Indeed, for questions relating to natural science, a positivist, quantitative approach is often appropriate (Edmondson & McManus, 2007) because this enables the testing of hypotheses, and supports confirmation of causality. However for initial questions relating to human resource management (HRM), it is often appropriate to adopt an interpretivist approach. This is because researchers are often seeking to explore and understand complex human views and behaviour, rather than merely explaining them in terms of ‘testable’ facts. This complexity of human behaviour in HRM is compounded by multiple inputs relating to organisational context as well as individual personality and experience. There is a risk that a sole reliance on quantitative approaches oversimplifies this complexity, ignoring important contextual factors.

Therefore, mixing methods was another approach considered for use in this study. This involves the collection, analysis and comparison of both qualitative and quantitative data in consecutive phases of the same study (e.g. Ivankova, Creswell, & Stick, 2006), and is aimed at improving confidence in the findings as well as the research methods used (Jick, 1979). However, the ‘fishing expedition’ issue described above, identified by Edmondson and McManus (2007) in relation to the premature deployment of

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quantitative approaches in theory development, also applies to mixing methods before sufficient knowledge has been developed in a topic area. This is also an issue when the qualitative and quantitative components of the study occur in stages, since the exploratory qualitative phase is unlikely to produce a sufficient quantity of variables for subsequent testing in the same study. For this reason, mixing methods is more appropriate when research has already identified some of the constructs and measures needed (Edmondson & McManus, 2007), and hence it was not considered appropriate here.

A quantitative survey was also considered as part of the research design. There were several reasons this was rejected. First, as elaborated above, qualitative methods have superior exploratory power in – and are therefore a better fit with - undeveloped and unscoped areas (Denzin & Lincoln, 2008; Eisenhardt, 1989). The Australasian SIR study to date used quantitative methods (Tharenou & Caulfield, 2010) perhaps prematurely given that priority that should be given to the significant, broad gap in knowledge relating to SIR expectations and experiences. Survey questionnaires tend to elicit fixed answer responses (M. Stroh, 2000), and, as argued, this is simply inappropriate early in the development of a topic area, when open-ended exploratory tools are required.