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Holloway & Wheeler (1996, p. 10), describe qualitative research as ―holistic, emic, contextualized, interpretive, and immersed‖. Within the discipline of corporate governance, this framework is very well positioned to contribute to the practical dimension of research outcomes. It is clear that the subjective element is an integral part of the aforementioned characteristics of qualitative research and therefore needs to be revealed.

The first source of subjectivity within this research relates to the primary method of data collection. In general, newspaper sources have been frequently used in event analysis. The reason for this is the fact that other sources of data are likely to

21 There is no suggestion that quantitative research has no place in the study of corporate governance.

However, there is evidence to suggest that the dominance of this line of enquiry in the Russian context produced contradictory findings with limited applicability (Iwasaki, 2007). Furthermore, the diagram does not propose that reliability, replicability and validity are undesirable characteristics of the research quality.

On the contrary, they are desirable. However, very often strict adherence to these quality checks can force researchers to re-formulate the research question, or drop otherwise legitimate enquiries all together.

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contain a larger bias or (as the case is in this particular study) are simply unavailable to most researchers. Nevertheless, newspaper sources pose fundamental problems of a methodological nature. With regard to longitudinal studies, or when two time periods are compared, it is important to know whether press data accurately represents events under consideration, or is skewed by journalists‘ selection process and a change in reporting practice. Although contamination of newspaper data has been categorically acknowledged (Danzger, 1975), others rather convincingly argue that no alternative source provides ‗as complete an account of events as newspapers for the widest sample of geographical and temporal units‘ (Olzak, 1989, p. 128). Moreover, even in the purely quantitative sense, the bias of newspaper sources has been described as stable and therefore acceptable for formal analysis. The metaphor used by Barranco & Wisler (1999) is that of a thermometer that shows temperature incorrectly. Here, the point is that if inaccuracy is consistent, then we can still learn about the changing nature of the unit of analysis through a systematic comparison.

Their study of public demonstrations in Swiss cities confirms the latter proposition which serves as the fundamental justification for the choice of the source of data for this study.

Articles from the Moscow Times, although factual in nature, are primarily informed by Western business people and written by Anglo-Saxon reporters. It is not surprising that a lot of published material on corporate disputes has a certain degree of bias in favour of foreign investors (particularly European and Anglo-Saxon). As a source from the Moscow Times put it:

“I think the only potential bias you could find in a Moscow Times story is the inevitable pro-foreigner bias that you would find in any foreign newspaper working in Russia. There is always going to be some subtle bias in favour of foreign investors just by the simple fact that they speak our language natively and we understand them better than we do the Russians. But that was never overt and I think we tried very hard to avoid that but I think that‟s probably a bias you will see in some Moscow Times stories” (see interview guide, appendix 4, question 4).

It is important to acknowledge that this bias is not accidental, as one of the aspects of this research is to investigate the phenomenon of Russian corporate governance from the perspective of Western investors. This bias very much

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contributes to foreigners‘ perception of the environment and, by virtue of that fact, influences the actual corporate governance practice. Moreover, the bias can be considered inert since it has been confirmed separately and independently by journalists who worked for the newspaper in 1998 and 2006.

An additional consideration here is that relying on a Russian newspaper would have produced a much greater anti-foreign bias. It is a general consensus (among both Russian and Western reporters) that Russian newspapers are subject to a greater degree of political pressure and hence are less free to portray the environment in factual terms and with the same degree of accuracy (Osipovich, 2008).

The second source of subjectivity comes from the interviewees themselves.

Clearly, answers to the questions must have been very much determined by the participants‘ individual experience. In general, reporters are largely free from that bias because they work for the same organisation and are equally well informed about the environment. However, they are still expected to have a varying degree of specialised knowledge and, more importantly, unique experience and circumstances. These circumstances cannot be fully disclosed for confidentiality and anonymity reasons, but are considered while analysing interview data and constructing analytical and concluding inferences.

Moreover, the researcher‘s bias needs to be acknowledged. This bias spans the whole of the research affecting data collection and analysis. The process of identification of corporate disputes covered in newspaper articles is full of subjective elements. This source of subjectivism revealed in the subsequent sections as the ‗decision trail‘ is exposed. For the purpose of clarity, it is critical to reiterate that the aim of presenting the ‗decision trail‘ is not to ensure repeatability of the study, but to reveal and explain the logic behind each decision made.

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