TERREMOTOS- EQUIPOS DE PATIO

Before the methodology can be discussed and justified, the philosophical underpinnings of the research must be considered. For instance, Hussey and Hussey (1997) begin their discussion of research methods by dividing the approaches to research into the positivistic and the phenomenological, with the positivistic encompassing the more quantitative data and phenomenological the more qualitative. Indeed, the term phenomenological approach is often used loosely to describe any study that considered the respondent’s point of view in contrast with the positivist method in social science which utilises statistics (Benton and Craib, 2001). However, phenomenology is more complex than this. Indeed, in its true sense phenomenology refers to a complex philosophical position which is related to how humans impose meaning on the world (Benton and Craib, 2001). The philosophical underpinnings of phenomenology will now be discussed.

It was Husserl (1859-1938), a German philosopher, who founded the phenomenology school of thought, which aims to describe the everyday experience of the ‘life world’ (Hughes and Sharrock, 1997). In essence, Husserl (2002) gave more credence to a person’s views in an attempt to garner understanding than traditional philosophies did. Indeed, Husserl critiqued previous philosophies for underestimating the complexity and diversity of thought and for imposing views ‘from above’. In contrast, phenomenology proceeds ‘from below’ to include the diversity of experience (Moran, 2005). Thus Husserl was primarily concerned with people’s conscious experience of their own world. In turning the focus onto a persons’ experience of a situation Husserl, enabled a new type of

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knowledge to be created, one which accounted for people’s experiences (Lemay and Pitts, 1994).

Heidegger (1889-1976), a former student of Husserl’s, continued this philosophical mode of enquiry and published his seminal text ‘Being and Time’ in 1927. In this text, Heidegger focused upon the concept of ‘being’ as he felt that many philosophical traditions overlooked this key concept (Mulhall, 1996). To rectify this situation Heidegger introduced the concept of ‘Dasein’ which refers to ‘being in the world’ (Clark, 2002). Thus each human being has their own unique experience of being in the world, which is shaped by their environment and this experience must not be overlooked (Lemay and Pitts, 1994). Consequently, ‘phenomenology is the science of the Being of entities’ (Mulhall, 1996, p26) and provides a means of exploring individuals’ experiences.

Significantly, the methods required for conducting an empirical research study arise from the underpinning philosophy (Delanty, 2005). Therefore in the case of phenomenological research, where the researcher aims to understand the respondents’ lived experiences (Creswell, 2007), a methodology that allows this in-depth data to be captured must be adopted. Consequently, ‘phenomenological inquiry is inherently qualitative in nature’ (Cope, 2005, p169).

Indeed, qualitative research aims to examine why the findings discovered occur (Curran and Blackburn, 2001) and the process is inductive with the researcher building from the details (Creswell, 1994). Therefore qualitative data is often regarded as rich, as it captures the details and nuances of the phenomena under investigation (Hussey and Hussey, 1997; Jack et al., 2008). All individuals construct their own realities and form understandings according to their own paradigms (Hill and McGowan, 1999) and qualitative research methods assist in understanding these multiple realities and enable the researcher to understand how the respondents view their world and their reality. In essence, ‘Good

qualitative research ought to confound issues, revealing them in their complexity rather than reducing them to simple explanation’ (Wolcott, 2001, p36).

However, currently qualitative approaches to entrepreneurship research are used to a limited extent (de Bruin et al., 2007). In fact, despite the calls for researchers to utilise more qualitative methodologies (Bygrave and Hofer, 1991; Gartner et al., 1992) studies with qualitative methodologies remain in the minority. For instance, Chandler and Lyon (2001) in a review of the empirical studies of entrepreneurship published in the key

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journals over ten years (1989-1999) found that only 18% were qualitative studies. Gartner (2008) is critical of the reliance on quantitative methods to explore entrepreneurship arguing that ‘statistical analyses are often about comparing the averages among groups,

yet the average isn’t necessarily representative of anything more than what the researcher has constructed as a way to compare and contrast a grouping of unique individuals that the researcher believes is a group’ (Gartner, 2008, p359).

Alas many substantive issues in entrepreneurship are rarely considered (Gartner and Birley, 2002) yet many of the complex issues in the field could be explored by utilising qualitative methods (Gartner and Birley, 2002; Leitch and Hill, 2006). Importantly, there are many insights that only qualitative research can discover (Bygrave and Hofer, 1991). Therefore there is an urgent need for the greater use of qualitative methods in entrepreneurship research (Hindle, 2004). As Gartner (2008) states ‘the current challenge

is to pay attention to the stories that entrepreneurs tell about themselves, in the present, as to how their views of their past, present and future are seen and acted upon in their day- to-day lives’ (p360).

Focusing on the research into female entrepreneurs in particular, again qualitative methods are invoked to a limited extent with quantitative methods the dominant method of research (de Bruin et al., 2007). However, the use of quantitative methods to research female entrepreneurship may be problematic, for instance Stevenson (1990) argues that quantitative methods encourage the development of profiles of the typical female entrepreneur and does not consider the heterogeneity of female entrepreneurs. Moreover,

‘Researchers have, however, demonstrated that it is exceptionally difficult to extract experiences of gender discrimination via the use of quantitative methods’ (Carter and

Cannon, 1992, p7). Thus there are also calls for the use of more qualitative methods of research into female entrepreneurship (Stevenson, 1990; Mirchandi, 1999).

However, the epistemological issues regarding the nature of knowledge and its acquisition (Snape and Spencer, 2003) must be considered when conducting qualitative research. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge and ‘refers to a fundamental branch of

philosophy that investigates the possibility, limits, origin, structure, methods and validity (or truth) of knowledge’ (Delanty and Strydom, 2003, p4-5). This presents the question;

can all claims to knowledge be justified in the same way with broadly the same kinds of evidence, or can this vary for example between the social sciences and the natural sciences? (Rosenberg, 1988). The nature of knowledge has long been debated by

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philosophers who can be broadly divided into two groups. Here the ‘rationalists’ were impressed by mathematics which arrived at absolutely certain conclusions by formal reasoning, whilst others subscribed to ‘empiricism’ where the whole source of knowledge about the world was the evidence of our senses (Benton and Craib, 2001). Given the types of questions that social scientists aim to answer, it is the empiricist view of knowledge that most cite when making claims to provide insight (Benton and Craib, 2001). Indeed in this research, when seeking to understand the lived experiences of the entrepreneurs, knowledge is generated through the analysis of the experiences and meanings described by the respondents.

As such, the nature of the relationship between the researcher and the researched (Hill and McGowan, 1999) is important because for the researcher to understand the respondents reality they must be close enough to them to discover, understand and interpret their reality (Shaw, 1999) consequently the findings are mediated through the researcher (Snape and Spencer, 2003). As Cope (2005) states ‘in this respect, the phenomenological description

of the phenomena presented by the researcher represents a personal interpretation of the interpretations of the researched’ (p170). This has implications for the axiological issue;

that is the role of values, making it necessary for the researcher to report their own values and biases as well as the information gathered (Hill and McGowan, 1999).

Furthermore there are limits to qualitative approaches. Collecting rich, detailed data requires smaller sample sizes to be invoked at the expense of statistical representativeness. The resulting smaller sample size renders it difficult to know if the findings represent the whole population (Carter and Rosa, 1998). However, even when quantitative methods are adopted there can be difficulties in ensuring representativeness due to the reluctance of entrepreneurs to participate in research resulting in problematically low response rates. For instance, Fischer et al. (1993) anticipated a low response rate to their research citing the reluctance of entrepreneurs to complete long questionnaires. Indeed, Allen and Langowitz (2003) garnered only a 3% response rate to a postal survey distributed to family businesses across the US, despite following best practices.

Curran and Blackburn (2001) offer an explanation for the particularly low level of participation of entrepreneurs, emphasising that they either don’t have the time or they don’t perceive the research to be relevant. Therefore ensuring the entrepreneurs’ participation is a key consideration in designing any entrepreneurship research

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methodology and whilst qualitative research does not aspire to representativeness (Barbour, 2008) ensuring that entrepreneurs will participate is crucial.

Analysing the data collected by qualitative research is also intrinsically more difficult. Lillis (1999) raises the issue of validity, stating that readers may be sceptical of how conclusions are reached, querying if the researcher has only found what they set out to find or if other potential explanations were overlooked and readers may also question if the research process can be reproduced. Moreover, qualitative methods are particularly open to the introduction of researcher bias at the data analysis stage (Easterby-Smith et al., 1991) wherein the researcher’s background may influence their interpretation of the data and compromise their objectivity (Ghauri and Gronhaug, 2002). Thus Shaw’s (1999) approach must be adopted, with the researcher explicitly stating how the process of data collection and analysis were undertaken to help allay concerns regarding how conclusions have been reached. However, concerns regarding the validity of the qualitative research can be mitigated by the use of a clear, systematic data analysis process.

Hence as the discussion illustrates, both quantitative and qualitative methods have their advantages and disadvantages (Carter and Rosa, 1998) and these must be considered before selecting the appropriate methodology. As this research aims to capture a detailed, rich insight into the experiences of entrepreneurs in Scotland, to gain a better understanding of their reality, in this case it is a qualitative methodology that best fits the purpose and will be adopted.