Fundamentals of Research Methodology

Academic research is a relatively simple process when a PhD student knows the methodologies, methods and tools that underpin it. Although it is assumed that students holding a master’s degree should have a sense of them, experience shows that this is not the case. This book aims to introduce these methodologies, methods and tools of academic research to PhD students in doctoral programmes in management during their first year. In this book, PhD students will find the principles that support quality academic research, as well as a description and explanation of the essential steps to carry it out.

The reader will find three parts in this book. The first one introduces the concepts and principles of academic research design. The second part introduces several research techniques for analyzing data. Some of these techniques focus on correlational methods (e.g., analysis of variance), others on logical methods (e.g., fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis), and finally some on heuristics methods (e.g., clustering). There is also a chapter about traditional methods for analyzing qualitative data. The book presents and resolves examples of all these techniques through R (the reader can download the data-set and the code to run in their computers or laptops). Finally, the third part refers to some standard tool in academic research, such as R and Latex.