BUSI 815 Week 1 DB Forum 1 Example

Discussion Board Forum 1: Thread and Two Replies

BUSI 815 Qualitative Research Methods, Discussion Board Forum 1 (thread and two replies)

Thread by [Student Name]

The prompt, the research topic and the classmates are composites standing in for the course's own; the books and the published research are real; the week, points and readings follow Liberty's public course guide for BUSI 815, which keeps each forum's detailed instructions inside the course.

My research interest is the experience of second-generation owners who take over small family manufacturing firms from a parent. I grew up in such a firm, a metal fabrication shop my father founded, and I have watched friends in similar businesses struggle with succession. In their review of the succession literature, Le Breton-Miller et al. (2004) report that under 10 percent of family-owned businesses survive into the third generation, so the transition matters economically. What interests me is how successors themselves experience it. Creswell and Poth (2018) argue that researchers bring philosophical assumptions to every study whether they state them or not, so this forum is a chance to state mine.

My ontological assumption is that successors' experiences are multiple. Two siblings who take over the same firm may describe the transition in very different ways, shaped by birth order, their relationship with the founder and their roles in the business. I want to report those multiple perspectives rather than reduce them to one account. Epistemologically, I believe I can understand these experiences only by getting close to participants, through long interviews and time in their firms, and that my understanding will be built from their words. Axiologically, I bring values I must acknowledge: I admire family firms, and I know from experience how painful succession can be. Creswell and Poth describe the qualitative researcher as one who positions themselves in the study, and my background will need to be stated openly. Methodologically, the study will be inductive and emerging, with questions refined as interviews proceed.

Those assumptions point to social constructivism as my interpretive framework. In this framework, researchers seek to understand the meanings people develop about their experiences, meanings that are varied and formed through interaction with others and through history and culture (Creswell & Poth, 2018). A successor's sense of what it means to take over is formed in conversation with parents, siblings, employees and customers. The question for my study is not what succession is, but what it means to the person who inherits the keys.

As a Christian, I need to address a tension. I believe that reality is not merely constructed: God created the world, and there is truth about it whether or not anyone perceives it. Does social constructivism contradict that belief? I do not think it must, if the framework is applied to meanings rather than to reality itself. A successor's father either did or did not retain control of the bank accounts after retirement; that is a fact. What the successor made of it, whether as distrust, protection or habit, is a meaning formed in relationship. I can hold that there is objective truth while studying how people construct the meaning of their experiences.

Keller and Alsdorf (2012), in their chapter on work that becomes pointless, draw on Ecclesiastes to show how work can feel meaningless when it is viewed only from under the sun, as a cycle of effort that death and time will erase. Many successors describe exactly that fear: that they are spending their lives maintaining someone else's achievement. That is one reason a study of meaning matters. Understanding how successors find or lose purpose in an inherited business could help families and advisers prepare the next generation better.

Reply to Jasmine

Jasmine, your thread chose pragmatism for your study of hybrid work policies in regional banks, arguing that you care about what works rather than about philosophical purity. Creswell and Poth (2018) describe pragmatism as a framework focused on outcomes and practical consequences, in which researchers use whatever methods best answer the question. That fits a DBA, where findings must help managers decide. I wonder, though, how your pragmatism will handle a conflict in your data. Suppose your survey shows that productivity held steady under hybrid schedules, while interviews show that managers believe it fell. A pragmatist must still decide which evidence counts more, and that decision rests on epistemological assumptions you have not yet stated. Would you treat the survey as the stronger evidence because it measures outcomes, or the interviews because they reveal what drives managers' policy choices? Answering that question now would make your framework clearer to your committee and would help you plan the design.

Reply to Malik

Malik, your choice of a transformative framework for studying the experiences of warehouse workers under algorithmic scheduling is well argued. Creswell and Poth (2018) describe transformative frameworks as those in which research is linked to action and change for groups whose voices are marginalized, and your participants have little influence over the systems that set their hours. My question concerns your position. You mentioned that you are a regional operations director at the company you plan to study. A transformative study usually commits the researcher to advocate with participants for change, yet your role may make workers cautious about speaking openly and may put you in conflict with your employer. How will you protect participants' candor, perhaps by recruiting through a worker center rather than through management? The framework seems right for the topic, but your position inside the company may require a design that keeps you at some distance from the data collection, at least in the interviews. A colleague from outside the company could conduct them, with transcripts stripped of names before you read them.

References

Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2018). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (4th ed.). SAGE Publications.

Keller, T., & Alsdorf, K. L. (2012). Every good endeavor: Connecting your work to God's work. Dutton.

Le Breton-Miller, I., Miller, D., & Steier, L. P. (2004). Toward an integrative model of effective FOB succession. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 28(4), 305-328. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6520.2004.00047.x