Linking Concepts and Data

Two essential modus operandi can be distinguished in management research. Researchers tend to either compare theory to an observed reality, or they try to elicit theoretical elements from reality. In practice this means that, once a research problem has been defined and the researcher has chosen the type of research to undertake, he or she is faced with two possibilities: either to study the literature and extract concepts from it, or to explore reality through field­work. The researcher thus assembles either a group of concepts or a body of data. The accumulation of concepts then leads to speculation on the type of data to collect to study these concepts in action, while the accumulation of data leads the researcher to attempt to reveal the concepts underlying this data. Whatever the situation, researchers try to establish links between concepts and data, employing two translation processes to do so: measurement and abstraction.

Measurement involves the ‘translation’ of concepts into data, and abstrac­tion the ‘translation’ of data into concepts (it should be noted that, in this chap­ter, measurement carries the same significance as the traditional concepts of operationalization or instrumentation). Researchers rely on measurement tools and abstraction processes to carry out these translations. Either existing measurements or measurements created by the researcher may be used when translating concepts into data. In translating data into concepts, researchers employ various methods to put together the data they have collected.

Source: Thietart Raymond-Alain et al. (2001), Doing Management Research: A Comprehensive Guide, SAGE Publications Ltd; 1 edition.