Researching Content and Researching Process

Understanding a research question requires making a certain number of choices. We will examine here two ways of studying the same management phenomenon: researchers can choose between content-based study and process-based study.

The many different definitions found in books and articles describing these two options all focus on the following elements:

1. Content-based research proposes an analysis based on the nature of the subject under study. It seeks to learn what it is composed of.
2. Process-based research, on the other hand, analyzes the phenomenon in terms of its ‘flux’. It aims to reveal its behavior over time, and to apprehend its evolution. Such studies are sometimes known as dynamic or longitudinal.

One of the objectives of this chapter is to show that most management subjects can be apprehended in terms of either dimension: content or process. The main difference between these two types of research lies essentially in the formulation of the research question and the methodology chosen. Table 5.1 illustrates the differences between these two ways of approaching a research topic, using two different studies – of interorganizational network control and of organizational memory – as examples.

The distinction we are making here between content and process may seem to be radical. Yet it is frequently used to structure the field of management research. These two types of research correspond to two traditional schools of thought, which disagree over two essential criteria: the nature of ‘time’ itself, and how research takes time into account. Even excepting these criteria, how­ever, the two schools of thought do not merge into a harmonious whole in terms of ideas and practice. The very diversity that makes them so valuable is also what makes them difficult to present clearly. We will not attempt to make an exhaustive rendering of their diversity here, but we will give examples using such different themes as organizational structure, innovation, strategic develop­ment, team work or change, in order to provide readers with a broad range of content- and process-based research.

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