Research design

Abstract

Empirical management research aims at describing real-life phenomena and explaining causal relationships between them. It bases on the assumption that thinking and reality are independent. Therefore, it is necessary to test theoretical descriptions of real-life phenomena and their relationships with empirical data. Thus, a key characteristic of empirical research is to gather, prepare and analyze external data in order to test the theoretically established relationships. For doing so the theoretical variables and their relationships need to be made measurable and analyzable similarly to research methods employed in natural sciences. This is the aim of this chapter.