Perceptions of business advisers in small manufacturing companies : the phenomenological interview as a research method /
This case study reports on research into small manufacturing businesses in the United Kingdom. This sector is vital for growth. Over the years, governments have established different types of policies to support this sector. One policy has been the provision of business advice. Our research aim was...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
London :
SAGE Publications Ltd,
2019.
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| Series: | SAGE Research Methods. Cases.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | This case study reports on research into small manufacturing businesses in the United Kingdom. This sector is vital for growth. Over the years, governments have established different types of policies to support this sector. One policy has been the provision of business advice. Our research aim was focused on finding out whether the perception of small and medium-sized enterprise owner-managers was that their firm's performance was improved by using advisers. This involved establishing an understanding of small and medium-sized enterprises' decision making. This is complex, and a survey method would have made it difficult to comprehend the contextualized worlds of owner-managers. Alternatively, the phenomenological interview was utilized to access the experiences of a small number of expert respondents. The phenomenological method (sometimes mistaken as an umbrella term for all qualitative research) seeks to unravel the meaning of events as lived by others. Consequently, in phenomenological research, the primary source of evidence is the respondent's perceptions of an object--in this case, business advice. Subsequently, we examine our research approach to planning, conducting, and analyzing the phenomenological interview. We also highlight some problematic issues when undertaking the phenomenological interview. Through these interviews, owner-manager "decision stories" were successfully generated about their perceptions of business advisers. From the owner-manager's accounts, we extracted a number of key themes. The resulting discussion of these themes or meaning units subsequently enabled us to meet the aims of the original study, which are also outlined here. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781526494665 1526494663 |