Reconciling positive and interpretative international management research: a native category approach

The use of 'native categories' in management research avoids the input of researchers' a priori understandings into the research process. The rich, unobservable and subjective perceptions of managers may be explored through interpretative research approaches, but these do not meet the positive aspiration of generating findings of generalisable application. A gulf exists between these two research approaches. An approach is described and evaluated which, in attempting to address the 'native category' problem in a comparative management research study, reconciles many of the objectives of interpretative and positive research. It explicitly recognises imperfection in all research approaches, and strikes a range of appropriate compromises. It is a way of accessing managers' 'native category' data results that is amenable to interpretative and positive, qualitative and quantitative analysis. The approach presented shows that the gulf between interpretative and positive approaches may be bridged, and other 'bridges' may be developed for other research enquiries.