The Research Design in Organization Studies: Problems and Prospects

The paper is concerned with problems of research methodology in organization studies. It places the main emphasis on the “research design,” which is seen as an important tool for the planning, the substantiation and the practical guidance of research procedures. The explicit discussion and improvement of research designs is proposed to be a major contribution also to concept and theory development in Organization Science. The basic content of the paper is an empirical analysis and evaluation of the status quo in design conceptions for organization studies. For this, some 300 empirical studies (in German and English) have been critically reviewed, 74 of them described in detail. The results show many deficiencies in the elaboration of the research designs, especially the ties between design and theory (or research question) are often weak or unclear. But there are also good examples which can be used as starting points for further improvements. The development over time shows shifts toward more reflection/discussion of available alternatives in the methods of data collection and more critical examinations of the data quality. This also leads to increasing applications of multi-method designs. A comparison between German and US studies show differences along the quantitative-qualitative line, which opens chances of mutual learning processes.