Research methods each have advantages and disadvantages, and you have to consciously choose them accordingly. A selection of the research method is usually justified by the advantages and then sensibly limited by the disadvantages. In the bachelor thesis, for example, you have to argue why you preferred an expert interview to the survey. Since your method does not, of course, reveal the entire knowledge on the topic, it should also be sensibly limited. In this article I show the advantages and disadvantages of each methodology. Tip: Use the advantages to justify your choice and pack the disadvantages into the limitation of your work. Literature analysis Literature analyzes form the foundation of any research and summarize similar findings. It helps in understanding, structuring existing knowledge and finding research gaps. Nevertheless, the following points should be limited: Novelty: Often literature analyzes only summarize existing knowledge and do not generate any new knowledge.Incompleteness:…

The case study is a possible approach to depict certain processes and circumstances within an organization or a situation. The aim of a case study is to supplement the findings from theory with those from practice. The strength of case studies lies in the fact that complex processes and procedures within a company can be clearly illustrated and can be used as examples. A point of criticism of a case study is often that general deductions from the individual case to the whole are not always possible or only possible under certain aspects. The reason for this is the strong contextual relevance to the respective case. Types of case studies There are two types of case studies. Case studies consider a case with a mostly critical, unique, typical or previously inaccessible nature over a longer period of time (Bodendorf et al. 2010). In doing so, you examine a company or…

There are two ways of thinking in research. On the one hand, researchers can transfer knowledge from practice into theory or transfer knowledge from theory into practice. The following figure shows these two ways of thinking. First I would like to show the more usual procedure for a thesis and then how you can pull through a topic without literature. Reading tip: Build research design Deduction: The standard for theses Deduction means transferring information from theory into practice. In other words, deduction means concretely to derive / derive. For example, you know: goldfish live in water. I have a goldfish. So this goldfish has to live in the water too. Reading tip: Find literature I would like to show you this using the example of change strategies in companies. You can find out more in the literature: What change strategies are there (Kotter, Lewin, …). Now you ask experts: How…

Are you writing a thesis and should you write it in the special context of your company or an industry or do you have a special context for SMEs or associations? You will often find a lot of general literature and probably little literature specific to your field. This is quite normal as many researchers prefer to do broader research. Tip: If you cannot find any literature in general, then read my article: Help, I can’t find any literature! However, the fact that you are researching a specific niche is often of value in practice, as many results are not transferable to any industry. I have e.g. Researched SMEs and often heard about general results: this only applies to corporations or it is too expensive for us, … There are also almost no studies on agility in SMEs. It is therefore important that you work out the specific framework conditions…

In the course of my doctorate, I only did a few expert interviews at the beginning, but I supervised numerous bachelor and master theses that made use of this method. I even have the feeling that the typical bachelor thesis is what I’m looking for Literature analysis and expert interviews. In the following text I would like to give you some tips. Advantages of an expert interview The purpose of the interview is to ask a selected expert about hypotheses. It is therefore not used to get an overview of a topic, but to evaluate specific points of the literature analysis. So it’s exploratory because you never know what kind of knowledge will be gained. The expert interview therefore has its strength in In contrast to the survey, in unstructured and open questions. To Group discussion it is differentiated by the fact that it is a dialogue between two people.…

Grounded Theory is a social science approach to the systematic collection and evaluation of primarily qualitative data (interview transcripts, observation protocols) with the aim of generating theory. It is not a single method, but a series of interlocking processes (Source: Wikipedia ). I often notice that there is no direct literature on many new topics about digital change and therefore not through a normal one Literature analysis can be explored. So the researcher has to generate knowledge himself. Grounded theory can help here. What is the Grounded Theory? To this end, Bodendorf et al. (2010): The grounded theory is derived inductively through systematic collection and analysis of data related to the research object (Strauss and Corbin 1996, p. 7). Data collection, analysis and the emerging theory are arranged in a cycle that is run through several times as part of a research process. The following figure shows the control loop.…