Research Findings and Analyses

Abstract

Much of the conventional management research was dominated by positivistic or neo-positivistic assumptions and methods stressing ideals such as neutrality, objectivity, scientific procedure, quantification, accurate data, techniques, replicability and discovery of fixed law (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000). Cooke (2009: 20) finds that articles about Chinese HRM published in top-ranking journals, particularly U.S.-based journals, tend to adopt a quantitative approach, ‘often involving sophisticated statistical analysis and hypothesis development and testing’. However, the inadequacies of the dominant quantitative hypothesis-testing approach have led to an increasing use of qualitative methods (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994). As Quer and colleagues (2007: 375) noted, adopting Western models and quantitative methods may have limited explanatory power and Chinese management researchers need to be ‘more self-confident in exploring locally relevant research issues and developing theories that explain Chinese phenomena’. Thus, Cooke (2009: 26) suggests that more qualitative studies are needed to complement the relatively large volume of quantitative studies that are ‘hypotheses led and (Western) theory driven with sophisticated statistical analysis’ in order to understand ‘the nuances of what is going on in business organizations that operate in the Chinese context’; and she argues that an inductive approach may be better suited to provide an insider’s view.