Reflecting and Integrating the Contextual Influences of Ambiguitiesand Institutional Power in Organisational Research Design: A Case of Myanmar

Our understanding of how an organisation operates is elucidated by the hostcountry's political system. Myanmar has remained abstruse toresearchers for many decades, as do most emerging markets prior to theirtransition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy such as China.We establi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Management and organization review 2019-06, Vol.15 (2), p.341-370
Main Authors: Win, Sandar, Kofinas, Alexander K
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Data collection
Discipline
Emerging markets
Epistemology
Field study
Institutionalization
Management theory
Paradigms
Positivism
Pragmatism
Reflective practice
Research design
Research methodology
Researchers
Social sciences
Transition economies
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Summary:Our understanding of how an organisation operates is elucidated by the hostcountry's political system. Myanmar has remained abstruse toresearchers for many decades, as do most emerging markets prior to theirtransition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy such as China.We establish how the problematising and contextualisation of the methodologiesadopted during longitudinal fieldwork in Myanmar (2008 to 2016) has influencedour research focus and question. By reflecting on our experience of conductingorganisational research in a highly institutionalised environment, we haveidentified limitations in the prevalent research methodologies used by theextant literature. Such methodologies tend to be incompatible with the Asiancontext. This process of problematisation required us to remain flexible andadaptive during the process of the generation of the research questions. Weadopted a context-informed theory-building process and reflect on the interplaybetween interviewer, interviewees, and local institutional contexts. Animportant insight from this process was the need to nullify the asymmetry ofpower between the interviewer and interviewees to obtain honest responses ratherthan superficial data that aimed to satisfy and please theinterviewer/institutional context.
ISSN:1740-8776
1740-8784
DOI:10.1017/mor.2019.26