ABSTRACT
It seems obvious that one of the most important words in the social scientist’s vocabulary is ‘data’. Science, as we have seen in Chapter 2, is typically conceptualized as an empirical enterprise in which data are obtained and analysed in order to establish facts about the world and to test explanations. From a positivist perspective, reference to the data is the ultimate court in which factual disagreements and theoretical disputes can be resolved. Moreover, researchers typically spend considerable amounts of time gathering and processing data, whatever their epistemological and theoretical persuasions. Not surprisingly, research methods textbooks tend to give a lot of attention to data collection techniques and to procedures for data analysis. An understanding of data therefore seems crucial for the management researcher because of its central role in the research process.
