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

Abstract

Our understanding of how an organisation operates is elucidated by the host country's political system. Myanmar has remained abstruse to researchers for many decades, as do most emerging markets prior to their transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy such as China. We establish how the problematising and contextualisation of the methodologies adopted during longitudinal fieldwork in Myanmar (2008 to 2016) has influenced our research focus and question. By reflecting on our experience of conducting organisational research in a highly institutionalised environment, we have identified limitations in the prevalent research methodologies used by the extant literature. Such methodologies tend to be incompatible with the Asian context. This process of problematisation required us to remain flexible and adaptive during the process of the generation of the research questions. We adopted a context-informed theory-building process and reflect on the interplay between interviewer, interviewees, and local institutional contexts. An important insight from this process was the need to nullify the asymmetry of power between the interviewer and interviewees to obtain honest responses rather than superficial data that aimed to satisfy and please the interviewer/institutional context.

Microfinance governance: a systematic review and future research directions

“…Existing research findings could already be biased if reported data was accepted without its reliability being questioned. Win and Kofinas (2019) previously underscored the need for researchers to take into account the potential manipulation of reported data by financial institutions in emerging or developing economies, especially in governance research. Our critique of the dominant paradigms in corporate governance research is not an attempt to discredit these authors.…”

Rethinking Qualitative Scholarship in Emerging Markets: Researching, Theorizing, and Reporting

“…This becomes a natural challenge for EM scholars to conduct interviews. Researchers can build trust from reflecting their roles in the research setting, employing a local interview assistant, and not recording and taking notes in the interviews (Win & Kofinas, 2019). Longitudinal data collection is also powerful in building trust and ensuring trustworthiness (Hota, Mitra, & Qureshi, 2019).…”

“…This helps to ensure contextually relevant data collection design and analysis, as well as an outsider's input that might uncover unrecognizable insights that are embedded in local context (Ratner, 1997). Some studies have proved to benefit from the researcher's ability to speak the local language without a foreign accent and in-depth knowledge in the local context (Liu et al, 2019; Outila, Piekkari, & Mihailova, 2019; Win & Kofinas, 2019). These advantages make the research focus on ‘contextual’ consistency rather than ‘verbal’ [literal] consistency (Xian, 2008: 235).…”

“…It follows that different conceptualizations of context invoke disparate interpretations of investigated EM phenomena and generate various research questions. Identifying the dynamics between the context and research question of the study is therefore a challenging task (Cuervo-Cazurra, Andersson, Brannen, Nielsen, & Reuber, 2016;Win & Kofinas, 2019). This task has been largely envisaged through a gap spotting approach that adds to the literature without identifying and challenging assumptions underlying existing theories (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2011).…”

“…We admit that qualitative research in most of the other EMs may not be easy to conduct. As Win and Kofinas (2019) articulate, in Myanmar, some interviewees are not 'comfortable answering questions and reluctant to share any information'. These challenges make the qualitative research in these areas more valuable and meaningful.…”