Business Research Process: Methods, Models, and Decision-Making

Introduction: The Importance of Timely Business Research

In the Age of Information, business research would appear to be a fairly straightforward enterprise, but some observers have equated the experience today to drinking from a fire hose because of the enormous amount of information available. Nevertheless, understanding the environment in which a company competes is a fundamental aspect of good business management practice, and managers are constantly looking for business research methods that will help them in their decision-making processes.

The purpose of Part I of this paper is to provide an overview of current business research practices, explain why the business research process is necessary to assist managers in decision-making, and describe how such research is typically conducted. A discussion and assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the various parts of the business research process is followed by an analysis of why this research is important to companies seeking to maintain and expand their market share in an increasingly globalized marketplace. Part II of the paper provides a business research proposal to collect relevant primary data concerning the importance of business research in the decision-making process and how managers are using such resources today. A summary of the research and salient findings are presented in the conclusion.

Overview of Current Business Research Practices

Generally speaking, all business research methods share some commonalities, including obtaining and analyzing data in order to answer questions, solve problems, or test hypotheses, thereby contributing to the understanding and knowledge of the larger environment in which companies compete (Thomas, 2004). According to Thomas, "Although there are many different ways to do research, and although different fields have their preferred research styles, all research does share certain features:

Research is empirical; it involves studying the world outside ourselves. Research adopts systematic and explicit methods; it is essentially a public endeavor in which it is possible, in principle, for others to repeat investigations and check on their accuracy" (p. 3).

Current business research practices vary according to industry and need, but the concept involves much more than simply asking a question and trying to answer it. According to Thomas (2004), "Sometimes research methodology is portrayed as if it were simply a set of tools and techniques used to solve research problems. But this is far from being the case… There is no one best way to do research" (p. 3). Even though there may be no single best approach to conducting business research, the importance of timely business research to the decision-making process — in helping managers accomplish their organizational goals — is well established, and these issues are discussed further below.

Business Research and the Decision-Making Process

Good managers are able to accomplish a great deal in virtually any environment based on an intuitive sense of what is needed to achieve organizational goals, but this "seat-of-the-pants" management style will only take a company so far. Timely information about a company's own performance as well as its competitors' performance, the environment in which it competes, and current economic trends represent just part of the vast array of information that business managers need to remain competitive today. Moreover, there is always the risk of relying on the wrong information, or even the right information for the wrong purposes. Because humans are involved, there is also the fundamental issue of the highly subjective nature of interpretation and application of research data.

In this regard, Vernon (2002) emphasizes that "The literature on decision-making is vast, since the subject is regarded as a critical management activity, though fraught with danger. All stress the importance of gathering information prior to decision making, being aware of factors that have a bearing upon the process itself, and identifying ways of dealing with the uncertainty that is at the nub of the problem" (p. 55).