Philosophy and Logic of My Early Research

Qualitative research takes support from anti-positivists, who criticize positivism for failing to accommodate the social world, possibly because social reality is constructed from meaning and expressed in practice (Hughes, 1980). Phenomenological substance is the product of an iterative process in which knowledge accrues in pendular fashion, so defies the repeatability requirements and other protocols of positivist empiricism. The qualitative researcher, often acting as participant, co-constructs theory through a cycle of dialogue and interpretation (Ponterotto, 2005). Such methods were useful for the achievement of my early research objectives, which were as follows:

1. To discover if and how guanxi helps UK organizations manage risk in China-originating SCs.
2. To develop an empirically-supported model of China SC risk management.
3. To theorize the strategies that organizations employ to mitigate China SC risk.
4. To evaluate strategies in practice vis-à-vis operational approaches presented in the literature.

Objectives 1 and 2 were achievable through qualitative research, ideally company case studies and in-depth, semi-structured interviews with managers of China-originating/-incorporating SCs. Objectives 3 and 4 could be accomplished by matching information obtained with the literature of SCM. Guanxi, an overtly social phenomenon with interpersonal and (trans)cultural dimensions and ramifications (Xin and Pierce, 1996) is, by my reasoning in 2014 at least, best explored using a supportive ontology and paradigm-compliant (qualitative) methods. This researcher favoured induction as the logic of design. Induction complements qualitative methods, and inductive processes augment projects that develop theory when no a priori analogue exists.