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Resumo: Este artigo tem por objetivo apresentar, com base em Saunders et al., as escolhas metodológicas que são adotadas na investigação científica acerca da influência da cultura local sobre a cultura organizacional e a competitividade, no estudo do cluster da malacocultura da região da Grande Florianópolis, situado no sul do Brasil. Saunders considera que são as sucessivas escolhas do investigador em relação às filosofias, à abordagem, às estratégias, aos métodos de coleta e análise de dados, ao horizonte de tempo e às técnicas e procedimentos de coleta e análise de dados, que caracterizam a investigação científica. O trabalho busca demonstrar que evidenciar as escolhas metodológicas é uma forma de reflexão que possibilita aumentar significativamente a consistência do modelo da investigação.Palavras-chave: escolhas metodológicas; modelo de investigação; cluster. Methodological choices in scientific research: use of the Saunders approach on the study of the culture influence on clusters competitivityAbstract: This article aims to present, based on Saunders et al., the methodological choices that are adopted in a scientific research about the influence of local culture on organizational culture and competitiveness, in a study on the malacoculture cluster of Florianópolis, in southern Brazil. Saunders believes that the successive choices of the researcher in relation to philosophies, approach, strategies, methods of collection and analysis of data, time horizon and techniques and procedures for collecting and analyzing data are what characterize the scientific research. The paper aims to demonstrate that showing the methodological choices is a form of reflection which enables to significantly increase the consistency of the research model.

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In the last two decades, an intense debate on the influence of financing constraints on the investment decisions of firms has emerged. One point of view (e.g. Fazzari, Hubbard and Petersen, 1988) argues that investment spending of a firm is affected by its level of internal funds. Another point of view (e.g. Kaplan and Zingales, 1997) argues that the investment-cash flow sensitivity cannot be used as a measure of financing constraints. Although, these two positions seem contradictory, this paper proposes a new test aiming at reconciling these two opposite views. This new test emphasizes the crucial role that the classification criteria used plays on the empirical results obtained. Therefore, two main empirical predictions were tested. Firstly, if firms are classified according to the degree of asymmetric information problems that they face in financial markets, a higher sensitivity of investment to cash flow would be expected for firms that face these problems at a higher level. Secondly, if firms are classified according to their financial status, investment by firms in a better financial position would be expected to be more sensitive to cash flow variations. The empirical findings obtained in this paper, using a sample of Portuguese manufacturing firms, did not allow to confirm these empirical predictions. In fact, from the regression results obtained, it was possible to see that the cash flow variable has a major impact for firms facing higher asymmetric information problems in financial markets and for firms in poor financial status. Thus, one can be led to think that these results would favour the predictions of Fazzari, Hubbard and Petersen (1988) instead of the one’s proposed by Kaplan and Zingales (1997).