A Genealogy of Ethnography Helps understanding its Everlasting Relevance

Qualitative/Quantitative Methodological Dilemma in Accounting Research: Whence and Whither?

“…Answering the above questions needs an archaeology of the emergence of the two schools (Qualitative/inductive and Quantitative/deductive) to understand many issues related to the emergence and evolution of modern business science and its methodology. This archaeology will go back to the 19th century, when positivism was the dominant trend (Larrañaga, 2017).…”

“…Scientists aimed to prove that using the same methods was possible to carrying out social research in general and business research specifically with having the same stability and reliability as it occurs in the natural sciences. At that time, using statistics and surveys was the dominant trend that almost all researchers were employed (Larrañaga, 2017). This is not to say that what was done at that time was not true or to criticize it as there is:…”

“…An early example of the use of statistical analysis in sociology is "suicide"…by Emile Durkheim" (Larrañaga, 2017, p. 78) By the end of the 19th century, it was possible for accounting researchers to deal with management and accounting issues -which include many social facts-as things or events, just like the experiments that can be carried out in natural sciences in isolation of the context and human subjectivity factors. Accordingly, business scholars thought that the social phenomenon, despite the significant differences with the natural sciences, could be subject to similar methods as the scholars in the field of natural sciences do (Larrañaga, 2017).…”

“…This situation left them in need to reinvestigate what do we mean by research? (Larrañaga, 2017 (Metwally Mohamed, 2017).…”