2. Research Problems, Questions and Theoretical Positioning

Introduction and Context

A qualitative study rarely begins with a method. It begins with an intellectual difficulty: something important is not adequately understood, an established explanation does not fit observed experience, or a practical situation raises questions that existing knowledge cannot answer. The quality of a qualitative inquiry therefore depends substantially on how the researcher formulates the research problem, converts it into answerable questions, and positions the study theoretically.

In doctoral business research, this task is especially demanding. Management phenomena are embedded in organizations, institutions, technologies, relationships, histories, and power structures. A research problem must be sufficiently focused to guide inquiry but sufficiently open to permit discovery. It must matter to scholarship and practice without being reduced to a managerial complaint. Similarly, a qualitative research question should invite interpretation of meaning, process, experience, interaction, or context rather than merely ask whether one variable causes another.

The researcher’s theoretical positioning is equally consequential. Theory influences what is noticed, how the problem is framed, which literature is considered relevant, how data are interpreted, and what counts as a convincing explanation. Qualitative researchers may use theory deductively, inductively, abductively, or retroductively. They may employ established theory, sensitizing concepts, conceptual frameworks, or theory-building strategies. These choices should be explicit, coherent, and appropriate to the study’s purpose.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, the reader should be able to:

1. Distinguish a management topic, practical problem, research problem, and research gap.

2. Formulate qualitative research questions that are focused, open-ended, feasible, and theoretically meaningful.

3. Explain inductive, deductive, abductive, and retroductive reasoning and identify their appropriate uses.

4. Critically use literature without allowing prior theory to close inquiry prematurely.

5. Distinguish sensitizing concepts from definitive variables and operational definitions.

6. Construct and evaluate conceptual frameworks for qualitative research.

7. Select theory-building strategies appropriate to doctoral management research.

8. Recognize common formulation errors, ethical risks, and implications for research quality.

From a Management Topic to a Researchable Problem

A topic is a broad area of interest, such as employee voice, artificial intelligence adoption, organizational resilience, or responsible leadership. A topic is not yet a research problem because it does not identify what is unknown, puzzling, contested, or consequential. A practical problem refers to an undesirable condition requiring managerial attention—for example, high turnover among skilled employees. A research problem is an unresolved issue in knowledge that can be investigated systematically. The two may be related, but they are not identical.

For example, “a technology company has high turnover” is a practical problem. A research problem might be: “Existing accounts of turnover emphasize compensation and career opportunities, but they provide limited understanding of how experienced engineers interpret organizational changes in professional identity and managerial trust.” This formulation identifies a phenomenon, a limitation in knowledge, and a reason the issue merits investigation.

A strong research problem normally contains four elements. First, it identifies the phenomenon or process of interest. Second, it locates the phenomenon in a meaningful context. Third, it indicates an intellectual tension, omission, inconsistency, or puzzle. Fourth, it explains why addressing the problem matters. The rationale may be theoretical, practical, methodological, societal, or a combination of these.

Researchers should distinguish several types of gap. A knowledge gap concerns what has not been sufficiently described or explained. A theoretical gap concerns limitations, contradictions, or untested assumptions in existing explanations. A contextual gap arises when a phenomenon has been studied in one setting but not in another where its meaning may differ. A methodological gap appears when dominant methods cannot capture process, lived experience, situated meaning, or marginalized perspectives. A practice gap concerns divergence between formal policy and actual organizational behavior. These categories should not be used as labels without evidence; the researcher must demonstrate the gap through critical engagement with literature and context.

The notion of a gap requires careful handling. The mere absence of a study in a particular industry or country does not automatically create a significant research problem. Nor is novelty alone sufficient. Doctoral research should explain why the missing knowledge matters and what conceptual or empirical contribution may follow from addressing it.

Constructing Qualitative Research Questions

Research questions translate a problem into a program of inquiry. They delimit the study while preserving openness to meanings and explanations that the researcher cannot predict in advance. A qualitative question often begins with “how,” “what,” or “in what ways.” Examples include:

• How do frontline employees interpret algorithmic performance monitoring in their everyday work?
• In what ways do middle managers negotiate competing expectations during organizational restructuring?
• How is trust developed, challenged, and repaired in interorganizational partnerships?
• What meanings do entrepreneurs attach to failure when deciding whether to persist or exit?

These questions are not simply stylistic alternatives to quantitative hypotheses. They reflect a different logic of inquiry. A question such as “Does transformational leadership improve innovation?” presumes variables, causal direction, and measurement. A qualitative reformulation might ask, “How do employees experience and interpret leadership practices associated with innovation in project teams?” The latter allows participants’ understandings, organizational processes, and contextual conditions to become visible.

A well-formed qualitative question has five characteristics. It is conceptually clear, meaning that its key terms are understandable and defensible. It is open-ended, allowing more than a predetermined answer. It is bounded by context, participants, time, or process. It is feasible given access, resources, and ethical constraints. Finally, it is consequential: an answer should have implications for theory, practice, or both.

A study may have one central question and several subquestions. The central question expresses the inquiry’s intellectual focus. Subquestions organize attention without becoming separate studies. For instance:

Central question: How do public-sector managers make sense of implementing AI-supported decision systems?

Subquestions:

• How do managers interpret the legitimacy and risks of these systems?
• How do they negotiate responsibility when human judgment conflicts with algorithmic recommendations?
• What organizational conditions shape their use or resistance?

Questions should be revised during design and, within appropriate methodological traditions, may be refined during fieldwork. Such refinement is not necessarily a weakness. It can reflect learning from the setting, provided changes are documented, justified, and consistent with ethical approval.

A common error is to include too many questions. A project that asks how a phenomenon is experienced, how it develops, what causes it, how it affects performance, and how it should be managed may become conceptually incoherent. Another error is embedding assumptions in the wording—for example, “Why do employees resist the beneficial restructuring?” This presumes that resistance exists and that the restructuring is beneficial. More neutral wording would ask how employees interpret and respond to the restructuring.

Reasoning in Qualitative Inquiry

Qualitative research is often described as inductive, but this description is incomplete. Doctoral inquiry commonly moves among several forms of reasoning.

Inductive reasoning

Induction moves from particular observations toward patterns, categories, or more general propositions. A researcher may examine interviews with remote workers, compare accounts across teams, identify recurring interpretations of availability and trust, and develop a conceptual account of “visible commitment.” Induction does not mean that the researcher enters the field without assumptions. Prior experience, literature, and theoretical sensitivity influence what is noticed. Inductive claims should therefore be presented as analytically developed, not as theory-free discoveries.

Deductive reasoning

Deduction moves from general propositions or theoretical expectations toward examination of particular cases. A researcher using institutional theory might investigate whether organizational actors reproduce, negotiate, or decouple formal sustainability practices. Deductive qualitative inquiry can guide sampling, interview design, and analysis. Its danger is forcing data into predetermined categories or treating unexpected evidence as error. Strong deductive work remains open to revision.

Abductive reasoning

Abduction is reasoning to the best explanation. It begins with an observation that is surprising, contradictory, or inadequately explained. The researcher moves back and forth between data and theory, asking which conceptual explanation could make the observation intelligible. Suppose employees publicly endorse a digital transformation but privately develop workarounds. Rather than immediately classifying this as resistance, the researcher compares theories of sensemaking, institutional decoupling, identity, and power, and develops an explanation that accounts for the pattern.

Abduction is particularly valuable in management research because organizational life often contains contradictions. It supports theoretical innovation while retaining empirical grounding. The researcher should make the inferential path visible: what was observed, why it was puzzling, which explanations were considered, and how the preferred account was developed.

Retroduction

Retroduction asks what underlying structures, mechanisms, or conditions must exist for an observed event or experience to occur. Associated especially with critical realist approaches, it moves from empirical observations toward generative explanations. If a restructuring repeatedly produces silence in meetings despite formal psychological-safety policies, a retroductive inquiry may examine mechanisms such as status hierarchy, employment insecurity, professional norms, or surveillance.

Retroduction differs from induction. Induction identifies regularities; retroduction seeks the conditions and mechanisms that could generate them, even when those mechanisms are not directly observable. It also differs from deduction because the explanation is not simply tested from a fixed theory. Researchers may use multiple forms of reasoning within one project, but they should clarify their philosophical assumptions and avoid treating them as interchangeable.

Literature as Resource, Dialogue, and Constraint

A literature review in qualitative research does more than demonstrate that the researcher has read widely. It constructs the intellectual conversation into which the study enters. Literature can identify concepts, reveal debates, expose assumptions, suggest sensitizing ideas, inform methodological choices, and help explain the significance of findings.

A critical review asks questions such as: What assumptions organize this literature? Which actors or experiences are absent? Are concepts defined consistently? Do studies privilege outcomes over processes? Are findings transferable across contexts? Which theories explain the phenomenon well, and where do they fail? Such questions prevent the review from becoming a sequence of summaries.

The timing and extent of literature engagement depend on the methodology. Grounded theory traditions have sometimes advocated limiting prior conceptual commitments to avoid imposing categories, although contemporary grounded theorists generally recognize that researchers cannot eliminate prior knowledge. Phenomenological inquiry may emphasize participants’ lived experience and caution against premature theoretical interpretation. Case study research often uses literature to develop propositions and analytic frameworks. Critical and poststructural approaches may use literature to interrogate power, discourse, and taken-for-granted categories.

The researcher should avoid two extremes. A “theory-first” design may fit every account to an established model. A “data-only” design may underestimate the interpretive role of the researcher and produce descriptive themes with little conceptual contribution. A productive alternative is reflexive engagement: use literature to sharpen questions and interpretation while remaining attentive to disconfirming, unexpected, or locally meaningful evidence.

Sensitizing Concepts and Conceptual Frameworks

A sensitizing concept provides a general direction for looking rather than a fixed classification scheme. Blumer’s distinction is useful: definitive concepts specify what an object is, whereas sensitizing concepts suggest what to attend to. Concepts such as trust, identity, legitimacy, vulnerability, or institutional work can guide inquiry without dictating how participants must define them.

For example, “organizational trust” may sensitize a researcher to promises, dependence, vulnerability, credibility, and experiences of betrayal. Participants may not use the word trust, and their accounts may reveal that reliability, fairness, or professional respect is more important than confidence in leadership. The concept has served its purpose by opening inquiry, not by imposing a measurement scale.

A conceptual framework is an organized representation of the key concepts, relationships, processes, and contextual conditions relevant to a study. It may be expressed narratively, diagrammatically, or both. In qualitative research, a framework should function as an orienting device rather than a rigid causal model. It can show how organizational conditions shape interpretation, how interpretation influences action, and how action feeds back into institutional arrangements.

A useful framework answers three questions: What is being examined? What concepts help make sense of it? How might these concepts relate, develop, or interact in the setting? The framework should be revised when field evidence challenges its assumptions. Changes should be documented as part of the analytic audit trail.

Theoretical Positioning and Theory-Building Strategies

Theoretical positioning involves more than selecting a famous theory. It requires alignment among ontology, epistemology, methodology, research questions, methods, and claims. A constructivist study may treat organizational realities as produced through interaction and interpretation. An interpretivist researcher may focus on meaning and situated understanding. A critical researcher may examine domination, ideology, inequality, and possibilities for transformation. A critical realist may distinguish observable events from deeper generative mechanisms. These positions influence what counts as evidence and explanation.

Several theory-building strategies are available. Theory elaboration applies an existing theory to a new context and refines its concepts. Theory extension adds dimensions or mechanisms that the existing account does not adequately explain. Theory generation develops an explanatory framework grounded substantially in empirical material. Theory critique exposes limitations, exclusions, or consequences of an established theory. Theory integration brings concepts from different traditions into a coherent explanation, although researchers must avoid combining incompatible assumptions without justification.

Theoretical contribution need not mean producing a grand theory. A doctoral study may contribute a process model, typology, mechanism, conceptual distinction, boundary condition, or refined interpretation. The contribution should be proportionate to the evidence and transparent about scope.

An Illustrative Case: Understanding Failed Digital Transformation

Background

The following is a fictional illustrative case. Meridian Health Services, a regional healthcare organization, introduced a digital scheduling platform intended to improve coordination among clinics. Senior leaders described the project as a technological modernization initiative. After eighteen months, adoption remained uneven. Formal reports blamed inadequate training, but the explanation did not account for differences among clinics.

Research problem and questions

A preliminary topic would be “digital transformation in healthcare.” The practical problem was uneven use of the platform. The research problem was more specific: existing accounts emphasized technical capability and user training but offered limited understanding of how professional identity, accountability, and local coordination shaped the meaning of adoption.

The central question became: How do healthcare professionals interpret and negotiate the introduction of a digital scheduling platform in their everyday coordination work? Subquestions examined how professionals understood accountability, how local work practices changed, and why similar clinics responded differently.

Theoretical positioning and approach

The researcher used sensemaking as a sensitizing concept rather than a complete explanatory model. Institutional theory helped examine the relationship between formal implementation requirements and local practice. An abductive strategy was adopted because the researcher expected to encounter interpretations that could not be explained by training alone. Multiple clinics were studied through interviews, observations of scheduling meetings, internal documents, and platform-use records.

Analysis

At first, low use appeared to indicate resistance. Closer analysis showed that nurses in one clinic viewed the platform as making workload visible and improving coordination, whereas physicians in another viewed it as transferring scheduling responsibility without increasing authority. In a third clinic, staff entered data into the system but continued coordinating through informal messaging. This was not simple rejection. It was a negotiated arrangement that preserved rapid responses while satisfying formal reporting requirements.

The researcher compared incidents across clinics, examined rival explanations, and refined the conceptual framework. The emerging explanation linked adoption to three conditions: perceived legitimacy of the system, alignment with professional accountability, and the availability of trusted local coordination practices. The framework suggested that symbolic compliance and practical adaptation could coexist.

Outcome and learning points

The study contributed a process account of digital adoption as negotiated accountability rather than a linear movement from training to usage. For managers, the implication was that additional training would not resolve concerns about authority and responsibility. Implementation required redesigning roles, clarifying accountability, and involving professional groups in system governance.

The case demonstrates how a researchable problem develops from a practical concern, how sensitizing concepts guide but do not determine analysis, and how abductive comparison can produce a more adequate explanation than an initial assumption of resistance.

Common Problems, Risks, and Ethical Considerations

Weak research questions often arise from an excessively broad topic, an unsubstantiated gap, causal language inconsistent with the design, or concepts that are undefined. Another problem is “question stacking,” in which several unrelated objectives are placed in one project. Researchers should also avoid promising representativeness when qualitative sampling is designed for depth, relevance, variation, or theoretical development.

Researcher positionality is particularly important. Professional status, organizational affiliation, identity, funding, and prior relationships may shape access and interpretation. Reflexivity requires more than a brief biographical statement; it involves examining how the researcher’s assumptions influence the problem, questions, interactions, analysis, and claims.

Ethically, the formulation of a problem can itself stigmatize groups. Describing employees as resistant, communities as deficient, or organizations as dysfunctional may reproduce managerial or institutional biases. Questions should protect dignity, avoid unnecessary exposure of identifiable participants, and recognize power asymmetries. Organizational access also creates risks: sponsors may seek control over questions, data, or unfavorable findings. Agreements should clarify confidentiality, ownership, publication rights, and the researcher’s independence.

Digital research introduces additional issues. Platform data may reveal behavior without revealing meaning, and automated classifications may embed organizational bias. Artificial intelligence tools can assist with searching, coding support, or concept mapping, but they do not replace interpretive judgment. Researchers must protect confidential data, disclose significant tool use where required, verify machine-generated outputs, and avoid treating algorithmic pattern detection as analysis in itself.

Current Developments and Best Practices

Contemporary qualitative management research increasingly addresses digital work, sustainability transitions, algorithmic management, platform organizations, hybrid identities, inequality, and global interdependence. These areas often require multilevel and longitudinal questions because meanings and practices change across time and organizational settings. Researchers are also paying greater attention to marginalized voices, Indigenous and decolonial perspectives, participatory designs, and the politics of knowledge production.

Several practices strengthen doctoral research:

• Begin with a consequential puzzle, not merely an interesting topic.
• Use literature to identify tensions and possibilities rather than to decorate the proposal.
• Align the wording of questions with the chosen philosophical and methodological position.
• Treat concepts as provisional when the design is exploratory.
• Make reasoning visible through memos, comparison, negative cases, and an audit trail.
• Distinguish description, interpretation, explanation, and theoretical contribution.
• Refine questions responsibly as field understanding develops.
• State boundaries and avoid claims that exceed the evidence.
• Integrate reflexivity and ethics into design rather than adding them at the end.

Chapter Summary

A qualitative management study develops through a connected sequence of problem formulation, question design, literature engagement, and theoretical positioning. A research problem differs from a broad topic or practical difficulty because it identifies an unresolved issue in knowledge and explains its significance. Qualitative questions are generally open-ended, contextualized, feasible, and oriented toward meaning, process, experience, or interaction.

Induction develops patterns from empirical material; deduction examines cases through theoretical expectations; abduction seeks the best explanation for surprising observations; and retroduction investigates the underlying mechanisms or conditions that generate events. Literature should be used critically and reflexively. Sensitizing concepts orient attention without imposing fixed meanings, while conceptual frameworks organize relationships among concepts and should remain open to revision. Theoretical positioning requires coherence among assumptions, questions, methods, and claims. Finally, strong doctoral inquiry attends to feasibility, power, ethics, digital risks, and the limits of its contribution.

Key Terms

Research problem: An unresolved issue in knowledge that can be investigated systematically and has scholarly or practical significance.

Research question: A focused inquiry that directs the collection and interpretation of evidence.

Knowledge gap: An area in which existing research provides insufficient description, understanding, or explanation.

Theoretical gap: A limitation, contradiction, omission, or unresolved assumption in existing theory.

Contextual gap: Limited understanding of a phenomenon in a particular setting, population, institution, or culture.

Induction: Reasoning from particular observations toward patterns, categories, or general propositions.

Deduction: Reasoning from theoretical propositions toward examination of particular cases or evidence.

Abduction: Iterative reasoning toward the most plausible explanation of surprising or problematic observations.

Retroduction: Reasoning from observed events toward underlying structures, mechanisms, or conditions.

Sensitizing concept: A flexible concept that directs attention without prescribing a definitive meaning or classification.

Conceptual framework: An organized representation of concepts and their possible relationships within a study.

Theoretical positioning: The articulation of assumptions about knowledge, reality, explanation, and theory in relation to a study.

Reflexivity: Critical examination of how the researcher’s position and assumptions shape the inquiry.

Theory elaboration: Refining an existing theory through examination in a new or challenging context.

Theory extension: Adding concepts, relationships, or mechanisms to an established theory.

Theory generation: Developing an explanatory framework substantially from empirical analysis.

Boundary condition: A circumstance specifying where, when, or for whom an explanation may apply.

Negative case: Evidence that challenges an emerging pattern or explanation.

Audit trail: Documented evidence of decisions made during research design, data collection, and analysis.

Theoretical contribution: A defensible addition, refinement, critique, or extension of knowledge.

Review Questions

Short Answer Questions

1. How does a research problem differ from a practical management problem?

2. What are two characteristics of a strong qualitative research question?

3. Define a sensitizing concept and explain its purpose.

4. What is the central distinction between induction and deduction?

5. Why is reflexivity important when formulating a research problem?

Long Answer Questions

1. Explain how a researcher can move from a broad management topic to a defensible doctoral research problem.

2. Compare inductive, deductive, abductive, and retroductive reasoning in qualitative management research.

3. Discuss how literature can guide qualitative inquiry without imposing predetermined interpretations on participants’ accounts.

4. Explain the role of conceptual frameworks in qualitative research and identify circumstances in which a framework should be revised.

5. Critically discuss alternative theory-building strategies available to a doctoral researcher.

Analytical / Application Questions

1. A company reports that employees are “resistant” to a new AI performance system. Reformulate this practical concern as a qualitative research problem and propose one central question with two subquestions.

2. Interviewees formally support a sustainability policy but privately develop workarounds that preserve existing routines. Which form or forms of reasoning would be most useful, and why?

3. Design a preliminary conceptual framework for studying trust in a distributed project team. Identify two sensitizing concepts, possible relationships, and one assumption that should remain open to revision.

22. Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

Question 1

Which statement best distinguishes a research problem from a practical management problem?

A. A research problem is always quantitative, whereas a practical problem is qualitative.

B. A research problem identifies an unresolved issue in knowledge, while a practical problem identifies an undesirable condition requiring action.

C. A research problem is based only on theory, while a practical problem is based only on data.

D. A research problem must already have a known solution, while a practical problem must not.

Correct Answer: B. A research problem identifies an unresolved issue in knowledge, while a practical problem identifies an undesirable condition requiring action.

Question 2

A researcher observes that employees publicly support a digital transformation but privately create workarounds. She compares sensemaking, institutional theory, and power perspectives to identify the most plausible explanation. This is primarily an example of:

A. Deduction

B. Induction

C. Abduction

D. Measurement validation

Correct Answer: C. Abduction

Question 3

What is the most appropriate use of a sensitizing concept in qualitative research?

A. To impose a fixed coding scheme before data collection

B. To provide flexible directions for noticing potentially relevant meanings and processes

C. To replace the need for a research question

D. To define a variable for statistical testing

Correct Answer: B. To provide flexible directions for noticing potentially relevant meanings and processes

Question 4

Which research question is most clearly qualitative and appropriately open-ended?

A. Does training increase platform adoption by 20 percent?

B. What percentage of employees use the platform weekly?

C. How do employees interpret and negotiate the introduction of the platform in their everyday work?

D. Is platform adoption significantly related to performance?

Correct Answer: C. How do employees interpret and negotiate the introduction of the platform in their everyday work?

Question 5

Retroduction is most concerned with:

A. Identifying the frequency of observed behaviors

B. Testing a predetermined hypothesis without revision

C. Generating categories solely from participant language

D. Inferring underlying mechanisms or conditions that could generate observed events

Correct Answer: D. Inferring underlying mechanisms or conditions that could generate observed events

Question 6

Which feature most strengthens a doctoral research problem?

A. It uses as many theoretical terms as possible.

B. It identifies a consequential puzzle and demonstrates why existing knowledge is insufficient.

C. It promises to solve a broad social issue completely.

D. It avoids specifying a context so that findings appear universal.

Correct Answer: B. It identifies a consequential puzzle and demonstrates why existing knowledge is insufficient.

Question 7

In the illustrative Meridian case, uneven technology adoption was ultimately understood primarily as:

A. A simple consequence of inadequate employee training

B. A negotiated issue involving accountability, legitimacy, and local coordination practices

C. Evidence that healthcare professionals rejected all forms of digital work

D. A random variation unrelated to organizational context

Correct Answer: B. A negotiated issue involving accountability, legitimacy, and local coordination practices

Question 8

Which statement best describes a conceptual framework in qualitative research?

A. A rigid causal model that cannot change after fieldwork

B. A statistical instrument for measuring dependent variables

C. An organized representation of relevant concepts and possible relationships that can guide and be revised during inquiry

D. A substitute for collecting empirical evidence

Correct Answer: C. An organized representation of relevant concepts and possible relationships that can guide and be revised during inquiry

Question 9

A researcher asks, “Why do employees resist the beneficial restructuring?” What is the principal formulation problem?

A. The question is too short.

B. It contains assumptions about both resistance and the restructuring’s benefits.

C. It uses a qualitative verb.

D. It includes an organizational context.

Correct Answer: B. It contains assumptions about both resistance and the restructuring’s benefits.

Question 10

Which practice is most consistent with responsible theoretical positioning?

A. Selecting a famous theory after analysis solely to make findings appear significant

B. Aligning philosophical assumptions, research questions, methods, analysis, and claims

C. Avoiding all prior literature until the final chapter

D. Combining incompatible theories without explaining their assumptions

Correct Answer: B. Aligning philosophical assumptions, research questions, methods, analysis, and claims