Global Journal of Commerce & Management Perspective
Open Access

Abstract

The Philosophical and Methodological Approaches Used by Sport and Business Management Student Researchers in Zimbabwe.

Lysias Tapiwanashe Charumbira

The study was conducted to assess the philosophical and methodological challenges facing sport and business management student researchers in Zimbabwe. Document analysis was used to collect data by reviewing the methodologies used by one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate students from seven Zimbabwean Institutions in their final year research projects between 2005 and 2013. The results show that in most of the studies, the selection of research methodology was out of sync with the nature of the research problem and the use of positivist research tended to dominate. The results strongly mirror the incompatibility thesis of quantitative and qualitative purists which posits that qualitative and quantitative methods cannot be mixed. The continued emphasis on positivist approaches by Zimbabwean management researchers tends to limit their ability to discover the hidden complexities and dynamic socially constructed business and cultural contexts of the country’s management environment.