Application of configurational approach and fuzzy set theory on social and behavioral science variable models needs more attention. Few social science researches have employed configurational methods of research to empirically investigate a research question. On the front of exploring unique and innovative ways of investigation, this paper discusses the application of fuzzy set theory in social sciences. The study primarily takes a model of emotional labor and employee well‑being as a case example to depict how configurational models are developed. The study examines emotional labor and well‑being, not as predictor or criterion variables, but rather as conditions and outcome. The study also distinguishes between correlational and configurational method of research and adopts a descriptive approach by taking five research papers that examine social and behavioral science constructs from a configurational approach. Scarcity of literature in the crossover between the mathematical models and social sciences, particularly for the respective variables, call for a study that can clarify the initial queries surrounding fuzzy set models and pave the way for future empirical studies. The research concludes that utilizing mathematical models like fuzzy set theory, configuration and qualitative comparative analysis in social sciences can break monotony and bring newness in approaching as well as addressing a research query. This paper draws attention towards exploring new avenues in research methodologies. Application of newer methods would not only increase the rigor and precision of research findings but also assist in approaching a research area from multiple angles thereby enhancing the research quality. 

The twenty first century has been a period of major change for business organisations and industries. This has led to an ever greater interest in and demand for managers with not only the traditional subject knowledge and technical skills but also individual business skills. To meet these demands business schools are under pressure to adapt their courses appropriately and to innovate. For an undergraduate degree in business management, this includes both the structure of the degree, the subjects covered, the teaching methods used and the whole student learning experience. But innovation poses a major challenge for researchers and teachers alike – how can the effect of an innovation be measured or assessed? This paper assesses the current state of evaluation methods applied in Business Schools. Student feedback has emerged as the dominant approach, but application is still at a fairly basic level. A case example of evaluating the new first year redesign of the business management degree at City’s Business School is used to illustrate the practical issues involved. Student feedback offers some indication of the success of the redesigned degree, but it does not entail any constructive dialogue between students and lecturers, and students often lack the skills to frame feedback constructively. The paper discusses the implications of changes in the business context for the evaluation methods used in Business Schools. 

This paper reviews approaches to teaching research methods and the effectiveness of the student supervisor relationship in managing research projects. Corporate scandal, changes in society, the emergence of online technologies and a need to reduce teaching costs have all led business schools to change their curriculum including how research methods are taught and undergraduate and postgraduate projects supervised. Management research, and the manner in which research methods are both taught and practiced continue to make a key contribution and play a significant role in the partnership between academia and practice. Virtual learning has been helpful in a better understanding of research methods, developing critical thinking and understanding issues in more depth that are briefly covered in class. Researchers have found that the blending learning approach and use of computer‑mediated discourse supported a collaborative learning approach and resulted in more active and reflective learners (Altinay and Paraskevas, 2007). Despite this positive example, the use of technology for learning has generally been limited to supplementing face to face learning (Thomas and Thomas, 2012). The class is increasingly culturally diverse, students more mobile while academics may be Anglo‑centric and westernised. Supervision needs to be responsive to the changing needs and ambitions of the student; to move away from a dyadic relationship between supervisor and student, and emphasise the importance of collaborative learning environments and collective models of supervision (Malfroy, 2005). Literature reviewing three related research questions is presented. Questions remain as to whether changes are driven by a need to reduce cost or improve pedagogy. Data collection has started with undergraduate business students through pilot surveys and interviews to gain an improved understanding of the trends, initiatives and best practice. A further paper will explore in more detail postgraduate business students. At a time when some schools are moving more content on‑line and seeking new forms of assessment so there is a need to ensure that management research continues to fulfil a contribution towards intellectual and practical understanding. Corona virus has made this need more urgent. 

The paper identifies and examines different positions of an interventionist researcher, facilitating value co‑creation for new technology in customer‑supplier dyads. The paper answers two research questions: (1) "what kind of positions can an interventionist researcher assume in a supplier‑customer dyad?" and (2) "what should an interventionist researcher consider when choosing a suitable position for her research design?" The paper reflects upon a longitudinal interventionist case study (2017‑2020) focused on facilitating and evaluating the value created by new medicine‑dispensing robot technology in home‑care in Nordic countries. The researchers conducted interventionist research in 11 supplier‑customer dyads, with multiple, evolving positions of the researcher(s). As a result, as a contribution to the existing knowledge about the role of the interventionist researchers, the paper proposes three positions that the interventionist researcher can take in an interorganizational supplier‑customer dyad: an auditor, a lawyer or a mediator. The auditor investigates the interface between the supplier and the customer as an outsider. The lawyer position compromises this perceived neutrality (but not independence) for deeper access to empirical data regarding one of the organisations. Thus, the lawyer actively pursues the status of 'one of us' with either the supplier or the customer. The mediator expands the previous positions by trying to achieve a status of 'one of us' in both organisations trying to understand both sides of the same story supporting both the supplier's and customers' activities. Importantly, as an extension to the existing knowledge, the paper argues that not only can an interventionist researcher move between the etic and emic domains, but she can also move within the supplier‑customer dyad under examination. Thus, when conducting research within the customer‑supplier dyads (and within similarly complex contexts), the interventionist researcher needs to be aware of the existence of different positions and her actual position to the subject of interventionist study. Indeed, the interventionist researcher may choose her role, or the role may be a result of an evolutionary process. The role is 'given' by the people the interventionist researcher interacts with and, thus, not something the researcher can completely decide by herself. However, the interventionist researcher can pursue a specific role that fits her research agenda and design. In any case, the researcher needs to be honest and transparent regarding the actually taken position to avoid potential methodological pitfalls arising from complex, novel research settings. 

In organizational research, growing attention has been given to the dynamic nature of workplace relationships and how such dynamic processes shape key behavioural outcomes. Experience sampling methodology (ESM) brings more opportunity than any other research option to examine such fluctuations and relevant causal relationships. ESM can be described as a quantitative method which allows individuals to assess discrete evaluative states on multiple events by combining three distinct elements; person, variables and occasion. Despite its increasing prevalence and popularity, however, there has been only a few attempts to investigate the most appropriate design, measurement and analysis choices for experience sampling data. Even though ESM has been utilized in organizational research for some time, systematic investigations regarding how these issues have been addressed and how the method has been applied to specific organizational topics are limited. This study provides a systematic and critical assessment of the use of ESM in current organizational research (2010‑2020) by reviewing a random sample of 50 ESM studies indexed in ISI Web of Science with the aim of identifying the current state of practice. The selected studies were analysed based on several methodological aspects including the type of ESM protocol applied, sample characteristics, data sources, specified interval and total duration of data collection, structure and properties of designated measures, analytic strategy, and the research model to be tested. Findings show that organization studies vary considerably based on how they design and implement ESM. Moreover, despite the availability of good practices, many studies fail to attain recommended standards about sample size, data collection procedures, data characteristics and measurement quality. As such, this paper offers several insights regarding how time‑based within‑person frameworks can be improved in future studies to account for dynamic organizational phenomena. 

Academic research is often regarded as less than helpful for practice, while knowledge practitioners are accused of failing to apply relevant research in their industries. This study successfully bridged the theory‑practice gap in that it resolved a real‑world problem and added to the body of knowledge, i.e. it aided to: identify underlying social root causes of a flawed project governance process and associated decision support software; define actions for improvement; and realise generalisable theoretical and applied knowledge to improve both theory and practice. It illustrates that collaborative academic research adds value to both academia and industry. This paper discusses an empirical study where soft systems methodology (SSM) was applied as an interventionist action research (AR) method, positioned in the critical systems thinking (CST) and critical social research (CSR) paradigm. SSM is defined as a learning system that facilitates the identification of actions for improvement of problematical social contexts—it gives epistemological guidance to systematically explore perspectives of individuals involved in and affected by social (e.g. organisational) settings, to identify actions for improvement. However, SSM is found to be most often applied interpretively by academia, i.e., to understand a problem context, rather than to improve it, and by practitioners as a consulting tool. SSM successfully facilitates exploring of problematical social contexts, but, according to users of it, fail to effect real and lasting change. It is also quite difficult to extract generalisable learning from its output. In this study, the researcher argues that SSM have the potential to live up to its original intent. So, she positioned SSM in the CST/CSR paradigm by applying an enriched version of it. She guided participants to reflect on inherent flaws in the scrutinised project governance business process and associated decision support software. Hence, by applying methodological pluralism, she also guided them to reflect on actions for change in light of the organisation’s socially constructed structures and their effects on involved and affected stakeholders of the process. SSM was enriched by also reflecting on the output of facilitated workshops, which aimed to identify required transformation to improve upon deficient project governance, from the perspectives of: the role of the participant(s) in the organisation; the effects that identified organisational decisions and changes may have on them; and by asking probing questions about the crux of statements made, e.g. if it is presumed to be true, what would the effect be, or vice versa. The outcome was emancipation, as key underlying social and structural causes for the organisational deficiencies surfaced. 

Software engineering (SE) research addresses not only technical issues but also human behaviour. SE is considered as an immature discipline because many technical and social issues concerning software development and management have yet to be specified. SE in general is inclined towards quantitative approaches. Nevertheless, qualitative methods are still appropriate for SE research as the methods encourage deep understanding of subject matter. Grounded Theory (GT) is regarded as one of the potential qualitative methods that is applicable to SE research. The method is able to transform less and unknown SE phenomena into cohesive theories through systematic discovery of empirical data from the ground. This paper shares some encounters of using GT in SE research based on the reflection made on several SE research projects covering various phases of software development life cycle. The encounters are then transformed into adaptations and classified as GT practices for SE research, as an effort to inspire the spirit of using GT in SE particularly among novices. The practices embrace aspects concerning formulating research questions, handling preconceptions, utilising software tools, getting access to data and presenting theory and its development process. To illustrate on how the practices were derived, a case study is presented. The proposed GT practices could act as the starting point of adopting GT in SE research. They shall be refined and improved in future to possibly become best practices when more and more experience of using GT in SE are obtained. 

The merits of qualitative research remain an issue of ongoing debate and investigation. Qualitative researchers emphasise issues such as credibility, dependability, and transferability in demonstrating the trustworthiness of their research outcomes. This refers to the extent to which the research outcomes are conceptually sound and serves as the basis for enabling other researchers to assess their value. Carcary (2009) proposed trustworthiness in qualitative inquiry could be established through developing a physical and intellectual research audit trail – a strategy that involves maintaining an audit of all key stages and theoretical, methodological, and analytical decisions, as well as documenting how a researcher’s thinking evolves throughout a research project. Since 2009, this publication has been cited in greater than 600 studies. The current paper provides an analysis of the use and value of the research audit trail, based on the author’s application of this strategy across diverse research projects in the field of Information Systems management over a ten year time period. Based on a critical reflection on insights gained through these projects, this paper provides an in‑depth discussion of a series of guidelines for developing and applying the research audit trail in practice. These guidelines advance existing thinking and provide practical recommendations in relation to maintaining a research audit trail throughout a research project. Based on these guidelines and the core issues that should be covered at a physical and intellectual research audit trail level, a checklist that can be tailored to each project’s context is provided to support novice researchers and those who are new to the research audit trail strategy. As such, this paper demonstrates commitment to rigor in qualitative research. It provides a practical contribution in terms of advancing guidelines and providing a supporting checklist for ensuring the quality and transparency of theoretical, methodological, and analytical processes in qualitative inquiry. Embedding these guidelines throughout the research process will promote critical reflection among researchers across all stages of qualitative research and, in tracing through the researcher’s logic, will provide the basis for enabling other researchers to independently assess whether the research findings can serve as a platform for further investigation. 

This paper contributes to the discourse about research methodology pedagogy towards the development of new scholarly researchers. Because students can better visualise causal effects within a single case, I propose that instructors, before moving onto to teach inferential statistics relying on impersonal numbers from many cases, use instead a case‑oriented approach to emphasise the “case” as the basic pedagogic unit to scaffold the student’s learning of research methodology. A carefully chosen case can represent an instantiation of the same phenomenon that will eventually be used to demonstrate inferential statistics. After all, for causal effects to show up at the population level, they must be operating within particular cases. I refer to this as an N‑case approach. This approach locates various combinations of quantitative and qualitative methods on a continuum from exploratory to confirmatory research. This continuum can also be framed as one moving from the particular to the general. The single case allows students to grasp ideas about causal processes in a more direct manner than a survey can. Instructors can then build on single case insights to grasp similar ideas at a population level. My motivation for this approach is to turn away from a pedagogy where research methodology teaching begins with ideas set in quantitative approaches to understand causal processes occurring at a particular case level. I also believe that current research teaching ought to turn away from encouraging students to apply a research design according to their favoured identity along a qualitative‑quantitative divide. Instead, the research problem should determine the required research design