Editor-in-chief's note: Research methods in human resource management: Critical knowledge for practitioners and academics

✍ Scribed by Theresa M. Welbourne

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2012
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 51 KB
• Volume: 51
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0090-4848
• DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21462

✦ Synopsis

Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers."

-Janis Joplin Y ou may be wondering why one would quote Janis Joplin in a serious academic journal like HRM, particularly when writing about research methods. The answer is that Joplin had something important to say on this subject, and this quote reminds us that even though our statistical techniques continue to get more complex, they do not necessarily create more answers. Thus, being able to understand the methods by which we continue to create knowledge is critical for all researchers, within business and academics. Questions are important, and we may not always have the right answers.

Additionally, the right answers from yesterday may not work in the future. Therefore, a clear understanding about how researchers ask their questions provides readers with a tool to interpret whether the solutions suggested in research papers work for various applications and contexts.

Readers of research need to be good consumers of research; they need to have knowledge about the research process so they can determine if suggested answers and results apply to their own specific context. Given