Business Research Methods

Dr Manuel Alector Ribeiro, University of Surrey The most complete and comprehensive Business Research Methods book available.



Dr Katherine Duffy, University of Glasgow A student-centred textbook which demystifies research methods and makes it approachable for students.


Ms. Gunilla S. Andersson, Linkping University The new edition of Business Research Methods by Bell, Bryman and Harley is the ideal guide for students on different levels to guide them through their project. Its a very good full-size book on research methods, covering both essentials, as well as quantitative and qualitative methods. If you are to single out one book for the students to use, this is the one!

Dr Lynn Thurloway, Henley Business School, University of Reading An excellent book on research which generally explains research and some of those hard to understand principles in an accessible way. Good examples are used to illustrate discussion. Definitely one of a few 'go to' books in this area.

Emma Bell is Professor of Organisation Studies at the Open University, UK. Her research explores culture, belief, and materiality in organizations using qualitative methods of inquiry and has been published in journals including Organization Studies, Human Relations, Academy of Management Learning & Education, Organization, Management Learning and the British Journal of Management. Emma is currently joint Vice-Chair Research and Publications of the British Academy of Management and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Alan Bryman was Professor of Organizational and Social Research at the University of Leicester from 2005 to 2017. Prior to this he was Professor of Social Research at Loughborough University for thirty-one years. His main research interests were in leadership, especially in higher education, research methods (particularly mixed methods research), and the 'Disneyization' and 'McDonaldization' of modern society. Alan was also the author of the bestselling textbook Bryman's Social Research Methods (Oxford University Press, 2021) as well as contributing to a range of leading journals: he was an extraordinarily well-cited and internationally-renowned social scientist. Bill Harley is Professor of Management in the Department of Management and Marketing at The University of Melbourne. Bill's academic research has been motivated by an abiding interest in the centrality of work to human life. His work has been published in journals including the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Journal of Management Studies, Academy of Management Learning & Education Industrial Relations, and Work Employment and Society. Bill was previously General Editor of Journal of Management Studies and is currently on the editorial boards of the same journal, as well as Academy of Management Learning & Education, Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences and Human Relations. He is Chair of the Society for the Advancement of Management Studies.

Part 1 - The research process 1: The nature and process of business research 2: Business research strategies 3: Research designs 4: Planning a research project and developing research questions 5: Getting started: reviewing the literature 6: Ethics in business research 7: Writing up business research Part 2 - Quantitative research 8: The nature of quantitative research 9: Sampling in quantitative research 10: Structured interviewing 11: Self-completion questionnaires 12: Asking questions 13: Quantitative research using naturally occurring data 14: Secondary analysis and official statistics 15: Quantitative data analysis: descriptive statistics 16: Quantitative analysis: inferential statistics Part 3 - Qualitative research 17: The nature of qualitative research 18: Sampling in qualitative research 19: Ethnography and participant observation 20: Interviewing in qualitative research 21: Focus groups 22: Language in qualitative research 23: Documentary data 24: Visual qualitative research 25: Qualitative data analysis Part 4 - Mixed methods research 26: Breaking down the quantitative/qualitative divide 27: Mixed methods research: combining quantitative and qualitative research