By Emmanuel OGUNJEMILUA
The African Network for Economics of Learning, Innovation and Competence Building Systems (AfricaLics) provides capacity building and networking opportunities (academy and visiting fellowship among others) for young scholars from low and lower-middle income countries in Africa.
Halmstad University was established in 1983 as a public University in Sweden. its motto is “The innovation Driven University”. As at 2017, the University Academic and Administrative staff’s population was 383 and 201 respectively. Students population was 10,674 and 88 for undergraduate and postgraduate respectively. The University conducts research within a broad field but prominent in three fields of research, namely, Information Technology, Innovation Science and Health Science. The University has three affiliations such as European University Association (EUA), Association of Swedish higher Education (SUHF) and Det Nordiska Universitets Administrators, Samarbetet (NUAS).
As one of the 2018 AfricaLics Ph.D visiting fellow at Aalborg University, Denmark, I signed up for Ph.D. course on “the process of theorizing and theory building in management research” held from 21-25th of May, 2018 at Halmstad University, Sweden. Thirteen interdisciplinary young scholars from different European Universities (EU) also attended the course. The Ph.D. course was jointly organized by Aalborg University (AAU, Denmark), Halmstad University (HH, Sweden), and University of Oulu (OULU, Finland).
The thirteen young scholars from EU were askance seeing a Nigerian Ph.D. student attending Ph.D. course organized for EU students. They were flabbergasted when I told them the platform (AfricaLics) that gave me the indispensable opportunity. We were grouped for assignments and presentations; shared and diffused vast research knowledge during and after the course; and established a strong research network ties. We learnt about “the process of theorizing and theory building in management research, via doing, using, interacting, class lecture and presentations.
“To hear is to forget, To see is to remember and To do is to understand”
I gained skills and knowledge in sensitivity to theoretical development during literature review process, analyzing and theorizing from qualitative data. The critical aspects of theorizing and theory building process among others are theoretical coding, theoretical memo writing, substantial coding, properties and attributes of data mined. Theoretical codes implicitly conceptualize how the substantive codes relate to each other as a modeled, interrelated, multivariate hypothesis in accounting for resolving the main concern. Substantive codes are the descriptive context-based categories and properties of the latent pattern embedded in the emergent theory. Theoretical memo writing simply implies conjecture of the researcher. It is expected of the interviewer to be opened and transparent to the data mined.
This course built on mixed methods research by showing explicitly the difference between inductive and deductive research and when to use either of them. Also, it reflected that there is no pure deductive and inductive research, one has element(s) of the other with vary degree.
We dined together in a Chinese owned restaurant called “Yoss Restaurang” and visited beach called South pier in Halmstad, Sweden, after the course.
“Take home”
“All systematic research methods have the potential of yielding useful results. It does not really matter which research method is being used; provided it does not violate the tenets of orthodoxy and is appropriate to the problem central to the research, interesting interpretations will be forthcoming. The real challenge is to understand which type of research method is best suited to which type of problem. Certain types of research problems are more suited to particular research approaches. Where there is already considerable agreement about the phenomenon in a particular context then deductive research is to be preferred. In circumstances where very little is known about the phenomenon, then inductive research is more appropriate. The ideal research plan or design is to begin with inductive research, establish what the issues are, and then to conclude with deductive research (Lowe, 2018).
Emmanuel and his colleagues at Halmstad University, Sweden
I appreciate AfricaLics for creating this platform for me to improve my research knowledge arsenal. Also, appreciation goes to my other 2018 AfricaLics Ph.D. fellows, Aalborg University, Denmark; I can tell you, they are wonderful colleagues. I know that the scholastic fire bond created will be kept burning and diffuse to nascent scholars. Finally, I appreciate the resource persons at Halmstad University, Sweden for explicitly shared their implicit research knowledge. God bless Nigeria, God bless AfricaLics community and God bless Denmark. Vi Ses.