Growth of Sustainable Enterprise in Guinea

Tagged: Research Methodology

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3.1 Introduction

The stage of any research that is of the utmost importance is the research methodology stage. It describes the planning of the research design, sample methods of participant selection, data gathering techniques, and analysis. The research technique is emphasized in the research type, structured to impact findings. The chosen methodology examined what motivates business owners to use sustainable business practices and what obstacles they encounter. This chapter explains the methods utilised to gather data, evaluate the study, and further describe the procedures involved in representing and evaluating the research. The ethical implications of the analysis and summary will be covered later in this chapter.

A research study's basic plan that serves as a direction for gathering and analysing that data is known as the research design. Before conducting the survey, weighing the benefits and costs is essential because tactical choices must consider time and money limits. A well-planned, controlled, and structured study design is one of the critical strategies for acquiring relevant data regarding the questionnaire. The researcher of the current study makes sure it is well thought out and structured by identifying objectives, developing a research hypothesis, articulating essential concepts, and constructing a questionnaire to collect data in response to the research questions.

Generally, research design can be regarded as a theme method to identify the cause of a specific problem statement. An appropriate structure created a framework for the investigation (Gioia et al., 2013). Exploratory research and Explanatory research are the two main divisions of study design.

The main goal of exploratory research is to analyse the study subjects at various levels of detail to develop a clear notion. This design aims to investigate the overview and thought for creating comprehension as it helps analyse the outcomes of the research difficulties (Whalon et al., 2015). The study examines entrepreneurs' perspectives to determine whether their values impact their social and environmental CSR orientations. It also identifies obstacles entrepreneurs face when implementing sustainable business practices and suggests workable solutions. As a result, the qualitative research methodology is best suited for this study.

The qualities of research concerning its understanding and hypotheses are formulated by research philosophy. The social theory describes how research is conducted, and four paradigms can be used to analyse social theory. They are interpretative, functionalists, radical structuralists, and radical humanists. Once more split into a subjective and objective duality are these four paradigms (Marschan-Piekkari & Welch, 2011). These philosophical methods allow the researcher to select the strategy based on the type of research to be conducted (Saunders, M., Lewis, P., and Thornhill, 2012). The fundamental presumptions in the research philosophy explain the researcher's perspective on the world. These presumptions will define the research's methodology and strategy.

Several researchers have analysed and characterised the four primary components of research philosophy: interpretivism philosophy, realistic research philosophy, positivist research philosophy, and pragmatic research philosophy (Saunders et al., 2009). Because it offers profound insights into a more comprehensive view of society, this study adopts an interpretive philosophy. Also, this study looks at how thoroughly the overall structure is understood. Their approach to interpretive inquiry reflects their knowledge of objects and things. In other words, the interpretative research philosophy includes constructivism, social constructivism, and qualitative research as subcategories.

The research methodology also covers planning and creating the methods needed to conduct a study. The research strategy is defined as narrating the research using theory and separates into two critical views, including deductive and inductive research approaches. The deductive method relies on prior beliefs and research to statistically explain the normal relationship between variables. Yet, the inductive research methodology gathers data and uses various techniques to examine it. Evaluating the readily available data is the first step in the procedure, ultimately leading to the formulation of the study hypothesis. The theory is then built based on the developed hypothesis. When using an inductive strategy, the researcher observes and further investigates the procedure without having any preconceived notions or judgements to register with an impartial attitude.

Additionally, the inductive researcher considers the logical generalization of the hypothesis through known and validated universal laws and scientific presumptions (Godfrey et al., 2010). This study uses an inductive methodology to examine the factors that encourage businesspeople to engage in sustainable practices. It also examines the views of businesspeople on the impact of personal beliefs on their social and environmental CSR orientations, as well as the challenges they encounter while implementing these strategies in Guinea.

The study's target demographic is the entrepreneurs in the region of Gambia's energy sector, and the study's target area is the Gambia.

A generalisation is the main aim of the quantitative approach. Every quantitative research method may make it challenging for the investigator to examine every potential participant. Instead, they use the population subsection sample to learn more about their subject of interest and generalize about the people (Lind et al. 2012). The researcher chooses the optimum sampling technique with the aid of the study's design, research objectives, and hypothesis. In addition, the researcher can choose an appropriate technique from a wide range of non-probability and probability sampling strategies.

When a sample is drawn randomly, each individual in the model seems to have an equal probability of being chosen. Random sampling is the technique whereby the researcher creates a sample frame and then selects a sample using a computer programme that generates random numbers (William G. Zikmund, 2012). Given the available sample error level, probability or random sampling may represent the most expensive sample in terms of time and effort. But in terms of bias, it enjoys the most significant degree of freedom from it.

Case study research design and qualitative research are usually related to non-probability sampling. Comparatively to qualitative research, case studies frequently focus on small-size samples. Instead of drawing statistical conclusions about how the example relates to the larger population, they want to investigate real-world occurrences (Yin, 2003). Instead of being representative or random, the participants' sample of cases must have a sound justification for including some examples.

The researcher's understanding of the community and the study's goals determines the adoption of the intentional sampling approach in this study. Finally, the self-study sampling consists of those who, after considering the necessary population criteria, opted to engage in the study as described by (Bacher, Lemcke, and Schmich, 2019). This approach has several advantages over other mechanisms since it meets the researchers' expectations by gathering inherently helpful information. Also, the sample size is calculated by estimating data depletion and is independent of statistical power analysis. As a result, the purposive selection technique is used in this study to pick a sample of 20 to 25 Guinean entrepreneurs working in the energy sector.

Primary and secondary data are the two main types of data typically gathered for research studies. According to (Struwig and Stead 2001), the methods used to get primary data to include collecting new, real-time data from human respondents closely related to the study's issue. This data collection strategy will produce precise research results because it offers more current and accurate data based on the study topic. The most important sources of information are those responding in real-time, and the most popular methods for gathering this data include surveys, observations, and interviews. However, the secondary data collection approach focuses on gathering information from existing sources, such as websites, books, journals, and government publications. Considering the scholars who have already researched the research topic to have obtained relevant data compared to the primary data gathering method, this type of data collecting is much simpler because it requires less time and money. Therefore, different data collection techniques should be chosen depending on the research topic.

This study used the primary data collection method to collect the data. Interviewing involves questioning participants in a survey to get their responses. Several types of interviews exist, including one-on-one, one-on-one, and face-to-face group interviews. Interview formats can be unstructured, semi-structured, or structured. The most significant situations for semi-structured interviews are those in which you won't have more than one opportunity to speak with a subject. They will send several interviewers into the field to gather information. The guidelines for semi-structured interviews contain a concise list of directives for interviewers to follow to collect accurate, comparable, and qualitative data. Hence, a semi-structured interview with survey questionnaires is undertaken to gather qualitative data for this study.

The problems are interpreted and quantified using a quantitative analytical method based on the numerical data gathered using the methods previously outlined. The data is translated into the necessary statistics to address the variables. This kind of analysis, which is well-organized, may involve surveys and interviews. Due to the use of statistical techniques and instruments to ascertain the link between the variables, the analysis becomes more effective. A thorough interpretation of the data gathered utilizing unstructured or semi-structured talks is made to obtain the necessary facts (Johnson & Christensen, 2013). In addition, data collected from the participants can be transformed into numbers and replies into themes using quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques.

The responses are divided into themes in this study's thematic analysis of the interview data, which is done using the NVivo programme. A manual text analysis approach, theme analysis, and codification were used to investigate the collected data. The interviewer's report was coded by looking for recurring themes, categories, trends, and the frequency of words and phrases. The review and findings of past studies and a clearer understanding of the literature gap were the foundation for this procedure. Finally, a thesis for positive effect was made available to several researchers and students.

The researcher must consider several ethical issues to ensure the study is conducted correctly (Babbie & Mouton, 2001). By using moral norms and principles, several ethical factors were considered. First, the study's transparent and ethical design guaranteed the participants' confidentiality and anonymity. The participants verbally agreed to participate in the survey so that it could be conducted according to ethical standards. According to the rules and principles, the researcher protected the privacy of the data and ensured that no personal information was disclosed Bratianu (2016). The researcher maintained the confidentiality of the data. At the same time, they collected and processed information from various business owners and took care to withhold any sensitive material to protect that secrecy. The data that the researcher gave for this study is actual and authentic. Cohen and Munoz (2016) state that accurate data cannot be substituted in research without consent. The researcher double-checked the data sources to avoid using false and faulty information.

This chapter concentrated on the steps needed to develop a practical research approach, starting with choosing the best research design, selecting the data type to collect, selecting the testable hypothesis, and, finally, selecting the statistical tools required for analysing the collected data. The exploratory and descriptive research strategies that utilized primary data were chosen as the research designs for the current study. The selected data-gathering strategy was a questionnaire and interview for obtaining quantitative and qualitative data. Questions of classification and attitudinal nature were utilized in both the close-ended and open-ended questionnaire types, and the respondents' responses were gathered to provide data. To ensure every member of the population was represented in the sampling process, the study used a stratified random sampling technique that is probabilistic and a non-probabilistic purposive sampling technique. The field results and their analysis using tables, charts, and graphs will be covered in more detail in the following chapter. This research study's primary and quantitative research will be established in the chapter.

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