Qualitative Research Design

For Public Sector Research

By Ersa Tri Wahyuni, PhD

Research Workshop STAN, September 2018 1

 Agenda
• Understanding Ersa’s Paradigm
• Designing your qualitative research
• Linking your research to the research paradigm
• Linking your research to the theory

Research Workshop STAN, September 2018 2

 Ersa’s Paradigm Toward Accounting
• What you are going to hear relies on how Ersa’s
perspective toward accounting research.
• Accounting as a research and a science falls under
social science, not natural science
• Accounting as a social object, every symbol of
accounting has meaning because human put meaning
on it.
• Accounting is socially constructed, the symbol in
accounting may have different meaning in different
society and EVOLVE with time

Research Workshop STAN, September 2018 3

 Designing Qualitative Research
• Setting up goals : Why are you doing this study?
• Conceptual Framework: What do you think is
going on?
• Research Questions : What do you want to
understand?
• Methods : What will you actually do?
• Validity : How might you be wrong?

Research Workshop STAN, September 2018 4

 1. Setting Up Goals
• Why is your study worth doing?
• What issues do you want to clarify?
• What practices and policies do you want to
influence?
• Why do you want to conduct this study and why
should anyone care about the result?

Research Workshop STAN, September 2018 5

 2. Conceptual Framework
• What do you think is going on with the issues,
settings, or people you plan to study
• What theories, beliefs, and prior resea rch findings
will guide or inform your research, and what
literature,
• preliminary studies and personal experiences will you
draw on for understanding the people or issues you
are studying.
• Conceptual framework in qualitative research can be
growing in time

Research Workshop STAN, September 2018 6

 3. Research Questions
• What, specifically, do you want to understand by
doing this study?
• What you do not know about the phenomena you
are studying that you want to learn?
• What questions will your research attempt to
answer, and how are these questions related to
one another?
Research questions in qualitative research may be
refined in later time during the final writing
Research Workshop STAN, September 2018 7
 4. Methods
• What will you actually do in conducting this study?
• What approaches and techniques will you use to collect and
analyze your data?
• How is the relationship that you establish with the
participants in your study?
• How do you select settings, participants, times and places of
data collections and other data sources such as documents?
• What are your data collection methods?
• What are your data analysis strategies and techniques?

Research Workshop STAN, September 2018 8

 5. Validity
• How might your results and conclusion be wrong?
• What are the plausible alternatives interpretations
and validity threats? How will you deal with
these?
• Why should anyone believe your result?

Research Workshop STAN, September 2018 9

Possible Topics in Public Sector Research
 Broad Topics
• Historical Studies : The adoption of IPSAS, The
11
History of Tax Reform, Reformasi Birokrasi, etc
• Transfer Pricing Issues
• Tax Law Enforcement : Tax avoidance studies
• Public Private Partnership : Value for Money
Model, Partnership Model, Transaction Cost
• Endowment Fund Management
• Accounting for BUMN, BUMD and BUMDES
 Some Papers in Public Sector Accounting
• Qadri, Wahyuni, Mulyani (2016) : From Cash Basis to Accrual Accounting: How
Indonesian Government Overcome External Institutional pressure and Internal
Obstacles in its Transformation (Historical Paper – Working Paper UNPAD)
• Machmud and Sidharta (2016) : Role of public private partnership in West Java,
Indonesia. Romanian Economics and Business Review
• Bracci et al (2015) : Public sector accounting, accountability and austerity: more
than balancing the books. Accounting Auditing and Accountability Journal
• Ellwood and Newberry (2006) : Public sector accrual accounting:
institutionalising neo-liberal principles? Accounting Auditing and Accountability
Journal
• Harun, et al (2015) : Indonesian public sector accounting reforms: dialogic
aspirations a step too far. Accounting Auditing and Accountability Journal
Linking qualitative research to the
research paradigm

Research Workshop STAN, September 2018 13

 Research Paradigm in Accounting
• The first most important think in qualitative research
is to link your research with your research paradigm
• Research paradigm will determine how do you see the
social reality, the theory you use, the data you collect,
your involvement in the study, the data analysis and
the report writing
• Sit down and think about how you see realities
around you may help to determine which paradigm
you fit in.

Research Workshop STAN, September 2018 14

 Some Paradigms in Social Science
• Each paradigms see the social reality differently
Positivism Empirical reality is external Quantitative method of
and objective to the data analysis
subject. Human is passive
object
Interpretivism Social reality is emergent, Ethnographic research,
subjectively created, and case studies, action
objectified through human research, phenomology,
interaction etc
Critical that social reality always Historical analysis,
Perspectives changes and the change is Case studies,
rooted in the tensions,
Etnographic research.
conflicts, or contradiction of
social relations/institutions.
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Research Workshop STAN, September 2018

Linking Your Research to the Theory

Research Workshop STAN, September 2018 16

 What is a theory?
• A set of concepts and the proposed relationships among
these, as or model structure that is intended to represent or
model something about the world. (Maxwell, 2005)
• Provide a model or map of why the world is the way it is
• It is not simply a “framework” but a story of what you think
is happening and why.
• A useful theory is one that tells an enlighthing story about
some phenomenon, one that gives you new insights and
broadens your understanding of that phenomenon.

Research Workshop STAN, September 2018 17

 How to use existing theory
• Theory is a coat closet : You can hang your data in
it
• Theory is a spotlights : a useful theory illuminates
what you see, but it will also leave other areas in
darkness
• Based on my experience : existing theory helps
you to organise your data and to guide you making
your own explanation, your own theory on the
phenomena

Research Workshop STAN, September 2018 18

 What is Grand Theory?
• refer to the form of highly abstract theorizing in which the
formal organization and arrangement of concepts takes
priority over understanding the social world (Mills, 1959)
• Grand Theory Examples in Social Science
• Structuration Theory : the creation and reproduction of
social systems that is based in the analysis of
both structure and agents (Giddens, 1984)
• Institutional Theory : It considers the processes by which
structures, including schemes, rules, norms, and routines,
become established as authoritative guidelines for social
behavior (Scott, 1995)

Research Workshop STAN, September 2018 19

 What is Grounded Theory?
• Does not refer to any particular level of theory 
• It is a theory developed by empirics (grounded or
rooted)
• A theory that is inductively developed during a study
(or series of studies) an in constant interaction with
the data from the study
• This theory is ‘grounded’ in the actual data collected,
in contrast to theory that is developed conceptually
and then simply tested against empirical data.

Research Workshop STAN, September 2018 20

The Evolution of Institutional Theory and Its
Potential Use in Accounting Research

• By: Ersa Tri Wahyuni,PhD

Padjadjaran Accounting Colloquium Series,

21
25th April 2016
 Agenda
• Introduction to Institution Theory
• New Institutional Theory
• Institutional Logic
• Institutional Entrepreneurship
• Institutional Work
• World Society Theory
• Questions and Answers

Padjadjaran Accounting Colloquium Series, 25th April 2016 22

 What is an Institution?
• Institutions are social structures that have attained a high
degree of resilience. [They] are composed of cultural-cognitive,
normative, and regulative elements that, together with
associated activities and resources, provide stability and
meaning to social life…
• Institutions are transmitted by various types of carriers,
including symbolic systems, relational systems, routines, and
artifacts. Institutions operate at different levels of jurisdiction,
from the world system to localized interpersonal relationships.
Institutions by definition connote stability but are subject to
change processes, both incremental and discontinuous”…
(Scott, 1995)
• Institutions are social structures that are constructed by
humans to provide stability and meaning to life. They are the
‘rules of the game’ that both enable and constrain human
behaviour.
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 Examples of Institutions…
• Organisations
• Companies
• Industry
• Universities
• Marriage
• A class room
• A household
• Religions / Church / Mosque

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 Pillars of Institutions
Institution constraints organisational activity through three different dimensions:

Pillars
Regulative Normative Cultural-Cognitive
Basis of compliance Expedience Social Obligation Taken-for grantedness shared
understanding
Basis of order Regulative rules Binding expectations Consultative Scheme

Mechanisms Coercive Normative Mimetic

Logic Instrumentality Appropriateness Orthodoxy
Indicators Rules, Laws, Sanctions Certification, Common beliefs
Accreditation Shared logic of action
Basis of legitimacy Legally sanctioned Morally governed Comprehensible.
Recognizable, Culturally
Supported

Source: Scott, 2001

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 New Institutional Theory
• What makes organisations so similar?
• ISOMORPHISM The Issue of
Decoupling:
– Coercive, Mimetic, Normative
• Organisational Isomorphism increase with: What is appropriate
– Resource centralisation and Dependency become more
– Goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty important than what is
– Professionalisation consequential
– Structuration Legitimate behaviour is
appropriate behaviour
• WHY? To be viewed legitimate
Source: DiMaggio and Powell (1983)

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 Institutions and Legitimacy
• Organizations require more than material resources and
technical information, they also need social acceptability and
credibility (Scott et al. 2000)
• Example of legitimacy:
– Input Legitimacy and Output Legitimacy (Botzem & Dobusch, 2012)
(e.g : IFRS)
– Technical Legitimacy (e.g : ISO)
• What can improve legitimacy:
– Due process
– Legal Support
– Endorsement from professional
– Diffusion of adoption by industry

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 How Institutions Response to pressures?
Oliver (1991) Framework
• Strategic Response to
institutional pressures
– Aquiescence
– Compromise
– Avoidance
– Defiance
– Manipulations
• Oliver (1992) discussed
“deinstutionalization”
• Oliver (1991) framework is
popular in organisational
studies to analyse
organisations with coercive
pressures to change.
• The concept of
deinstitutionalization has
been used by Lawrence &
Suddaby (2006) to develop
Institutional Work Theory.

Padjadjaran Accounting Colloquium Series,

28
25th April 2016
 Institutional Logic
The term “institutional logic” was introduced by Alford and Friedland (1985)
to describe the contradictory practices and beliefs inherent in the institutions
of modern western societies.

Core institutions of society : Capitalist market, bureaucratic State, Family,

Democracy and Religion, - each has a central logic that constraints both
means and ends of individual behaviours.

An institutional logic is the way of particular social world works.

IFRS is an accounting standard, which is a socially constructed product as a

result of political struggle of interested actors. Does IFRS has logics? What
are the logics of IFRS?

Padjadjaran Accounting Colloquium Series, 25th April 2016 29

 Institutional Logic
• Usually used to describe institutional change in a micro level
analysis
• Used extensively in management accounting case studies
• Sometime can become a paint brush term where people use
“institutional logic” without a deeper understanding
• Institutional logic is not very easy to find.
• New development of this theory is “hybrid logic” and “
situational logic”
• Example of institutional logics for the case of the
privatisation of public company’s: Public Service, technical
efficiency, commercialisation.

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 Institutional Entrepreneurship
(DiMaggio, 1998 ; Battilana, Leca, Boxenbaum : 2009)

• Who Change Institutions?

• The Paradox of Embedded Agency : Can an Individual really
change an institution?
– Yet many evidence : Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Elvis Presley, Sir
David Tweedie,
• How to distinguish Institutional Entrepreneur and just key
actors?

• Institutional Entrepreneurship (DiMaggio,1988): activities of

actors who have an interest in particular institutional
arrangements and who leverage resources to create new
institutions or to transform existing ones’ (Maguire, Hardy & Lawrence, 2004)

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 Institutional Work
• Institutional Work (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006; Lawrence, et.al 2009)
– Institutional work represents a new idea connecting, bridging and
extending the work of institutional entrepreneurship, institutional
change and innovation and deinstitutionalisations (Lawrence et al., 2009)

– Institutional work : “the purposive action of individuals and

organisations aimed at creating, maintaining and disrupting
institutions”. (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006)
• Institutional Work used three categories: Creating Institutions,
Disrupting Institution and Maintaining Institutions
• Focus on the work and actions of actors which change
institutions.
• Some case studies of institutional work are focusing on
“creating” institutions
• Usually are used at organisational level or field level of study

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 World Society Theory
• World Society Theory (Meyer, 1997 ; Drori 2003; Drori et al., 2006)
– World society theory sees globalisation as more than intense
worldwide transaction but also includes an additional
conceptual shift towards the universal, and is thus a cultural
process in addition to being an economic and political process
• Sociological theories
• Modernization theory
• World Systems Theory (WST) / dependency theory
• World polity theory (WPT) / institutional theory

World Society Theory see the world as a “village” with its

own culture and polity. Globalization are the result of people
adopting the “world culture”

Padjadjaran Accounting Colloquium Series, 25th April 2016 33

 References
Battilana, J., Leca, B and Boxenbaum, E. 2009. 2 How Actors Change Institutions: Towards
a Theory of Institutional Entrepreneurship. The Academy of Management Annals, 3, 65-
107.
Botzem, S., & Dobusch, L. (2012). Standardization cycles: A process perspective on the
formation and diffusion of transnational standards. Organization Studies, 33(5-6), 737-
762.
DiMaggio, Paul J., and Walter W. Powell 1983. “The iron cage revisited: Institutional
isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields,” American Sociological
Review 48:147-60.
Drori, G. S. (2003). Science in the modern world polity: Institutionalization and globalization:
Stanford University Press.
Drori, G. S., Meyer, J. W., & Hwang, H. (2006). Globalization and organization: World society
and organizational change: Oxford University Press.
Lawrence, T. B. & Suddaby, R. (2006) 1.6 Institutions and Institutional Work. In: Clegg, S. R.,
Hardy, C., Lawrence, T. & Nord, W. R. (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Organization Studies.
London: Sage,pp.215-254

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 References
Lawrence, T. B., Suddaby, R. & Leca, B. (2009) Institutional
Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of
Organizations. New York: Cambridge university press.
Meyer, John W. and Rowan, Brian (1977)‘Institutionalized
organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony’.
American journal of sociology 83: 340–363.
Meyer, J. W., Boli, J., Thomas, G. M. & Ramirez, F. O. (1997)
World Society and the Nation‐State. American Journal of
Sociology, 103(1), pp.144-181.
Oliver,C. (1991) Strategic responses to institutional processes.
Academy of Management Review. Vol.16 (1) : 145-179
Scott, W. Richard 1995. Institutions and Organizations.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

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 Any Questions?
• Email : ersa@unpad.ac.id
• WA : 0812 13 14 52 99
• Blog : etw-accountant.com
• IG : @ersatriwahyuni