12.2: Benefits and Challenges of Interpretive Research

Interpretive research has several unique advantages. First, it is well-suited for exploring hidden reasons behind complex, interrelated, or multifaceted social processes—such as inter-firm relationships or inter-office politics—where quantitative evidence may be biased, inaccurate, or otherwise difficult to obtain. Second, it is often helpful for theory construction in areas with no or insufficient a priori theory. Third, it is also appropriate for studying context-specific, unique, or idiosyncratic events or processes. Fourth, interpretive research can also help uncover interesting and relevant research questions and issues for follow-up research.

At the same time, interpretive research also has its own set of challenges. First, this type of research tends to be more time and resource intensive than positivist research in data collection and analytic efforts. Too little data can lead to false or premature assumptions, while too much data may not be effectively processed by the researcher. Second, interpretive research requires well-trained researchers who are capable of seeing and interpreting complex social phenomenon from the perspectives of the embedded participants, and reconciling the diverse perspectives of these participants, without injecting their personal biases or preconceptions into their inferences. Third, all participants or data sources may not be equally credible, unbiased, or knowledgeable about the phenomenon of interest, or may have undisclosed political agendas which may lead to misleading or false impressions. Inadequate trust between the researcher and participants may hinder full and honest self-representation by participants, and such trust building takes time. It is the job of the interpretive researcher to ‘see through the smoke’ (i.e., hidden or biased agendas) and understand the true nature of the problem. Fourth, given the heavily contextualised nature of inferences drawn from interpretive research, such inferences do not lend themselves well to replicability or generalisability. Finally, interpretive research may sometimes fail to answer the research questions of interest or predict future behaviours.