EVIDENCE & THE PROBLEM OF ORGANISATIONAL RESEARCH

Evidence and the Problem of Organizational Research

Evidence and the Problem of Organizational Research

Business Research

In general, the style for writing health and social service research theses is in line with other scientific research theses. Our outline reflects this rather formal convention, but applied and naturalistic methods of inquiry, which are on the rise in business research, do not necessarily lend themselves to a conventional style of presentation (Scott et al 2003 741). The following is therefore a template from which the research student can build. If you find yourself in the position of preparing a project, you will need to consider with your supervisor/academic adviser the most appropriate project format. This will be the one that best reflects the research approach and style of the institution. It is good practice to obtain some example theses related to the same course or programme from the university or academic institution's library of past students' work. This will help you identify any specific standard requirements.

An intense debate emerged recently in entrepreneurship research on the value of business planning for established small and especially new firms. It concerns the crucial quandary entrepreneurs face whether to plan before embarking on the perilous quest for venture success or if they should just storm the castle. Some researchers belonging to the planning school propose that business planning is crucial for the survival and development of both new and established small firms. The planning school argues that a systematic, prediction-oriented, and formal approach leads to superior venture performance. An opposing group of researchers challenges the value of prediction-oriented strategic approaches for an organization's performance. These researchers propose instead to focus on learning, strategic flexibility, and controlling resources, especially when facing high degrees of uncertainty (Greenhalgh 2001 102).

With this study, we address this controversy by synthesizing prior empirical findings. Especially we aim to explain divergent findings by introducing context variables that moderate the planning-performance relationship such as the newness of the sampled firms, the nature of business planning, and cultural variables. In so doing, we intend to foster a contextual and dynamic understanding of the business planning-performance relationship. In other words, beyond the question whether a general planning-based approach is beneficial for small firms, we aim to uncover empirical evidence relating to contexts when business planning shows increased effectiveness.

In our study, we follow an evidence-based approach to entrepreneurship research by applying meta-analysis. Evidence-based research seeks to derive insights by systematic synthesizing prior empirical findings. It overcomes limitations of individual studies and narrative reviews of empirical findings. Our meta-analysis synthesizes extant research on planning comprising 46 studies on 11,046 organizations, both new and established small firms. To examine the moderating effect of contextual factors, we apply both bivariate analyses and meta-regressions.

Our findings confirm that business planning increases the performance of both new and established small firms, yet different factors moderate the strength of the relationship. In samples with more established small firms, business planning has a stronger positive effect on performance than it does in samples ...