Research in emerging economies: Reading small type in dim light in a speeding train?

Abstract

Emerging economies have increasingly been acknowledged as a research field with immense potential. At the same time, the fact remains that unless the contextual differences with developed economies are accounted for, researchers could misspecify research designs. The pace of evolution of 'context' in emerging economies, coupled with 'weak signals' emanating from sparsely distributed data points calls for the primacy of idiographic explanations, such as those afforded by the case study method. As case research links observations, experiences and underlying mechanisms, it allows the researcher to tackle problems associated with continuous transformation of institutional arrangements in emerging economies. In contrast, a researcher employing conventional survey research in such settings may not be alert to either the presence of unfamiliar contingencies or the operation of hitherto dormant mechanisms, resulting in low 'validity.' Furthermore, such survey research would have low 'reliability' due to low statistical power of the significance tests. With its potential for higher validity and higher reliability under such circumstances, we argue that the case study method is a more appropriate and powerful tool to capture rich data for theory building in emerging economies.