In this section we turn our attenti

In this section we turn our attention to the research strategies you may employ. Each strategy can be used for exploratory, descriptive and explanatory research (Yin 2003). Some of these clearly belong to the deductive approach, others to the inductive approach. However, often allocating strategies to one approach or the other is unduly simplistic. In addition, we must emphasise that no research strategy is inherently superior or inferior to any other. Consequently, what is most important is not the label that is attached to a particular strategy, but whether it will enable you to answer your particular research question(s) and meet your objectives. Your choice of research strategy will be guided by your research question(s) and objectives, the extent of existing knowledge, the amount of time and other resources you have available, as well as your own philosophical underpinnings. Finally, it must be remembered that these strategies should not be thought of as being mutually exclusive. For example, it is quite possible to use the survey strategy as part of a case study. In our discussion of research strategies we start with the experiment strategy. This is because, although in their purest form experiments are infrequently used in management research, their roots in natural science laboratory-based research and the precision required mean that the ‘experiment’ is often the ‘gold standard’ against which the rigour of other strategies is assessed. The strategies that we consider subsequently in this section are: