Paper info

Getting the right interview in Asia

Anton Kriz , Christopher McSwiney, Sharon Purchase and Tony Ward

The paper was published at the 18th IMP-conference in Perth, Australia in 2002.

There has recently been a significant increase in the number of Western researchersconducting business research in Asia. Whether the research is cross-cultural (etic) orwithin culture (emic), the researcher must adopt an appropriate research methodology andtactics for obtaining reliable data in a non -Western oriented domain. This paper focuses onthe techniques used in three studies in Asia that relied on gaining the 'right' access to the'right' interviewees, so that, with the use of appropriate interview techniques to gather thequality of data required, meaningful outcomes were achieved. The aim of the paper is toassist future business researchers to improve their data collection techniques in thesedifficult primary research domains. The contribution of the paper is to provide guidance onobtaining good interviews by describing a suitable process and identifying 13 key successfactors.