A Pandemic Research Method

For the subjective study of Business in the Time of Coronavirus

Note: This article is also available as a supplemental episode of the Beyond Back to Normal podcast.

Rashmir Balasubramaniam, one of the people I interviewed for this research, said to me:

“There’s nothing overly complex, I think, in the tools and the methods, and sometimes one of the problems, I think is that we as humans make them more complex, or make them seem more like big things that we have to learn and do.”

She was talking about the tools and methods for getting ourselves grounded and together in the midst of the disorienting experience of the COVID-19 crisis. She might as well have been talking about the research methods for the study that forms the foundation of this podcast.

When I began this study, I wrote that its purpose was “to describe the diversity of experiences and reactions people in business are going through, embracing the existence of multiple perspectives.”

Now that the interviews are done, that purpose is on the road to being achieved, in part. As this podcast moves forward, it’s only the first draft of a more full description of the diversity of experiences and reactions of what people in business are going through. A written report is coming, though that’s going to take even longer to produce than the podcast.

If I was writing about the research objective now, I would say that the purpose of the study is to explore rather than describe the impact of the coronavirus crisis on the culture of business. A description sounds much more complete than what’s possible, while an exploration is a first look.

The COVID-19 pandemic is going to go down in history. It will be researched for generations to come, and it will need to be. As a global crisis, its scope is immense, making it impossible for any researcher to describe anything more than a limited aspect of it.

This study is qualitative, meaning that it explores people’s ideas as ideas, rather than trying to translate them into numbers. The interviews were open-ended, meaning that they followed the course of the ideas presented by research participants, rather than relying on a predetermined list of questions.

50 people who work in business were interviewed for this research, over 40 of those people agreeing to be on the record, while a handful wished to remain anonymous. Most interviews lasted approximately one hour, though some were shorter, and some longer, depending on the time available and the needs of each conversation. All interviews were conducted remotely, using Zoom, given legal restrictions on face-to-face contact and the global distribution of research participants.

The research participants were 50 percent female, 50 percent male. Beyond that, the results of this research are not at all statistically representative of the general population of people in business in terms of distribution. Such a sample within the time frame of this research would have been impossible, as the population of people working in business is global in reach and enormous in size.

The people I interviewed were from six different continents, many of them living in countries far from where they were born. The majority of research participants are currently living and working in Europe and North America, and the findings are thus biased toward their perspectives. I hope that future studies are able to reflect a more balanced perspective.

A central goal of the study was to complete the research relatively quickly, so that the findings could contribute to adaptive efforts and discussions before the crisis ends. Knowing that, with a research design of a relatively small number of interviews conducted at greater length, the findings could never achieve anything close to adequate representation, although I attempted to recruit more research participants from Asia, Africa, South America, and Australia, I decided that it was more important to stick to the schedule than to spend more time on recruiting.

The themes that I am reporting as findings from this research emerged from ideas discussed by multiple research participants, but none of the themes were expressed by all participants. They’re common threads, not universal patterns. Even among the 50 people I talked to, there was a remarkable variation in experience, depending on factors such as physical location, professional identity, and family status.

Although some participants expressed the feeling that everyone around the world is sharing in a common experience, the details of participants’ coronavirus experiences were actually quite different. In reporting the themes from the interviews, I am choosing those concepts that were more dominant.

There is also a time bias in the research. The interviews were conducted between the middle of March and the middle of April, 2020. Even within this single month, the external reality of life under the coronavirus shutdowns changed quickly and dramatically. As I release this podcast, the situation is still in flux. The emotional and organizational perspectives of research participants who had been in isolation for less than a week would certainly have been different if I had interviewed them even one or two weeks later than I did.

Further bias comes from the fact that I chose to be the sole researcher in this study. Because I wanted to move quickly to deliver findings in a timely manner, I decided to avoid the delays that would result from coordination and negotiation of the research process amongst a team.

This study explores subjective experiences, perceptions, and ideas, all of which have been filtered through my particular interpretive lens. If another researcher had conducted the study, the research participants, the content of the interviews, and the interpretation would all have been different. I have posted a supplemental podcast episode introducing myself, but it doesn’t begin to address the many ways my personal perspective shapes the findings. If you’d like to know more about me, to temper your own interpretation of this research, I encourage you to get in touch, by filling out the contact form on the web site at BusinessInTheTimeOfCoronavirus.com.

The context for this research was challenging. Opportunities for contact were limited. Information about the medical, social, and economic reality of the coronavirus crisis was sketchy, and remains so.

The upshot is that this research is limited in its reach and perspective, and has been marred by some significant flaws. At this point, you may be wondering why you should bother paying attention to it at all.

Before you give up, I urge you to keep in mind that all research, even and especially research that claims to be objective, is flawed. Every research design is a choice to enhance certain sources and forms of insight, while excluding others.

So, rather than not listening to the rest of this podcast in the weeks to come, I encourage you instead to listen more.

There will be no single definitive study of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the culture of business. The subject is too vast for that.

The best that we can hope for is that a collection of many projects will, on the whole, begin to represent something closer to an adequate degree of insight to the experience that we are going through.

Read the results of more studies as they come out. Listen to more podcasts. Seek out more voices from your own networks, and from outside them, and take the time for more conversations that go beyond the quick, initial platitudes that we’ve all heard.

It’s an important time to pay attention with an open mind.

Thank you for listening.