Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal Emerald Article: Crystallization and research in Asia Pia Polsa

Article information: To cite this document: Pia Polsa, (2013),"Crystallization and research in Asia", Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 16 Iss: 1 pp. 76 - 93 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/13522751311289776 Downloaded on: 14-01-2013 References: This document contains references to 45 other documents To copy this document: [email protected]

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Crystallization and research in Asia Pia Polsa Hult International Business School, Shanghai, China and Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland

76 Abstract

Purpose – Crystallization calls for the interaction between mind, body and spirit. While the knowledge of the mind is how we are used to see knowledge creation, the body influences the co-creation and the embodied experience between the researcher and the participant as a human instrument for understanding. Spirit refers to the sensitivity to ethics in preventing the reaffirmation of the stereotypical narratives. The purpose of the article is to demonstrate how body and spirit in addition to mind can provide alternative insights on a research topic. Design/methodology/approach – The current study focuses on the body and spirit. Self-reflective empirical narratives from China and India evidence interpretive findings that suggest that crystallization help us to create an emic understanding of those studied and affirms our commitment to them. Findings – The interpretive findings demonstrate that with help of body and spirit research can move towards indigenous findings of the research site that can be put into action to improve the life of those studied. Two new quality criteria are established to trustworthiness namely indigenousness and action orientation. Originality/value – The paper contributes to research methodology by demonstrating how in addition to mind generated findings reflections from body and spirit open new avenues to additional findings. It is proposed that knowledge from body and spirit is particularly important in Asian settings because of the Asian culture’s holistic view on life and tolerance for multiple truths. Keywords Crystallization, Research approach, Methodology, Asian methods, Trustworthiness, Research methods, China, India Paper type Research paper

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal Vol. 16 No. 1, 2013 pp. 76-93 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1352-2752 DOI 10.1108/13522751311289776

Introduction With regard to methods in China, the predominant technique has been and, to a large part, still is the quantitative paradigm. There is a long tradition of collecting survey data for local gazetteers, cultural history materials (Clausen, 1991), and both local and national statistical books such as the China Statistical Yearbook. Even during turbulent times, such as during the Four Histories Movement in 1963, data were collected for local family, factory, commune and village histories (Thelle, 1991), and after the Tianmen square incident in 1989, sociological surveys were collected in co-operation between foreign and Chinese researchers (China Exchange News, 1993; Manion, 1994). Surveys were popular during the 1980s (Zhu, 1996). However, gradually and simultaneously with the development of qualitative methods in other parts of the world, qualitative inquiry has begun to gain a hold in the Chinese research fields. With regard to research in Asia, researchers suggest that, at least for Chinese settings, special techniques and requirements are warranted. For example, research shows that interviewing requires special tactics in China (Eckhardt, 2004; Eckhardt and Bengtsson, 2010). The collections of experiences performing field work in China

provide practical information that experienced China researchers share (Heimer and Thogersen, 2006). These accounts are often personal experiences, such as Croll’s (1987) accounts, and thus lack coherent conclusions on how to study China. Because of the extensive literature on how to perform research in Asia, particularly in China, it appears that the research community widely agrees upon the need for guidelines for conducting research in the Asian cultural context. However, these studies have merely discussed methods in Asia and have seldom gone deeper to question the methodologies or the philosophies in science, and they have not suggested alternative methods that might originate from the Asian way of creating and sharing knowledge. However, in the field of psychology, empirical evidence (Gould, 1999) and philosophical thoughts (Liu, 2011) have shown that the distinct Asian cultures provide insights to the established theories. Therefore, local or indigenous knowledge creation can offer alternatives to the methodological foundations of Western-originating research. This current paper partly addresses this gap in the literature by introducing crystallization as an Asian strategy for approaching a research problem. In its view on culture, this paper is consistent with “consumer culture theory” (for an overview of consumer culture theory, see Arnould and Thompson, 2005) where culture is treated as a complex system that is manifested in experiences, meanings and actions. Crystallization In her seminal article, Richardson (2000) defined crystallization as follows: Crystallization, without losing structure, deconstructs the traditional idea of “validity” (we feel how there is no single truth, we see how texts validate themselves); and crystallization provides us with a deepened, complex, thoroughly partial, understanding of the topic. Paradoxically, we know more and doubt what we know (Richardson, 1998, p. 358).

Richardson (1998) contrasts crystallization with triangulation (Denzin, 1978) by stating that while triangulation uses a number of different methods to validate findings, crystallization goes beyond triangulation. Richardson (1998) discusses evocative mixed gender texts such as narratives of self, ethnographic fictional representations, poetry and drama that crystallize the findings reflecting externalities but also reflecting the researchers themselves. Crystallization is “a postmodernist deconstruction of triangulation” (Richardson, 2000, p. 934). While triangulation, by definition, calls for a triangle of methods that are compared against each other, crystallization refers to a myriad number of crystals that all reflect different views, dimensions, shapes, colors, patterns and arrays of the phenomenon that we study. Therefore, crystallization does not validate the data as triangulation does, but it provides room for multiple voices to be heard and acknowledges the voices that we are unable to hear and see. This view of complexity is close to consumer culture theory, which also seeks for “the dynamics of fragmentation, plurality, fluidity, and intermingling” (Arnould and Thompson, 2005, p. 869). According to Ellingson (2009), Richardson did not explain crystallization as a methodological framework, which becomes Ellingson’s contribution to the development of the concept of crystallization. While some consider crystallization to be a research approach (Polsa, 2011) or a research process (Richardson, 1998) because crystallization is a way to achieve quality in research, it can also be considered to be a framework

Crystallization and research in Asia 77

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for conducting qualitative research (Ellingson, 2009). The methodological framework that Ellingson (2009) proposes promotes multiple approaches that are intertwined without dualism. Lack of dualism While Richardson (1998, 2000) exemplifies the process as evocative writing and reflection in texts, Ellingson (2009) goes beyond the writing process to state that crystallization involves a process of intertwining mind, body and spirit. The core idea with this methodological approach, framework and process is to step away from the dichotomies of art and science (Ellingson, 2009), of knowledge and interest or of theory and practice (Murray and Ozanne), and of qualitative and quantitative methods (Polsa,z 2011) and to embrace methodological pluralism (Arnould and Thompson, 2005). Based on Richardson’s work, Ellingson (2009, p. xii) defines crystallization: [. . .] as postmodern reimagining of traditional, (post)positivist methodological triangulation (i.e. validating finding through mixed methods design) as a messy, multigenre, paradigm-spanning approach to resisting the art/science dichotomy.

The purpose of crystallization is to identify deeper and most likely more complex findings that still only reflect a partial, situated, constructed, multiple, embodied reality that is enmeshed in power relationships (Ellingson, 2009). Rather than calling attention to the researcher’s knowledge, we should emphasize “how much we value the opportunity to learn about the participants” world’ (Ellingson, 2009, p. 78) and we should blur the dividing line between the knower and the known (Liu, 2011). Crystallization also involves respecting those who are studied, and it thereby provides room for their voices; due to this respect, more complex findings are generated, and dualism is diminished. Lack of dualism has also been addressed by the contemporary social psychological research that has given rise to the Asian epistemologies (Liu, 2011). In several Asian countries, including Taiwan, Mainland China, the Philippines and India, indigenous psychology has provided alternative views to Western psychology by developing the local systems of psychological knowledge on their own terms. The approach is pragmatic in the sense that it does not prefer certain methods, and the pragmatism provides the ability to examine questions that fundamentally involve complexity and multiplicity (Liu, 2011); thus, the dichotomy between the qualitative and the quantitative methods is lacking (Ho et al., 2007). The dualism that separates mind from matter and human nature from material nature is absent (Liu, 2011). This lack of dualism applies to the comparison between Eastern and Western knowledge creation. Even if the indigenous psychology contrasts the two and even if the original sources of crystallization (Richardson, 1998, 2000; Ellingson, 2009) do not touch upon cultural aspects, this paper steps away from treating East and West as an opposite bi-polar. This paper only calls for increased balance between the different approaches in the different knowledge creation traditions that have influenced the ways of seeing research. Multiple approaches Multiple approaches have been encouraged based on an “oriental systems approach,”, i.e. a Chinese philosophical view that combines different views into a creative tension (Zhu, 1999; Zhu, 2000a, b). The point made by Zhu (1999, p. 596) is that a researcher

sees “the distinctive theoretical positions as challenging and supplementing one another, rather than competing with or subsuming one another.” In a similar vein, consumer culture theory calls for “the construction of overlapping and even conflicting practices, identities and meanings – to make collective sense of their environments” (Arnould and Thompson, 2005, p. 869). While crystallization calls for multiple findings that lead to deeper understanding, the oriental systems approach reflects the same idea of multiplicity, but based on theoretical positions. The dual theory building process was recommended by Cohen (1970) when he encouraged researchers not only to take a “systems approach” by not limiting themselves to descriptive generalizations but also to take an interdisciplinary approach to broaden the researcher’s view and ensure that the study is relevant to the context (Cohen, 1970). Cohen (1970) calls for a broader view that is generated by interdisciplinary approaches, but alternative units of analysis can also provide broader views and alternative results (Polsa and Fan, 2011). Layton (2007) provides a marketing systems approach where not only an exchange level of analysis is considered but, for example, a societal level of analysis is also used to scrutinize the findings and Arnould and Price (2006) call for meso-level market-oriented ethonography. Thus, the view can broaden from the individual, exchange, and organizational level to the societal or even the global level. Indigenous psychology also moves between different levels of analysis: from interpersonal, to individual-group, to individual-society and, finally, to intergroup relations (Ho et al., 2001). Mind, body and spirit In crystallized research, knowledge is created in the interaction between mind, body and spirit (Ellingson, 2009), which corresponds to the terms used in the oriental systems approach (Zhu, 2000a, b). In the terms of the oriental systems approach, mind is close to wuli, which relates to knowing and studying the regularities of objective existence and obtaining knowledge from the objective world (Gu and Zhu, 2000). Because Western science, both social and natural, has traditionally focused on finding the objective reality and on the objectivity of the researcher, mind relates to the wuli that studies world as an objective existence. Because wuli can also be observed as the material and technical existence (Zhu, 2000a), it thus relates to the traditional natural sciences (material, technical, knowing, regularities in objective existence, objective existence). Below, body and spirit are discussed, drawing on both shili and renli as support. Although often ignored in business research, these bodily and spiritual encounters are even more relevant in the Asian context because of the intertwined, holistic and collectivistic culture. Body In this paper, body refers to the embodied encounters that researchers experience while creating knowledge and includes both data collection and analysis. Body is close to the term shili in the oriental systems approach because shili refers to ways of seeing and doing; it also refers to subjective modeling and understanding by reflecting on our own ways of seeing and acting (Gu and Zhu, 2000). Because shili refers to sensing (Zhu, 2000b) in a bodily active way such as seeing and doing and because it refers to human interaction in the world, it can be compared to the meaning of body


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in crystallization. Additionally, subjectivity (cognitive, psychological, sensing,) is prevalent in both body and shili. At least in qualitative accounts, the body is observed to influence the co-creation of reality through the face-to-face interaction between the researcher and the participant but also through a deeper involvement in the communities of the observed (Burawoy, 1998; Murray and Ozanne, 1991) and respondents’ reality is embodied and negotiated (Arnould and Thompson, 2005). What differentiates shili from body is shili’s emphasis on the various ways of organizing cognitive activities (Gu and Zhu, 2000). While shili looks at the cognitive part of human interaction, body also calls attention to feeling, which is a forgotten part of knowledge acquisition. Holistic bodily interaction with both cognition and feelings in the community of investigation leads to deeper involvement and commitment to the setting than conventional ethnographic participation. Shili means event, service, involvement and engagement, reflecting the same ideas as body; it means engagement to the community of the study (Zhu, 2000a). Shili also refers to subjective existence (Gu and Zhu, 2000) and thus acknowledges subjectivity to research. Body, through commitment and engagement, leads to a consideration of ethics in the form of spirit. Because body alone can lead to a commitment and an engagement that influences the studied society in a negative manner, concerns about spirit might help to reflect the impact of research. In the collectivistic and holistic cultures, a research interaction cannot be separated between the investigator and the participants but becomes instead an encounter where the researcher also needs to share information. Because the knowledge creation emphasis has been on mind, two-way interaction as a knowledge generating tool has been ignored. However, this type of knowledge creation or information collection is more present and more important in other types of cultures than in Western settings because human interaction is not separated into sections, such as an interview and an interview topic, but is intertwined in every part of life. Spirit The term spirit refers to the sensitivity of the researcher to the study’s empirical setting, which leads to ethics that go beyond the conventional research ethics such as anonymity and objectivity. In other words, crystallization goes beyond validity, reliability and trustworthiness in its efforts to explicitly and ethically make change in the lives of those who are studied without forcing this change on them. Spirit can be seen as being close to the concept of renli, which seeks and co-ordinates the patterns underlying human relationships. While the concept of wuli refers to knowing and shili refers to understanding, renli is comprised of social, political, caring and intersubjective human relationships (Zhu, 2000a; Gu and Zhu, 2000). The central question in renli is whether “our project serves the genuine interest of concerned parties and wider societies” (Gu and Zhu, 2000, p. 14). The practice of renli is participatory and discursive through generally listening, respecting, caring, compromising and coordinating (Gu and Zhu, 2000). Crystallization does not seek for truth but for truthfulness (Ellingston, 2009) and the utilization and applicability of the research findings to the participants (Miles and Huberman, 1994). Truth should be realized rather than known intellectually with the mind (Bhawuk, 2010). The knowledge acquired should “speak for others,”, i.e. the “voices of marginalized others” should be communicated to “our own academic ends”

(Ellingson, 2009, p. 37), but, moreover, acknowledging spirit enables involvement and participation in the community that we study by employing the self-criticism in science that emancipates this community (Burawoy, 1998) or criticism of social conditions (Murray and Ozanne, 1991). In its most prominent form, research can bring social justice to those who are studied (Ellingson, 2009). In a similar manner, reflective science calls for intervention for the sake of those we study (Burawoy, 1998) and resamples critical theory that declares emancipatory interest on research site that may lead to social change (Murray and Ozanne, 1991; Lincoln and Guba, 2000). In addition, to pursue knowledge, Chinese cultural traditions are concerned about wisdom for action rather than for philosophy, as in Western knowledge traditions (Liu, 2011). The implications, intended and unintended, become even more relevant when the researcher operates in an environment that is alien to her/him. Building on Said’s (2003) seminal work, Westwood (2004) reflected on how international business research can fall into imperialistic ways of treating the research topics and those researched. While Said’s work was primarily based on research on Palestinians and Westwood discussed international business research in general, their concern that research might be imperialistic or that results might be biased based on a stereotypical view of those studied can also be applied to other research areas. The researcher can fall into orientalism (Said, 2003) or imperialism (Westwood, 2004). Orientalism refers to the research on the orient, where outsiders studied cultures and geographical areas that were not their own and often provided a picture of their research topic that did not reflect the view that the studied had about themselves. Both orientalism and imperialism are easily interpreted as a Western way of seeing or treating the other. However, this paper provides a broader definition of orientalism and imperialism. This paper defines both approaches as the outsiders’ biased and stereotyped way of seeing the other or the outsiders’ dominant treatment of the other. So, Asian researchers can also study their subjects with an orientalist or imperialist mind set. The other does not necessarily need to be a cross-border or a cross-cultural other because researchers are sometimes outsiders in their research setting, even in their own country and among their own people. Thus, both Chinese and Indian research traditions, examples in this paper, may fall into imperialism and orientalism if they do not pay enough attention to spirit. Both of these societies, internally and externally, have been and still are acting in an imperialist and orientalist manner much as Euro-America has. Therefore, bringing Eastern philosophical traditions into research does not mean that Eastern societies always practice these traditions. The value added by crystallization lies not only in the validity but in the possibility it shows of stepping away from orientalism or imperialism and acquiring the voice of the peripheral accounts, as well as of helping create social change in the empirical contexts that we study. Moreover, crystallization provides a possibility through actions that are consistent with spirit and body, but it does not guarantee an unbiased view. Spirit can also be interpreted as spirituality, or what indigenous psychology refers to as intuitive illumination (Liu, 2011). Following Eastern traditions such as Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, Asian science allows sensible intuition in knowledge creation (Liu, 2011). In this sense too, the dualism between mind and intuition is lacking in Eastern thinking and in the holistic intertwined thinking there exists a tolerance for contradiction between the logic of the mind and the intuition of the spirit (Liu, 2011). In a similar manner, crystallization accepts the complexity and the


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co-existence of multiple truths. However, in seeking spirituality, the spirit of crystallization goes beyond renli. While Chinese thinking provides social relatedness and holistic interconnectedness (Liu, 2011), Indian traditions have a similar pull for spiritual depths in epistemology (Liu, 2011; Bhawuk, 2008), thus potentially providing a deeper understanding of the role of spirit in knowledge creation.

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Summary The initial ideas of crystallization stems from Western literature (Richardson, 2000, 1998; Ellingston, 2009); however, this paper has enriched it with the oriental systems approach (Zhu, 1999; Zhu, 2000a, b) as well as with the consumer culture theory and indigenous psychology. Figure 1 shows the core idea of the intertwined combination of mind, body and spirit. While crystallization combines and balances mind, body and spirit in knowledge creation, the other approaches capture only parts of these three elements of knowledge. Wuli is purely related to mind while shili and renli can comprise elements from both body and spirit. More traditional research approaches such as market-oriented and critical ethnography are combinations of mind and body or mind and spirit but are not mixture of all three elements: mind, body and spirit. The figure also illuminates that crystallization crosses “disciplinary boundaries and goes beyond multiple-method and uses multiparadigmatic research strategies to understand various world views in their own contexts” (Liu, 2011, p. 222). Table I further illustrates the differences between crystallization and market-oriented and critical ethnography. Compared with market-oriented ethnographers (Arnould and Wallendorf, 1994) or critical ethnographers (Foley and Valenzuela, 2005) who participate to engage in lengthy commitments with informants, crystallization is embedded in culture. Market-oriented and critical ethnographies participate in informant’s lives to increase the validity and trustworthiness of the data. The body as knowledge creation goes

Figure 1. Crystallization and related research approaches

þ

þ

þþ

þþ

þþ

Marketoriented ethnography

Critical ethnography

Crystallization þþ

Approach

þþ

þþ

Main methods Quality criteria

Qualitative Trust-worthiness: credibility, transferability, dependability, conformability Objectivity, anonymity Qualitative Trust-worthiness: credibility, transferability, dependability, conformability Objectivity, anonymity, Mixed Truthfulness: influence of research on qualitative utilization, respondents and indigenousness community credibility, transferability, dependability, conformability

Objectivity, anonymity

Knowledge creation by Mind Body Spirit Ethics Cons

Context sensitivity, understanding and commitment to the context

Context sensitivity, understanding and commitment to the context

Possibly leads to findings that are valueladen and subjective and political

Lack of cultural knowledge to make change

Context sensitivity and Lack of commitment to understanding of the make change context

Pros


Table I. Comparison between crystallization, market-oriented ethnography and critical ethnography

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beyond data quality enhancement by treating holistically and without dualism the social interaction between the researcher and the researched. Crystallization distinguishes itself from both market-oriented ethnography and critical ethnography by emphasizing the embodied encounters between the researcher and the researched. On top of lengthy interaction with the participants, crystallization also includes social, non-research related interaction. While market-oriented ethnography does not stress the practical implications of research findings but highlights the importance of describing and explaining a phenomenon as such, both critical ethnography and crystallization include the responsibility that the researcher carries over those studied. Thus, for both approaches, spirit becomes an important part of knowledge creation in the form of actions taken to change the lives of those under investigation. The difference between market-oriented ethnography and critical ethnography is that they have emerged from different research disciplines; market-oriented ethnography derives from consumer research and critical ethnography from sociology. The other difference is that critical, more than market-oriented, ethnography emphasizes action that changes the lives of the studied or the involvement with the empirical site. While research currently seeks for validity, reliability and trustworthiness, in the future it could seek for truthfulness (Ellingson, 2009). Ellingson (2009) sets truthfulness against the search for truth in a similar way to how Lincoln and Guba (1985) build up trustworthiness, and thus both truthfulness and trustworthiness imply a similar search for authenticity rather than for the truth. In addition, crystallized research seeks actions to influence the participants in the spirit of body and hence can be evaluated in terms of utilization, application and action orientation (Miles and Huberman, 1994), implications of research (Gummesson, 2000), improvement of society (Murray et al., 1995) and researchers’ political involvement (Foley and Valenzuela, 2005). Ideas from the body bring in research quality criteria that consider action, in other words, the practical implications of the studied setting. With regard to the concept of spirit, which seeks to understand the participants in their own premises, one more quality criteria can be established: indigenousness, which applies to how well the international context research seeks and finds indigenous knowledge and methods: the emic knowledge. To differentiate the quality criterion of crystallization from that of naturalistic enquiry (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) where credibility, dependability, transferability and conformability form trustworthiness, the quality criterion is, thus, labeled (Table I) as truthfulness rather than trustworthiness. In addition to credibility, dependability, transferability and conformability, the added dimensions of truthfulness are utilization and indigenousness. Below, two cases illustrate the research experiences in the People’s Republic of China and India that has given empirical ground to the above discussion. Cases in China and India Case 1: retailing in the People’s Republic of China Since 1993, I have been collecting data in Guilin in Guangxi province, China, with conventional Western methods: surveys, interviews, observations, participant observations, photographs and census data. The setting has been grocery retailing and consumer behavior, and the theoretical position is that of Western marketing. The field work was initiated by interviews that I conducted with the help of native and local Chinese interpreters (Polsa, 1998). It was soon evident to me that interviewing

in China is not an official occasion between a professional researcher and her object but a social event where the information is not only collected and acquired but also shared. Every interview with a new retailer began with informal chats about my origin, my country, the level of development of my country and so on. We talked about ice-hockey or soccer, depending on whether my informants understood my country to be Finland or Holland, about art if the informant’s only connection outside China was a brother who exhibited in Europe, and about marketing strategies if the retailer was more business-oriented. I needed to give before I could expect to obtain information. The meetings became reciprocal between me and my source of information in the traditional manner of guanxi building and more of a bodily experience than mind-oriented conventional interviewing. For example, the grandson of the interviewee plays a traditional Chinese instrument for me after the interview. These types of conversations took time, and I soon needed to give up all the efficient calculations of how many interviews were possible in a day. The interactions were also Chinese in that often dinners or lunches were shared before or after the interviews, and during lunchtime, the interviews were impossible, which cut the effective interview time by about three hours. In a society where both private and public is intertwined and not separated, it was natural to conduct an interview in the hospital room of the informant’s wife. The room was a social place for several groups and interactions between people, my interview being one of them. The interviewing was not only a meeting of minds but of bodies in the sense that we shared food and our experiences, and the interviews involved feelings that made us closer and made me more concerned about my sample of retailers than I had expected at first. Because of this experience, where due to the particular culture, I could not separate myself from the informants in a neutral manner, I became more involved with the individuals that I was to “use” as sources of information for my doctoral thesis and coming publications. I was concerned about the development of the retailers and about the personal lives of those retailers who become my friends. Even if, over the years, I could not involve my bodily experience with research analysis to blend my mind with bodily knowledge, I still can reflect over some individuals. One of the grocery store retailers wanted their teenage son to fill out the questionnaire, which allowed me to chat with him at the same time. The future of the store was very uncertain because the government had planned to build a new real estate project at the location of the store and had not provided a new location. I assumed that the parents wanted a better future for their son through a foreign friend and thus provided an opportunity for their son to interact with me. After my short, but intense, encounter with this family over dinners and swimming, I have lost contact with them and have no information regarding their retailing business or their possibilities for alternative earnings. In a similar manner, a manager of a collective retailer disappeared from a prime location due to government reconstruction. The last time I met this manager in 1996, I could sense her worry and her need for help. “We have an old business but it is not doing very well. We really need money. Please, assist us.” was a line written on a questionnaire carefully filled out by the 138th respondent of a survey in 1998. I had assured the respondents of the anonymity of my sample, which I then thought to be ethical, but reading a line like that made me reconsider my ethics because these three individuals left me with three lines in my structural equation model analysis without my being able to provide an action-research type of contribution to the society.


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The above experience with the nameless questionnaire did not prevent me from relying on the survey results and conclusions that the quantitative research brought about, but it led me to conform to a multi-method approach where some parts of the data provide knowledge for the purpose of science and other parts provide knowledge for the purpose of action or to generate empathy. In summary, I learned to interact in a holistic manner in a collectivistic culture, accepting the requirement for a broad social interaction but failing to give back to society the way, for example, the Guilin commercial bureau wished me to. Should I not have the spirit of providing to the community that I am researching? Are there ethics in research other than those of anonymity and trustworthiness? Case 2: a poverty alleviating business model in India The questions that remained unanswered in my experience with China became more evident and haunting with my research in India. The entire research question for this project reflected the questions of ethics and research involvement. In 2008, I began to investigate a business model that was an alternative to the base-of-the-pyramid strategies for how to alleviate poverty with help of profit-making businesses. A Finland-based company, Tikau (www.tikau.com), and its NGO Tikaushare (www.tikaushare.org) conducts business with Indian artisans on a sustainable basis, and to evaluate the impact of their business for the local Indian actors, I have been interviewing, observing and photographing a small village of untouchables in Orissa since 2010. This avenue has been sensitive as a research site from the very beginning. In my field diary 11 November 2011, before the first fieldtrip, I wrote about my worries and cited my son who had said: “what do they need?” and my field notes continue: How many charity projects have failed because the “helpers” and donors have not thought about needs of those less fortunate. It is so easy for us rich to think that everyone needs the same things we have, desire and use. How much we rich could learn from those who do not live in the consumer culture! [. . .] When I took my children to their school bus my daughter said twice to me that I look sad. I did not feel that way but I think I am or was worried like I am always before any trip. However, this time I am more worried. I am worried about studying people who are out from my context and who are extremely vulnerable. I also learned in the chronic poverty conference that India’s poor have been very well studied during the recent years. They might be totally tired of meeting again a group of people who try to change their life. It is always best to help when help has been asked for. This time it has not been asked for. We help because we think help is needed but have we ever questioned that [. . .] I am also worried about being disappointed with the case company. What if she has no respect! What if she treats these people like a source for ideas or like the poor. What if there is no respect.

The field notes reflect the concerns of mutual learning, which are most likely partly due to the Chinese experience but also due to my respect for the community I was to research. On 11 November 2011, I wrote: What do I expect? It is funny and strange to feel confused. Instead of doing my profession, i.e. observe and ask, I am maybe more in a journey of learning. [. . .] I am not only curious but look for something beautiful and functional and simple. As if in these places there is the simplicity of life.

The field notes continue to explain how the rich should learn a more sustainable lifestyle from the less affluent; thus, the learning that I refer to in my diary is not

learning for data collection or analysis but for alternative lifestyles that reflect a level of respect in adapting such a life or lifestyle. Poverty is striking when you encounter it face-to-face. An elderly lady is sitting in front of me and my research assistants. She is willing to talk, as if this is the first occasion where someone is interested in her. I cannot help but notice that her sari is worn out and old. Objectivity and anonymity is far away when I meet the participants of my research face-to-face by a rice field and see how the old sari does not cover enough but leaves the private parts of the lady’s body exposed. She tells us: “The three boys do not help at all. They live in the house and I sleep together with my husband at the terrace in front of the house” (Plate 1). My interview notes continue: “She is crying at this point.” I can still remember tears, tiny body, heat, broken sari and the literally embodied experience of being in front of a person who lives at the mercy of her children and me with my privileged habits and all of the electronic devices to record this little lady, bottles of water, and the other material possessions that my world considers to be necessities. It is not enough to only record and tell the story; action is also needed. Research should and could be more than just recording, participating, analyzing and reporting. It could also be acting on behalf of those I record. Research in Orissa has been blended with charity and consultancy work because during my field work I also help Tikaushare by delivering charity in form of clothes, food and improved housing. My field diary evidences this dual role on 22 August 2011:


It is very important that a difficult place is the case of research. I have so much more begun to understand the failures of projects and the costs of NGOs and the problems that people take up with regard to charity. Do it yourself and you will see that helping the poorest and most suppressed people is not ever an easy task. So, finding a difficult case to research is not to generalize the findings to apply all other BoP or development cases but to provide action research type of implications that might then help other projects or at least give understanding how much work there is behind each and every success.

Plate 1. Embodied interviewing

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On 23 August 2011: Yes, so it seems that the business of Tikau/Tikaushare is intertwined closely bringing together the profitable business and helping. Helping is not only charity like all the other companies are doing but giving employment and markets.

Given that there is a fragile and unique community and that the case company of my research wants to improve their quality of living, it was also possible to destroy the current system. Therefore, the very presence of the company and the seemingly neutral presence of the researcher could destroy or harm the current community, its people and its system. These possible threats led me to think about ethics from the perspective of spirit. The entire mainstream field of base-of-the-pyramid research seeks models to improve the quality of life of the less affluent; however, there is little discussion about what constitutes quality of life outside of the Western setting. Thus, given the research topic of my Indian research, there is a risk that the researcher brings an imperialist view on quality of life. Thus, the concept of quality of life, poverty and affluence should be defined from the Indian perspective. Interpretive findings While on the abstract level of the philosophy of science, crystallization intertwines mind, body and spirit holistically, as shown in Figure 1, with regard to the operational level of abstraction, mind, body and spirit produce different findings in an iterative process and are evaluated under different quality standards. The operational process, raw data, findings and quality criteria of mind, body and spirit are shown in Figure 2. The data collection and analysis process between mind, body and spirit is iterative so that all three elements can benefit from each other. Raw data can also be shared, but results and findings are clearly separated. Mind results in research reports in the form of articles and conference papers. Body, however, results in more subjective findings such as poems and visual art in the form of photos, paintings, videos and so on that illuminate the researcher’s subjective but emotional experiences. The results of spirit are the actions that make change for those who are studied in the form of action projects, improvement programs and so on. The iteration between mind, body and spirit is important to provide objectivity regarding the actions taken or sensitivity to the research reports. The first case illustrated how body supplements the purely mind-oriented research. The case illustrates how interviewing changes from a conventional interview to a context embedded holistic conversation that is reciprocal. In the holistic culture, it is impossible to separate the interviewee or the interviewer from her or his life by concentrating only on interview topics. The interaction between the interviewee and the interviewer becomes intertwined in the lives of both and experiences and off-interview topics are shared. The first case also illuminates the need for the researcher to share his or her own life so that the shared information is reciprocal. Because this reciprocal encounter becomes involved with life in general, it also creates a bodily experience. Thus, conventional interviewing with mind becomes, over time, embodied interviewing. The first case also illustrates that with the lack of a crystallization approach, the need to assure anonymity and objectivity prevented the body and spirit, or shili and renli, from emerging and, in consequence, prevented certain findings from being uncovered. The mind provided the ethics of anonymity and quality criteria such as trustworthiness,


Figure 2. Crystallization and empirical reflections

validity and reliability but the emergence of body and spirit inspired ethics such as action to help or caring for the research site as well as indigenousness. Based on the experience from case one, it was obvious that the holistic, embodied experience was the Asian way of gaining knowledge. Case two brought the ethics of spirit more obviously into the research. Because of the fragile setting of the very poor participants, it was not possible to only collect data; the setting demanded deeper involvement and action. Because of the subjective feelings involved in the research but also because of an explicit decision to consider spirit, the process led to a caring for the setting that, in turn, led to action in terms of practical implications. Therefore, the research on poverty alleviation was not enough; the research approach also needed to involve action to eliminate poverty. In this case, the practical implication of eliminating poverty was first to provide or deliver donations but also to consult the case company and the case NGO. The objective research findings were complemented with actions that made change in the studied community. Conclusions and limitations The potential contribution of crystallization as a research approach is that it can provide empirical tools or attitudes that complement Western-oriented theories and, in consequence, give rise to novel indigenous and emic theories. By involving both body and spirit as parts of a research approach, empirical findings are brought beyond those provided by the mind’s objectivity and logic. While indigenous psychology has used

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conventional Western methods to show that Western originated ethical theories do not apply in, for example, Asian settings (Gould, 1999), crystallization has provided one research approach that can detect indigenous theories and findings. Further investigation and scrutinizing of crystallization can also lead to alternative methods and methodological tools that better uncover the indigenous in a research setting. The empirical research journey illustrated above has been a Westerner’s odyssey to Asian research sites. Therefore, the view remains a Western view of the orient and might fall into orientalism. Despite efforts to integrate the indigenous oriental systems approach, the research community still needs to present more Asian views of Asian settings that illuminate even more deeply the specifics of Asia. One way of presenting truly Asian research methods, methodologies, philosophies of science and research approaches is to use more Asian publications such as journals and books published in Asia. Future research avenues on crystallization should deepen the concepts of both body and spirit. Much of the coming work could benefit from using original and indigenous literature from Asia. While much of this literature is published in China and in India, a cross-cultural and crossvergent co-operative work is warranted (Liu, 2011). The current article has discussed crystallization as one research approach to be considered as suitable to Asian empirical research settings. However, the article has addressed the methodological concerns on one level of abstraction. As stated by Heckhausen and Schulz (1999), in any given phenomena, the degree of universality is dependent on the level of abstraction. Highly abstract concepts and phenomenon are universal, while the same construct at a more operational level can need a more emic approach. Therefore, future research on methods in Asian cultures should also consider different levels of abstraction from the philosophies of science, epistemologies and ontologies to the research methods and tools used for collecting and analyzing data. The above applies also to the level of analysis of the culture. An aggregated view on Asian culture has been used to illustrate how crystallization might bring deeper and alternative understanding to research phenomenon. However, culture is more complex than the view given in this article. Therefore, future research on the topic warrants different levels of analysis of culture: national, regional, ethnic and so on. Local cultures at any level of analysis are increasingly interpenetrated by global media and capital as well as migration (Arnould and Thompson, 2005), which blends the indigenous with the global and thus makes the concept of culture even more multifaceted and complex.

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Further reading Heckhausen, J. and Shultz, R. (1995), “A life-span theory of control”, Psychological Review, Vol. 102 No. 2, pp. 284-304. Hofstede, G. (2001), Culture’s Consequences – Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Hofstede, G. and Bond, M.H. (1984), “Hofstede’s culture dimensions: an independent validation using Rokeach’s value survey”, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Vol. 15, pp. 417-33. Hofstede, G. and Bond, M.H. (1988), “The Confucius connection: from cultural roots to economic growth”, Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 16 No. 4, pp. 4-21. About the author Pia Polsa is Dean of Hult International Business School in Shanghai and Associate Professor of Marketing at the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland. Her research includes grocery retailing and consumer behaviour in China and sustainable poverty alleviating business models in India. Her current research interests are poverty, service and relationship marketing at non-profit settings like health care in developing countries, international marketing channels, and cross-cultural methodology. She has published in journals such as Journal of Business Research, Journal of Macromarketing, Journal of Services Marketing, Supply Chain Management, International Marketing Review, International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Journal of Management Policy and Practice, Journal of Academy of Marketing Science Review, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Journal of Marketing Channels, and Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management. Pia Polsa can be contacted at: [email protected]

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