Business Research Methods [Hardcover]

I used this in a graduate research methods class, and found it devoid of much practical information, instead being filled with a lot of meaningless doubletalk that has (unfortunately) come to dominate a high percentage of social science textbooks in the last twenty years. The advice on research and study design is useful for only extremely narrow types of studies, and may or may not help a student prepare for a thesis or dissertation (I am guessing it will not help more people than will find it helpful.)

To add insult to injury the book is patronizing and tends to talk down to students particularly in the insultingly stupid and simplistic faux case studies it uses. In particular, the 'MindWriter' study with "Myra Wines" reads more like a very poorly written soap opera than legitimate business case study, and insults the intelligence of students. (Particularly galling is the wholly implausible situation in which Myra finds herself solving an expended munition problem in the Army. Clearly from reading this, the authors should know more about their subject matter before creating these vignettes.) Most people who use this book could do entirely without these manufactured, extremely politically correct case studies. They in no way enhance learning.

Another major issue is the actual presentation of the text. McGraw Hill should be ashamed of the way this book looks. There are random text boxes breaking up the chapters all over the place (most often with useless information), pointless and often indecipherable flowcharts abound (an excellent example of this is the questionable flow of lines on Exhibit 3-7, 'Research Proposal Process', or the labyrinthine Exhibit 5-1, 'Ethical Issues and the Research Process', neither of which help make anything clearer), and extremely poor font and color choices. Here I refer to the dubious decision to use red ink to print inset quotations. Evidently McGraw Hill doesn't know that in many studies, red has been found to be one of the most difficult to read colors, and detracts from comprehension. Besides that, what's the point? I can read black ink just as well, it costs less, and it is already inset so I can see it is differentiated at a glance. None of that, however, is as bad as the selection of pink paper for many of the ancillary sections (normally case studies and the like) sprinkled liberally throughout the book at inconvenient places. This is dreadful. Not only is this difficult to read, but it is hard to highlight. Of course all these things make the book vastly more expensive. Textbook publishers would do well to knock off the fancy typesetting tricks and get back to basics while making their books less expensive. I don't mind paying $136.00 for a book, but I do want to get a good value. (Of course this isn't the only textbook that has fallen into this trap.)

All told I gave this book two stars. It really is a sub par book, and I did consider giving it one star, but it occasionally contains a real gem of a thought that makes it more worthwhile than a single star book would be. I believe that this book is in dire need of a good editor. It is 857 pages long, and could easily be reduced to 300 pages by sorting the wheat from the chaff. At 300 pages this would probably be a very good and practical book, at 857, it is obese. If you have a choice of book to use for a given course, I would not select this one. It is of limited utility and it requires vastly too much effort to glean required knowledge. Avoid if possible.