Rigour vs. Reality: Contextualizing Qualitative Research in the Low-Income Settings in Emerging Markets

Management scholars increasingly conduct qualitative research in low-income settings in emerging markets. These large communities, which often operate in the informal economy and cut across national boundaries, face enormous challenges in meeting basic needs. Nevertheless, low-income settings have not received separate methodological attention and are often subsumed instead under the more general and homogenous category of emerging markets. We argue that application of Western methodological conventions to low-income settings may result in decontextualized and distorted knowledge that does not advance societal betterment. We characterize research that strictly follows methodological rules and steps, with limited contextualization for low-income settings as ‘rigour-by-convention’. In turn, we introduce the alternative concept of ‘rigour-within-context’, which reconciles the seemingly opposing goals of rigorous and contextualized research. In this approach, researchers contextualize their research, even if this means deviating from established conventions. Hence, rigour should be judged by its internal logic rather than by external rules or templates not designed to capture key insights from low-income settings. We conclude by recommending the means through which contextualized research on low-income settings can be conducted.