May 28,2018 Scientific research & Postgraduate Studies, Business Administration

Thinking out of the Box: Non-Typical Research methods in Business

Researchers

Al Aytouni, Kinaz; and Naddeh, Kinan M.

Published in

Modernizing the Academic Teaching and Research Environment – (Book) - Springer, Cham, 2018, pp 127-160

Abstract

After discussing statistical techniques for data selection, collection, coding, manipulation, summarizing and presentation, this chapter describes one of some relatively new research methods in business, which are non-typical, non-statistical in nature. Artificial Neural networks (ANNs), case-based reasoning, fuzzy logic, and genetic algorithms are advanced techniques that show promises as enablers to solve some difficulties that may lie in analyzing and synthesizing complex systems which include large quantities of data from several different sources into a coherent research model. Raising the idea up of discovering un-noticed observations or data in front of a researcher is for a purpose. One of the new techniques proposed in this chapter, like data mining, rely on discovering unobserved or unnoticed patterns in the already available data and data sources. This chapter will focus on using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) method, what is it, who will use it, why and how to use it. The chapter ends by presenting the future trend in using this method, which is the combination among typical and non-typical methods.

Keywords: Artificial Neural networks (ANNs), Perceptron, Hopfield Networks, Kohonen Network, Non-Typical Research methods, Business research.

Link to read full paper

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74173-4_8